The alternative to a life of debt, work and consumption is one of liberty, purpose and (hopefully healthy) obsession. 

Obsession is the tricky character in this trio. On the one hand, obsession can give you the focus and flow to accomplish great things. But on the other, it can also destroy health and relationships. 

Today’s post tries to find the right balance. But first, we need to understand the self-sustaining nature of this story. 

The virtuous cycle

Those who have built high life efficiency and financial resilience can transition from yesterday’s vicious cycle to this virtuous alternative: 

Those who manage to leverage their liberty to turn their purpose into their job are those who transcend work.

For these creators, work does not require willpower. Instead, it inspires and fills that hollowness inside that so many others can only fill through self-destructive consumption. 

The result is guaranteed stellar levels of life efficiency, granting even more liberty to pursue a chosen purpose. 

Obsession of the healthy kind

Self-earned freedom to pursue a truly inspiring purpose easily leads to obsessive behavior. This journey is just so remarkably interesting that it naturally starts to dominate thinking patterns.

All this thinking inevitably leads to even more interesting ways to pursue your purpose, leading to a self-strengthening cycle all by itself. 

As long as your purpose will contribute to society, this is certainly a good thing. But it can also be taken too far. 

Obsession of the unhealthy kind

An obsession becomes unhealthy when it starts to negatively affect your health and relationships. 

For me, avoiding health impacts is easy because of a deep understanding that excellent health is a prerequisite to pursuing my purpose. This effectively makes healthy living part of my purpose. 

Maintaining healthy professional relationships is relatively simple for the same reason as outlined above. But personal relationships run a bigger risk of being damaged by creative obsession. 

The best I’ve come up with to date is to massively prioritize quality over quantity. I spend relatively little time on personal relationships, but ensure that I’m all in and fully present for every interaction.

It also helps to recognize the long-term value of a few close personal relationships. We’ll return to this long-term view tomorrow.