Idiosyncrasies

Idiosyncrasies, those annoying little things that our loved ones, and hey and let’s face, that we ourselves do that drive everyone NUTS! They affect everything we do! No matter if it’s someone else’s quirks, or our own. As I travel on my journey to improve my health, shed some weight and to figure out who that lady in the mirror is, I am finding that I have quite a few personal imperfections and peculiar qualities that are driving me mad! And some of these oddities are NEW!

What might those be…ah, confessions! I have become the refrigerator/pantry Nazi…”You really need to eat that now?” With the response of, “I would like to get ingredients to make dinner dear,” or, “Does this apple meet your approval.” Oops. Since starting at the gym, the lady in the mirror has become annoyed with me as has the rest of the family because now I am frequently looking in on her. I’m checking her posture, is she standing up straight, sucking that belly in. Or I’m checkin’ her out-- look she has some shape emerging. Or criticizing her—she’s not eating right, she’s not working hard enough. Then the one that irritates me the most is the fidgety feeling I get if I don’t get to the gym by 11am. Where did this come from!!! Oh, and there’s this old embedded part of my personality of the more someone says NO, the more I say YES and vice versa—a tad bit of an oppositional defiant person I am sometimes. Sigh.

Joseph De Maistre once said, “It is one of man's curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them.” Ummm…so this made me start thinking that maybe, just maybe the things my family or friends do that irritate me, may in fact just be my own idiosyncrasies surfacing. For example, my son not making his bed in the morning boils my blood. But….he just rolls his eyes at me when I complain—which is his response to my obsessive desire of wanting his bed, which is in the basement, behind closed doors, that no one sees, made! When I looked at it that way, I rolled MY eyes! OK, I get it now, what really is the big deal!?

So over the last week or so, I decided to try and take a broader look at the behaviors of those around me as well as myself and figure out why they bother me or others. Never did figure it out, sorry to disappoint you. But what I did learn is that while the general conscientious is that idiosyncrasies are negative they can in fact be positive. While there is not much I can do to get a 16 year old boy to make his bed that is hidden from the world, I can stop obsessing over what my family eats by not bringing junk into the house. When I can’t get to the gym when I want I can remember that I will get there sooner or later.  Or when I am annoying the lady in the mirror I can remember to stop the negative self talk—see it’s positive because it’s reminding me to do something positive! Then there’s that crazed fluff lady at the gym that comes in and grunts and groans and slams the too heavy weight down and spends all but 15 seconds on a machine—she drives us all nuts! But instead of thinking bad of her, I could (and did) celebrate her efforts and go over and help her find the right weight and explain the principles of strength training and teach her some proper technique—after all I am a physical therapist and almost a personal trainer shouldn’t I use those skills!? Or when my neat freak daughter is flitting around instead of being irritated, I can be thankful she’s cleaning! And when my husband says, “Honey, wear your seat belt and turn on the lights and don’t beat on the van,” for the umpteenth bazillionth time (OMG drives me OVER THE EDGE), I can remember that it his way of saying he loves me, be careful out there.

So to finish up here I will quote Mike Leach, famed former winning head coach of Texas Tech, “I think everybody has idiosyncrasies ... You just do your deal and constantly figure out a way to do it better.”  Makes sense to me!