Focusing on something other than yourself isn't a sure path to sanity, it's just the more likely path. You can become just as obsessed with your marathon time as you can with the size of your thighs. I know, I am the obsessive type, and I can get throughly engrossed my projects. But I've found that when I get obsessed with a project I have periods where I feel great. I experience flow. I am in the zone. I am a productive machine! But sometimes I can get frustrated. There are times where nothing seems to work and I end up throwing things and eating lots of ice cream and maybe a few tears are involved.
When I focus on myself and self improvement projects there aren't those periods of beautiful calm punctuated with bouts of vexation, it's more a long downward spiral. Some parts of of the spiral seem fun (researching diets, starting a fitness plan), other parts are fast and painful, but it all leads down. In the end I feel shitty about myself. Even if I succeed, (and note that success in these self-improvement projects is often ephemeral and vague) I feel shitty about my old self and feel shitty about my current self as soon as I fall off the rails for a minute.
We all have to grow and develop. We can't stay infants forever. We have two paths to do this. One is by focusing on the actions and things you want to improve, the other is about improving yourself. Both involve pain. That's the price of being alive, we can't escape pain. My theory is just the the first path, focusing on actions and things you want to improve is less painful than trying to improve yourself.
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