Why Reaching Goals Can Bum You Out

All right, everybody, welcome, welcome to the show, this is Faithful on the Clock, where my whole goal is to get your faith and work aligned. I’m your host, Wanda Thibodeaux, and speaking of goals, today’s episode is all about the arrival fallacy and making sure your joy doesn’t kick the bucket as soon as you get what you want. Stay tuned, the discussion is gonna be awesome. Let’s get right to it.

Right out of the gate, let’s just explain for anybody who might not have heard the term before, arrival fallacy is just this false idea that when you arrive at a goal, when you meet whatever objective you set for yourself, you’re gonna feel amazing and super motivated by what you accomplished. But what often happens is, you get to that big finish line, and it does not feel that way at all. It feels, I don’t know, just like something really big is missing, or that it just didn’t quite live up to what you thought it was going to be. And you just get down in the dumps because the concept you had doesn’t match the reality that you’re actually in.

So a good example I have of this is, a CEO I work with, he’s actually started multiple companies. He’s a serial entrepreneur. But when he sold his first company, you know, he knew it was time to do that, all the numbers and everything looked good, and he was really excited going into the whole deal. But then when the sale actually happened, he was just miserable. Because even though he had tons of money from the sale of the business, he really hadn’t anticipated what it would feel like to not be with his team anymore, you know, to not be there innovating the way that he’d been able to before. So for him it was just this one giant letdown.

And I think we probably all have experienced this to some degree. A couple of years back, for instance, I like to run, that’s kind of, really freeing for me to do, and I set a goal to run a half marathon. And just like a big work project, that’s not something you can just get up and do in the morning, there are weeks of training that go into it. But after I got done, you know, I’d been anticipating that finish for so long that when it actually happened, it was, it really was this downer. And I was like, OK, well, now what.

And so why is this important for you as a team member or leader. Well, what’s the big emphasis right now? Especially with people like John Doe-er in the thought leadership space, everybody, and especially around Silicon Valley, the big thing is objective key results, you know, your OKRs. And that’s just the idea that you set an objective that has some kind of metric or key results that you actually can verify or measure. And leaders are really wanting individuals and teams and their whole companies to set OKRs because provide so much accountability, and because they really help everybody understand where they need to go and what to do to get there.

So everywhere you look, everybody is like, set your goals! You gotta set some goals or you’re not gonna get anywhere. And so what that’s doing is, it’s basically conditioning people to anticipate these finish lines, whether those finish lines are just, you know, hey, get your info on the database today or bring in another five digits a month in sales. And unless you approach that the right way, there’s a lot of risk that when they reach those goals, they’re gonna feel let down, just like my CEO who sold his business, or like I did with the marathon. And you don’t want that, because it’s really gonna make it hard for them to feel like moving on to the next thing and putting in more effort is worth it. It’s gonna have a negative effect not just on your productivity, but on the bigger things like your entire team’s morale and your culture.

So there are two big things that can prevent this whole arrival fallacy problem from kicking you in the behind. The first is the rule of thirds. That’s been used by Olympian runner Alexi Pappas to keep post-success depression under control. And it basically says you should feel crappy a third of the time, meh or neutral a third of the time, and good a third of the time. And what applying that rule of thirds does is, um...I think traditionally we really see goals in black and white thinking, where you either make it or you don’t. And everything is really based in the future. But the rule of thirds, what that does is, it really does focus on the entire process of what you’re doing, and it teaches you to just be more mindful and stay in the present moment of what’s going on with you right now.

Now, when you do that, achievement suddenly isn’t the big focus anymore. The focus isn’t on what you did, but rather on how you’re different. And that’s good, right? We want to grow, to develop. And asking yourself how you’re different can take a lot of forms. You might ask yourself, for example,

What skills did you improve or gain?

What new connections do you have?

How has your view of other people shifted?

What are you excited about or considering now?

Is there something you’re not afraid of anymore?

Where would you feel comfortable now?

And whatever variation you might come up with on that theme, the big picture is just that it’s OK if things aren’t perfect. It’s fine if it’s a little rough, because even in the rough stuff, you’re probably learning something.

Secondly, you’ve probably heard of breaking your goals up to make them more manageable. I think that’s great advice. And that works from the neurological perspective because the brain, it actually gives you these hits of dopamine every time you anticipate something, OK. It’s important to understand that it’s not just when you receive the reward that that happens, it’s the anticipation. Dopamine, that’s the chemical that makes you feel happy, but it also ties to motivation, too. It keeps you looking for new, novel things, keeps you curious. So when you have a big goal, you can get this big rise in dopamine and then this huge crash. And that crash actually can happen before you even reach the goal if you’re anticipating the end of that goal sooner, you know, maybe the deadline is the end of the month, but your boss is pushing for you to have it done a week ahead of that. And then when you hit the real deadline, it’s like, that’s it? That’s all there is? And it all just feels like a formality. Those kinds of scenarios. But if you get little tiny goals happening all the time, then you get this drip, drip, drip supply of dopamine, rather than this big surge that might happen and then suddenly just drop into the basement.

So as an individual or leader, what that means is, you have to be really careful that you have some milestones to celebrate along the way. And you have to be really realistic about how you pace yourself. If you’re a pre-crastinator like I am, for instance, then you might really have to put those mental breaks on and say, nope, that project isn’t even starting until next week, so I’m just gonna chill out and do these other tasks on my plate. And conversely, if you tend to procrastinate and put things off, you know, you want to spread things out a little better so you actually give yourself enough time to celebrate and process those little wins that you have the opportunity for. And you really have to be self-aware and observant of your team for this to work well, because every project or group is going to be a little different and need different things.

Shifting gears here and putting goal-setting into the Biblical perspective as we always want to do, scripture similarly teaches that there’s this balance to the goal-setting process. Proverbs 6:6-11 points to the insect, the ant, and it basically says, hey, you gotta work hard and prepare and get stuff done. You can’t just sit around. Proverbs 21:5, too, says “The plans of the diligent lead to profit.” So I’m never going to tell you, step setting goals, forget those OKRs. Having a strategy and a process, those are good things.

But on the other hand, the key to that is to let God stay in the driver’s seat, and to understand that that no matter what planning we do, no matter what goals we might anticipate or set, God’s gonna do what He’s gonna do, and we have to respect that He knows better and can blow our ship way off the course that we personally wanted. So one verse to memorize is James 4:13-15. That talks about how we don’t have any idea what’s really going to happen and it says, “Instead you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” And Proverbs 16:9 another good one to keep in mind, which says, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines His steps.” And then the beautiful thing too is in Matthew 6:33-34, which reminds us that, if we seek God first above all else, He’s gonna take care of us, and that we don’t have to worry. We don’t have to stress out and be afraid, because He’s always got our backs.

So with that promise, let’s go ahead a do a quick prayer.

God, setting goals has its place. But any of those goals we set carries a risk of making us feel disappointed. So even as we focus on the journey and put things into bite-sized pieces, help us remember that you’re working to the biggest goal of all, to reunite us with you. And help us just overcome this tendency we have to want all the answers, and help us trust in your timing. And when we set goals, make sure we remember that all of those things, all the stuff we can achieve on this Earth, it’s going to fade into something much more precious once you come back to get us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

That’s the show for this week, peeps. Next week, I’m taking a look at specialization. Is it really OK to focus on just one area of expertise and not wear a billion different hats? Check back for that, and as you wait, go ahead and look us up on social media, I’ll have links in the show notes so you can follow on all your favorite channels. I really want us to be a team out there, OK? Go click those links, and until next time, be blessed.