TRANSCRIÇÃO 🔗
WEBVTT
1
00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:04.080
You got it. The promotion. The flat. The degree. The
2
00:00:04.120 --> 00:00:07.530
thing you worked toward for two years. You remember imagining
3
00:00:07.549 --> 00:00:11.429
this moment. In the imagining, it felt enormous. There would
4
00:00:11.449 --> 00:00:14.669
be relief and pride and a sense of arrival, and
5
00:00:14.789 --> 00:00:18.230
everything after it would feel different. In the actual moment,
6
00:00:18.739 --> 00:00:22.879
it felt quiet. Smaller than the imagining. And by the evening,
7
00:00:23.359 --> 00:00:26.239
you were already thinking about the next thing. Not because
8
00:00:26.260 --> 00:00:29.390
you were ungrateful. because the feeling you were promised did
9
00:00:29.449 --> 00:00:31.350
not arrive with the thing you were promised it would
10
00:00:31.370 --> 00:00:34.570
arrive with. Welcome to Before You Overthink It Again. I
11
00:00:35.289 --> 00:00:38.070
am Logan. Today we are talking about the emptiness that
12
00:00:38.090 --> 00:00:40.750
can follow a success, and about why it does not
13
00:00:40.810 --> 00:00:43.340
mean you wanted the wrong thing. Here is the question.
14
00:00:44.090 --> 00:00:48.079
Why can reaching a long-wanted goal feel strangely empty? You
15
00:00:48.119 --> 00:00:50.820
did the work, you reached the place, and the place
16
00:00:50.920 --> 00:00:54.399
feels like any other place, only quieter, because the noise
17
00:00:54.460 --> 00:00:57.549
of striving has stopped, and underneath it, there is a
18
00:00:57.630 --> 00:01:00.890
silence you did not expect. Did you climb the wrong mountain?
19
00:01:01.570 --> 00:01:04.409
Or is something else going on? Something else is going on,
20
00:01:04.849 --> 00:01:08.030
and it has a name worth knowing. The arrival fallacy.
21
00:01:08.900 --> 00:01:12.359
The psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar gave it that name, and it
22
00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:15.799
describes a very common belief. The belief that reaching a
23
00:01:15.840 --> 00:01:19.799
goal will deliver lasting happiness. That once you get the promotion,
24
00:01:20.019 --> 00:01:22.599
or the degree, or the house, you will feel a
25
00:01:22.640 --> 00:01:26.140
certain way, and you will keep feeling that way. It
26
00:01:26.180 --> 00:01:29.140
is a believable belief because the goal is real and
27
00:01:29.159 --> 00:01:32.939
the wanting is real. But the belief confuses two different things.
28
00:01:33.700 --> 00:01:37.939
The goal is an event. Happiness is a state. And events,
29
00:01:38.319 --> 00:01:43.219
even wonderful ones, do not produce lasting states. They produce moments.
30
00:01:44.060 --> 00:01:48.109
And moments pass. Underneath the arrival fallacy is an older finding,
31
00:01:48.549 --> 00:01:50.609
and it is one of the most famous in psychology.
32
00:01:51.409 --> 00:01:54.450
In the 1970s, Brickman and his colleagues studied people who
33
00:01:54.469 --> 00:01:58.200
had won lotteries and people who had become paraplegic
Load full transcript
after accidents,
34
00:01:58.780 --> 00:02:01.700
and they compared both groups with people who had experienced neither.
35
00:02:02.519 --> 00:02:05.299
The lottery winners were not much happier than the comparison group,
36
00:02:05.859 --> 00:02:09.060
and the accident victims, after the initial shock, were not
37
00:02:09.099 --> 00:02:12.969
as unhappy as everyone expected. The study was small, and
38
00:02:13.009 --> 00:02:15.430
it has been argued about ever since, and it should
39
00:02:15.469 --> 00:02:18.090
not be read as saying that terrible things do not matter,
40
00:02:18.330 --> 00:02:21.250
because they do. But the core finding has held up
41
00:02:21.310 --> 00:02:25.789
in many other studies since. Human beings adapt. We return,
42
00:02:25.949 --> 00:02:29.979
over time, toward a baseline. Good events lift us, bad
43
00:02:30.020 --> 00:02:33.939
events lower us, and then gradually, the lift fades and
44
00:02:33.960 --> 00:02:39.099
the drop softens. Psychologists call this hedonic adaptation. It is
45
00:02:39.139 --> 00:02:41.879
the reason a new car feels extraordinary for a month
46
00:02:42.340 --> 00:02:45.060
and ordinary by the second, and it is the reason
47
00:02:45.120 --> 00:02:48.349
a promotion feels enormous for a week and normal by
48
00:02:48.389 --> 00:02:51.629
the second. Now here is the second layer, and it
49
00:02:51.689 --> 00:02:54.669
is the part that explains why the emptiness feels so personal.
50
00:02:55.509 --> 00:02:57.969
The goal was carrying more than it could ever deliver.
51
00:02:58.659 --> 00:03:01.060
It was not just a promotion or a degree or
52
00:03:01.080 --> 00:03:05.120
a flat. It was carrying meaning. It was carrying identity.
53
00:03:05.780 --> 00:03:09.240
It was carrying proof. Once I get this, I will
54
00:03:09.259 --> 00:03:12.120
be the kind of person who has this. Once I
55
00:03:12.159 --> 00:03:15.189
get this, I will know I am good enough. Once
56
00:03:15.219 --> 00:03:19.069
I get this, my life will finally start. No external
57
00:03:19.129 --> 00:03:22.210
event can carry that much weight. A promotion can give
58
00:03:22.250 --> 00:03:24.930
you a title and a salary. It cannot give you
59
00:03:24.969 --> 00:03:28.610
a self. A degree can give you a qualification. It
60
00:03:28.629 --> 00:03:31.770
cannot give you a verdict on your worth. The emptiness
61
00:03:31.810 --> 00:03:34.780
you feel is not the absence of happiness. It is
62
00:03:34.819 --> 00:03:37.599
the gap between what the goal promised and what any
63
00:03:37.680 --> 00:03:40.939
single event is capable of delivering. And the gap was
64
00:03:41.120 --> 00:03:43.960
always going to be there, because the promise was too
65
00:03:44.020 --> 00:03:46.659
large for the event. And there is something else the
66
00:03:46.699 --> 00:03:50.400
goal was carrying, which is easier to miss. The pursuit itself.
67
00:03:51.340 --> 00:03:53.860
For two years, the goal gave your days a structure.
68
00:03:54.599 --> 00:03:56.860
It gave you a reason to get up. A direction
69
00:03:56.879 --> 00:04:00.060
to walk in. A community of people walking the same way.
70
00:04:00.759 --> 00:04:03.719
A story about where you were going. The striving was
71
00:04:03.780 --> 00:04:05.860
not just a cost you paid to reach the goal.
72
00:04:06.580 --> 00:04:08.460
It was a source of meaning in its own right.
73
00:04:09.280 --> 00:04:12.240
And when the goal is reached, the striving ends, and
74
00:04:12.259 --> 00:04:15.319
the structure goes with it. The emptiness is partly the
75
00:04:15.379 --> 00:04:18.300
silence where the structure used to be. You did not
76
00:04:18.339 --> 00:04:21.339
just arrive somewhere. You lost the road that was taking
77
00:04:21.379 --> 00:04:24.879
you there. And roads, it turns out, are where most
78
00:04:24.920 --> 00:04:28.750
of the living happens. So what do people commonly misunderstand here?
79
00:04:29.509 --> 00:04:32.089
They think the emptiness means they wanted the wrong thing.
80
00:04:32.750 --> 00:04:35.189
If it feels empty, the goal must have been a mistake,
81
00:04:35.689 --> 00:04:37.850
and the answer must be a bigger goal or a
82
00:04:37.910 --> 00:04:41.389
different goal or a goal that will finally deliver. But
83
00:04:41.410 --> 00:04:44.209
the emptiness is not evidence about the goal. It is
84
00:04:44.250 --> 00:04:47.490
evidence about adaptation and about the size of the promise.
85
00:04:48.290 --> 00:04:50.810
A bigger goal will produce the same emptiness on a
86
00:04:50.870 --> 00:04:54.300
larger scale because it will carry an even larger promise.
87
00:04:54.870 --> 00:04:57.680
and adaptation will do the same work on it. The
88
00:04:57.740 --> 00:05:00.759
answer is not a bigger destination. It is a different
89
00:05:00.800 --> 00:05:04.399
relationship with the walking. There's a distinction worth making here,
90
00:05:04.819 --> 00:05:07.060
and it is between the goal and the life around
91
00:05:07.079 --> 00:05:10.600
the goal. The goal is a destination. The life is
92
00:05:10.639 --> 00:05:15.000
the days. And satisfaction, the research suggests, lives much more
93
00:05:15.019 --> 00:05:18.459
in the days than in the destinations. It lives in progress,
94
00:05:18.779 --> 00:05:22.139
in engagement, in the feeling of moving towards something that matters,
95
00:05:22.750 --> 00:05:24.730
in the people you meet on the way, in the
96
00:05:24.769 --> 00:05:28.100
skills you build while walking. The arrival is a moment.
97
00:05:28.600 --> 00:05:31.329
The walking is a life. And if you only measure
98
00:05:31.360 --> 00:05:34.439
the moments, the life will always feel thinner than it is.
99
00:05:35.079 --> 00:05:37.899
There's a practical step here, and it starts with a question.
100
00:05:38.779 --> 00:05:41.339
What did the pursuit give me that the arrival cannot?
101
00:05:42.100 --> 00:05:46.000
Name it specifically. Was it the structure, the early mornings
102
00:05:46.040 --> 00:05:49.139
with a purpose? Was it the community, the people who
103
00:05:49.160 --> 00:05:52.459
were walking with you? Was it the growth, the feeling
104
00:05:52.480 --> 00:05:56.040
of getting better at something hard, Whatever it was, that
105
00:05:56.079 --> 00:05:58.959
is the thing to rebuild, deliberately, now that the goal
106
00:05:59.040 --> 00:06:02.160
is done. Not by chasing a bigger goal, but by
107
00:06:02.220 --> 00:06:05.620
building a new structure that contains the same ingredients. A
108
00:06:05.660 --> 00:06:08.870
new practice, a new project, a new reason to get
109
00:06:08.939 --> 00:06:12.050
up that is about the doing, not the arriving. And
110
00:06:12.069 --> 00:06:15.329
there is a second question, just as useful. What parts
111
00:06:15.350 --> 00:06:18.389
of the life I wanted are already here? The flat
112
00:06:18.430 --> 00:06:21.290
is yours, the mornings are yours, the people are yours.
113
00:06:22.189 --> 00:06:24.750
The life you were waiting for may already be underway,
114
00:06:25.209 --> 00:06:27.470
and the emptiness may be partly the habit of looking
115
00:06:27.529 --> 00:06:30.569
past it toward the next arrival. Here's the sentence I
116
00:06:30.610 --> 00:06:32.649
want you to keep from this episode, because it is
117
00:06:32.709 --> 00:06:34.910
short enough to carry into the next goal you set.
118
00:06:35.529 --> 00:06:38.360
The goal was never the destination. It was the excuse
119
00:06:38.399 --> 00:06:41.180
to walk. And the walking was the point all along,
120
00:06:41.720 --> 00:06:44.980
even when it felt like waiting. The promotion, the degree,
121
00:06:45.259 --> 00:06:48.139
the flat, they are real, and they matter, and you
122
00:06:48.199 --> 00:06:50.759
earned them. But they were never going to be the feelings.
123
00:06:51.379 --> 00:06:53.980
The feeling was in the walking, and the walking is
124
00:06:54.019 --> 00:06:56.980
still available in whatever you choose to walk toward next.
125
00:06:57.639 --> 00:07:00.379
So back to the evening after the achievement. You got it.
126
00:07:00.759 --> 00:07:04.139
The promotion, the flat, the degree. The moment was quieter
127
00:07:04.180 --> 00:07:06.620
than the imagining, and by the evening you were already
128
00:07:06.680 --> 00:07:09.660
thinking about the next thing. The quiet is not failure.
129
00:07:10.259 --> 00:07:12.500
It is the sound of the structure ending, and of
130
00:07:12.579 --> 00:07:15.910
adaptation doing its ordinary work. The goal did what a
131
00:07:15.930 --> 00:07:18.670
goal can do. It gave you a direction, and you
132
00:07:18.709 --> 00:07:21.790
walked it, and you arrived. What it could not do
133
00:07:21.850 --> 00:07:24.209
was give you a self, or a verdict, or a
134
00:07:24.250 --> 00:07:27.829
lasting state. Those were never the goals to give. They
135
00:07:27.870 --> 00:07:30.639
are yours to build, in the days, in the walking,
136
00:07:31.180 --> 00:07:33.839
in whatever you choose to walk toward next. And the
137
00:07:33.879 --> 00:07:37.079
walking is still there, waiting, the way it always was.