Reaching your goals should bring lasting happiness, so why does it so often not?

To say that Friska Wirya is an overachiever is an understatement. She was the youngest general manager at a gold mining company, has won numerous awards (including being a 2022 Australian Women’s Small Business Champion) and, earlier this year, the 39-year-old delivered her first TEDx talk.

But when she ticks another goal off her list, Wirya doesn’t savour her achievement. Instead, she feels satisfied “for maybe five seconds”. Then she fixes her eyes on the “next big thing”. In other words, Wirya is all too familiar with the “arrival fallacy”.

Friska Wirya says she now understands that focusing on the journey rather than the destination can reap the greatest rewards.Credit: Peter Rae

As psychologist Lana Hall explains, “The arrival fallacy is a story we tell ourselves: ‘When this happens, I’ll be happy and I’ll stay happy.’ ”

Psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar is credited with coining the phrase. According to a 2019 article in The New York Times, he came up with it after experiencing its effects as an elite squash player when he was younger.

“I thought if I won this tournament that I’ll be happy,” he told the NYT. But any happiness was short-lived. “Then the same stress and pressure and emptiness returned.”

While it’s true that reaching a goal can bring joy, Hall says that feeling is likely to be fleeting because external events – “even amazing ones, like winning the lottery” – only temporarily affect your mood. “Mostly, how happy you are is a function of your general outlook in life … not a result of what is happening in your world.”

And yet, the fact that Wirya kept succumbing to the arrival fallacy makes sense to Hall. “It’s such an attractive idea that we can control our emotional state in the long-term,” she says. “Anything that gives us the hope of avoiding negative feelings will always be tempting to us.”

To get off the arrival fallacy bandwagon, Hall says you need to stop expecting external achievements to lift your mood and work on improving your mindset instead.

“One of the best ways to shift your mood is to get into a state of gratitude for what you currently have. This allows you to access positive feelings right now, instead of waiting for something specific to happen. Change the thought from ‘I’ll be happy when’ to ‘I am happy now, because’ and then find things to enjoy right now.”

Next, take a deeper dive into why you think you’ll be happy when you reach your goal. “Once you know why the goal matters to you, then you can find simpler and more immediate ways to get to those outcomes,” says Hall.

For instance, if you want more money to better support your family, Hall recommends considering other ways to offer that support, such as learning to listen better and voicing your appreciation for your loved ones.

It also helps to celebrate all your wins, big or small. Congratulate yourself on how hard you worked and how well you did to get there. As twee as it might sound, Wirya says she now understands that focusing on the journey rather than the destination can reap the greatest rewards. “I realised it’s not about the goal, it’s actually about progress and it’s about performance,” she says.

Wirya still appreciates tucking achievements under her belt, but no longer assumes that once she reaches her next goal she’ll tap into a well of everlasting happiness. “I know myself well enough to know that I’ll always be looking at the next mountain to climb.”

Evelyn Lewin is a GP and freelance writer.

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