Goal Accomplishment Letdown

I have been fascinated by the human mind for most of my life. One particular aspect of humanity that has interested me is the ups and downs of the human outlook. I have coached a number of people who have set big goals, accomplished them, and then felt somewhat depressed afterward. It was the letdown from actually getting what they wanted that I was curious about.

When we pursue a goal, we create a stronger focus on doing the things that will get us to that desired outcome. Goal pursuit is not as natural as habitual actions, though. This means we are overriding our natural tendencies in the pursuit of something that matters. When we do this and accomplish something, we get a dopamine rush. Dopamine is the pleasure-inducing mechanism for the brain. After the dopamine rush, the brain dips below the dopamine baseline for that person and then levels back out. The bigger the dopamine rush, the bigger the dip after.

The dip is the thing that feels like a let-down. People will often compensate for the let-down by attempting to get another spike in dopamine. A celebration, a party, or doing something adventurous brings it back up, but then it crashes again. We can’t be in a constant state of a dopamine high. That simply isn’t the way the brain was made. The lesson to learn is that we should allow the dopamine to drop and simply use that time as a time to reflect, relax, and recover. After the drop, we go back to level if we allow ourselves to experience all of it.

We spend too much time believing we should never have negative emotions. The simple reality is that the full range of human emotions is the human experience. It’s alright to feel down. It’s alright to feel up. We simply need to understand the cycle of experience and embrace our humanity. We need to recognize that there will be another up when we are down. I would challenge you to sit with your emotions for a little while today. Allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling, and then seek to understand how those feelings originated. The more you understand yourself, the easier it becomes to level out and live a happy life.