You have been working towards this for all these years. The late nights studying, the unpaid internships, and the interview which made your palms sweat. But the offer letter finally came and for about three weeks you were floating on cloud nine. But today is a Tuesday morning and you are sitting at the desk that you had only dreamed of and the question which keeps recurring in your mind is “Is this it?”
If you feel lost after achieving your dream job, you are not being ungrateful, broken, or even doing the wrong thing. This is something that has been researched by psychologists for decades now. Once you know how this works, you will find it much easier to deal with.
The Arrival Fallacy: Why the Finish Line Feels Empty
This has been wonderfully described by psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar with a term called the arrival fallacy. This is the fallacy that once we arrive at a big goal, happiness will come along with us.
However, once we arrive at it, the satisfaction is temporary. There is a rush of self-pride, relief of a kind and congratulations from your family members but then back to the grind as you add an email signature.
Some of this has got to do with the way our reward system functions. Studies have found that dopamine has more to do with looking forward to the reward than actually getting the reward. While you were working towards the goal, it had purpose. Every mock test, every application, everything was significant. But once you achieve it, it is over and done with.
That is what is known as the "post-success void." It does not indicate that your goals were misplaced or wrong. This is just the inevitable effect of a mind that focused itself on one objective and attained it.
Consider the student who passed an extremely difficult test, or the graduate who got a job with the company they have always admired. That goal was so big it filled up the whole horizon. And when it is accomplished, that horizon seems empty all of a sudden.
Hedonic Adaptation: Why Success Stops Feeling Special
Another less noticeable driving force is hedonic adaptation, sometimes referred to as the hedonic treadmill. First introduced in the early 1970s by Brickman and Campbell, it refers to our natural tendency to revert to a certain baseline of happiness when faced with good (or bad) events in our lives.
A corner office, a pay raise, an impressive title, and a fancy logo on your name tag – initially it all seems to be incredibly exciting. After only a few months, however, it all becomes completely ordinary. And once you feel completely ordinary about it, your brain shifts its focus onto the next step on the ladder.
It is one of the key drivers of career dissatisfaction following success. The problem is not that the job has somehow changed; rather, what was your goalpost became your starting point.
It accentuates the process of social comparison. Go through LinkedIn and you will find peers celebrating their promotions, new rounds of funding, and professional certificates. Suddenly your dream job seems like one of many dots on the map, and you start making comparisons between yourself and others, who have already done one more step ahead.
This is the frame you need to keep in mind: dissatisfaction is valuable information. It gives you something to know about your expectations, needs, and future steps to take. It does not say anything about whether you made a mistake.
Feeling Lost After Dream Job Often Means Your Identity Was the Goal
The objective for many of us wasn’t simply about the job. It was an answer to the question Who am I?.
The process of being "the person preparing for X" or "the one who is going to get into Y" achieves two things at once. It not only gives you your daily agenda but also an identity – one that you can use to know both what you do and who you are every day.
According to psychologist James Marcia, there is something known as identity foreclosure – commitment to an identity without exploring what you want and where your values lie. It generally happens in situations where the chosen path is respected by your family members, teachers, and society. The feeling of security provided by such identity lasts till you achieve your goal.
Sometimes there’s a second dimension as well. Impostor syndrome describes this feeling for many successful people—a persistent belief that your success is undeserved, and you are going to be exposed sooner or later. This mixture results in an odd emotional cocktail: I have achieved everything I ever wanted, but why do I feel so much like an impostor and totally bored at the same time?
Usually, the problem lies not in yourself. What happened is that you’ve grown beyond a goal which shouldered more importance than any goal could shoulder on its own.
Why It Hits Students and Young Professionals Hardest
This experience doesn’t end with the newly minted graduate either. It occurs in the recently promoted junior associate, in the engineer who has relocated to a new city because of the offer letter, in the founder who has just closed a round of funding. Anybody who runs towards the clearly defined destination ends up bumping into a wall after reaching it.
Early career individuals tend to experience this more acutely due to three reasons.
- First of all, education taught you how to set milestones. Examinations, rankings, grades, admissions – progress was always measured numerically. In the workplace, you will have much less of a scoreboard. Feedback will be sparse, ambiguous, and often politically motivated.
- Additionally, there is the issue of not wanting to complain. Your parents have probably given up a lot for this profession. Your friends might envy you for having this profession. To say "I am feeling empty" would seem ungrateful, so people remain quiet, and in that silence, the feeling magnifies.
- Thirdly, you are still developing your identity. Your identity, which is still in formation, in your early and late twenties. Winning big can be seen as both an end and a new beginning, and that emptiness that you feel after winning big is simply your mind getting used to a new phase without an itinerary.
What to Do After Reaching Career Goal: A 5-Step Reset
The positive aspect of this stage is that it is manageable. And now, if you are looking for ways to cope after having accomplished your career goals, here are some practical recommendations based on psychological theory.
1. Identify it objectively. "This is an adjustment following a significant accomplishment, and it is normal," you may want to say out loud. Identifying an emotion makes it less intense and helps you not confuse typical lack of enthusiasm with the sense of failure.
2. Distinguish between the work and the emotion. Is it a matter of the actual job, the people around you, the pace, or the lack of purpose? There is self-determination theory developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, which states that in order to flourish, people need three elements – autonomy (choice), competence (growth), and relatedness (connection). Identify the missing part – and you will know what to do.
3. Transform destination goals into direction goals. "To become a manager" is a destination goal. "To become a person who trains other people" is a direction goal.
4. Re-establish your feedback loop. Since work doesn’t issue any grades, make your own. Maintain a log each week of what you've learned, accomplished, and had trouble with. Request feedback from your manager once a month. Progress of any kind, even minor and visible, will reestablish the feeling of momentum that the chase gave you.
5. Broaden your identity outside of your position. Build relationships, a pastime, a talent, or a community of people that is unrelated to your place of employment. When your entire identity is defined by a single profession, each poor week at work is a catastrophe. When it isn’t, you maintain stability.
If you don’t want to sort things out on your own, an objective viewpoint goes a long way. At Expert Educare, we have helped students and young professionals decide their path in life since 2005, and sometimes all it takes is one conversation with our counselor to know what to do next.
When to Seek Extra Support
It is normal to feel a period of time when one feels flat following a big accomplishment. However, if the feeling persists for a long while, or is accompanied by disruptions in sleeping, eating habits, loss of interest in all areas of life including work and feelings of hopelessness, then you should speak to a mental health professional or doctor.
Getting help does not mean that one is unable to achieve happiness. It simply means that some maintenance is required of a brain that has been operating in overdrive for many years.
The Finish Line Was Never the Point
The fact is, people are simply not made to be content always; people are meant to develop, chase and find a meaning in their pursuit. The dream job might be a fantastic point in someone’s life, but it was never supposed to be everything.
Therefore, if you find yourself sitting on your dream desk asking why it is so quiet, accept it as a challenge, not as a judgment. Ask yourself the question that no schools or exams ever asked you: now that I have achieved my dream, who am I going to be?
This is when the next chapter of your life starts and it is much more exciting than the previous one “Is this all?”.
If this blog entry describes you, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. Career counseling services offered by Expert Educare will help you choose the right path after you have achieved your current goal. To learn more visit Expert Educare.