Hello, I'm your host, Dr. Caroline Leif, and welcome to my podcast, Cleaning Up the Mental Mess. Have you ever chased off to a goal, believing that once you achieve it, it would make you happy? But it actually didn't. You achieved that milestone, but you failed to find that happiness and that sense of peace or achievement that you were expecting, once the thrill wears off. And you already onto the next thing to full and emptiness?
I think this is something we all do or have done. And in today's podcast, I'm going to explain the arrival, the arrival fallacy, why we do this, and strategies to help us manage this. So let's dive in. Just a quick note before we begin. If you're hearing this, you're currently not on the NeuroCycle app and you'll only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to hear the whole episode, you'll need to subscribe to the NeuroCycle app where you can listen to full episodes in the NeuroLive section.
And you can listen and watch ads free on the NeuroCycle app. And you can listen to so many more great episodes to help you with your mental health and get you through your day. The link in the details will be in the show notes. Let's dive in.
Hi everyone. I'm going to talk about something that really has tripped me up and I saw this so much with my patients as well. And then just talking in general to friends and family and the kinds of emails and comments we get through social media and it's called the arrival fallacy.
There's absolute desire to achieve something and then you get there and then it's kind of disappointing. That's pretty much what the rival fallacy is. Let me put my little brainy back up here. By the way, this little brainy is the character that we created to help you walk a mental health journey, which basically help you walk your mental health journey with you. And we created it for kids with my new book, my children's book.
how to help your child clean up their mental needs, but adults love this too. So if you wonder why it's sitting here, this is why it's sitting here. It's my little brandy character. It's my little grandchild's favorite toy and a lot of adults love it too. It's just a nice token to guide you in just a reminder to work on your mental fitness. So if you want them, they are available on my website, DrLief.com. You can order them there. Okay, the arrival fallacy. Have you ever chased after a goal?
And then you believe that once you achieved it, it would make you truly happy, but it didn't, okay? You achieved that milestone, but you failed to find the happiness or peace that you were expecting. Once this rule was off and you were really onto the next thing to feel a kind of emptiness. It's almost like you don't take enough time just to appreciate what's happened. But there's such a buildup and you get there and there's such a letdown. I can't tell you how many times people have spoken to me about this and it's so disappointing.
It's kind of like that, most of that Greek, I think it's Celsius, who was, he was on sign to roll a boulder, get up to the top of the hill and then it falls down again and he rolls it to the top of the hill again and then it rolls down again. It's kind of like we do now, we get to the top of the hill and before we even appreciate that we've got to the top of the hill, we already are on the next thing. And that's not good. It's not how we are wired.
It's not how a psychoneurobiology works. It's this term of a rival fallacy was coined by the psychologist Dr. Telben Shahar, and it refers to this belief that attaining a specific goal will need to long-term happiness. So the most important thing to understand, however, is that this belief is not grounded in reality.
So it's the belief that you're going to just when you get there, it's going to be amazing and you get there and it's not and there's this massive disconnection disappointment that can happen. So the arrival fallacy just taking a little deeper is defined as the belief that true happiness will come from accomplishing the next big thing. However, more often than not, the happiness is short lived, sometimes missing entirely.
And it's a mental trap. Literally, this arrival fallacy is a mental trap that affects your mental fitness, that affects your mental health, that actually raises your blood pressure and maces with your cortisol, maces with your HPA axis, things that are not going to make you feel so great, mentally and physically. So it's a mental trap and it affects all ages. It's not specific to one age, which is very interesting. From the research we see that it affects
All ages. School-age children battle with us to ambitious young adults to seasoned professionals to retirees.
And it's a real trap because it makes us feel awful. A trap isn't something that makes you feel excited. It's a trap that makes you feel awful. And when it's a trap, the implication is it's like a habit. So a habit is something that's established. It's an established pattern that's driving you. So if you keep doing this, even though you don't feel great when you get there, but you just keep doing it. Like keep rolling that stone up the hill and then goes, falls down, you start all over again.
So it makes us feel awful and the kinds of symptoms or signals that you can be aware of to see if you're in this arrival fallacy, mental trap or things like perpetual dissatisfaction.
So just never really feeling satisfied. Just thinking, you know, you get to the end of the day and you've done a bunch of stuff where you get to the end of an achievement and you've achieved that goal. And it's just like, you don't smile and sit and soak and enjoy. And it's just like the satisfaction, this is unease. And my husband used to often say to me, and he doesn't say anymore because I'm so much better at this. He'd say, but can't you just enjoy what you've just done?
You know, it's still from time to time and maybe like I have a goal for the day and I get there and I got there.
But then I'm not really satisfied. And if you get that, it becomes a habit. If it's trapped you, then it's a patch of the satisfaction. And that's not healthy for your mind, brain, body connection. It's disrupting on your chemistry. Emotional dissatisfaction is another one, showing up as things like burnouts. You just don't ever give yourself a chance to recharge.
Soaking in the joy of achieving goal is recharging and restorative. So if you don't do that, you feel burnt out, you feel this hovering anxiety that something's not right. You feel depressed. So this is on top of the visual dissatisfaction.
You may neglect, find yourself neglecting prison joys because your eyes are always on the horizon. So instead of saying, look at this, let me soak in this, let me enjoy this. You're already, okay, next thing, you know, stones at the top of the hill, knock it down and go up again.
Under that you may be fine that you under that your relationships because you focusing on goals instead of people and that's a really good one you just undervalue developing a friendship or putting the time into getting really quality good time with it with a partner or children or best friends or family members.
Reduce capacity for gratitude for what you have. These are good signs. If you find that these are happening in your life as a pattern, then this could be a problem. You could be in the mental trap of the arrival fallacy. These things obviously can apply to a lot of different things, but these are signals for you.
in your life, you can ask yourself, are you in this arrival fallacy trap? Or have you been periodically doing it enough to disrupt your life in certain ways? And these are really key signals or symptoms that can tell you that you're at this potential place where you're in an arrival fallacy trap.
So why does it happen? Why do we get to this point? It happens because we overestimate the happiness and joy that future successes will bring and underestimate the value of now, the present and the value of the journey. And this is a lot to do with toxic productivity, a lot to do with our society and the way cultures changed and work demands the sign of the head change over the last 40 years. And the tremendous focus on optimization and well-being
where we've got to constantly optimize every single moment. Every single moment needs to be filled with all this, these affirmations and optimization. And I mean, just all the devices that you can wait to track everything. So there's this constant measuring of data. And with this overestimate that if I get to this point, these numbers, this goal, I'm going to be more happy. So it's a constant ongoing data capturing without ever getting to some level of resolution acceptance
and soaking. And over estimation, when I've done this, when I've achieved that, when I've done that, I'm going to be so much happier. And it's an over estimation of that. And you're so focused on that that you don't even enjoy the moment. I remember years ago when, and I don't remember the name of the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, we had just arrived in New Zealand at the hotel for a conference. And that's in the evening, and the TV was on, and the Prime Minister
came up and was saying something and the whole bunch of stuff that just went over my head because I was jet late. And then suddenly she said, we so busy twitching the moment that we actually not even enjoying the moment and it stuck with me all these years later. And that's kind of reminding me of that, that we so busy either social media in some way, not to this word social media, but you know what I mean.
Or so busy looking for the next fix, planning the next to do the sitting of sat on the next goal that we just totally underestimate the value of now. What do you think at the moment right now? I am connecting with you in this new life and podcast and I'm connecting and talking to you so you'd hear in front of me. I'm enjoying this moment. I've prepared this.
The stuff appeals to me. I know what it can do if I get stuck in this. I want to share this with you. I've been doing telling you this. I'm enjoying sharing this slideshow with you. I'm enjoying telling you. That's what I mean. I'm enjoying this. Not, oh, that's one more podcast done. Oh, that's one more you'll have done. I'm enjoying the present and the value of the research I did to get here and so on. I mean, that's just an example.
So we need to ask ourselves, are we valuing the present? Are we valuing the value of the journey? And I know you've heard this a million times and been asked this a million times and it's kind of cheesy. And you hear this from all these people saying these same things, but let me ask you right now, have you underestimated the value of the present? Were you all right now and the value of the journey? Take a moment, take 10 seconds. Just close your eyes for 10 seconds and just think about what you are doing today.
Are you enjoying the value of the present and the value of the journey that you are on today? And maybe you can expand that into the bigger project, maybe the week, maybe the month. Just take 10 seconds to do that now. Just close your eyes and take 10 seconds.
Another reason why we do this, society puts huge emphasis on our achievements as a source of happiness. So there's a lot of that in the minds, mindsets of who we are. And that creates unrealistic expectations about the effects of success on our emotional well-being. So let me explain it like this. You've heard me talk about the conscious, subconscious and non-conscious mind. If you haven't, and this is the first time you're hearing me, the conscious mind works when you're awake.
Go to sleep in your sleep subconscious is like a bridge or waiting room between the conscious and the non conscious the non conscious is this huge enormous infinite. So fast beyond space and time on an energy.
field where every experience you've ever had and will have is in there, there's wisdom, it's on your side, it's searching for all the things that are disruptive to your life and making you aware of those, it's searching for all the things that are great and making you aware of those, you can accelerate them, it's guiding you in your learning, it's where your personality resides, your wisdom, it's just phenomenal.
never goes to sleep operates 24 seven. And it's what we need to tap into as in order to function well, which is what the neuro cycle that I teach does. Okay. So what the non-conscious mind also does is it enables us to absorb the environment that we in. So every day as we wake up and go through the day, it is on non-conscious mind that absorbs pretty much 95 to 100% of everything that we're experiencing. The things that we not
consciously aware of, or non-conscious is taking in. You only consciously aware, maybe the estimation is somewhere between 2 and 10%. I think it's closer to 2% that you're aware of. So you're taking in around about 95 to 100%, but you're only aware of 2 to 10%. What that means is that you're taking in good, bad and ugly.
and that bad and ugly can disrupt you. Now fortunately your non-conscious is so brilliant, you are so brilliant, you are your non-conscious, that it searches the stuff that's not good for you and gets rid of them. But if you have certain mindsets that you've built in as thoughts into your non-conscious mind and you absorb something from the environment through the non-conscious, it then hooks on those become sticky points where this extra stuff that you've taken in it finds those and it gets stuck on there and then they get kind of stuck there. So your non-conscious mind
scans and eliminates what it can, but sometimes things get stuck and then it has to push those through the subconscious, into a conscious mind for you to fix. One of the things that does get stuck are the current zeitgeist mindsets or the mindsets that are being hammered in the media and things that you keep hearing all the time.
So what we've been hearing a lot of the last 40-50 years is optimization, biohacking, achieve the best, get to the top, you can get the achievement driven thing. And you hear it so often that it's sticking, it's like sticky, and it creates new
properly, sorry, creates neural tangles, neural networks get tangled because it's making you feel this, you've got to get there. And so we need to listen and be aware of this, like you're aware of this now. So those, these things here, I'm just going to go back to this, these things.
or signs from your non-conscious looking at one of those knots in the non-conscious, that's an incorrect mindset. That's saying that the only way you can be happy is if you're constantly achieving and when you get there, then you feel this arrival fallacy because it's not really true. It's not going to actually happen.
So, the way that your non-conscious gets your attention, all of these things, these types of things, perpetual satisfaction, emotional dissatisfaction, showing up as burn-up, these are not things that you ignore, these things that you embrace to process and reconceptualize and find out why am I feeling this? Is a rival fallacy one of these issues? Is this maybe coming from that? Okay? So, that's your non-conscious, reads a little toxic neuro bundle, sends us these little signals and we pay attention and then we can unwind them. Okay?
We go over there. Social media also adds to this. It doesn't help but it's curated showcasing of highlights of lives without mentioning the struggles, which is where true growth occurs. We know that true growth occurs in the struggles, but we don't like them because you also have a mindset that's a sticky, bad mindset of neural networks that are saying that no pain again or pull for every ill or suppress any emotions. If you feel any sadness or whatever, it's bad, get rid of it.
No. Embrace the good, the bad, the ugly. No emotions are bad. All emotions are information. Growth occurs when we embrace, process, re-conceptualize. The only way to heal is through. We've got all those kinds of things.
Otherwise, we get immediate highs as well when we anticipate rewards. Now, that's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. We get these highs, we get this neurochemistry reaction, we get this excitement, we feel how hot, fluctuating, we get a great electromagnetic surge from our heart, and that releases a hormone that makes us feel good, and we get this theta wave going through our brain and our body, and we get the release of anandamide and oxytocin, and that can go on and on and on. But this makes you anticipate, it activates
All that stuff then makes the reward circuit in our brain that's been labeled the reward circuit because it tends to fire up and respond in these kind of situations, these anticipation. So this is great. But it becomes toxic if we think there's a certain picture of what it looks like and then you get then that picture is not achieved or we don't spend enough time in that achievement.
And then we lose the benefit of that anticipation. So the anticipation and all that chemical reaction and all that sakanya biology I just described sets us on the road. Then we keep ourselves in that state if we enjoy the journey, if we enjoy the present moment, if we embrace the struggle and learn and then go up and down and do the healing journey and get to the end and if we soak in it.
But if we just skip all of that and just dive in and just ignore all the present and you're not ignoring it, but you're not presenting the present. You get there and you just get to the top of the hill and push the stones down and you're busy going for the next one. And you're wondering, why don't I don't feel happier? I've got to go for the next one. You lose all this great psychoneurobiological effect that actually help improve momentum and physical health.
So how do we do it? How do we avoid that happening? We avoid that happening by training ourselves to enjoy the present, to soak in the present and soak in the journey and get that mindset of awareness that, hey, the struggle is where I'm going to learn.
and allow yourself to feel and not push away those bad feelings, embrace them to process, to reconception us. It's those are the things that will help you move forward and enjoy it. As a result, we develop unrealistic expectations. If you don't enjoy the present, if you don't embrace the journey, if you don't embrace process and reconception us,
And if you don't soak in the achievement, you're going to develop this arrival fella strap, which means we develop unrealistic expectations. We put too much to the end. And when we get there, we don't know how to appreciate it because we haven't had the appreciation journey built. And then unhealthy relationships with our goals. So we have unhealthy, unrealistic and unhealthy relationships with our goals. That's really what's happening. We're developing these unhealthy relationships with our goals.
And the past will take to achieve them so we need to change those things. How do we change this? It's not as difficult as what it sounds. I've already given you a lot of the answers by explaining that we have to really focus on the now, the present.
Then we just summarize this quickly before we dive into this. We arrive. We've got to focus on the present. We've got to focus on the journey. We've got to force ourselves to do that. We've got to embrace the good, the bad, the ugly. We've got to process and reconceptualize. We've got to learn from the ups and downs. We've got to recognize and anticipate the ups and the downs and see that as part of the journey. We've got to physically force ourselves to stop trying to jump ahead and just focus on the end result. We stopped falling into that trap.
And this is a, recognize it, this is a mindset, recognize that those signals, let me jump back to these again, that these are telling you something. If you are feeling this arrival fallacy that you disappointed, okay, if you're feeling this.
Happiness will come from accomplishing the next big thing or even more often and not the happiness is short of the missing entirely if that's what you feeling and it's showing up in these kinds of signals perpetual dissatisfaction emotional dissatisfaction neglect of present joys blah blah blah you know that you're not doing you are not taking advantage of this great second your biology and
So now, first thing that you've done well done, you've already started solving the problem. The first thing to change this is you've listened to this podcast. Just in your life, you're away. You understand a little bit more about the non-conscious societies.
standards getting wide in as these knots and then I'm going to send you those signals and that you know that we need to be aware of that and it could be a mental type of the arrival fallacy that's the big first awareness without awareness you can't report so you've now got some focus awareness on in the mental type of arrival fallacy and.
Simple question to get yourself going is, am I feeling those symptoms that I read earlier on, or those signals? And do I get to the point where I have these goals? I get there and I can't even enjoy them. I can't sit there. I'm already rolling that stone down and starting again. Okay. So how we recognize this mental trap and then that's the whole awareness part. So that first phrase, everything I've said summarizing what I said earlier on is
Link to this first little phrase, we recognize this mental trap, and then we shift our focus from the destination. We force ourselves, and you can do that. You can train you or your mind, your wise mind which is driven by your non-conscious, which is where your wisdom and intelligence resides.
and drive the messy conscious mind. The conscious mind is messy. It's great. It's wonderful. We need the messy conscious mind, but it just needs to work hand in hand with the wise, non-conscious through listening via the subconscious, which seems all those little signals of dissatisfaction and hovering anxiety, et cetera.
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So if created the awareness, now with this awareness, you can make the decision to shift your focus from the destination to the journey. And it's going to require practice. You're going to need 63 days to build a habit. If you are used to focusing on the end and just getting stuck and getting disappointed, then you're probably going to need to practice this over 63 days because it takes 63 days to build a habit. It takes 21 to break down the arrival fallacy and build up the healthy reconstructed
journey is a distance and this is a journey and so on and then it's going to take another 42 days to stabilize that and that may sound like a nightmare of time but it's not because in those 63 days if you don't do it you are actually making this mental trap worse so you either take 63 days to manage the mental trap or you take 63 days to make the mental trap even worse because neuroplasticity is happening regardless and neuroplasticity is the changes that we are
that is the change that happens every day and that change could be making the mental trap stronger or catching the mental trap and changing it. So strategy.
One, kind of this is actually almost strategy number three because strategy number one is the big general awareness and understanding and getting yourself focused on it and making that decision. As I said in the previous one, recognizing this mental claps in our life and everything like that. So the first two are really awareness of this information and then looking at yourself and seeing if you have this.
but it's a little bit deeper, it's a little bit more focused strategies to dive in once you've got this awareness that you now have from me emphasizing this point and you're listening to this point. Okay, so strategy one, find the why behind your goals. Now, you can't find the why behind your goals until you've done what I've already just said. Understanding this mental trap, understanding the signals, understanding what it does, what the stuff I've been saying has led you to the point where you can now do this, okay?
Find the why behind your goals. Remember this arrival, fallacy, mental trap. Postures that unhealthy relationship between you and your goals. Okay. So now you want to try and fix that. Okay. So what's the why behind your goals? Do they bring you clarity? You can ask yourself these questions and answer them. Do they make sense? Do you feel you can do them?
Do you want to do them? What's the driving force behind them? I mean, it could be saying them in the period, but you can take each one such you could just be for today, whatever you've got to achieve today. Do my goals today bring me clarity? Does this make sense to me? Yes, it does. No, it doesn't. Why? Answer, fix. Do they make sense? Yes, they do. Great. I'm going to do them. Do they make sense? Absolutely not. I cannot do all of that in this time. So well, how can I fix it? Do you feel you can do them? No, too many things. Yes, I can.
Do you want to do them? I want to do some, but not those. Those I have to do those. I can't do those. I don't have to do. Okay. What's the driving force behind them? Okay. Driving force. I need this as part of my job. I need to get these done. Could I do it over two days? Yes, I can.
What's the driving force behind them? I think I need to get them done, but I don't really need to get them. That's not that important. Let me eliminate that. That's upsetting me. Can you see what I'm doing? Okay. Has this affected your mindset in the types of goals you choose? So this is a broader question about the goal. So now this is standing back and looking at maybe more specific, more broader goals in terms of maybe your relationship, maybe your work, maybe your leisure time.
maybe put a relationship with someone, your goal of an exercise goal or whatever. Has this affected your mindset in the type of goals that you choose? So you're looking at the why behind your goals. So this arrival fallacy is all about goals.
And you just focusing on the goal and thinking if I just get that I'm going to be happy so has that affected the types of goals that you've chosen so have you chosen goals that you think. All the things that you need to be happy but actually really evaluate them.
They're more driven by social media or this one's doing and that one's doing what you expected to do at your age or whatever. So, maybe adjust those. So, that question's kind of more pickable in a broader sense in life goals. Okay. And that goes, it's the same thing, a rival fallacy. Isn't just for your day-to-day living in your day-to-day work and your day-to-day functioning. It's also your general life goals like relationships and what you want to achieve in terms of your bucket lists and those sorts of things.
Do you need to challenge your view of what it means to be successful? This is one that most of us will say yes to, because you need to ask yourself, what are your goals? What do you think is success? And that's very different for everyone. And very often it's, you know, making money. And I'm just thinking of a paper that I read recently about the asking millennials about what is success and happiness. And unfortunately,
Unfortunately, a lot of millennials said money. And whereas Gen Z is actually didn't say that. They said something different. They said it was more about the passion. And so it was interesting and I'm trying to remember the study and I'm trying to remember the exact thing. But the Gen Z is in the, the Gen X is in the boomers. It was more about, well, this is what you need to get done. This is what successful person do. You get married. You have a
ask you whatever, whatever, have kids and so on. Get this fine, your job stick with the same job forever, that sort of thing. So in other words, you need a challenge of view of what it means to be successful. Is your success barometer coming from everything that the world's telling you to do? Not that or bad, maybe some of it's fantastic. But you need to look at that as you, for you as an individual and see that works for you and if it's going to be healthy for you mentally.
Because if your mind's a mess, your brain and body and your life are going to be a mess.
I hope you found today's podcast interesting and helpful. If you want more tips and help with managing anxiety, depression and mental health, be sure to visit my website at DrLeaf.com. And to sign up for my weekly newsletter, we'll also include a schedule of my speaking events and so much more. And follow me on social media. I'm on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Just look for Dr. Caroline Leaf.
Also, I love seeing all your posts on social media about this podcast. I love seeing what resonates with you and what you've learned. So, be sure to continue posting and tagging me and letting me know what you think and how these tips worked out for you. And don't forget, leave a review and keep spreading the word about this podcast.
Thank you for joining me today. I really hope you learned something new and helpful. Till then, I'm Dr. Caroline.
This podcast represents the opinions of myself and my guests. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for educational and informational purposes only. Please consult your healthcare professional for any individual medical questions you may have. While we make every effort to ensure that the information we are sharing is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions or corrections of errors.
