Understanding Hidden Motivations that Derail Our Pursuit of Fulfillment
In the pursuit of what feels like true accomplishment and fulfillment, many people, understandably, develop an “arrival fantasy”—forming a belief and treating the pursuit as though it were the path to lasting happiness and self-worth. Over time, they can, often without realizing it, begin projecting personal wishes and desires onto the goal—expectations that extend beyond what the accomplishment can realistically fulfill.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Cultural Conditioning and Societal Expectations
Society often equates achievement with happiness, creating the perfect ingredients for an arrival fantasy. From an early age, we’re taught to believe that reaching certain milestones is the key to contentment and personal success. However, these socially conditioned goals rarely deliver the lasting fulfillment we expect. Psychologists Philip Brickman and Donald T. Campbell first discussed this phenomenon in the 1970s as hedonic adaptation, noting that people quickly return to a stable level of happiness despite life’s ups and downs. Later research by Sonja Lyubomirsky and others supported this theory, finding that even achieving long-desired goals doesn’t have the lasting impact on overall happiness we might hope for. This means that, while aligning a pursuit with our genuine values and needs can lead to personal growth, it’s unlikely to permanently raise our baseline happiness.
The Quest for Self-Worth
When people attach their sense of self-worth to external accomplishments, they may confuse seeking achievement with proving their value. While the drive to accomplish can be motivating, it can also become a blindspot if one’s self-worth is solely dependent on future success. This is because the problem may actually be subjectively perceived, while the solution is objectively demonstrated. In other words, the problem and the solution aren’t directly related. For example, someone may pursue an ambitious goal—like running a marathon—in hopes that it will somehow solve personal relationship issues. By recognizing what we’re actually attaching to achievements, we can keep our targets in clearer view while also preventing disappointments.
Escapism and Future-Focused Thinking
Unfortunately, the arrival fantasy often only serves as an escape from present dissatisfaction. By focusing on a distant goal, people can avoid confronting current challenges or discontent, hoping that the future will magically resolve their struggles. This can be likened to someone avoiding anxiety by imagining being in their happy place. This future-focused mentality may feel productive—it certainly feels better—but it can also unknowingly detract from finding the actual joy and meaning in the present.
Dopamine and the Biological Pull
Part of the reason escapism can so easily develop is biological. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that drives motivation by rewarding anticipation more than actual achievement. When we imagine reaching a goal, dopamine is released, creating a pleasant sense of motivation, making goal-setting and the pursuit of self-improvement feel rewarding. Imagine being a passenger on a train, traveling to New York, and at some point, a switch mistakenly gets thrown, so that later, the train arrives someplace else. This anticipatory system, originally meant to drive us toward goals, can become addictive. Because escapism is associated with pleasure and the release of dopamine, we start to crave dopamine itself and become focused on continual seeking rather than fulfillment—that’s the equivalent of throwing the switch.
The Myth of Permanent Happiness
There’s a widespread belief that happiness is a permanent state, as if it were something that can be achieved and maintained. This misunderstanding fuels—and almost predisposes us for—the arrival fantasy, as people strive for an ideal of lasting happiness that doesn’t align with the reality of human experience. Happiness, in truth, is a transient state that must be continuously cultivated.
