How to Navigate Post-Success Blues

You’ve finally reached your goal and as you tick it off. But instead of feeling elated, you deflate and dip into a slump. Known as post-success blues, post-achievement slump or post-achievement depression, this sneaky feeling is not uncommon to have when reaching a milestone. Anyone can experience it. An athlete who has crossed a finish line, a graduate after triumphantly accepting their degree or a matriculant passing finals. As they’re not unexpected, prevention is better than cure for post-success blues. Which means you can buffer against your celebratory joy being stolen. Here’s how to navigate post-success blues. 

What are Post-Success Blues?

Post-Success Blues are the feelings of let-down and depression which can follow reaching a goal successfully.  For most a post-achievement slump is a temporary feeling of let-down. However, for some the depressed feelings can linger and even interfere with their daily lives. 

Post-success blues tend to bring the highest-achiever’s feelings of deep emptiness. They’re not a sign of missing the mark so much as achieving it or excelling. With feeling alone and empty, come tears, which are often mistaken for happy tears by outsiders. These leave the triumphant person isolated, deflated and confused. Consequently, while people congratulate them, all they want to do is hide away and wonder if it was all worthwhile.   

Olympic athlete, Michael Phelps, has spoken out about his post-Olympic battle with depression and suicidal thoughts. He estimates that after the Olympics up to 90% of athletes battle post-success blues. Often in the form of depression, psychological distress or other mental health issues. This is also known as the “Post-Olympic dark period”. 

Why do We Feel Down after Succeeding?

Often, to reach a goal, you must make lifestyle adjustments and dedicate time as well as energy towards it. Your focus becomes single minded and you direct your everyday around working to achieve that goal. For example, how much you are able to socialise, what you are eating and your sleeping patterns. Then your goal is finally reached. But almost instantly, in that moment of success, a big motivating factor and sense of purpose and focus are lost.  

“Never let a goal define who are you or your happiness”

Depending on what you were aiming for, there can be a varied number of underlying reasons for post-success blues. A sudden lack of routine can feel like a “hole” in your life and result in you twiddling your fingers wondering what to do next. For many matriculants and graduates it’s caused by a loss and change of identity, from scholar to autonomous adult. Working towards a promotion might have resulted in social isolation due to increased work hours. Once promoted feelings of loneliness, especially if others envy your achievement, kick in. Then if post-achievement the reality is that instead of easing up your workload increases, depression could replace your jubilance. Alternatively, the sudden loss of external affirmation and attention, as people’s focus shifts away from you, can escalate feelings of loneliness. 

Why Does Success Feel Like Failure? 

Harvard Business Review puts forward that there are several reasons you can be achieving success but feel like a failure.  

3 Reasons Why Winning feels like Losing

1. Feeling like you’ve cheated yourself. There two reasons this can happen. The first is that you’ve made a trade off between working hard to achieve and personal life, self-care, socialising and family time. A second could be because you’ve had to compromise on your own ethical stances or beliefs to achieve your goal. 
2. Imposter syndrome. This is as a result of feeling like even though you’ve achieved something it shouldn’t be attributed to you. So rather than because you worked hard, in your mind you were just lucky. 
3. Lack of External validation. Sometimes an achievement goes unnoticed and not having approval makes you feel like you didn’t accomplish anything. 

What is the Arrival Fallacy

The arrival fallacy is a term that Tal Ben-Shahar  introduces in his book Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfilment. It’s a psychological trap many high-achievers are caught in, whereby they get to where they want to be but then feel let down, alone and disillusioned.  

The trap’s premise it that as we work towards a goal, we believe that we are going to achieve it. This triggers our brain’s reward centres, makes us feel good and produces a cognitive soothing effect. Thus, the feeling of accomplishment becomes part of our everyday being. This means that by the time we reach our goal, we have been incrementally adjusting to achieving it. Consequently, reaching it is less satisfactory than we thought it would be.  

“Success doesn’t necessarily lead to contentment or deliver happiness.”

The end result is that we experience self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy. So, what happens next? We start a new cycle by searching for a new goal to fill the void. And in doing so, get caught in a thought trap of seeking our next achievement to feel the satisfaction of success.  

How to Avoid the Arrival Fallacy and Post-Success Blues 

1. Value the journey and enjoy the process. Achieving a goal takes time, as the process unfolds recognise the lessons and gifts each step brings. 
2. Keep personal purpose more important than goals. Even though a goal can be highly motivating, personal purpose stops you feeling empty. This making it important to keep the bigger picture in mind and remembering what makes you tick. 
3. Success is relative, so define it for yourself. Society prescribes what’s seen as success within a career or personal space. However, this generalised view doesn’t take into account personal desires or needs. Therefore, accomplishing a goal won’t necessarily feel like success. Additionally, what seems like a good decision in your 20s might not be the best fit in your 30s. This doesn’t mean you don’t set goals. Rather it means choosing goals that you want to achieve and that relate to your measure of success.  

“Achieving a goal is not an accolade of success but rather than one of many stones to build a great life.”

Another way of buffering against post-success blues is to have a coach. They can assist in helping you define goals outside of other people’s expectations. Thereby also helping to contextualise goals within your life’s bigger picture.  

Helping Others Define Their Goals

Being a coach is a rewarding career choice and is an excellent way to assist people in how to navigate post-success blues. It’s a vocation that enables you to positively build into other’s lives as well as continuously develop your own potential. SACAP has a range of coaching courses. These are accredited by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and approved by COMENSA. For more information on how to start becoming a coach, enquire now.