018 The Uplift Podcast - The Waiting Room Theory: why "I'll Be Happy When" is lying to you.

You know the sentence. "I'll be happy when I lose the weight." "I'll be happy when I hit that number." "I'll be happy when the shoot's done."

I've been on both sides of it — the teenager who thought happiness was attached to an image, and the bodybuilder who stood on stage having done the thing, and found the feeling wasn't waiting there either.

In this solo episode, I'm unpacking why that happens — and it's not just a mindset thing, there's real research behind it. We get into the arrival fallacy, why over 70% of people report feeling less happy after hitting a big goal than they expected to, and why your brain is actually wired to reward the chase, not the catch.

Then I bring it home to what I actually believe: chasing a body composition goal, getting stronger, losing fat — I think it absolutely will make you happier. Just not because of the result. Because of what becoming that person demands of you.

If you've ever felt like you're waiting for permission from a future version of yourself to start enjoying your life — this one's for you.

In this episode:

• The arrival fallacy and why reaching the goal rarely feels like you think it will
• The research: the 70% study, the tenure study, and what neuroscience says about dopamine and pursuit vs. arrival
• Why women in particular get stuck living in a "waiting room"
• The reframe: why the goal is the vehicle, not the destination
• Four practical shifts to start living in the process of becoming, starting today

If this episode struck a chord, DM STRONG to @scarlett_portues and let's talk about building that discipline with real structure behind it.

And if you're ready to stop waiting and commit to becoming — properly, alongside a group of women doing the same thing — The Uplift Project is where that starts. 

Find us @theupliftproject1.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello everybody, welcome back to the Uplift Podcast. It is just me today, your host, Scarlet. And I want you to think about the last time you hit a goal, like a real one, not the number on the scales, something like a comp, a date that you've been building your whole programme around. Did you get there and feel it? The thing that you thought you'd feel, or did you get there and about six days later you're already looking for the next fix? Um, because I've definitely hit goals in the past and can tell you that I did feel not what I thought I would. Um so that kind of leads into what I want to talk about today, and that is that I'll be happy when sentence. Um, you know the one. I'll be happy when I lose the weight, I'll be happy when I hit that number on the bar, I'll be happy when the shoot's done, or I'll be happy when I get my body back. Um, I've lived on both sides of that sentence. I was the teenager who thought happiness in myself was attached to an image, that if I looked a certain way, I'd finally feel settled. Um, and I was the bodybuilder years later, standing on stage, having done the thing, hit the goal, built the body, um, and finding the feeling I was chasing wasn't waiting for me there either. So today I want to unpack why that happens. Um, there's actually a lot of research on this, it's not just a vibes thing, it's very well documented. Um, so I want to start it by saying like I do believe that chasing a body composition goal, chasing a strength goal, having fat loss goals, I do think that makes you happier. Um, not just for the reasons you think, though. Like, it's actually not the destination doing the work, it's what you have to become to get there. So let's get into it. So there is a name for this, and once you hear it, you'll probably see it everywhere. It's called the arrival fallacy. A psychologist called Tal Ben Shahar, probably butchered that, apologies. Um, who taught positive psychology at Harvard, one of the most attended courses in the university's history, by the way, coined that term. He defined that the false belief of reaching a specific goal, a promotion, a body, a relationship, a number, um will produce lasting happiness, or what he called a false sense, a felt sense of completion. And the fallacy part is important. It's not that you're broken or you're ungrateful or you're doing it wrong. Um, it's that you believed something that turned out not to be true. So you believed that the happiness was waiting at the finish line, and then you got there and it wasn't. And you're like, hello, where is it? Where's that happiness? Um, so I want to be clear that this isn't just a wellness Instagram idea. There's actually a study published in the Journal of Personality and Psycho and Social Psychology, uh, where researchers found that over 70% of people reported feeling less happy after achieving a significant goal than they expected to feel. Um, so two things that are happening, and they're both backed into how your brain works. So this isn't a personality flaw. Um, the first is called hedonic adaptation. Sometimes people call it the hedonic treadmill. Basically, your brain is built to normalize whatever circumstances are, good or bad. So you hit the goal, you get a spike, and then usually within weeks, your baseline resets and that new body, the new number, the new achievement just becomes your normal. It stops registering as anything special because your brain isn't designed to keep celebrating a fixed state, it's designed to notice change, not maintain excitement about a plateau. So the second thing is about where the dopamine actually sits, and this is a bit like that. Um how this is a bit like how I changed coach, honestly. So neuroscience shows the reward system is wired for the chase, not the catch. Dopamine peaks during the pursuit of the goal while you're working towards it, and it tapers off once you've actually got there. So your brain was never built to reward the arrival, it was built to reward the process of getting somewhere. So when you say I'll be happy when I hit that number, you're asking a finish line to deliver a feeling that was actually being generated by the running, not the crossing, and that's the trap every single time I'll be happy when statement is mentioned, and the evidence says it over and over, it doesn't live in the arrival, it is in the becoming of that process, and I think that's why a lot of people double down on that like trust the process, like you see it all the time, don't you? Um because that is it, like when you enjoy the day-to-day stuff of you know what it takes to get to your goal, that is how you become that person. So why this hits women particularly hard, um, because this isn't unique to women, but I think it gets um I think I think we get handed a version of this trap that's especially sticky, especially in our 30s and 40s, because a lot of us that I'll be happy when isn't about a promotion or a house, it's about the body. It's I'll be happy when I lose this, I'll be happy when I look like I did before, I'll be happy um when I finally look like I did before I had the kids, or you know, when I put together enough to start feeling like I'm behind. Um and underneath that is something worse than the arrival fallacy. Um, it's the belief that that you don't get to enjoy your life yet, not properly, and not until the body sorted, obviously. God, how dare you enjoy your pursuit of becoming? Um so you end up living in a kind of waiting room, um, present physically in your actual life, the job, the kids, the relationship, the Tuesday, but mentally you're sat in a waiting room thinking the real version of you, the one who gets to actually feel good, starts later after the goal. And the comparison culture makes the waiting room feel permanent because there's always a version of further along compared to yourself that you'll never run out of reasons to keep waiting. So here's what I want you to sit with. If the research is right, and it is, um, then if you hit the goal, the waiting room doesn't end. Um, you just find a new doorway to wait in front of, right? I've done it, I've hit the stage, I've hit the number, and with days I was, you know, looking for the next thing to do. Um, the waiting room followed me into that. Um, so the reframe that we can kind of take from this, like becoming, not arriving. So um, this is what I want to say, um, because it's not that goals don't matter. Like, I don't believe that, and I don't think that is true. I do think pursuing body composition goals, getting stronger, losing body fat, um, especially if you're carrying more than what feels good on you, um, building physical capability, I think that will make you happier. I stand by that completely. Um, but not because of the result, because of what pursuit demands of you, you know, to actually do it properly, not the crash diet, not the hack fast track version. Like you have to build discipline, not punishing discipline, the kind where you show up on the days where you don't want to. Um, you know, you have to set personal boundaries, which you've probably never set before, around food, around time, around people who don't respect what you're building. Um, you have to mentally challenge yourself again and again towards a version of you that doesn't exist yet. And that's not vanity, that's identity work. Every single one of those things, the discipline, the boundaries, the mental channel channeling. Um that's not a side effect of the goal, that's the actual prize. And the body composition change is almost like the receipt. Um, that's proof, proof, that's proop, that's proof that the work happened. Um, it was never the the work itself. So Ben Shahad, the same researcher who I named, uh who named after the arrival fallacy, actually said this too. He doesn't say abandon goals, he says repackage what the goal is for. So make the process of achieving it as important as achieving, because the goal gives you your becoming direction. So without the target, you don't build discipline in abstract, right? You build it in the service of something. So like the goal is the like the vehicle and the becoming is the destination. So, like, if we don't set goals, we don't have direction, we don't have purpose, we don't have that vision, like then you will just kind of dilly-dally about. So the shift isn't stop wanting the body, the shift is stop outsourcing your happiness to a future version. So the number on the scales, and start noticing that the woman who gets up at half five to train before the kids, um, who's or who says no to the wine because she said yes to herself first, or who holds a boundary with someone who used to um have a folder that you know the woman is already there right now, um, mid-transformation, right? She's not waiting for the after photo to be allowed to feel proud. Um so how to actually do this? Hold on one second. Talking so much is thirsty work. So, practically, how do you get out of the waiting room and start living in the becoming? So, a few things I actually do with clients. First, catch the sentence. So every time you hear yourself think, I'll be happy when, stop, finish it honestly. Like, I'll be happy when I lose half a stone. Really? The half a stone will do that. Naming it out loud usually breaks that spell because it sounds a bit ridiculous when it's said out loud. Um, and then second, audit today. So not the afterthought. At the end of each day, don't ask, did I make progress towards the goal? Ask, did I do something today that the woman I'm becoming would be proud of? A boundary held, a workout you didn't want to do, but you did it, a meal you didn't need to think twice about. That's the actual scoreboard. Um, third, let the goal stay, but change its job. So keep the number if it motivates you. Stop asking it to make you happy. The job is to give your training direction and your discipline something to aim at. It's not, its job was not to hand you a piece of it on the other side. Um, and the fourth one, this one's uncomfortable, but notice when you hit a goal and feel flat, you know, there were those flat feelings show up because it will. Don't panic and assume something is wrong with you or the plan or your body. That flatness is hedonic adaptation, doing exactly what it's built to do. The move isn't to chase bigger goals, to chase the feeling away. The move is to set the next target from a place of what do I want to become next, not what will finally make the flatness stop. So if you take one thing from this episode and let it be this you do not need permission from a future version of your body to start enjoying your life. The discipline you're building right now, today, this week, that's not a warm-up act before the real thing starts. That is the real thing. You're not in a waiting room, you're becoming, and it's allowed to feel good now, not later. If this landed and you want support, building that discipline with actual structure behind it, um, DM me on Instagram, Scarlett underscore portuits, um and let's talk about what that might look like for you. Um if you are wanting to get into more of like a group transformation and kind of delve into a little bit more about how to become that version of you, we are gonna be launching the next uplift project very soon, not just yet. Um, so follow the uplift project one on Instagram so you can stay up to date with when that will be launching. Um, but just something to think about when it comes to how you really, really dig in and enjoy your goals. Um, so yeah, I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I really enjoyed talking about this. I think it's really important um to just sort of double down on it. Um, so thank you so much for tuning in. As always, I appreciate the listeners. Um, it's actually wild to see where this podcast ends up. Um, so yeah, thank you so much for tuning in, and I will see you on the next one.