Imagine you’ve just finished something important. An achievement, a challenge, a super-important strategic presentation to your team. You’ve ticked all the boxes, rather better than well.
You expect to feel joy, relief, recognition… But what you feel is a hollowness. An emptiness. A form of discomfort, of crushing fatigue. And yet, the pleasure isn’t there.
It’s confusing.
An emotional tornado
I remember experiencing exactly that when I launched my e-learning platform edu.dominique-ara.com. A titanic project that forced me to go beyond my limits, and to learn to manage technical consoles I’d never seen before in my life, to edit while seeing again and again flaws I could no longer correct.
When I put the courses online, I felt a moment of liberation.
Not for long.
The backlash matched my efforts. A real emotional whirlwind. I even had an existential doubt: ” But I’m actually sick… Am I depressed? Why am I not happy? There’s something wrong with me, I’m NEVER happy!… Maybe I should stop all this, what’s the point?“
Among the brilliant women I work with, I’ve witnessed similar scenarios: for example
Katia went above and beyond for a trade show, finding solutions despite budget cuts. The event was a success. But she feels disappointed, and goes so far as to think that her bosses are “bullshitting” her with their “its amaizing what you have accomplished!” She doesn’t believe a word of it.
This up-and-down phenomenon is not a psychological anomaly. It’s a biological law linked to the amount of dopamine production.
What dopamine does and doesn’t do
Dopamine is often thought of as the pleasure hormone. Not true.
Dopamine is the hormone of anticipation.
It rises before the result. It propels us forward, creating momentum, motivation, and the euphoria of “this is going to work”.
But once the goal has been reached? If the real thing doesn’t match the projection… the dopamine drops.
And sometimes, it drops even lower than it did at the start.
Neuroscientist Wolfram Schultz showed this clearly: dopaminergic neurons react to the discrepancy between expected and actual reward. Not enough feedback → sharp drop in signal. Even in the event of success.
And that’s not all: according to researchers Berridge and Robinson, dopamine is not linked toliking, but towanting. In other words: you don’t feel joy afterwards because your system has consumed it before. What ?!
The longer you wait, the more you fall
The more you project into an action :
– recognition,
– esteem,
– relief,
– visibility,
…. the greater the disillusionment.
And this disillusionment has nothing to do with objective results.
It’s an emotional trap. Invisible. But frighteningly effective.
Because you do everything “right”. You anticipate, you manage, you get involved. You don’t count your hours, your ideas or your heart.
But in a blurred environment where successes are absorbed, normalized, little celebrated, you get no clear signal of victory. Your brain waits for a shot that doesn’t come. Psychiatrist and researcher Judson Brewer even talks about post-success emotional withdrawal: we become addicted to micro-rewards (likes, e-mails, feedbacks), and when they don’t arrive… emptiness sets in.
And then it’s not just your motivation that crumbles. It’s confidence in your own engine that crashes! There’s something deeply unsettling about not feeling what you thought you’d earned. Joy doesn’t come. Relief doesn’t come. And you wonder if you’ve become insensitive, cynical… or broken.
Well, no.
I’m repeating it because I’m afraid you haven’t really registered what I wrote above: what you’re feeling is the result of a chemical functioning, which takes no account of your generosity or integrity. And that’s where real emotional leadership begins.
Learn to regulate your expectations
The secret is to return to a finer ecology of your expectations! ( I find the expression super relevant!)
What’s involved?
- Putting in energy without demanding an immediate return.
- To give you without making you swallow.
- Remaining lucid without becoming cynical.
- Enjoy during, not just after.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of the concept of flow, has shown that lasting happiness often comes from the experience itself, not its recognition. Calibrating your expectations is a form of inner elegance. The posture of those who want to last, not just shine.
How to avoid the fall?
When dopamine betrays you, it’s not that you’ve dreamed too much. It’s that you’ve confused intensity with truth. You can learn to choose how you launch. And how you land.
Before you go
Before embarking on an action that will require a major investment of energy, cognition and physical strength, write down the answers to these questions and calibrate your expectations:
- Deep down, what do I really expect once the work is delivered?
- I do it for reward and fame? To receive laurels and recognition? A medal? (extrinsic motivation)
- I do it to progress, to get out of my comfort zone with curiosity and observe how things are going… (intrinsic motivation) by giving myself certain permissions.
After completing
Three tracks to test in the days before and after you complete your achievement:
- Rejoice in how far you’ve come during the action, even if it’s not completely finished.
- Slow down and slow down again immediately after this peak in performance. Don’t try to “follow up” with another project (see my article onabundance).
- Vary the sources of small intrinsic joys (that come from you): movement, free creation, silence, sleep, nature, etc.
These actions regulate dopamine, subtracting it from serotonin, the hormone of lasting satisfaction.
In conclusion
Next time, when you’re feeling a little down after an achievement, remember that it’s your chemistry playing tricks on you, and that you deserve to celebrate yourself for the work you’ve done.
And to close this article, know that it’s going to happen to you again because you can’t escape its biochemistry. But you can so you don’t become a passive victim. So what first step will you take the next time you feel disappointment, instead of joy after an accomplishment?
Find out more about dopamine – motivation – achievement and its impact
- Schultz, W. (1998). Predictive reward signal of dopamine neurons. Journal of Neurophysiology, 80 (1), 1-27. DOI:10.1152/jn.1998.80.1.1 journals.physiology.orgPubMedResearchGate
- Schultz, W. (2016). Dopamine reward prediction error coding. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 18 (1), 23-32. DOI:10.31887/DCNS.2016.18.1/wschultz PubMed
- Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. (1998). What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience? Brain Research Reviews, 28 (3), 309-369. sciencedirect.comPMCPubMedResearchCommunities by Springer Nature
- Robinson, T. E., & Berridge, K. C. (2008). The incentive-sensitization theory of addiction: some current issues. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 363(1507), 3137-3146. DOI:10.1098/rstb.2008.0093 ResearchGate
- Brewer, J. A. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (50), 20254-20259. (on craving loops and feedback addiction) elifesciences.org
- Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row.
Huberman, A. (2021, October 4). Understanding and Controlling Dopamine for Motivation, Focus & Satisfaction [Podcast episode]. Huberman Lab. https://hubermanlab.com/understanding-and-controlling-dopamine/
