In a 2005 interview on the show “60 Minutes,” Tom Brady talked about what drives him to keep on playing football. At that time, the 27-year-old Brady had led the New England Patriots to three Super Bowl wins in the past four seasons, and Brady’s story of rising from an almost forgotten player to perhaps the greatest quarterback in the history of football was just starting to be written.
However, Brady offered a poignant moment during this interview. After being called “the most eligible bachelor” in the country and lauded for his athletic achievements, Brady stated that he couldn’t believe that what he had achieved was the pinnacle yet, that there had to be something greater than what he had accomplished.
“Why do I have three Super Bowl rings,” Brady said, “and still think there’s something greater out there for me?”
While it might be hard for us to think that someone like Tom Brady can truly feel this way, our growing understanding of how our brains work seems to back up his statement. Oftentimes our perspective is that we will have arrived when we finally get to whatever we have told ourselves is the promised land, whether that be money, relationships, looks or career success.
But it seems that life is much more about the journey than the end goal. The term “summit syndrome” has even been used to describe the potential disappointment that we feel when we achieve a long-term goal and don’t feel the rush of euphoria that we thought we would, named after the experience that some mountain climbers have felt after reaching the summit of a mountain.
When we think about this with how our brains work, it actually makes sense that sometimes we feel this letdown after a major accomplishment. One of the chemicals that our brain uses to motivate us is called dopamine, which is released to encourage us to seek out behaviors that make us feel good. Dopamine plays a major part in our motivation to do things, and it seems that sometimes we experience more pleasure in the pursuit of a goal than in the actual accomplishment of the goal because our brains are pushing us to keep on going with more and more dopamine.
This idea of the chase being actually more enjoyable than the payoff first stuck out to me when I was in graduate school, learning to be a counselor. My roommate at the time was a huge fan of the show “Lost,” which is about a group of people who survived a plane crash together but ended up stranded on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. As the show progresses, there are so many unimaginable coincidences between the stories of the survivors, who were at first seemingly strangers, that the anticipation of the culmination of the storyline becomes almost unbearable. How could all of these strangers be so connected and what exactly is happening on this deserted island?
For my roommate, however, the buildup was much greater than the climatic explanation, as he told me that he had been bitterly disappointed in the ending of the show and that it had failed to deliver on its premise. How many times have we felt that about a movie, book or TV show?
Perhaps the most important way we can combat the disappointment that can come from summit syndrome is by enjoying the journey and actually seeing it as the most enjoyable part of the process rather than the finish line we are working toward.
Let’s practice being mindful of the journey and put less pressure on meeting our goals to deliver the mountain top experience we want it to. After all, summit syndrome got its name for a reason.
- Mischa McCray is a licensed professional counselor and a licensed marriage and family therapist. Send questions or topics you’d like him to discuss to mmccray@wpcgreenwood.org.
