Unfinished Hikes

Dopamine, perfectionism, and the lost craft of completion

Photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash

I originally envisioned my project on “living deeply” as the premise of a book. In fact, I have a Google Doc from 2019 with pages of bullet-pointed ideas for “The Live Deeply Project Book,” so clearly this is something that has been rattling around my brain for a long time. I dreamed of writing the next Eat, Pray, Love. I longed to go on a transformational journey, create a new reality for myself, and help others do the same.

Perhaps someday there will be a book; I haven’t given up on that yet. But here’s what I’ve realized since 2019: dreaming too big is one of the sneakiest ways I self-sabotage my goal of living deeply.

That might sound counterintuitive to anyone who knows me since I have always been a head-in-the-clouds dreamer, and I regularly advocate for people to follow their passions. I don’t believe that there’s anything inherently wrong with dreaming big and shooting for the stars; the world needs big dreamers.

My problem is that my dreams and the logistical realities often feel too far apart to co-exist.

My dreams are rarely small. When I dedicate myself to something, my mind tends to immediately jump from zero to one hundred.

As a beginning songwriter, I was plotting record deals and world tours before I had even played a local open mic night. As an eight-year-old on a swim team, my goal wasn’t just to do my best at local meets–it was to go to the Olympics someday. My goal for a Live Deeply Project book was not just to finish writing an entire book (which in and of itself is a gigantic feat); it wasn’t even just to have it published. I wanted to write something that changed lives—something that people would still be reading one hundred years from now.

That might sound crazy or grandiose, and I’m fully aware of that. But for as long as I can remember, I’ve had this internal drive pushing me to aspire for bigger things. It doesn’t come from any sense of superiority; I’m not trying to prove that I’m better than anyone else or more capable or that I deserve more than the next person. It comes from an inner fire, an innate tendency to push myself to the max just to see how far I can go. If I’m going to do something, I want to do it all the way, and I don’t want to die without leaving my mark on the world.

Though this comes from an authentic place, it has not always served me well. By my mid-to-late twenties, I had already experienced multiple rounds of burnout, had multiple existential crises about my career choices and accumulated a graveyard of plans and ideas.

My abandoned dreams tend to follow a predictable pattern. Initially, my soul ignites with possibilities. I feel so jazzed and elated, and I spend hours swirling ideas around in my mind like a fine wine, picturing how amazing it will be when they come to fruition. With energy and enthusiasm, I get to work. I obsessively pour my heart, mind, and soul into the project for months. I work in the evenings and weekends and whenever I have a spare moment–I think about it in the shower and as I’m falling asleep at night.

And then, inevitably, something drags me back to reality. The frenzy of excitement fades and the self-doubt kicks in. The shiny dream loses some of its polish, and the fine wine goes stale.

It’s like standing at a lookout point on a hike, seeing a landmark in the distance and thinking that’s not that far away; I can totally make it that far.

But then you hike for another hour, come to another lookout point, and you realize that the landmark doesn’t actually look much closer than it did an hour ago. If anything, it looks farther away. Your stomach drops. You have the sinking understanding that the proximity was a mirage. You’d have to hike another ten or twenty miles to get to the landmark, and you’re running out of daylight. Eventually, the voice of practicality drowns out the voice of possibility, and you give up. You turn around and start the trek back to the trailhead, convincing yourself that the landmark probably wasn’t even that cool anyway.

My twenties have been filled with unfinished hikes. Projects started, internal fires stoked. Thousands of hours spent pondering, creating, strategizing, only to realize that it would take me years to reach the landmark–if I ever make it there at all. So rather than scale back and reevaluate, I have a habit of hopping on a new trail.

I’m really not lazy. I work extremely diligently if I believe in a project, and I don’t tend to give up just because something gets hard. I tend to bail when I worry I might be failing. Once I become afraid of failing, I’m easily seduced by new dreams. Like a gambler hovering by the slot machines, I have convinced myself that the next lever I pull will be the one to pay off.

The next dream is always sexier than the current reality.

Of course the sensible response to my self-defeating pattern would be to find a series of smaller, more realistic goals. Rather than trying to be the next Joni Mitchell right away, start frequenting some open mics. Book local gigs. Do something and see how it lands. That’s the advice that I would give to any of my therapy clients in a similar predicament. But, to reinforce the cliche of helping professionals who don’t practice what they preach, that isn’t always what I’ve done.

Often the smaller goals feel disappointing, not quite good enough. They lack the sparkle and excitement of the big goal, and on some level, lowering the bar feels like I’ve already failed. So I become intoxicated with a new idea, convince myself it makes sense, focus my energy there for a while, then eventually give up when I realize how far away I am from the finish line.

I now have two albums worth of unrecorded songs, four partially-written books, several half-created online courses, numerous discarded business plans, and about 20 dreams that I haven’t even started working toward.

So what does this have to do with living deeply? A lot, as it turns out.

In my observation, many people have their own versions of this self-defeating pattern, and I believe it’s one of the common traps that prevents us from feeling a deep sense of satisfaction in our lives.

Humans long for completion. We derive a feeling of purpose from finished tasks. In past eras (or at least in my idealized visions of them), the tasks were often simpler: catch a fish, gather berries, start a fire. In today’s landscape, it can feel like our work is never done. We could always be doing more, or at the very least, we could be doing something else.

I think of it as the Tinder-ification of the world. When we start to become dissatisfied with the thing in front of us, we can swipe left and jump to the next thing. We’re inflicted with an illusion of infinite possibilities. The perpetual allure of greener grass keeps us running in circles, never actually getting where we want to go.

The problem is that our brain chemistry and our deeper existential longing for purpose are often working against each other.

The Dopamine Trap and the Allure of All-or-Nothing

You hear a lot about dopamine these days–that infamous neurotransmitter that fuels motivation. But something that a lot of people don’t realize is that dopamine has more to do with anticipation than completion. It rewards the chase—the possibility of a reward, the allure of “maybe this next thing will be the one.” That’s why starting a new dream feels intoxicating while slogging through the middle can feel so draining.

Our phones, apps, and online platforms exploit this wiring. Unpredictable rewards (sometimes you get something great, sometimes nothing) hook our motivation systems—that’s one reason why our feeds are so addicting. Each swipe, scroll, or notification hits the dopamine button just enough to keep us chasing.

But here’s the paradox: chasing gives us the thrill of movement without the deep joy of arrival. We end up addicted to beginnings, and we bail before we get to a satisfying end. We’re always running and never getting anywhere.

True satisfaction–the lasting kind, the kind that gives our lives a sense of meaning–usually comes not from the dopamine high but from the quieter, slower chemistry of completion and consistency—serotonin, endorphins, and the profound joy of knowing we’ve worked hard and finished something.

Unfortunately avoiding the dopamine trap can feel like swimming upstream. Our brain chemistry already sets us up to chase novelty. But then often some unhelpful thought patterns double down, convincing us to quit when things don’t feel perfect. Together, biology and psychology create a cycle that keeps us stuck.

This is the quick-and-dirty version of very complex systems; but the broad pattern holds: novelty amps the chase, and perfectionistic thinking nudges us to quit before we get to the end.

Not everyone has dreams of global domination in their field, but many people have fallen into their own version of these traps on a more day-to-day basis.

For instance, have you ever set a New Year’s resolution or tried to start a new habit or lifestyle change only to give up after a few weeks?

Maybe you tell yourself that you’d like to go to the gym five days per week. You’re really dedicated for a bit, but then life happens, and you miss a few sessions. Suddenly, it’s been a month, and you realize you haven’t gone to the gym at all. You feel a smoldering sense of shame, which you suppress by telling yourself that you’re not really a “gym person” after all.

Why do we do that?

To put on my therapist hat for a moment, this common pattern often partially stems from a type of cognitive distortion called all-or-nothing thinking. In all-or-nothing (sometimes called black-or-white) thinking, we only see the extremes. Something is either amazing or terrible, young or old, a success or a failure. The nuance, the middle, the gray all get painted over and cease to exist. We present ourselves with two options, and we must choose which of the two boxes we’re going to contort ourselves to fit into.

Black-or-white thinking is rampant in our society. It has probably always been a threat to human happiness, but I believe that social media is magnifying the problem. Algorithms love all-or-nothing content, so it spreads through the population like a contagious disease, infecting our thinking on and offline. We’re especially prone to all or nothing thinking when our nervous system is dysregulated–an unfortunately common occurrence in our always-on society. So many of us have unwittingly become indoctrinated into the cult of all-or-nothing.

In my case, the options that I presented myself with were to 1) do something “all the way” (e.g. be an Olympic swimmer or best-selling author or renowned songwriter) or 2) to not do it at all (e.g. hop to a new passion). Essentially, my subconscious mind decided that I can either be world-class at something (all), or I’m a failure who should just give up (nothing). The middle (being average or even slightly above average) does not “count.”

The thing is, there are almost always more than two options. You can almost always find gray, or even plaid or polka dot amidst the black and white.

And joy, contentment, and purpose are rarely black or white.

To live deeply, we must get comfortable with the messy middle, learn to love the gray, and favor progress over perfection. We need to spot these traps—or at least notice when we’re in them—so we can crawl out. We must slow down, step away from our screens sometimes, recenter, self-reflect, and hold ourselves with compassion when we’re not perfect. Because we won’t be.

If this feels hopeless—like you’ll never outsmart your dopamine system—here’s one counterintuitive fact that might help. Dopamine doesn’t only fire during the chase. It also fires when a finish is better than expected. That surprise signal is how the brain learns, and it’s our opening to rewire what feels rewarding.

We can’t control every outcome, but we can shape how we register it. Most of us blow past small wins and sprint to the next possibility, teaching our brain that small wins don’t count. What if we slowed down and savored the win—like stretching out the last few bites of a ridiculously good dessert? What if we let ourselves soak up the reward of small, incremental change?

Pause. Name the win. Let yourself feel proud. Take ten seconds to notice the “that counted” feeling. Small finishes, savored well, start to rewire what feels rewarding.

Living deeply isn’t just about finishing the hike. It’s about celebrating the milestones along the way.

P.S. If you’d rather listen to this as an audio essay, check it out on our podcast here.

Thanks for reading! I hope you have a nice rest of your week, and please let me know if there are any topics you’d like for me to explore next.

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