Why Do I Feel Let Down After Something I Looked Forward To?
Why Do I Feel Let Down After Something I Looked Forward To?
In 2023, I bought tickets to a concert I’d wanted to see for years, almost six months before the show. From the moment I bought them, I thought about that night constantly, probably once a week, sometimes more, and the excitement kept building the closer it got.
The night came. It was a great show.
And I left thinking, that was good, but not as good as I thought it was going to be.
Anticipation is powerful. That’s not in question, it’s one of the strongest feelings we have access to. The question is whether you’re leading it, or just letting it run wild on its own.
It Wasn’t the Show’s Fault
Here’s what I understand now that I didn’t understand then. There’s real science behind what happened that night. Neuroscientist Wolfram Schultz’s landmark research (Schultz, Dayan & Montague, “A Neural Substrate of Prediction and Reward,” Science, 1997) found that dopamine, the chemical tied to motivation and reward, fires more strongly during the anticipation of something good than during the moment you actually get it. The wanting lights up more than the having.
The Arrival Fallacy: Why Getting There Feels Like Less
Psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar gave this letdown a name: the arrival fallacy, the belief that reaching a moment you’ve built up will hand you a feeling big enough to match the buildup. It rarely does. Not because the moment wasn’t good. Because six months of imagining it had already been doing a lot of the emotional work, every single week, long before the night ever arrived.
The Trailer You Already Watched
Think of it like a movie trailer. If you watch the same trailer once a week for six months, by the time the movie finally plays, you’ve already seen the best parts a hundred times in your head. The movie can be genuinely great and still feel like less, because the trailer got there first.
Your safety system plays a part here too. A moment you’ve mentally rehearsed that many times isn’t fully new anymore by the time it happens. Some of it already feels familiar, because in a sense, you’ve already been there, over and over, in your imagination. There’s simply less left to discover in person.
What Changed in February
This February, I had a business trip and decided to bring my wife along for a few extra personal days. We planned it about four months out, and I looked forward to it the same way I always do, plenty of normal anticipation building in the weeks before, nothing unusual there yet.
Here’s what was actually different: once we got there, every night of the trip, I used BEHAVE (the six-step nightly protocol from my book) to anticipate the next day. We were in a town we love for the food, so it was easy, a specific breakfast spot, a lunch, a dinner we were looking forward to. Anticipation is actually the A in BEHAVE, and for good reason, it’s one of the most powerful tools we have access to. Instead of the excitement running out the moment we arrived, I kept building fresh anticipation every single night, for the day right in front of us.
There was no letdown. It was everything I’d looked forward to, and more.
How to Stop Feeling Let Down After Events You Anticipated
The difference wasn’t that February was a better trip. It’s that I never let the trailer stop playing.
Passive anticipation is a single trailer on repeat for months, and once the movie starts, there’s nothing left queued up. Led anticipation keeps cueing the next preview, tomorrow’s breakfast, tonight’s dinner, so there’s always something ahead of you, even while you’re standing right in the middle of something good.
Your safety system isn’t the reason good things feel smaller than expected. It’s just responding to how much of the moment you’d already shown it in advance. Show it a new preview every day instead of the same one on repeat, and there’s nothing left to feel like a letdown.
Anticipation was never the problem. Anticipation running wild, with nobody leading it, was.
Take the Lead Challenge
Next time you’re looking forward to something weeks out, don’t just replay the same excitement on a loop. Each day, picture one new, specific detail you haven’t pictured yet. Keep the trailer moving instead of watching the same two minutes over and over.
F. Allen Scott is the author of From Safety to Success, where he explores the safety system framework behind why we stay stuck, and how to finally change that.
Related reading: Why Do Weekends Fly By But Mondays Feel So Long?