why achieving a goal can leave you feeling lost
In late 2022, I passed my LMFT exam, finished grad school, and became an LMFT Associate, all within a span of a few weeks. A handful of huge goals achieved all at once – it’s supposed to be a top-of-the-world moment, right? Far from feeling accomplished, however, I was surprised to find myself feeling completely lost — aimless and confused about what I should be doing next. I started working as a therapist, of course, and I loved starting to grow my practice and hear new people’s stories. But in my personal life, I kept having a feeling of “what should I be doing right now?”
One of my friends pointed me to what has become one of my favorite books: The Creative Act: a Way of Being by Rick Rubin. It touches on the sense of malaise that can happen once we’ve achieved a major goal, so my internet search history — “feeling lost after graduating” — finally felt validated. Not all of us feel as angsty as I did after I graduated, but many of us know what it’s like to have finally accomplished something truly momentous…and it didn’t leave us with the high we’d been promised. Instead we were left feeling a mixture of anxiety, confusion, maybe even disappointment.
This experience is something that’s portrayed so relatably well in the film In a World… (2013) directed by Lake Bell. I love this film. It’s one of those movies that’s such an easy watch that its nuance can easily escape your notice. It’s like watching it can help us grow without us even realizing it. Heads up, spoilers coming your way.
meet hollywood’s most relatable dark horse
In A World… (2013) is the story of a 30-something woman named Carol who works as a vocal coach in Hollywood and is struggling to find a foothold in the male-dominated world of voice-overs – basically she wants to be the person declaiming dramatically over movie trailers. Like all of the best heroines, she experiences set-backs in her climb toward success. There are people who want to see her fail, one of whom, notably, is her father, who is a voice-over legend. In one scene, a different big-time name in voice-over world – Gustav Warner – laments to his agent, “What?! I lost it [a gig] to a broad?!” The broad is Carol, of course, so one of the set-backs she faces is relentless misogyny in the voice-over industry.
Carol’s career starts to pick up steam after she somewhat accidentally auditions to do the voice-over for a children’s romantic comedy – Welcome to the Jungle Gym (lol) – culminating in the revelation that the producer of a new quadrilogy – The Amazon Games – wants to hire Carol to do the voice-over for its trailers, which will begin with the classic line “In a world…” Not to be outdone by a woman, Gustav and Carol’s father both decide they want to take the gig from her.
We then watch a montage of the three voice-over artists recording their demos, each of them speaking in their most buttery, dramatic tones, waxing poetic about the women-led dystopian future in the first film in the quadrilogy. My personal equivalent of this moment from my earlier anecdote would be a montage of me obsessively making flashcards and furiously typing research papers as I inch toward graduation, my dreams just a hair’s breadth away. It’s Carol versus two titans of voice-over and the patriarchy! It’s Trina versus licensing exams and finals!
Very dramatic, indeed.
Good news: Carol wins. The director awards the dark-horse candidate with the gig, and we’re all very stoked for her, watching from our couch at home. I, on the other hand, repeatedly refresh my browser at home and finally see my name pop up as a licensed associate therapist on the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council website. Huzzah! Carol and I did it!
Naturally, we all expect what comes next to look a bit like this classic scene in The Natural (1984).
when life doesn’t stop to celebrate you
Alas, what happens for Carol is something a bit different. Unsurprisingly, her dad has a meltdown instead of congratulating her, so that’s not great for her. For a moment though, we think she’s going to get the sincere congratulations and accolades she deserves when Carol finds herself alone in the ladies’ room with the film’s executive producer, Katherine Huling.
Instead, Huling says she chose Carol, not because Carol was the best for the job – “because frankly you weren’t,” the producer says bluntly – but because “this quadrilogy is going to make billions of dollars, and your voice is going to be the one to inspire every girl who hears it.” Hiring a woman to read the iconic “In a world…” line served a higher purpose: Carol wasn’t so much singled out for her talent as she was unwittingly tasked with being the voice of a symbolic victory highlighting the importance of women in the voice-over industry.
Huling plays an interesting role here. Going back to my own story – the week after my licensing exam, I ended up having to deal with a plumbing emergency in my home, which was weeks of re-arranging my schedule trying to accommodate people doing repairs, while still having to go to class and finish my semester. After graduating and becoming fully licensed, I found myself with free time for the first time in years – time which I spent mostly catching up on housework and chores I’d been neglecting for months.
Life didn’t come to a halt in order to celebrate me. My house had not cleaned itself, my friends did not clear their schedules to lift me on their shoulders and trot me around town. I still had to deal with the logistics of being a human in the world, and it was a let-down. Huling is the vehicle delivering that let-down to Carol.
holding the disappointment & the pride
Because of how our culture portrays achievement in less true-to-life films, media, and in other messaging, many of us carry an unspoken expectation that everything will change once we achieve significant goals. But rather than being the finale of something, achieving a goal is often more the beginning of the next leg of our journey, which can feel exhausting. It can leave us with the feeling of “I thought I was done, why do I still have to keep going?”
When we find ourselves in this disappointed headspace, it can feel tempting to re-frame our achievement as something less than it was or be deceived into thinking it didn’t matter. Persisting in our belief that what we’ve done is still important means holding two things at once – the disappointment plus the pride in our success – which isn’t an insignificant cognitive and emotional task when we’ve reached what we thought was the end of the race.
I find Carol to be an inspiring character because she holds both things and continues onward. Her next move gives me the impression that Carol knows Huling bet on someone who was worthy of the task. All the evidence is there to support the belief that Carol is a rockstar voice-over artist – a titan on the rise in her own right. After she completes her taping for the trailer, her colleagues in studio with her are dumbstruck by what they’ve just heard and witnessed.
Carol embraces the next leg of her journey.
But Carol isn’t going to ignore the reality that she’s still a newbie and a woman trying to make it in a man’s world. She takes the feedback from Huling – and uses it to move forward on the next leg of her professional journey. A disappointment turned into possibility. Carol decides to return to her vocal coaching business, leveraging the success of her voice-over on The Amazon Games trailer, and begins coaching normal, everyday women to use their literal voices to feel more empowered.
“An achievement, yes. An ending, no.”
In my own story, the fact that I had to return to my normal life meant that I was forced to move onward. Becoming licensed is what was necessary in order to begin my life as a professional therapist, it was not an ending in any meaningful way. An achievement, yes. An ending, no. And perhaps that’s the growth edge: there’s a lesson to be learned that achieving a goal is not the same as an ending.
Thank you for reading! I’m Trina, and I’m a therapist in Austin, Texas. I write about movies, TV shows, & other media that reflect the kinds of patterns, relationships, and questions my clients are exploring in therapy.
I wrote this post myself, drawing on my own ideas and clinical perspective. I occasionally use AI to help me with things like titles, keywords, and SEO. But the reflections are always mine.
If you’re in Texas and looking for therapy, I’d love to connect and hear more about your story.
