The Myth of Arrival: The Toll Booth No One Talks About
What if the life you’re chasing is costing you the life you actually want? The myth of arrival isn’t just a lie; it’s an expensive one.
This month I noticed patterns in myself — the same struggles showing up in different areas of life — and when I started connecting the dots, I realized they were all speaking to the same truth.
I struggle with saying no so my therapist recently challenged me to practice saying “no” until the end of the year. At first, I thought it would be doable, but the moment I tried it with someone I genuinely wanted to say yes to, my chest tightened. It was as if my body itself resisted the boundary. That reaction showed me how deeply ingrained my need to please has become. I’ve made progress, for sure, but for me to step into the next stage of my life, there’s more work to be done. Saying yes feels easier in the moment, but every yes piles up until I’m stretched too thin — and then I’m left wondering why I feel so depleted.
Every yes has a cost. The question is whether the cost honors the reason you said yes in the first place.
That depletion opened my eyes to another layer: I don’t just struggle with saying no — I struggle with what comes after all my yeses. Once I’ve overcommitted, prioritizing becomes almost impossible. Someone told me recently, “It’s not what you did, but how you did it,” and that phrase has echoed in my mind. Because the truth is, I can fill my calendar with all the right things — meaningful work, people I care about, commitments that matter — and still miss the point. If I show up rushed, anxious, or exhausted, then how I did it overshadows what I did.
Overcommitment doesn’t just steal energy; it robs us of the ability to show up fully, diminishing the very impact we hoped to make when we said yes in the first place.
What version of us is really showing up when we’re depleted? How focused can we actually be when our brain is wrung dry? And if we’ve said yes to so much to the point where we feel we can’t breathe, how could we possibly plan well for any of it?
The question about planning led me to see another layer to this pattern and how it’s showing up in my finances. Yes, the cost of living has gone up, and the economy hasn’t caught up with that reality. Companies can only raise salaries so much, and that part is true. But where I am today is still considerably better than where I was six years ago — and teenage me would never have been able to imagine the career or income I have now. I grew up knowing we couldn’t afford the things I wanted. Most of the time, I wouldn’t even ask, because the answer was already no. So now, being in a position where I can buy the things I want feels almost unreal, like something my younger self wouldn’t allow herself to dream.
And yet, even with the progress I’ve made, I still find myself without the financial relief I know is possible. In the back of my mind, I know that with planning I could create stability but envisioning it feels blurry — the same way picturing this career once did. When I listened to Morgan Housel’s interview with Mel Robbins and heard him say, “All happiness is the gap between expectations and reality. The wider that gap is, the more miserable you’re going to feel,“ it hit me. I could see myself in that gap. I’ve been treating money like a safety net instead of a tool. I’ve avoided planning, which leaves me stressed. And when I compare myself to others, the gap only widens.
The real revelation is this: the gap isn’t just financial, it’s emotional. By not planning, I’ve been people-pleasing with myself. I’m saying yes to the little girl who grew up with her needs met, not her wants. I’m trying to protect her from ever hearing “no” again. That survival pattern has followed me into adulthood. So, the gap isn’t just about expectations and reality; it’s about past and present. It’s about learning to stop overcompensating for the child who couldn’t ask, so that the adult I am today can finally lead with wisdom instead of fear.
And underneath all of this, I realized I hadn’t been prioritizing my relationship with God which for me is important because it lays a solid foundation and allows me to not be swayed from my center, my light, and my values. For the past 18 days, I’ve been rebuilding that foundation through prayer, devotionals, and time in Scripture on a daily basis. Proverbs 27:12 stood out to me in a recent study: “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.” That verse brought clarity. My struggles with boundaries, priorities, and money all connect back here. Am I seeing clearly and acting wisely, or am I moving blindly to soothe my younger self and paying the cost later? Am I living reactively, drifting toward depletion and comparison, or am I choosing to build with foresight, wisdom, and faith?
And this is where the myth of arrival comes back in. There are false narratives and stories we each tell ourselves — the idea that when we hit a certain milestone, we’ll finally unlock happiness, or satisfaction, or some deeper sense of peace. That was my reckoning for the month of September. I had to face the reality that these futuristic goals I’ve placed so far ahead of me are not, in fact, the doorway to happiness. They are a myth. A lie. A falsehood I’ve used to convince myself that if I just keep climbing, I’ll eventually arrive. But arrived where? Arrived to what? And most importantly — at what cost?
Arrival doesn’t come free — every step of the ladder costs time, energy, and pieces of ourselves we sometimes never meant to sacrifice.
Sometimes we only realize at the toll booth that we’ve already paid too much for a destination. For me, the reckoning isn’t just realizing the myth — it’s learning to ask different questions. Not “Have I arrived?” but:
Do I like the person I’ve become in the process?
Am I proud of what this cost me?
Would I trade it all again if I knew how it would feel?
Let’s give a toast for the rest of the year. Cheers to 3 months of saying no. Cheers to 14 weeks of disappointing people. Cheers to 96 days of showing up more radically myself than I ever have before. And cheers to the fear that I might lose people along the way — because I’m becoming someone they don’t yet recognize.
Maybe the truth is we never really arrive. We just decide, moment by moment, whether the journey itself reflects who we want to become.