Throughout our lives, we set ourselves goals — to pass an exam, run a marathon, lose 10 kilograms of excess weight or gain a promotion. Given the importance of such goals to our physical and psychological wellbeing, it’s not surprising that there’s has been a wealth of research into how best to set, work towards, and achieve them.

But let’s say you succeed — what then? Psychologists have paid less attention to people’s behaviour after they’ve achieved their goals. And although it’s generally good for us to continue to study, exercise, eat healthily, work hard, and so on, this doesn’t always transpire. For example, one follow-up of contestants who’d won the weight-loss TV show The Biggest Loser found that six years on, most weighed even more than they had at the start of the show.

However, a recent study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition offers a solution. People are more likely to maintain good behaviours, the researchers find, if instead of thinking about achieving a goal as “arriving at a destination,” they view it as “completing a journey.”

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