Is there a there that we can realistically ask if we're there yet?
Somewhere in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon Rebecca West has a passage (it's in Volume 1 of the 2 volume edition, of which my copy is mysteriously not where I thought it was, next to Vol 2, so I'm quoting from memory), that women think that one day something will happen after which life will be entirely agreeable, while men think that one day they will be called upon to do something supremely effortful and unpleasant, after which life will proceed on an entirely different plane altogether.
I suspect that the distinction is not anything like as gendered as Dame R had it, but I do think that there is a human tendency to think that at some point, we will have achieved something, and it will be done and dusted and there will be no further necessity for effort and striving and possibly failing. Which applies over a whole swathe of areas and has been on my mind due to all kinds of different stuff happening all over the place.
Whereas:
There are certain states, for example outstanding achievement in certain physical accomplishments, where however good you get, you still have to keep practising just to maintain that level.
This also applies to a whole lot of things like housework and personal maintenance, where it's impossible to keep things continuously shining and pristine and tidy, it all keeps having to be done over.
There are also other things, where, once you have achieved one goal, it is like climbing a mountain and seeing that there are other higher mountains, or at least a further obstacle-strewn path, beyond.
(Not that there aren't points at which one at least gets clear of some quotidian effort and sees the rather larger picture.)
Most people (not all) desire, I think, to Do the Right Thing, and it would, I concede, be awfully nice to think one had achieved some state in which one did this naturally and without having to think and consider and evaluate and, o dear, perhaps Do the Wrong Thing nevertheless. But unless one is someone who after long endeavour and discipline has achieved enlightenment (and even then I wonder, because presumably such a person would still be human) it's never going to be that easy, unless you are a person who has decided to adhere to some system which provides absolute rules for behaviour in all circumstances (which are very unlikely to have enough degree of flex genuinely to accommodate the messy contingencies of life, or respond to changing circumstance).
Thinking you have the answers and everything worked out is exceedingly problematic - my point of reference here is Charlotte Yonge's novels, as I've been discussing these elsewhere: in Yonge's modern-day novels it's pretty much always the individuals who pride themselves on being Good, as opposed to those who are struggling and aware of their failings, who turn out to be Wrong, because they have been blinded by their smug certainty in their own righteousness.
I don't think people can change their lives overnight, or even over the course of a weekend (thinking back to the 70s and the various 'instant enlightenment intensives' that were about then). It's one thing to be pointed in a different direction, it's another thing to set off in that direction and to stay on it. Time and repetition are always necessary, I find.
I'm not sure that this is something for which there is a suitable image or metaphor - if it's not a wheel or cycle (O Fortuna), an upward path, a road with a clear destination, or even a labyrinth, what does it look like? The pattern is obscure.