We all know what disappointment feels like. We all know that there’s a direct relationship between how high your expectations are and how many pushups Disappointment did before it stabbed you in the chest with a rusted machete.

I don’t know about you, but I experienced a lot of disappointment this past year. I usually handle disappointment well, so I did just that — except for two surprisingly devastating instances. In one, I was sitting in front of my computer at work when it happened. It felt exactly the way it’s portrayed in movies: your vision tunnels and your heart races and your chest tightens; soon your breathing subconsciously tries to calm you down and does the opposite — it becomes slow, heavy, concentrated. The second time felt like the first, except this time I dropped to my hands and knees in the middle of my bedroom, exhausted, hopeless, staring into my carpet for answers to a question I was tired of asking.

When you’ve been severely disappointed, you want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s natural for your defense mechanisms to kick in; self-preservation, after all, is hard-wired into you. So what are your options? A friend of mine once offered me his solution: have low expectations because you’re less likely to get disappointed. It makes sense and strikes an emotional chord, but I tried and couldn’t do it that way. I’m too much of an optimist. I can’t suppress excitement which, it seems to me, is an important stage in the enjoyment of things.

Instead, I balanced my unbridled enthusiasm with occasional reminders that I may be disappointed. In other words, I kept my expectations in check. It seemed like the sensible, moderate approach, and I’ve used it for almost a decade. But I think I’ve found a better way…

Let’s examine the power of expectations for a minute. I think we’d all agree that expectations are powerful. They have the ability to make good things seem bad, and vice versa. But I don’t think we realize exactly how powerful they are:

The human brain, research suggests, isn’t built for objectivity. The brain doesn’t passively take in perceptions. Rather, brain regions involved in developing expectations can systematically alter the activity of areas involved in sensation. The cortex is “cooking the books,” adjusting its own inputs depending on what it expects. … People assume that they perceive reality as it is, that our senses accurately record the outside world. Yet the science suggests that, in important ways, people experience reality not as it is, but as they expect it to be. (Jonah Lehrer)

So what’s my new approach? Don’t have expectations. Sound extreme? That’s because it’s unnatural. As a species, we’ve spent millions of years conditioning ourselves to predict our surroundings, paying careful attention to discrepancies to survive in the wild. Well, it’s not as useful in our day-to-day lives.

A farmer had only one horse. One day, his horse ran away. All the neighbors came by saying, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.” The man just said, “We’ll see.”

A few days later, his horse came back with twenty wild horses. The man and his son corraled all 21 horses. All the neighbors came by saying, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!” The man just said, “We’ll see.”

One of the wild horses kicked the man’s only son, breaking both his legs. All the neighbors came by saying, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.” The man just said, “We’ll see.”

The country went to war, and every able-bodied young man was drafted to fight. The war was terrible and killed every young man, but the farmer’s son was spared, since his broken legs prevented him from being drafted. All the neighbors came by saying, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!” The man just said, “We’ll see.”

It’s fine to want and hope for something, but when you start to expect it, you’re not paying attention to what’s actually happening. Take it or leave it, but I only write about what works for me.

The other day, something I’ve been wanting to happen was about to happen. I was getting excited. But instead of building up in my mind how I wanted things to play out, I looked forward to how things would actually happen. We’ll see, I thought.

 I was still excited, but I was excited about reality. So when it didn’t end up happening, I wasn’t disappointed. I just smiled and thought, “So that’s how it happened.” But I knew that wasn’t the end of the story. We’ll see, I thought.

And then, later that day, it happened. I was excited again and my mind wandered, imagining the significance of it, trying to predict what would happen next … until I caught myself.

We’ll see.