Whatever happens, whether you succeed or you fail, people with high expectations always feel better, because how we feel — when we get dumped or we win employee of the month — depends on how we interpret that event.

Sharot is underscoring a core finding from affective science and cognitive psychology: events do not determine our emotional state as directly as the meanings we assign to them. “High expectations” here function less as naïve optimism than as a cognitive frame that biases interpretation toward possibility, learning, and future improvement. The examples (romantic rejection versus workplace recognition) suggest that the same interpretive machinery operates across domains—social, professional, and personal. The quote also implies that emotional resilience can be cultivated by changing appraisal habits: if feelings follow interpretation, then shifting interpretation (without denying reality) can soften the impact of setbacks and amplify the benefits of successes.