Throughout this book, I may use the term “Expectation” interchangeably with “Prediction” referring to “what we expect to happen.”

In this section, I’ll delve into the important topic of Expectation Error or Prediction Error, terms I will frequently use moving forward. As mentioned in earlier sections, the brain’s most critical function, next to survival, is prediction, which is itself a major part of ensuring survival.

The human brain is continuously running a cycle, which I’ll call the Reward Pathway. This cycle includes making a prediction, receiving a reward (even a small one) for a correct prediction, or receiving a punishment (even a minor one) for an incorrect prediction. The amount of reward or punishment is influenced by many factors that I have explained in detail in previous sections. In other words, rewards and punishments emerge in our awareness and against the backdrop of our mental context, making it a complex process. Here, I’ll try to simplify this pathway with a few examples to make it more understandable.

It’s like I’m trying to play Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 on a toy piano or whistle, just to give you a glimpse of the musical pattern. If you’re familiar with this symphony, you’re likely aware of its complexity.

This Symphony is recognized across various languages and cultures worldwide, often simplified for use in toy pianos and children’s music books. It’s also used in cartoons and children’s programs to evoke a sense of happiness and unity. The song that Schiller wrote, and Beethoven set to music, conveys a universal message about joy and friendship, making it memorable due to its melodic simplicity and widespread appeal.

Certainly, the pleasure mechanism in the human brain is incredibly complex and oversimplifying it, whether scientifically or philosophically, is like isolating a famous part of this symphony and presenting it as the pinnacle of this timeless masterpiece. Throughout this book, I will frequently use the metaphor of an orchestra and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to represent the brain and nervous system.

To understand my discussion, I’ll divide the path of suffering and experiencing pleasure into several stages. It’s clear that such categorization doesn’t exist naturally but is rather a construct of my mind to explain the topic.

Stage One: Imagination

Imagine different types of pleasure, such as the joy of eating something you love, going to a place you like, seeing someone you adore, and even non-material pleasures like learning, helping others, engaging in art and creativity, or anything you consider spiritual. Imagining each of these can create a pleasant feeling within us, or in other words, bring us pleasure.

Stage Two: Moving Toward Attainment

After imagining a pleasure, moving towards achieving it is also pleasurable for us. This stage can be very short or very long. It might be as brief as eating something or as long as pursuing a long-term goal. The path we take to reach this destination is pleasurable for us.

Stage Three: Achievement

For many people, reaching the goal is the peak of pleasure. This also depends on each person’s mental context and lived experience, but it can be said that in many cases, such a statement is correct. Many people, myself included, enjoy the journey more than the arrival, even with its numerous hardships—like writing this book, which took years, during which I often felt like giving up. The definition of “reaching” also varies from person to person. For example, reaching my goal in writing this book may not be a single moment but might include the time of its publication, the release of an audio version, translation into other languages, or even gaining attention. Every pleasant experience must be stored in our memory to be conceivable. This storage in memory and its retrieval are crucial, as the inability to remember can affect this entire cycle and lead to anhedonia.

Stage Four: Possession of Pleasure

This is the pleasure experienced after you’ve reached your desired goal—eating your favorite food, meeting someone you love, buying or acquiring something you wanted, completing a spiritual or non-material task. At this point, you’re experiencing another type of pleasure from possession or accomplishment. Those who learn to appreciate in their value systems and lived experiences can enjoy Stage Four more, continually deriving pleasure from what they have. It’s evident that this also involves the phenomenon of boredom and weariness.

If you notice, all of the examples above involve liking, desiring, or considering something significant. That is, if these activities aren’t seen as likable or desirable in our minds, no pleasure arises; instead, it might lead to the experience of suffering, which I contrast with pleasure here.

Instead of using the word “liking” or “desiring,” we could use the word “Expectation,” which might give us a clearer understanding of the mind’s nature. The brain is a prediction machine, and prediction is closely tied to expectation.

In each stage, alongside every pleasure, there is also a pain or suffering. It could even be said that this pain drives us to reimagine, move, achieve, and repeat this cycle. Hunger, thirst, separation, or any physical and mental need you can think of is considered suffering. In this book, I don’t differentiate between physical and mental pain; I refer to suffering as an unpleasant experience. This experience might be pleasurable for another person depending on their mental context, and vice versa.

The intensity of the suffering we experience has an interesting relationship with the degree and manner of experiencing pleasure. The more intense the pleasure in a shorter period with less effort, the greater the suffering associated with it, and consequently, the likelihood of addiction to this pleasure increases. By addiction, I mean the suffering that drives us to re-experience pleasure.

Even alongside the pleasure of possession and gratitude, there is always the suffering of loss. Not only is losing what we love painful, but the fear of losing it is also a constant companion.

The path of pleasure and suffering isn’t always one-way; sometimes, the reverse happens—the pleasure derived from enduring suffering, especially suffering chosen voluntarily and willfully. By voluntary suffering, I don’t mean self-harm but rather the suffering that comes from resisting the urge to repeat stages of pleasure, which can be pleasurable for us. For example, if you enjoy eating a specific food or doing a particular activity, resisting the urge to eat that food or engage in that activity, willingly, can also be enjoyable. Many of the physical exercises we do are a form of voluntary suffering. Studying, learning, fasting, abstinence, and meditation are other examples of voluntary suffering that result from resisting the urge to repeat the stages.

With this perspective, one could say that pleasure without desire can be unpleasant, while voluntary suffering can be pleasurable and enjoyable.

I consider boredom a type of mental suffering that arises when not doing anything or not being engaged in an activity. Like other pains mentioned in the section on pleasure and suffering, this pain results from the reward obtained from engaging in any activity. Almost all activities we perform, even the most demanding ones, are accompanied by a reward that encourages us to repeat them. After this pleasure ends, the suffering of boredom appears, serving as a driving force for movement and activity. In today’s modern life, where we are bombarded with various activities, boredom manifests itself more strongly than ever. Many of us are constantly engaged in different tasks throughout the day—from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep, this process continues without pause.

Weariness is often used synonymously with boredom, but by weariness, I refer to that part of suffering resulting from the diminishing pleasure of performing a task each time it is done. If you recall, I explained in the section on pleasure and suffering that each time we experience a pleasure, part of its enjoyment diminishes, and it no longer brings as much pleasure as it did initially. From now on, we will call this phenomenon weariness, which has a subtle difference from boredom. Boredom is the suffering of engaging in a pleasurable activity, while weariness is the decline in enjoyment resulting from that activity. This is why humans are highly interested in novel and fresh activities.

If you, like me, have a fondness for coffee, ice cream, and croissants, your senses are always alert to find specialty coffee shops, Italian gelato, and French croissants. I must admit that one of my long-standing ideas has been to have a franchise combining the best specialty coffee, Italian gelato, and French croissants, with the possibility of creating a magical croissant-gelato combo that combines the best of both Italian and French traditions. If you find this idea appealing and decide to pursue it, don’t leave me out!

Whenever I arrive in a new city, finding these three items—which I’ll call the Indulgence Triangle—takes top priority. My brain orders me to first find a list of specialty coffee shops, carefully check their photos, and read customer reviews. Doing so creates an initial expectation in my mind. For example, a coffee shop with 5 stars and thousands of positive reviews can be quite appealing, especially if pictures of flaky French croissants and several French people vouching for them are visible. Measuring this level of expectation is very difficult, so I won’t delve into that here.

Now, imagine I enter this café with this expectation and order a cappuccino with a croissant. My experience of consuming this tempting combination depends entirely on the expectation I formed in my mind after seeing the photos and reading the comments an hour earlier. But the story doesn’t end there—it’s far more complicated than one might imagine. How well did I sleep last night? Is this my first coffee of the morning, or did I already have a double americano while still half-asleep? Is this my first meal of the day, or did I already eat something before? And countless other factors, like the news, social interactions over the past few days, and my anxiety level—all these contribute to the experience of eating the croissant and drinking the coffee. I have summed up all this under the term “context.” Therefore, context plays a crucial role in how an expectation is fulfilled.

If the taste and quality of this croissant meet my expectations, you receive a “satisfaction” reward. However, if this croissant is better than any I’ve ever tasted, a process occurs in the reward pathway that I’ll call “Hyper-Satisfaction” or “Over-Satisfaction” moving forward. Now, what exactly constitutes “better quality” is a separate topic, but let’s assume, for now, that “better quality” means greater pleasure brought about by the sensation of biting into a hot, fresh, buttery croissant straight from the oven. (If just reading this sentence makes your mouth water, feel free to pause reading this book and take a moment of silence in honor of Ivan Pavlov, who discovered the Pavlovian response.) Not only will you write an excellent review for this coffee shop, but you will spend the entire day dreaming of returning the next day to enjoy the buttery croissant melting in your mouth, to the point that you might even postpone your trip to the next city because of it (no joke—I’ve personally done this). If the croissant matches what you expected, you enjoy your coffee and croissant quite reasonably but see no need to change your travel plans.

Now, let’s consider the opposite scenario. Unfortunately, not only is the coffee at this café made with stale Brazilian Robusta beans, and the barista has over-steamed the milk, creating a massive amount of foam, but the croissant resembles nothing like the buttery French croissant you expected and tastes more like cheap bread. In this case, a sense of “dissatisfaction” appears in your awareness, which I’ll refer to as Expectation Error or Prediction Error from here on. This unpleasant feeling is the punishment I mentioned at the beginning of this section. This unpleasant feeling, or pain, is part of the punishment and reward pathway that prompts us to either repeat an action or avoid repeating it. In these circumstances, you probably wouldn’t return to the café to retrieve your expensive hat if you left it behind, let alone try their awful coffee and croissant again, which deserves a scathing review. Now, imagine you stumbled upon this café by accident and hadn’t read anything about it. If this café offered even the low quality of the previous example, the experience of drinking bad coffee and eating a poor croissant would be far more tolerable than the pain you experienced from reading those glowing reviews and seeing those enticing yet fake pictures.

The effect of expectation doesn’t end with such scenarios; it is present in every moment of our lives. Many of the mental pains we experience daily are due to this prediction error. From waking up to falling asleep, we are constantly moving along this pathway. When you discover there’s no water after entering the bathroom or realize you’re out of coffee and have to endure the commute to work groggy—or face more significant challenges like financial troubles or dealing with an unexpected illness—anytime our internal dialogue starts with “I expected…” or “I was expecting…,” prediction error can manifest. Every time you realize your mistake, you experience a minor mental pain that drives you to correct the error until you fully adapt to the new pattern and perform it automatically. This is precisely why forming new habits requires patience and repetition.

To understand how subtle this pathway can be, try wearing your watch on the opposite wrist for a few days, or change the location of something in your home. Rearrange your phone icons or, for an added challenge, leave your phone behind, forcing your brain to create severe mental discomfort from the lack of attention to social media.

Each time you learn something new—whether a physical activity like a new sport, a mental activity like learning, or a combination like playing an instrument—you experience the pain of expectation error throughout the learning process until you master it and receive a reward for accurate prediction. The hope of receiving a future reward, as I mentioned in the section on Hope, acts as a driving force for humans, soothing the pain of repeated errors.

If I accidentally spill coffee on your clothes while standing in line, a split-second expectation of an apology arises in your mind. From early childhood, we are repeatedly introduced to the concept of forgiveness and taught this notion repeatedly. We all use the word “sorry” daily in various forms. From early on in life, we learn to apologize and forgive those who cause us any kind of distress. These teachings gradually become part of our value system. As we learn and practice forgiveness, we simultaneously develop an expectation to hear an apology.

If, while you try to clean the coffee stain with a tissue and unbutton your shirt (only to a socially acceptable degree depending on where you live) to remove the burn mark from the hot 80% Robusta americano, I continue on my way without acknowledging you, you instantly face an expectation error. Your mind, trying to balance this injustice, kicks into action, and the feeling of anger appears along with physical manifestations such as increased heart rate, muscle tension, and changes in breathing rhythm. You decide to yell at me, clenching your fists and preparing to throw a punch at my jaw. But if instead of ignoring you, I kindly apologize multiple times and then offer you a 100-euro bill to buy a new suit, your brain quickly signals to stand down, as the imbalance has been addressed through an apology and compensation. Thus, the pain caused by the expectation error is balanced and soothed, either through the shout-punch method or the apology-compensation approach. If none of these occur, your mind will have to choose another method to balance things out. In this case, an internal dialogue might come to your aid: “What a jerk,” or alternatively, “He’s probably had a tough day,” or “He never learned any better.” Or, if you attribute this incident to yourself: “I probably deserved this for ignoring that beggar a few minutes ago.” In each of these scenarios, the mind tries to establish this balance.

In the poor croissant example, this balance might be achieved by returning the croissant and writing a bad review, complaining to the café manager, or even just grumbling to your partner—or perhaps through an internal dialogue like, “After all, you can’t expect much from a Portuguese croissant,” or “Maybe their chef got COVID, and the local baker made the croissants.” Behaviors like gossiping, complaining, and talking to friends, family, or neighbors in line often act as a balm and equalizer for this imbalance.

Now, if instead of giving you a 100-euro bill, I gave you a stack of 10,000-euro notes, then invited you to dinner and registered a beachfront villa in your name in southern France—what would happen in your mind?

With this act, I’ve created another imbalance that likely not only compensates for spilling coffee but also leaves you feeling indebted, thinking you must repay this favor somehow. You might refuse my offer to avoid the consequences of feeling indebted or embrace me warmly, thank me profusely, donate the stack of bills to charity, or use an internal dialogue like, “I always knew I deserved something like this in life,” to restore balance to some extent. Or perhaps, you might express gratitude to a higher power and fast for a month to repay this kindness, or maybe you’ll recall a fortune-teller who once predicted a big change in your life, reinforcing your belief in such superstitions. The number of possibilities, depending on each person’s mental context, can be countless.

Every time you use common curses like “Ugh, damn it,” in various daily situations, or honk and make disapproving faces or gestures while driving, you’re trying to restore this equality. Additionally, when the imbalance is slightly greater than usual, your deep beliefs, such as “There must be a reason,” “This was God’s will,” or my personal non-religious mantras, like “Everything that happens is part of my lived experience, and there’s nothing more valuable than experience,” or “Let the future unfold naturally,” or similar mantras can establish equality to a large extent.

Sometimes, the pain caused by prediction error is so severe that it can bring a person to their knees. One could even argue that the pain a person addicted to substances experiences during withdrawal, driving them to re-use, is due to this prediction error, as I will explain further.

If the level of imbalance is so high that even the Hammurabi-style retribution courts, and modern compensation methods can’t soothe the pain caused by it, then this severe pain could lead to what we now call PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).

This drastic imbalance can be compared to a bank loan, which is itself an imbalance, and since you can’t afford to balance and repay the loan all at once, you must slowly pay it off. Now, if during repayment, you must borrow money to pay off part of the loan, you’ve nested your debt, and this cycle could continue indefinitely. Imagine someone who suffered severe emotional trauma as a child in a car accident or war. Now, to soothe part of this pain, they turn to alcohol or drugs.

This person may appear to suppress the pain by using alcohol or drugs, but not only has the imbalance not been eliminated, the magnitude of it has increased with substance use. They might drive under the influence or cause a catastrophe in a street fight, and this vicious cycle can continue forever.

It’s like borrowing money from a cartel to repay a bank loan and then, being unable to repay it, being forced to work for them, steal, or commit another crime.

The brain predicts not only external events but is also constantly predicting everything happening inside the body. When a specific molecule level in the blood or nervous system falls below expectation, this pain drives us to compensate (or balance) this deficit. Many of the unpleasant feelings we experience manifest as mood swings, irritability, anxiety, and depression, resulting from imbalances in bodily substances, insufficient sleep, lack of sunlight, inadequate physical activity, and many similar factors. This imbalance can cause unpleasant feelings; repeated over a long period, it can lead to chronic illnesses. Alcohol and drug use dramatically increases this molecular imbalance, and the pain from not using substances, which we call addiction, is the same pain that compels you to restore molecular balance.

Once, during a journey where I had to endure several hours of sleeplessness, without proper nutrition and physical activity for a few days, all during winter in the dark and rainy weather of Northern Europe, I felt a day-long sense of depression, irritability, and restlessness. Meanwhile, I tried to counter this low mood and extreme fatigue with more caffeine and overeating. This dreadful combination can easily trap anyone in a vicious cycle that might last years and cause irreparable damage.

When a specific part of the body is injured, pain drives us to care and treat it. However, when the damage relates to the body’s molecular balance, the issue becomes more complex. The vagueness of pain is quite natural because molecular imbalance has no specific physical location in the body, making diagnosis difficult and treatment complex, requiring numerous tests, imaging, and careful examination. Hence, designing and adhering to a personal plan is essential for everyone. This personal plan, based on your lifestyle and aligned with your values, is what I will call the “Balance Cycle” from now on. It’s a cycle because it repeats daily, and “balance” indicates the goal of executing this cycle. The Balance Cycle has no universal formula or guideline; each person should design it like their value system and philosophy of life. My personal Balance Cycle includes ten items that I try to review daily and always update after each unpleasant experience.

These ten items, which I won’t detail further but have elaborated on for myself, are as follows:

1. Adequate and quality sleep with minimal disturbance.

2. Daily exposure to sunlight.

3. Daily physical activity including resistance, aerobic, balance, and stretching exercises.

4. A healthy and balanced diet with minimal processed foods, sugar, and simple carbohydrates, along with intermittent fasting.

5. Minimizing caffeine consumption and limiting it to early morning hours.

6. Avoiding social media, alcohol, and drugs and maintaining daily digital fasting hours.

7. Meaningful emotional and social relationships.

8. Daily time in nature and spending time outdoors.

9. Engaging in meaningful work aligned with values, increasing knowledge, and learning new skills.

10. Meditation, self-awareness, revisiting values, and life philosophy.

Clearly, your list can differ significantly and be much longer or shorter. The key is to design this Balance Cycle and regularly review it as part of your daily habits. Also, I can never fully optimize and balance all these items, as mentioned in the travel example. Due to a trip or an unexpected event, the regular sleep rhythm may change for one or several nights. In such situations, I do my best to keep other options like diet, caffeine, and sunlight balanced to minimize expectation errors and return to the regular sleep rhythm as soon as possible. Being aware of the Balance Cycle and constantly reviewing it is essential, especially when the Indulgence Triangle (coffee, croissant, and ice cream) fills all your mental awareness; paying attention to this list becomes much more challenging. If the image of this triangle is the content of awareness, what determines the intensity of the temptation is the context. Stress, hormonal changes, diet, and hundreds of other factors can alter how content appears in the awareness space.

Now, it’s time to visit the fridge and take a break after this intense and appetite-inducing section. The topic of Expectation doesn’t end here—it’s just an introduction to what I’ll discuss in the next chapter based on it.