A result can be surprising because the world behaved strangely or because your expectation was narrow.

Surprise is a fact about you before it is a fact about the world. Something unexpected happened either because events took an unusual turn or because your model was too narrow to contain the ordinary range of outcomes, and both feel identical in the moment. The second case is far more common and much less flattering.

Treat surprise as an invitation to inspect the expectation rather than the event. Ask what you assumed, where the assumption came from, and how much of the possible range it ever covered. Repeated small surprises in one area of your life usually mean the model needs widening there, and that is useful news.