Stop Believing in Horoscopes
As tempting as they may be to read for a bit of a lark, getting hooked on horoscopes as a guide for your daily life isn't being fair on yourself. Your destiny is largely determined by the choices you make and one of those choices can certainly be to stop believing in horoscopes and to start taking charge of your own self-analysis and daily routine. Once you've decided it's time to stop basing your week's plans around the horoscope or your love life around star sign compatibility, you're free to chart your own course and discover people for who they really are.
Contents
Steps
History and science
- Look up the history of horoscopes. Doing a bit of learning about how horoscopes developed and how they have been used throughout history will help you to see that they are just a pseudo-science.
- Consider how the positions of stars have changed since horoscopes were first formed. The signs aren't even in the same positions as they once were.
- Consider how the planet positions change constantly. Due to the fact that all the planets are constantly changing their positions, these cycles in fact never actually repeat themselves, making each person an absolute individual. A single horoscope can therefore never capture the breadth of personality and destiny of any single person.
- Note that sun-sign astrology has some severe limitations when the science is applied to it. For example:
- The Sun is a star with a large mass. Extensive research undertaken on earthquakes and the positions of the planets has shown that they strongly affect the rate of earthquakes and that the Sun has no greater effect than any of the other planets.[citation needed]
- Depending on the Suns' relationship to the the other planets, the nature of the influences can in fact be the exact opposite of what is traditionally stated in sun-sign astrology.
- Due to the fact that the characteristics of the sun-sign can be the same as the traditional characteristics, the opposite, or somewhere in between, there can be no sound statistical method that would work just based on the traditional characteristics of the sign.
Treating horoscopes as entertainment
- Realize that horoscopes are just for fun and do not mean anything. You can help to convince yourself of this by trying the following:
- Check your horoscope (hopefully for the last time).
- Look at what your horoscope says. Then look at a different sign's horoscope. Can they both be applied to you? Then try looking at all the different signs. See how general they are? At least a few can be applied to anyone, including yourself, which proves that they are not specialized in any way whatsoever.
- If you find yourself thinking that you need to change to fit a horoscope, you have a clear answer that it's not accurate. It is also not the slightest bit unusual to find yourself thinking that some of the horoscope applies to you, while a lot of it doesn't. Seize that moment and realize it for what it is––your mind is telling you that the fit is wrong because no single horoscope can discern who you are. Unfortunately, many people choose to ignore the bits that don't fit and exaggerate the value of the parts that do, hence giving meaning to something that simply hasn't earned it.
- Think about the personality traits revealed in the signs. Do their personalities really match the personalities that the horoscope claims them to have? Do the people born in the same month as you act exactly like you? You will see that this is not the case - everyone has some stronger personality traits, but they don't necessarily correspond to what a "Leo" or "Taurus" is said to have. If a person chooses to manipulate their personality towards that trait, that's a choice, not a foregone conclusion.
- You can test this. Read the types behind signs that are not those of your friends. Do this with an open mind. How many of the things said seem applicable to a friend? It's likely that you'll find many things seem like your friend in the other signs too, precisely because horoscope writing uses generalizations that can apply to all people in some way. It is simply the human desire to fit the pieces according to what we prefer (confirmation bias) that causes us to believe one set of grouped traits is more applicable than another.
- One of the dilemmas that horoscopes have always had is in the case of twins. Twins seldom have the same fortune and many have different styles and personality. If horoscopes were real, they'd act exactly the same and have the same love life and fortune. This is simply not true!
- Think about any previous loves, and the people that you get along with very well. Do they all have the same sign (that is compatible with yours?) Not likely. Horoscopes cannot predict people's personality, and in turn, cannot predict people's compatibility with each other. Chemistry is a lot more complicated than the month when you were born!
- Think of how silly the concept really is whenever you read a horoscope. People born of the same month do not have the same personality, and you don't always see sparks with people who have a compatible sign. You will not have good fortune on a certain day because a magazine tells you so. Those magazines are just there to be fun and sell to people willing to believe the generalizations and conditional hope they offer.
- Even the more tailored horoscopes purchased online or through so-called horoscope "experts" are generalized. The people generating these horoscopes are good at reading people and generalizing about the types of personality traits that apply widely across a population. And within the space of week, every person is likely to have at least one good and one bad thing happen; it is very easy to fit the things that did occur to you into the sweeping statements that suggest such things will happen; in actual fact, it is you who have done the work of matching what has happened to you to the possibilities outlined in the horoscope. There is nothing quite so powerful as self conviction.
- Horoscopes are just opinions, like the majority of things human beings offer one another in life. Consider seriously just why planets and stars and the Sun would be intimately involved in your daily affairs. They are mass bodies doing what they are physically capable of, and that certainly does not include steering the events of human lives!
- Go cold turkey. Hopefully you have been convinced that horoscopes are not accurate. It will help if you just stop looking at them, and live your life on your own terms. Have fun, and don't worry about what a magazine column says!
Tips
- Basing your life around horoscopes is destructive to your life. If, after reading this article you just can't shake the belief in them, it may help to go to a therapist.
- The majority of people do not believe in horoscopes. This may be an incentive to think of how silly you look to other people when they find out that you truly believe in them.
- Challenge comments made by people about being driven by being a star sign type; this simply reinforces self-perpetuating stereotypes rather than accepting that all human beings are a lot more complex than any horoscope could ever dream of.
Warnings
- If your friends, relatives or others close to you believe in horoscopes, they may not take kindly to you weaning yourself off them. Don't let that stop you from thinking critically.
