If you see your horoscope in a magazine do you check it out? When I ask this question to clients I mostly get “yeah, but I don’t believe it!”

My response is usually “then why the hell read it?”

Here’s where you might tell me that you did go to a psychic once and she told you things that she couldn’t have possibly known about you! Or that once you read in your horoscope that you may bump into a childhood friend soon.  The very next day, who do you see? One of your old school friends from 12 years ago!

The Barnum effect.

It’s a common psychological phenomenon where people believe that personality descriptions apply specifically to them, when in fact they are quite general and apply to a broad range of people. Psychics, magicians, horoscopes, palm readers, crystal ball gazers all make great use of the Barnum Effect.

You’re an intelligent person though, right? You really seriously cannot believe that the combination of (1) the date your biological parents had sex, and (2) some alignment of planets or stars is going to predict what is going to happen to you in the future. Evidence? None. 

Or maybe it isn’t anything like that.

Perhaps you really don’t believe it but you just like the idea of walking in that place between skepticism and belief, or spiritualism and logic.

But there’s a cost.

You’re giving away some of your power.

And the more powerful you believe you are - the more positive, healthy, happy, and successful you are. I don’t mean Trump-like narcissistic power. I mean authentic, genuine, confident, I-can-do-this-if-I-put-my-mind-to-it power.

I’m going to even suggest to you that reading your horoscope, even if you don’t really believe it to be true, is a wee bit dangerous …

It’s dangerous because there’s a little slither of your mind that is hoping that whatever you’re about to read may say something wonderful, or even just favourable, is going to happen to you today or next week. You’re putting some hope in the hands of fate.

The more you believe in external factors such as luck, fate, chance, magic, superstition etc. the more you’re handing away some of your power, meaning you’re a little bit more “powerless”.

And the more powerless you are, the more you’re opening up the door to anxiety.

Once again you might say “yeah, but I don’t really believe it”.

Then don’t read it.

Take a stand and vote one for your intelligence and sense of power! You decide what it is you want to achieve tomorrow or next week and then put the effort in and do it.

Yours truly, Michelle the Cancerian. Deeply intuitive and sentimental. LOL.