Horoscopes are tempting, no argument there. Often, we just can't help but open up that page and read what's written in the stars for our zodiac sign.
However, it is not a completely harmless habit. In fact, it has been proven that horoscopes can be bad for your mental health! Here are the main reasons why reading horoscopes can do more harm than good.
1. Horoscopes clutter your ability to make decent decisions
This is by far the most important factor.
Let's take your job, for example. You are not entirely happy with your current career position and your horoscope tells you should act now to make a good career choice or you will regret not taking action. What do you do? You turn to your boss and write a letter of resignation. The horoscope acts as a trigger even if it's not supposed to.
Horoscopes are designed to match with at least something in every reader's life, but it's not even remotely guaranteed to be accurate about YOUR life situation. Yes, you might be unhappy with certain aspects in your life but you should deal with those issues rationally, instead of making hasty decisions.
2. Horoscopes can affect your relationships – and not in a good way
The ability to make rational choices transfers to relationships as well since horoscopes have almost always something about love and relationships.
Horoscopes are not the go-to relationship guides. You can't honestly believe a horoscope to predict something about such a personal thing as a relationship between two people.
If the horoscope says you are going to meet someone exciting and you might start a secret affair, it doesn't mean you should consider every guy as a potential “hook-up”. Instead, concentrate on your relationships and forget everything you have read from the newspaper. No one can define the way your relationships go.
3. Horoscopes distort reality
The single worst thing about horoscopes is the way they affect people into doing things they normally wouldn't do. Hence they distort reality and make the line between rational and irrational decisions rather foggy.
For example, you might read from the horoscope that you will find a sudden amount of money. In the hopes of that happening, you'll spend $20 on lottery tickets. You might read you are going to fight with your partner and unexpectedly, a small everyday topic breaks your relationship.
That's not a consequence of a horoscope but your actions – actions that YOU have taken. Forget the mumbo-jumbo someone has made up, just to print in a newspaper.
4. They waste your time
That few minutes spent on reading a horoscope could have been spent on something much more productive – like doing some sit-ups, preparing a meal, calling a loved one.
If you want some good laughs, get a comic book or read the anecdote section – horoscopes are neither funny nor helpful, so they are a complete waste of your time.
5. They alter your mindset and personality
Sometimes we tend to take these little horoscope bulletins very seriously and start defining our personality according to that. If the horoscope said you are feeling neurotic, that's how you'll feel, right?
Wrong! Don't let a fictional story affect the person you are and change the way you feel about things.
That's the way human nature is – we cannot help our curiosity and the industry thrives on that. It's completely okay to read horoscopes every once in a while as a little fun note but you shouldn't take them seriously.
There's only one person in the whole wide world who can decide how your life turns out to be and that person is you. Now, go take that morning coffee, grab the newspaper, read the horoscope and have a nice laugh – that's what they are there for, nothing else.
