The World Cup ended today and it is a quite happy day for me. Not because it’s over, but because of how it ended.
While watching the finale, I observed myself not wanting to leave my lucky chair, not even for a second. The reason was not that I really thought it would matter, well maybe I did. you never know. The last time I left my lucky chair, my favorite team lost.

Superstition is the belief in supernatural causality—that one event leads to the cause of another without any
natural process linking the two events—such as astrology, religion, omens, witchcraft, prophecies, etc., that contradicts natural science.

Stuart A. Vyse in Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition

Or shorter: A superstitious person links two absolutely unrelated events together. There is of course no proof that superstition works. Under normal circumstances – that excludes watching sport events – I’d say I am not a superstitious person. What about you?

After thinking about the question for a while and watching myself going about my daily affairs, I realized how I am trying to make sense of events and situations by treating them as if they were related.

Someone steals my parking spot, I spill my coffee and get stuck in traffic on the way home. And suddenly I declare “It’s not my day.” Even better if it is a Monday. Why do I even wonder? Whatever unfortunate happens next is proof that I am right. This day is lost. But all I did was creating a link where there was none. And now, I don’t expect to do anything right. Failure expected.

We do this a lot. “I am just not good at [I am sure you can insert something]“. “He just doesn’t like me.“, “This is just not my year.” (more…)