Everytime I pass gas I loudly proclaim “my soul doesn’t stink!”. Nobody around appears to believe that however.
I know it is silly, but every once in a while i’ll do something along the lines of feeling if I watch a game on TV I will make my team lose. And right now I’m waiting for a job offer, and for whatever reason I decided to give $ to a beggar I see all the time until I get it. Like he is my good luck charm or something. He’d be happy if they took their time… 
This^^. I have squandered prodigious amounts of time pondering whether I am moving toward or away from my “destiny”. Oh curse you cheap fiction!
Also, I’ve had to struggle to kick the habit of thinking that being “in the groove” is the way to do my job well. It’s hard to explain this, but it’s completely different feeling like things are flowing, and having focus. Flow means I’m dancing to an inner rhythm that makes things happen quickly and easily, but can as easily lead me down the wrong path as the right one. Focus means the inner dialog is tuned down to an acceptable background chatter which doesn’t distract me from what needs doing.
Or perhaps this is just more magical thinking. Whoopie!
The last time I was at the Carnegie Museum, I bought a stuffed penguin, and named it Sidney. Now whenever I watch a Penguins game, I have to hold on to him, or at least have him nearby – or else I feel like the Pens will lose.
Well:
BigT: I agree.
olivesmarch4th: I know the feeling.
billfish678: There’s an old, old creaky elevator in downtown Oakland that I greet warmly every time I ride it. It does that swift-acceleration-then-CLUNK thing. I like it because it’s messed up but it keeps trying.
spark240: I may be mistaken, but I believe everything on this page qualifies, at least with psychologists.
elfkin477: I don’t wish, but I always notice it.
Perciful: Absolutely! Frequently. Despite everything, I often feel moments of intense love for the world, and for humanity. It is a beautiful place, and people are pretty cool.
kopek: I think a little superstition is very rational on a motorcycle. Nice picture!
supergoose: For it to qualify as what?
MeanOldLady: I’m inclined to agree.
Little Nemo: Great idea! No one can argue with that.
Guinastasia: I am inclined to agree with you, it is pretty much human nature. (–not the penguin thing, that’s all yours! I mean the magical thinking.) I would venture to say that many more humans on earth engage in “magical thinking” of some sort, than not. And this is central to my point here.
I was researching a particular set of personality disorders/ mental disorders, to try and better understand someone I know; and I was stricken with how frequently “magical thinking” is mentioned as a symptom and a factor in diagnosis of several different disorders. It’s just that it’s so very common, even among people who are very rational, and/or who are not at all religious. And it even occurs among those who self-identify as skeptical. Not to mention what I think is a very significant fact, that it is mostly within the context of the dominant culture’s thought that such things are considered silly or nonsensical – rational or not, many peoples’ native belief systems include various examples of “magical thinking,” and I think it’s odd that it is considered so likely to be a manifestation of disordered thinking.
It’s as if, under “Axe Murderer”, the books said:
- carries an axe
- covered in blood
- magical thinking
And, under “Passive Aggressive,” they said:
- does stuff behind your back
- manipulates while feigning innocence
- magical thinking
etc. etc.
I do. I don’t really believe. I guess it is more that I want it to be true. None the less, I have my share of rituals.
I never, ever step on cracks in pavement. Except unfortunately when I first heard ‘step on a crack, break your mother’s back’ I assumed that the space between two paving stones(? what do you call pieces of sidewalk?) was considered a crack, so now I can’t step on those either.
Knocking wood after you say “I’ve never had x bad thing happen to me”, yep. I usually have to say “knock on wood” as well when I do this.
I’m going to spoiler box this because it RUINED MY LIFE GUYS: I don’t pick up pennies if
they are tails up, because then they are ‘bad pennies’ and will give you bad luck.
Oh also, making a wish when an eyelash falls on my cheek (you blow it off your finger after wishing for those who don’t know), when the numerals on a digital clock are all the same, when I catch a falling leaf in midair (then crumble it up and toss the pieces into the wind).
Maybe I’m just full of shit, but I feel like I never have these thoughts or perform such rituals. Almost everyone else I know seems to do it to some degree; my boyfriend and my best friend almost to the level that it interferes with living their lives (everything is a game they play with themselves, their every action has meaning, and their rituals can change the outcome of situation - although they do seem to understand that it’s not rational, so I wonder why they continue to do it).
I think ‘depressive realist’ is the perfect description for me. I have had dysthemia for much of my life, but have been pretty contented and functional for the past 5 years. I have the most level moods of anyone I know though. I’m almost never excited or happy or angry or sad - just my normal, non-emotional self.
I’ve never been able to have belief or faith in god, an afterlife, luck, destiny, or magic. I can’t ever relate to things that aren’t concrete and logical.
Magical thinking by psychiatric standards.
Well cripes, what do you do when faced with sidewalks? Just walk on the grass/street?
Watch where I’m walking so that I only step inside the squares of pavement. (Sometimes I start counting steps to make it the same number of steps in each square but I think that’s not magical thinking, just regular neurosis.)
I’m a baseball fan. Of course I’m superstitious! 
If you comment on how good someone is, they’ll blow it. If you say your team can’t lose, they’ll blow it. If you want them to win too much, they’ll blow it.
Actually, this is less a matter of being superstitious than it’s a matter of being an Indians fan.
You stole this from me.
I still do little things, sometimes to the point of OCD. Here’s a weird one: you know the veins in some streets that result from repairing cracks with asphalt or tar or whatever? I don’t like driving over more of those with one tire than the other. It makes me feel unbalanced.
I sometimes count my steps. They should be even: one step with each foot.
I am compulsive about peeling labels off things. It’s the first thing I do when I get a new gadget. A friend of mine still has the advertising label for his TV – the one that says the neat things it does – after owning the thing for years, and it bugs the heck out of me.
I cross my fingers, but mostly for other people when I’m walking them through a tech fix.
And one day I found a loaded wallet outside the Student Services Building at UT. It had identification in it and a heck of a lot of money. I turned it in to the information desk, feeling a mixture of pride and annoyance – I really, really wanted more money for Christmas gifts but there was no way I’d take it from a lost wallet. Further down the road, outside the Catholic church where my father married his first (not my mom) wife, a crisp clean twenty was lying in the grass.
Apparently, sometimes God pays you for your honesty.
I pick up all money I find, even pennies. I don’t want the universe to think I have too much money and stop sending it to me!
I practice “what goes around comes around” magical thinking. Sort of the golden rule with a payoff. Basically, the magic is, what good or bad you do, will come back to you. IMO, if everyone practiced it, we would be better off as a society anyway, so I figure it has no negative impact.
Have you ever read Illusions: the adventures of a reluctant Messiah, by Richard Bach (the Jonathan Livingston Seagull guy)? If you’re prone to magical thinking, don’t! It’s full of advice on how to use the power of your mind to choose the things that happen to you.
Yeah, it was one of my favorites when I was in my teens.
Kind of neat story about it. I was 27ish and had just gone back to college and was absolutely bombing Calculus two. I was depressed because I didn’t think I would finish my degree. I was cat-sitting for a friend and his mother had the book on her shelf. I picked it up and opened it at random and the first quote I read was: Argue for your limitations, and sure enough their yours. Oddly, a sense of peace came over me and I thought, you know what? You can do this. Things started to fall in place that week.
Of course, I never *did *learn to vaporize clouds…
But that is good advice even without the magic.
Yeah, it was an enjoyable read, if nothing else.