Superstitions May Not Be So Suspicious.

Always put your left sock on first. Walk onto the pitch last.  These were just two superstitions that I used to swear by during my rugby playing days. 

People avoid walking under ladders, salute a single magpie or wear their lucky undergarments to name but a few. Some cast these off as quirks that have no relevance in the real world – that affect nothing and are therefore useless.  However, the opposite can be argued.

On a recent course a delegate revealed she had passed her driving test at the fourth attempt.  When I asked 'if you had failed it that fourth time instead of passing it, would you have retaken it a fifth time?'; she said 'of course she would, however, probably would have to move straight to the sixth attempt to pass because she has a thing against odd numbers.' (At least that's how I remember the conversation).  Luckily the room took it in the spirit it was intended and everyone had a good belly laugh, including her I might add.

My Grandmother truly believed that bad things happen in 3’s.  A statement I have heard regularly in the past.  If we think about this – although it may not be helpful, it may not be so illogical either. 

We have a filter in our brain that allows us to take in the information most relevant to us at any particular time.  This is why you notice a certain car drive past you on the road once you decide you are going to buy that model.  This is why you are able to ‘ignore’ all the other cars on the road to concentrate on the things that are important (such as potential hazards to avoid).  You filter things in and out according to your perceptions and beliefs.  After witnessing the first ‘bad thing’, my grandmother would spend the rest of the day focusing on finding the other two.

If someone sets a goal to run a marathon, they begin to notice runners out on the street.  Those runners were there before; they were just filtered out as being less important than something else at that time.

Superstitions work in the same way.  Someone wears their lucky pants for a big meeting, their mindset is just that little bit more positive about how their big meeting will go as a result.  They feel more confident and therefore stand a better chance of behaving more effectively.  Someone walks under a ladder, they spend the rest of the day focusing on any negative they see and attribute it to this arbitrary event (if that is what they believe happens as a result).  The same negatives may have happened anyway, but if we don’t focus on them they won’t define our day in the same way.

A superstition therefore DOES affect the outside world.  Through a shift in an individual’s focus and what they filter in and out, it drives different perceptions, emotions and therefore behaviour.  Our behaviour then affects the outside world - indeed it is the only way we do affect the outside world.

So superstitions aren’t so suspicious.  They are perfectly logical in the way they work – it’s just that we need to make them work for us rather than against us.

And yes - in case you're wondering, my Grandmother always completed the set in the end.