cosmo insight
How much of your life is
planned based on what your
starsign tells you? If you’re in
retrograde, do you use it as an
excuse? (‘Sorry I yelled at you
- Mercury was in retrograde.’)
Do you feel hope when you think
of that love-attracting rose
quartz in your pocket? We put
a lot of faith in The Universe.
A logical mind will tell you that
relying on the universe for answers
is a bunch of baloney. But cut to me
on any particular week and you’ll
see a woman cross-referencing three
different astrologers, wondering if
she needs to refer to her natal chart
and cleanse her crystals with the
full moon. Impatient? Deluded? Or
just wanting a heads-up? You be
the judge.
Even though I perpetually find
myself relying on some galactic map
to determine my life, I’m no loony- even my most with-it girlfriends
join me in this obsession (as do the
6.5 million other people who tune in
to astrologer du jour Susan Miller’s
horoscope overviews each month).
Whether we’re worried about work,
confused about our next step in life,
or losing patience in the seemingly
neverending quest for love, our
horoscopes, psychics, tarot cards and
whatever-elses serve to tell us that
everything.is.going.to.be.OK. ’Cos
it just has to be. Right?!
It’s in our DNA
‘It’s a bit of a human tendency to
want to know what’s coming up at
times of emotional difficulty,’ says
psychologist Dr Samantha Clarke.
‘That’s partly linked to the way
our minds are set up. We have the
limbic system, which is our fight or
f light, and the pre-frontal cortex,
which is pretty much why we’re at
the top of the food chain – but we
still don’t like uncertainty. Our
minds think that if we can’t see what
is in the distance, there might be a
predator, and it needs to know what’s
there so it feels safe. The physical
threats have disappeared, but the
psychological threat of not knowing
about the future is still there. We
need that little reassurance that lets
that part of our anxiety settle down.’
2017 has already presented a
raft of uncertainty in the world.
Because of this, we seem to be a
melting pot of lost souls searching
for meaning in WTF times. Some-
times seeking a forecast of good
news is nothing more than needing
a sounding board, a confirmation
of previously held beliefs, or just,
you know, some guidance.
To an extent, our gender also
fuels this obsession, encouraged
by the ‘locus of control’. Dr Clarke
explains it as a two-sided pattern
of thinking when it comes to our
personality – internal and external- and women are believed to have
a higher external locus of control.
According to Dr Clarke, those
who have an internal locus of control
feel they have more control over
what happens to them in their life:
in their mind, ‘they make a choice
that leads to an outcome’, says Dr
Clarke. Then there are the rest of
us, those with an external locus of
control, who feel like we’re more
powerless to control our situation
regardless of what we do. Think
about your workplace. You may feel
you have no control over who the
ISTOCK boss gives a promotion to, but >
COSMOPOLITAN June 2017 111