When I was younger, I wasn’t superstitious about black cats or broken mirrors.
I was superstitious about authority.
A high school counselor once told me,
“School might not be for you.”
It wasn’t cruel.
It wasn’t loud.
But I treated it like fate.
If someone in authority says it, it must be true.
So I adjusted my effort accordingly.
Seven F’s.
Financial aid stripped.
Community college twice.
I didn’t just struggle academically.
I embodied the label.
I told myself I wasn’t book smart.
That owning a home was for other people.
That success belonged to a different species of human.
I lived inside that belief for years.
That was my superstition.
Not ladders.
Not mirrors.
A sentence.
The difference between superstition and belief is testing.
Nobody tests walking under a ladder.
They just avoid it.
I did the same thing with academics.
I avoided trying fully.
Because if I tried fully and failed —
then maybe the label would be real.
Years later, I went back.
Associate degree.
Honor roll.
University.
Graduated with honors.
The sentence didn’t disappear overnight.
It just lost authority.
Now I understand something:
Bad beliefs function like superstitions.
We inherit them.
We obey them.
We rarely test them.
And effort — real effort — is the only experiment that breaks them.
Reader question:
Have you ever mistaken someone else’s opinion for fate?
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