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Remember when you were a little kid and played pokemon? And remember how when you'd throw the pokeball you'd button mash like hell, believing you were swaying the outcome in your favor?
Well I was thinking about how this same superstitious activity applies to my life right now. When I'm on my computer and something is not loading right I tense up and yell or bitch at my computer. There's a little part of me that believes this outburst will add something to the progress of the machine sitting in front of me.
Or like if I'm waiting in line to for something like to cash my paycheck. If there is a long line I will count all the people and estimate how long it will take them to file out. Part of this is to see how long I'll probably wait, but another part of me believes that by analyzing the situation, I am gaining some sort of superhuman control that will have an effect on the duration of the event.
Or if snow might cancel classes tomorrow. Me and my friends will start talking about the snow, and making estimations and I truly believe one reason we do this is to make the idea of the snow day last in our minds and just by thinking about it it may make it happen!
I feel like this way of thinking serves little to no positive purpose in my life besides raising my hopes. I think I should instead give in to the situation and let go, understanding my loss of control.
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What?! spamming the 'a' button doesn't help in catching pokemon? fuck i've been doing it wrong
but on a more serious note, I find I do the exact same things. I analyze a situation I have no control over but it makes me feel better anyways. It's almost like watching sports
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Lol i do this all the time. If anything it makes me feel i'm doing something.
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Your first example is a sign of immaturity. The second is perfectly normal when you're stuck with nothing to occupy yourself with. The third is just wishful thinking - also perfectly normal.
If there's one thing you should change, its the freaking out over things not going as planned. It might make you feel a little better to vent your frustrations, but it just makes others embarrassed for your inability to control your temper - something I've ended up having to teach both my brother and fiancee how to deal with.
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You just broke my heart saying the A button didnt help you catch pokemon 
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i'm not sure what to say. people like to pretend they have control when they don't and imagine order where there is only chaos. its not really a good or a bad thing until it gets to silly extents, like people believing in bizarre conspiracy theories or listening to psychic mediums and such.
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I think you're on the right track here. But if you start looking, you'll find that nearly everything we do revolves around things outside our control that we mistakenly think we have more influence over than we do.
Getting the job, getting the girl, having money, losing the job, losing the girl, having no money. In all these situations, the external factors over which we have no control often far outweigh the things we do to influence the outcome, and yet we endlessly congratulate or berate ourselves on the outcomes.
The key to me is concentrating on what we do have control over, which is our own thoughts and actions. For example, we might wait in a queue of fifteen people for three minutes or one hour. Being happy or angry about either outcome is illogical - it's something that we're not responsible for.
Instead, I try to be happy or sad based on my own actions, and not make my happiness dependent on external random events. So I'm happy if I spent my time in the queue well. For me, that might be going over some study I did that morning to help me remember it, or planning out in detail something complicated I need to do in the future, or turning to the person next to me in the queue and having a conversation. I'm sad if I waste my time in the queue thinking about pointless shit or getting frustrated.
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United States217 Posts
It was never spamming A, always hold down B + up xP
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So weird how spamming those buttons happened all over the world. Guess were all stupid
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I wildy rock my left thumb on the left and right arrows and rock my right thumb on the A and B, gets pokemon caught 
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I always clicked the B button right as the pokeball closed on the pokemon, I swear once I started doing that I caught them more 
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EPT
