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Phrase: Jinx yourself
When you jinx yourself, you unintentionally cause yourself to have bad luck by either thinking too positively or too negatively.
So, that sounds pretty straightforward, but how do you cause yourself bad luck?
Well, one good way to jinx yourself is to talk positively about something you would love to happen.
For example, if you underwent a job interview and felt it went very well, you should not tell people you think you got the job.
If you do, you could jinx yourself, and someone else will be hired.
Thinking negatively about things is also a way to jinx yourself.
On the ArtisanEnglish.jp Idiom and Word of the Day blog, I’ve often talked about the power of positive thinking.
If you think something will happen, it probably will.
If you have a special event, a vacation you have been looking forward to or have been anticipating something for a while, you should try to look on the positive side, not the negative.
Negative thinking could cause you to jinx yourself, and the bad things you are worried about will happen.
Yes, we are talking about the supernatural here.
Many people are superstitious.
They believe that being overly positive or negative about something could cause it to be foredoomed to failure.
Notice here that I wrote ‘could cause it to be foredoomed.’
There is no guarantee that you will or will not jinx yourself.
That’s why some people try to be neutral about things until they happen.
After a job interview, don’t say it was or was not successful.
Wait for the answer.
That way, you are guaranteed not to jinx yourself.
If you don’t get the job, that’s just plain bad luck.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 71.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.
