Sign Off: Don’t blame bad personality traits on your zodiac sign

Sure, it’s fun to take random Buzzfeed quizzes to find out who your One Direction soulmate is or what ice cream flavor you are all based on your sign. But let’s be honest– Zodiac signs mean absolutely nothing. Yeah, the stars were aligned a certain way when you were born, and they are aligned a certain way right now — but that’s not an excuse for everything that goes wrong in your life. Zodiacs should be a fun thing that people can look at anytime, not something that determines your personality traits. 

Some people shrug off their worst qualities or bad habits and simply use their zodiac sign as an excuse. “Oh, I hurt that girl’s feelings? It’s because my zodiac says I’m manipulative.” You can’t get away with blaming your toxic traits on being a Pices.

I’ve probably checked my horoscope prediction daily for the past few years, but only out of sheer curiosity. As a Libra, I’m supposedly charming and a great listener, yet indecisive and unreliable. Sure, that may be accurate here and there, but those words definitely wouldn’t pop into my head if you asked me to describe myself.

If Cosmopolitan’s Snapchat’s daily horoscopes tell me that I–along with every other Libra out there– am supposed to “find the one” in the upcoming week one more time I think I’ll lose it. I’ve heard that prediction just about a million time. Has it happened? Nope.

When you blame what’s bad about yourself on a zodiac sign, that bad characteristic will probably never change. I was born on Sept. 24, classifying me as a Libra, but that doesn’t give me an excuse for every time I can’t decide whether to go to Taco Bell or Chick-Fil-A for dinner. Not only does the art of horoscopes leave me baffled, but the fact that some people read into them for anything more than just a laugh is crazy.

Every sign is said to have their bad traits. A Gemini is superficial. A Taurus is stubborn and lazy. But just because your sign gives you a bad deck of cards in the personality department doesn’t mean you can get off the hook for stealing just because “you’re an Aries”.

If we all believed that every trait a person carried was genuinely determined by the star alignment when they were born, nobody would have the drive to fix their bad traits, or find their actual ones.

Not every quality attributed to us by our signs actually applies to our personality. Believe me, my nine missing assignments in Skyward definitely speak against the fact that productivity is supposed to be one of my best traits.

Sure, there’s a few traits I can agree with, but just because they apply to me doesn’t mean they apply to every Libra out there. Yes, I think I’m an extrovert. But is everyone who has been born between Sept. 23-Oct. 22 really an extrovert? One of my best friends, who’s also a Libra, is one of the quietest people I know, and my Libra brother would choose staying home over going out anytime.

The day you were born has nothing to do with your personality traits — your personality is influenced by your environment, those around you and your morals. Not the position of the stars in the sky when you were born. So next time your mom yells at you for avoiding your chores, don’t blame it on the “lazy” characteristic the stars “gave” you. Own up to your actions and work on the parts of yourself that you don’t like.