The Main Thinking Errors That Affect Each Mercury Sign (Especially During Retrograde)
It's important to remember that your thoughts aren't necessarily your reality.
Yarkovoy via Shutterstock / IM4-G1N3, sick moose via Canva Your Mercury sign rules your thinking process. The way you see things, process them, and then communicate or act on those thoughts are all ruled by this planet.
Mercury even governs over how you think and prioritize your own emotional feelings, so as much as this planet may be seen as just often affecting tech issues (especially during Mercury retrograde), its reach is much broader.
Your thoughts create your reality, which means Mercury is always working behind the scenes pulling the strings at the life you create.
The planet of communication is at its best when in a talkative, detail-orientated zodiac sign, like Gemini or Virgo.
However, just like each planet, each Mercury sign embodies both negative and positive qualities. No matter how great of a placement your Mercury sign is in, there are still challenges that may occur within it.
According to astrology influencer Jake Astrology, each Mercury sign is susceptible to a specific thinking error that distorts reality.
Find out the thinking error that affects each Mercury sign.
Mercury in Aries: fortune-telling
The fortune-telling thinking error involves coming up with a situation that hasn't happened yet and then treating it as fact.
With Mercury in Aries, this can be caused by overconfidence, leading you to miss important steps or even just frustrating those around you. The more you cannot tell the difference between confidence and avoidance, the more challenging life becomes.
Mercury in Taurus: tradition bias
Taurus can be rather stubborn and when it comes to your thinking you are hard-pressed to learn something new. You tend to believe that the old way is the best way and are very reluctant to accept new ways of doing this, which can end up hurting you and your relationships overall.
Being set in your ways ends up hurting the life that you are hoping to create, so remember to be open to trying new ways of doing things.
Mercury in Gemini: labeling
Labeling involves making broad assumptions about things based on isolated incidents.
You can't put people, situations, and feelings into neat and tidy boxes and expect that they are going to stay there, yet that is exactly what you often do.
Instead of just accepting people as they are, you try to make sense of them, which can leave them feeling like you are careless or do not accept them. When you do this, you end up alienating people even if the relationship is actually meaningful to you.
Mercury in Cancer: emotional reasoning
Emotional reasoning assumes emotions are rational thoughts.
As a water sign, no one faults you for how sensitive you are, but you do get yourself into trouble when you take these feelings as fact. You often will take a personal feeling and make it the reality of a situation, which affects your personal and professional relationships because you are not seeing the truth of any of it.
Mercury in Leo: personalization
The personalization thinking error happens when you make situations that might be totally unrelated to you and make them about you.
The Leo Mercury sign is often guilty of thinking everything that another does or says is somehow about you which can have you acting in dramatic ways even if it had nothing to do with you. You also miss a lot too by being on the defensive.
Mercury in Virgo: catastrophizing
As a Virgo Mercury, you tend to always have one foot in the worst-case scenario at all times, discounting any positives. This can have you nitpicking at your partner who is being perfectly amazing or never seeming satisfied at work even when you have achieved that corner office.
With this energy, you end up seeming so impossible to please that everyone around you gives up.
Mercury in Libra: the fallacy of fairness
It is not bad to have a preference for justice and fairness, it is just that with this thinking, you will always be biased.
When you are considering what action to take or even advice to give, you operate from an extremely limited black-and-white knowledge of right and wrong. This ends up coming across as know-it-all energy that discounts others' circumstances.
Mercury in Scorpio: all-or-nothing thinking
In some ways similar to Mercury in Libra’s energy, you tend to think everything through as an all-in or nothing scenario. This is more intense than just black-and-white thinking because it literally means it is your way or the highway.
The worst part is that you think you are always right. No matter how you hurt others there is a justification that keeps you from seeing the truth, which is why it is also so hard to manifest your deepest dreams.
Mercury in Sagittarius: overgeneralizing
Even though you are known as the seeker, you tend to overgeneralize to the point of isolating yourself from new experiences and growth.
If something bad happens when you do something once, then you believe it is factually associated with what happened. One experience for you turns into expertise even if you lack the knowledge or wisdom to back it up. This affects not just your own life but your ability to grow in relationships as well.
Mercury in Capricorn: limiting statements
You are eternally looking for ways to achieve your dreams but the picture inside your head is what will always ruin it.
This is the way that you believe things should go, as well as simply comparing yourself to others who are in their own process. By doing this you miss what is right in front of you and even underestimate your own self on what you can achieve.
Mercury in Aquarius: anti-tradition bias
As one of the most innovative signs of the zodiac, when it comes to your thinking error, you simply believe that old will always mean bad and that whatever is new and shiny will always be preferable.
You like to do things differently just for the sake of doing it, not necessarily because it is what you really want or what will help you. This can infuriate those in your life and also end up with you trying to make a point rather than create a life.
Mercury in Pisces: Heaven's reward fallacy
Forever the self-sacrificer, your biggest thinking error is believing that anyone, including the universe, owes you anything. This means believing that all the work you put in, the love, and the giving will eventually be returned to you because it is what you are owed.
The reality is that no one owes you anything, and living like they do takes energy away from you and delays your happiness which is what has you continuously living in fantasy land.
Kate Rose is an artist, writer, passionate yogi, spiritual astrologist, relationship and life coach, and motivational speaker. As a spiritual intuitive, she practices the religion of astrology and love. For more of her work, visit her website.