 The dangers of negative thinking, Adolf Merckow was a billionaire, he was a billionaire who threw himself in front of a train in 2009 and committed suicide. Now why did he commit suicide? Adolf committed suicide because he had lost $3.6 billion in the market, a huge amount. However, he still was a billionaire. I cannot think of a better example of awfulizing an event. Orphalizing is a term coined by cognitive behavioral therapy. It's a tendency that we have as humans to make events the worst thing that could happen in our lives, to exaggerate the pain that we feel from an event. And we do it from a young age and it's incredibly destructive. Let me give you an example. Imagine a young girl. A young girl that needs to play piano in front of her whole school. During rehearsals her teacher tells her, hey you better practice or else you might make a mistake in front of everybody. The seed is planted. She goes home and practices some more. Her father tells her, hey you gotta keep practicing so you don't make a mistake. Another seed. This simple event, this playing the piano in front of the whole school has now been awfulized into potentially the worst thing that could happen in our life if she makes a mistake. Now rationally speaking, making a mistake is something that's acceptable but to this girl it's now the worst possible outcome. Now it seems ridiculous to us. But the reason awfulizing is so negative is because when we awfulize events we tend to connect the events' failure or the event without ego. So failures become a failure of ourselves. So the businessman who fails a business sees himself as a failure instead of the choices he made. The little girl who makes a mistake thinks that there's something intrinsically wrong with her. That's the problem. We can battle awfulizing events by using relativity. Relativity can be our best friend. Knowing that whatever we're doing there's always the possibility of things being worse. Yes you can make a mistake playing piano but at least you have the chance to play piano. At least you're still living. At least you're living under a roof. Yes you can lose $3.6 billion. Perhaps it's 40% of your net worth but you still have $5 billion. At least you're not living on the streets. Put everything a perspective. Perspective shines a light on events and removes the tendency of awfulizing them. So the next time you catch yourself awfulizing remember to put things in perspective and to detach your ego from your failures.