The Guy Formly Known As Rat Boy

Negativity Bias is a cognitive bias that results in adverse events having a more significant impact on our psychological state than positive events. Negativity bias occurs even when adverse events and positive events are of the same magnitude, meaning we feel negative events more intensely.

I get it. Life used to be hard and dangerous so we constantly scanned our environment for bad shit. I eat a tasty apple - great. I eat a poisonous mushroom and spend three days wracked with diarreha and a high fever - I remember that with amazing clarity. The problem for me occurs when I start spending all of my time imagining that bad stuff is just around the corner when - in fact - bad stuff isn't present in my life nearly as often as good stuff. Mindfulness helps me slow down and detach and look around. I see the good more easily and put the bad in perspective more quickly. I need to quit scanning for problems so often and start noticing what's right in front of me. A good example is The Guy Formly Known As Rat Boy (apparently management came down on him and the wood has mostly disappeared - wood that we surmised served as Rat Condos) is now Electric Saw Guy. He's building something back there. SuperK thinks he's one of those massive fuck-ups who doesn't have much of a job but fancies himself as some kind of visionary creative type. Cutting wood makes a distinctive noise. Here's the thing - the noise is rare and intermittent but I find myself tensing up. Is his car there? What's he doing now? It's quiet but he's probably going to start up soon. Right? Right? The end result is that I'm waiting for a problem - admittedly, goddammit, not that big of a problem - that doesn't usually happen.

Happiness is not hitched to things going my way but arises out of life itself.

Loss Aversion is another cognitive bias, one that is closely lined with the negativity bias, where the pain we experience from losing far outweighs the perceived benefits of acquiring the same amount. If I find $50 I'm kind of happy but if I lose $50? I'm turning the world upside down to find that $50.