Kiss Your Butt Goodbye Because There's Absolutely No Hope! (The Power of Negative Thinking)

     We've all heard of the power of positive thinking and the benefits of doing so, but what about the reverse--the extreme power of negativethinking?

     How many of you are familar with the famous urban legend of the railroadman who froze to death inside a boxcar freezer?
There are several variations of the story but the basis is as follows:

     There once was a man who worked for the railroad.  He was a pessimistic man who had the habit of assuming the worst in just about all aspects of his life.  He was negative and cynical and led a rather mediocre existence.

     One day, after long hours working hard repairing a train car, he accidently locked himself inside a walk-in freezer in one of the boxcars.  He shouted and beat on the walls of the large freezer trying to attract someone's attention, but all the other workers had gone home for the day.  There was no one around to come to his aide.

     The man panicked.  He looked around trying to find a way out, but he was stuck fast.  He knew he would freeze to death quickly if he could not escape the freezer.  Before long, he told himself there was simply no hope of surviving so he decided to leave a note for his wife documenting the last moments of his life.

     He found a piece of carboard and  a marker and began writing his thoughts.  He described how cold it was inside the freezer and how numb his fingers had already become.  He noted that hypothermia had already set in and that he was shivering uncontrollably.  His breathing was becoming shallower by the minute.

     His handwriting became shoddier as time passed and the affects of the extreme cold took hold upon his mind and body.  The last words he wrote were:  "I knew my life would be a waste.  I was cursed the day I was born."

     The man's co-workers found his body the next day inside the freezer.  An autopsy later revealed the cause of death as being severe hypothermia, or freezing to death.  This puzzled authorities and the man's co-workers because the compressor in the boxcar freezer had not worked for months.  The freezing mechanism had been completely removed.  When the man's body had been discovered, the temperature inside the freezer was about 55 degrees-nowhere near cold enough to freeze a person.  In fact, there were ventalation slots at the top of the freezer that allowed fresh air inside and kept the temperature consistant within.

     So, what killed this man?  Negative thinking.  It's a powerful adversary to all of us.  The man had resigned himself to certain death, so that's what happened.  If he had chosen to think positively, then he would have been found alive and well the next morning.

There is an old confucious saying:  The man who says he can, and the man who says he cannot, are usually both right.