The trick in high sec is to not be a war target.
I lost 50 ships the first two months in a corp with a war with another corp. I have to confess I never shy way from dying , I find it quite enjoyable. Then I moved to a new corp with no wars , I lost 3 (?) in two months.
Frankly going null sec never sounded like a good idea to me. Mainly because how far I will have to move from the two main trade hubs (amarr and jita). I am not big on alts so I like to keep things simple.
I make easily 30 mil per hour in super high sec , doing anomaly (the green ones that dont need scanning) combat sites only. I am near my trade hub, I afk most of the time and it has been a relaxing and reward experience.
Unless you are in a corp that is hardcore null sec, high sec is were the fun is.
PVP in this game is close to non existent anyway, so you should not be bothered with dying.
The only thing that one should worry is that his ship has the proper fit for the job. Wasting time is far more costly than losing ships.
If you are a war target and dont want to leave your corp you can bring down your death rate to zero if you check the gates using this
http://eve-gatecheck.space/eve/
Also if you are in high sec, dont bother mining, its a huge waste of isk. Ice is the only exception but even that is not worth it because of low supply and high demand.
The only activity I have found that justifies leaving the comfort of high sec is wormhole gas mining. Surprisingly wormhole gas mining is by far the safest activity in eve (with the exception of station trading) because of how unpopular it is. It can easily net you 15-30 mil per hour. The fact that gas miners are so rare in wormholes (I have not found even one) and the fact also that gas sites run on a sleeper timer make the activity so unappealing to gankers that want easy kills and usually camp relic sites.
On the matter of null sec or low sec, maybe ratting is really worth it. Especially the fact that bounties are far higher makes this as appealing as incursions but as I said it comes with some larger downsides.
EVE is a dangerous game but the dangers can be easily be avoided with common sense.
Also avoid flying what you can afford to lose. Yes people will tell you that you should not be flying what you cannot afford to lose but expensive ships make less appealing target because the risk for gankers increasing exponential and generate a ton more isk per hour especially if you use the proper fit for the job.
The bast way to waste isk is to keep it in your wallet.
Gankers may dominate the headlines but is as carebares that rule this game. We make the economy work and our numbers are so great that we are stuff that dominates the nightmares of gankers. Which is why this game is so dominated by 10vs1 pvp.
If you want to see badass pvp players run for the hills, just join a big fleet.
I remember one time we were a fleet of 40 ventures/barges mining moon ore that got ganked by 10 pvp players . FC spoke one sentence
“RELEASE THE DRONES”
The align time of those pvp ship was phenomenal fast, they went poof !!!.
Though it took them 30 seconds to realise how not so painless 80 light t1 drones can be on a single target.
I am sure its a lesson they will never forget.
Remember the best ship in EVE is , knowledge.