What's under the bed?

As a young undergraduate in the early 1980's at the University of Iowa, the comic strip "Bloom County" was a favorite of many. Berkley Breathed, the creator and cartoonist of the strip, lived in Iowa City in the early days of Bloom County and referenced many Iowa City landmarks.

For me, the enduring character of Michael Binkley and his closet of anxieties has been a light-hearted way for me to deal with my own. Every once in a while, my own closet of anxieties opens up a Pandora's box of irrational and bizarre things to worry about.

Dressed in his sweet footie pyjamas and his totally 80's techno-pop hairdo, Binkley has a closet filled with 80's icons that scare him to pieces. What I admire about Binkley, is that he is not too afraid to actually take a look inside.

I notice that when life has a particularly high number of stressful events that require me to be on my game pretty much all the time, I tend to have these kinds of night visitors.

"It's the friends you can call at 4 a.m. that matter." - Marlene Dietrich

And usually what happens is that my 4 a.m. someone is there and can take the flashlight, shine it under the bed and in the closet and say, "See, Laura? There's nothing there but good stuff."

Good stuff, indeed. Here's a post I read today that admonishes us to not gloss over the good stuff. No kidding. How many times do we take for granted the incredible that happens to us every day? I live a charmed life, no doubt about it, and I often miss it thinking that because it's not happening the way I envisioned/scripted/wanted-to-control, that somehow, it's not good. Silly, isn't it?

Just like any parent trying to calm a child's fears, the question is, "Is this for real?"

Makes sense, doesn't it? Are these unsettled feelings coming from true stressors, things that are actually happening or is this just my overactive, highly-developed imagination awful-izing things? And, it's always the latter. I find that I don't lose sleep over the events of the day that I'm living through, but the oh so tempting act of worrying about potential problems.

Seth Godin wrote about the opposite of anxiety this week and he defined non-clinical anxiety as "experiencing failure in advance," and "amplifying the worst possible outcomes."

Yes. That's it. So, let's imagine the best possible outcomes and be amazed by all that is good instead of scaring the wits out of us with monsters under the bed.