Are you afraid of the dark?

It’s 2:46 on Friday morning.  Not the time I would ordinarily choose to add to my blog, but my darling dog Lucy is having a bad night, and won’t let me sleep, so I figured that I would share some of my thoughts at this weird hour with you.

Lucy has, over the past several months developed what, in a child, we might call nightmares, or night terrors, and is too frightened to be alone, so she wakes me up to be with her. The result is that I am a zombie the next day after spending the night soothing her fears. Which brings me to the point of this blog:  What are you afraid of? What is it that keeps you wakeful in the night? For Lucy, an old dog, it is the sounds she hears, like the owl outside that sometimes roosts in the tree next door and hoots that mournful sound, or the new puppy next door that sometimes cries at night (even I heard him tonight), or the neighborhood coyotes howling at some passing sound, or the things she may think she is seeing because her eyesight might be changing with age.  Lucy is agitated enough by these fears that she can’t sleep, and keeps me up as well. But what is it or how is it that you finally settle down and get back to sleep when your fears are up and about in the night?

Being truthful with ourselves, we realize that there are so many things that keep us awake. Is it the fear that we are not up to the challenges that we face? Is it that we are just not good enough, period? Or is it some other variation of these worries that go bump in the night? So I look at this question and ask myself new questions about it. They might be questions that you could ask as well.

Is there some way that you can face this with less fear? Is there some way that you can look at this sense of inadequacy and not feel so bad about yourself? After all, you have managed to muddle through life this far, you have managed to get through school, to hold down jobs, to raise children, and maintain a home and marriage, so you might just be doing some things right, right?  What if you consider the facts of all of this? And what if you let those facts persuade you that you are indeed adequate to the challenges of daily life, because after all, you have evidence of that? What if you were to allow those thoughts of adequacy in, to support the idea that what you fear is true is perhaps not so true, and what if you let the truth of that into your consciousness?  Could you rest easier in the knowledge that you have been adequate to meet the challenges of life in the past, so in all likelihood, you might be able to meet the challenges of life in the future, even if it means learning how to tweet, or taking on some new technology that makes you feel dumb and shakes you to your core?

So look at yourself with new eyes.  You have lots of things to recommend you.  You made it through that last dinner party you didn’t want to go to, that last networking meeting you would have loved to skip.  You behaved admirably toward your in-laws, and the school principal.  You have what it takes to navigate the world.  Give yourself a pat on the back and stand tall.  You deserve to be admired.  Remember that and smile.  Studies show it will make you feel better, even if nothing changes but the look on your face.