Your Unicorn Must Be Rubbing Off On Me

 “Your Unicorn Must Be Rubbing Off on Me”

I was influenced by two messages for a long time.

The first message was that I needed to be realistic and choose. In both the over and covert messages of adults around me, I heard the false dichotomies of  happiness or money, love or career, Jesus, or fun. The conclusions derived from those assumptions were that “you can’t have your cake and it too.” Fortunately, I never really bought into the that mindset. It didn’t make sense to me, and no one was able to provide a convincing argument. It seemed to be simply their opinion about the way the world works.

The second message, sadly, influenced me for too long. It was that showing my soft and gooey side would make me be taken less seriously. It started as a young adult. The field of psychology consistently sent messages that one needs to be less caring in order to be objective. I remember writing “passionate” in a cover letter; my mentor explained that the readers might see me as less scientific or emotionally unstable. I deleted it. Someone told me that if I built Chocolate Psychology, I should keep it completely separate from my professional identity so that it doesn’t prevent people from taking me seriously.

Essentially, I was told covertly and overtly, to extract and present the smart side of me, and tamp down the loving and colorful side of me. I listened. I stayed true to my core values, but I internalized a consistent message that I needed to choose.

A few years in, I watched a movie about Mr. Rogers, an old television show. I never saw the show, but the movie portrayed Mr. Rogers as a person who saw past the outside of people and sought to heal their inside hurts. He wasn’t naive, nor immune to his own humanity. He simply cared.

I cried the whole way through it. I cried for hours afterward. I cried the next day.

I didn’t cry because the movie was sad; I cried because it reminded me of who I am. I cried because I’d suppressed the strongest core part of my identity–the part that cares deeply and loves hard. I cried because I felt like I’d betrayed both myself and God by being less of who I am. 

I believe people are worthy of love. I believe that love heals.  I believe in beauty. I believe in hope. I believe that inside most people, there are childlike needs to be seen and celebrated.

I believe that my intelligence can help solve problems, but I believe that my love can heal people’s hearts.

These beliefs are not absent from the ugliness in the world; rather, they persist in spite of it. I help leaders fire people. I say “no” to people and opportunities that are toxic. I believe that there are consequences for bad behavior. I believe evil exists. 

The movie challenged me to walk out the gooey part of my identity instead of minimizing it. After the movie, I actively decided to bring all parts of me to the table and let the chips fall where they may.

I don’t know if anyone really noticed the difference because I didn’t start dancing down the street with big heart flags. But I did start taking more emotional risks—gave more emotionally to my clients, sent them funny things to make them smile, spent less time worrying about whether my warmth would come across as unprofessional.

One of these clients and I have a bit of an inside joke about unicorns. I don’t know if we know exactly what the joke is. I send texts of happy unicorns, and he desecrates them with crass images or “wrong” responses. He’s seen the dark side of a lot of people and life. His job was to help people kill possibilities; my job is to help people create them.

Yesterday, he spoke about a business idea that involved holistically helping people, working to integrate his professional expertise in a context that would build, repair, and heal. He said, “I don’t know, does that makes sense? Maybe it’s a moonshot. Your unicorn must be rubbing off on me.”

It was the coolest thing that someone said to me this week.

If you’ve been told that you are too much, too happy, too unrealistic, too sunny, too warm…that people won’t take you seriously if you like unicorns, remember that unicorns can change the world.