Consider Unicorns -- a different way to act instead of react in life's situations

Whether unicorns are "real" or not, these mythical creatures have existed in our collective human imagination for thousands of years.

Let's say you were dreaming at night, your body safely asleep in your bed, and you dreamed of a unicorn... Upon waking, what would you do besides blinking your eyes a few more times than necessary and whispering to yourself " An unicorn? What was I thinking?" before getting out of the bed and forgetting the dream in a hurry?

Would you have known that an opportunity had come for you to "think in a different way"?

How many of us operate in auto-pilot in almost all areas of our lives? The way we operate at work, at home, with colleagues, with clients, with families, with friends, with life's upsets. The way we swear in blind rage in the privacy of our cars. The way we handle our tiredness, our lack of time for ourselves before we collapse in bed after another day of "getting by", dismissing the possibility of " a better and different way".

So many of our believes were there before we even gave it conscious permission to be there. Believes that got passed on from our culture, our ethnic groups, our religious authority, our current society, our parents, our childhood, even our past lives...etc. How many of your everyday thinking, your behaviour and your emotional reaction are under the control of your conscious awareness?

Do you really know why you were upset when someone said or did that thing that made you upset?

Sometimes I feel like a field of land mines. Those land mines were buried there so very very long ago in an forgotten war that no one alive really know why they were there and where exactly they were. But someone says something and "boom!" a land mine goes off. Someone gives me a certain look and "boom!" another land mine goes off. Someone cut in front of me in the traffic and "boom! boom! boom!" a series of land mines were upset and the explosion couldn't be stopped.

Do we really know why we were "wired" one way or the other, not unlike a suicide bomber except we can't remember when it was that we got wired and why.

Some of us go to the therapists, some of us don't. But perhaps the when and why, while interesting and educational and perhaps contains important information regarding disarming the emotional land mines, aren't as important as " the willingness to operate in new and conscious ways".

For example, rejection is a personal biggie for me. Whenever I come across rejection in my personal life, it sent me right back to the equivalent of the Stone Age of Emotional Evolution. As to the reasons why, I have a few theories but it never gets clear. But knowing myself and the way I get triggered around issues of rejection, will I still react angrily and unconsciously to the girlfriend who said she needs to be left alone for a while and never called again?

Or can I acknowledge that every individual is a complex mess of wires and triggers and ticking clocks and no one can really know why someone acts or reacts a certain way? Instead of reacting out of old emotional patterns, can I choose to have compassion towards myself and others instead?

Choose Compassion Over Judgmental Reaction

Compassion is like the cooling water that dampen the bomb before it can explode. Know that there's no way of really knowing someone's issues and just let go before you set off that emotional bomb of rage and abuse. And by all means, stay back, so you don't become a casualty in someone else's suicide bombing mission.

But we are talking about unicorns and thinking in new different ways....

Can you catch yourself before you get emotionally triggered, or hopefully immediately after?

Can you have a good laugh at this universal human condition of pain/triggers instead of diving head long into judging and reaction?

Have you ever stop in the middle of your everyday activities and ask yourself "is there a new and better way"?

And why am I asking all those questions?

Would you have believed me if I said I have been touched by a unicorn?

by Violet Flame