“Do you ever look at someone and wonder what is going on inside their head?”Inside Out, a new animated feature by Pixar, gives you a glimpse of what might be happening inside peoples' heads. The movie revolves around a happy 11 year old girl, Riley, who moves from Minnesota to San Francisco with her parents. However, instead of telling the story from Riley's perspective, the story is told from the perspective of Riley's dominant emotion, Joy.
Together with Joy, Riley's other emotions of Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear influence how Riley acts and help her cope with the new environment.
It's interesting to watch how these five emotions operate inside Riley's head, but most importantly, you get to learn lessons about your own emotions from Inside Out.
1. All of your emotions are useful
However insignificant or negative some of your emotions may seem, they all play an important role in your well-being. They help you survive. As mentioned in the movie, fear helps you to stay away from dangerous situation, disgust keeps you from getting poisoned and anger helps to keep things fair. All of them are useful when used in the right context.2. Emotions are neither good nor bad
Some emotions such as sadness are deemed to be bad or weak by many people. Some adults put on a happy front when times are bad. Some children are reprimanded by their parents for crying. However, there is nothing wrong about being sad. This movie shows you that sometimes sadness can help you get the support you need from others.3. Suppressing your emotions is unhealthy
You can't be happy all the time. Suppressing your emotions is unhealthy in the long run. Not able to feel your feelings makes you numb or depressed. Plus, if you don't express or communicate your emotions to people who care about you, how would they know what you are genuinely feeling and when you need support?4. Emotions come and go
For an emotionally stable and healthy person, emotions don't stick around for long. They come and go. Feeling emotions and letting them go is so natural to human that we aren't aware that emotions can be released easily.When a person is angry, they replay the event that makes them angry in their head and that makes them even angrier. This movie shows that other emotions can easily step in to stop this unhealthy loop.
5. Listen to emotions that keep showing up
Emotions are good signals for your well-being. If a particular emotion keeps showing up, there must be a reason to it.When you keep feeling down or angry, it means something isn't right and you need to address it. It's time to pay attention to your emotions and listen to what they are telling you. If it's time to feel sad, feel the sadness. Give it the moment it deserves and then understand why you are feeling these emotions.
