What Pixar Movie “Inside Out” Teaches Us About Being Happier

To be happier, cultivate a loving relationship with all of your emotions — even the negative ones.

At the end of last year I chanced upon an interesting Podcast series called “the Happiness Lab”. The title of the latest trailer to an upcoming series of podcasts caught my eye. It’s called:

“Reset Your Relationship with Negative Emotions in 2022”.

I remember thinking to myself — how funny — you’re telling me that — to be happy, I need to first be unhappy?

Step 1: Identify your emotions

In the first episode of the series, the guest explains that in her research, she found that:

Most Americans could only identify three emotions — happy, sad, and pissed off.

In other words, we can’t tell different emotions apart or have the proper words to describe what we are experiencing.

Our emotions are data — and we need to pay attention to them. Especially the negative ones, because they are telling us important things that we need to address if we want to be happier.

Acknowledge your negative emotions

When tragedy strikes, it can feel like everything around you is falling apart….

You may feel like …everything is in chaos..

We may deny what we’re feeling

We may try to block ourselves from experiencing grief

But the reality is — We have a lot more agency when we engage with our grieving process. When we realise that we can’t fight it, but we can support ourselves in it.

Step 2: Engage with your negative emotions

Apply these three techniques:

Self-compassion.

What it is: Accepting ourselves without judgement and building a relationship with ourselves.

Be kind to yourself. Understand that you are not perfect. This is essential in recognising what we’re doing and whether it is working against us.

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Balance.

What it is: Do things that balance you.

Do things that help you feel safe in your mind and your body and your home. So that you then have much more robustness to deal with these storms of grief when they also come through your mind and body, so that you’re not on code red alert when the storm comes.

Setting limits (say no more often)

Grief is the iceberg. Physiologically — 90% of you have been used up, and you have very little left to cope, so that you cannot expect yourself to function similarly when everything is normal.

What it is: Give yourself permission to have limits.

You need to accept that this is you for now. Your energy and your capacity has changed

Strategies: Have a good ‘no’.

Just remember, when you have a good no, then your yes is really good.

Step 3: Growing with your emotions

How many of you have seen the Pixar movie “Inside Out”?

After young Riley is uprooted from her Midwest life and moved to San Francisco, her emotions — Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness — conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house, and school.

It’s a story about a little girl called Riley who is moving to a new city and not only has to say good-bye to the life and friends she love, but also needs to adjust and find her place in a new environment.

In the movie, we are given a glimpse into the emotions of Riley who were depicted as distinct characters — Joy, Disgust, Anger, Fear and Sadness.

Not surprisingly, Joy is the most the most popular emotion who instantly brightens up everything, and Sadness is the dreaded character who ruins everything.

However, the movie ends with a twist.

Sadness was the one who saved the day. By embracing the feeling of Sadness, it brought the main characters closer and together they were able to overcome the challenge.

I’ll end by quoting what the podcast refers to as “The paradox of grief” — in order to be happier, we must first acknowledge our feelings, even the most unpleasant ones.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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