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Joy and Sadness Need Each Other

23 June 2015

Allison watched Disney • Pixar’s Inside Out and remembered that by allowing ourselves to feel sadness and learn from it, we can often find our joy faster.

Tags: allison read, allison watched, animation, balance, communication, empathy, grief, happiness, leadership, optimism

I’d been waiting for Disney • Pixar’s new movie Inside Out for what felt like forever. I blogged about its first trailer eight months ago when I was feeling pretty sad about a break up. I wanted to be with him. He didn’t want to be with me. It’s a story as old as time, and I’ve been the one who didn’t want to be with someone, too. Now I know it’s for the best that we’re not together, but back in October 2014, I wasn’t ready to say that. I was just really, really sad, and this post with a link to the trailer was all I could think of to write about on that Tuesday.

Since then, I’ve shared the Inside Out trailer with a lot of clients as a segue to the idea that it’s up to them to manage all of their feelings if they want to lead, communicate effectively, and have balance in their lives. The feelings are real, important, and not necessarily bad or good (Inside Out really makes that clear), but left to their own devices, the feelings can sometimes hijack us.

There’s much we can learn from brain science about how to manage our emotions so we can live more effectively. Many of Inside Out’s reviews include a hat tip to the underlying human psychology depicted in the movie. I especially like how this article explains which of the psychological principles are true, mostly true, and artistically made up.

Last Friday, I finally got to see Inside Out, and I was delighted. No spoiler alert needed here. All I’ll say for now, is the movie did a beautiful job of explaining that Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness all play important roles in our lives. But the main story line is about how we don’t need to be so afraid of Sadness. In fact, the Director of Inside Out, Pete Doctor, tells a great story in this article about how the movie was in real trouble until they realized that it was Sadness and not Fear that needed to go on a journey with Joy.

Disney • Pixar’s Joy and Sadness

Early in the movie, Joy tries to get Sadness to stop touching everything. When this trailer about Riley's first day of school and the circle of sadness came out, I couldn’t stop laughing. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last eight months asking Sadness to quit roaming around my mind and dragging me down. In some ways, containing my sadness for brief periods of time was a necessary and healthy step as anyone who is grieving will tell you… at some point you’ve got to fake it ‘til you make it so you can at least function.

However, much of what I know about grief is grounded in concepts that are wonderfully explored in Inside Out. Sadness is a part life. If we have good things in our life, we will sometimes suffer loss as well. But Sadness can help us figure out how to get back to Joy. And it’s never a good idea to just push Sadness to the sidelines. Sadness has wisdom to share and helps us make empathetic connections with others.

This week, my brother wrote an open letter to our daddy for Father’s Day. He explained what it's like to be raised by a man who lives his life with joy, optimism, hope, and most importantly, faith. While my father lives most often with Joy at the mission control of his mind, that doesn’t mean he never feels Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness. In fact, I think he does a better job than most people I know of naming those feelings, looking to them for input, and then letting Joy talk him back to a better place.

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