“Inside Out” the Movie of our Inner Life – by Alfie Wishart

Ever noticed that as you begin to establish a regular meditation practice or compassion practice, the mind seems to rebel and get even louder and more unruly sometimes?

This is a natural part of the process.

It takes us time to settle in to a regular practice so that, when on a day our mind and our emotions are acting up, we can take it as it is rather than think we are failing at this stuff and just aren’t good at it, and worse: it will never work for me. Those are the kind of thoughts that hold us back in life. They induce us to say yes when we mean no, to snap at someone who we find irritating and isolate when we need to be with others or vice versa. We get mixed up and feel we’re not doing so good at life.

Inside Out, the animated film released in 2015 – with a pending update in June 2024 – is a story about what goes on in the mind of an 11-year old girl, as she faces life’s challenges. The film brings the latest information on how the universal emotions such as Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust interact with each other and have a direct influence on our behavior. The film does this with much humor and heartfelt care. Many psychologists and researchers made contributions to it. It won Best Animated Feature in 2015 and received accolades from the psychological community.

In its unique and humorous way, the film gives us the opportunity to see our own personalities and get a better idea of how our mind and emotions work.

• We get to see what happens when sadness overtakes us and the unique qualities of sadness that are essential to our wellbeing… when it is in balance with our other emotions.
• We learn about how our personality is formed and maintained and what happens when we get depressed. And, on the other hand, we get to see the problems that arise when we try to be happy all the time; we get out of balance with the other emotions.
• We get to see the role our core memories play in our daily life and what happens when we get disillusioned and our core memories fade, leading us eventually to a breakdown and making poor decisions.
• We are introduced to the subconscious and when Joy asks Sadness what that place is she says “It’s where they put all the troublemakers; something we all do to some degree.
• And many other aspects of our psychological function.

Following the film framework, DCMC is developing a new ONLINE class series. We call it “Inside––Inside Out.” The goal of the series to is helps us get to know our mind and emotions better. As we gain insight into how we work, we become more aware of the ebb and flow of our thoughts and emotions and better manage them. Our sense of ease in life increases as well as our overall sense of wellbeing, we are more resilient in our times of difficulty, not only during, but afterwards getting back in balance.

How we handle many of life’s problems is largely determined by the conceptual framework we use to explain our inner experience and the outer work. In order to live our daily lives, we are in a constant conversation between our inner experience and what’s going on in the outer world. When our concepts of how we work inwardly and outwardly are inaccurate, we get unexpected results. We call those disappointments, or mistakes and often blame ourselves or the world for our difficulties. When we have a more accurate framework, we have a smoother time in the world, with ourselves and others. Life gets easier and we get better at managing adversity.

Look for this new online series in the fall of 2024, and consider joining me in this unique and important class to add an extra measure of fun to your life’s journey.

In the meantime feel free to drop in to one of our weekly sessions where we explore the concepts of mindfulness and self-compassion.

Alfie