In May, the emails started coming … ‘Have you seen the trailer for this new Pixar film called INSIDE OUT? All about emotions etc. How relevant!!’
After it opened in July, Eilish McGuinness, my fellow Founding Trustee of our charity, INSIDE OUT, joined me for a night at the movies. And there we went — with a cinema full of children, average age about 7 — inside the mind of young Riley and watched her emotions — Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness — guide her through life’s ups and downs.
And how relevant indeed. The lessons from the film — really well articulated in this article (but beware spoiler full!) — are the same lessons that we impart to children on our INSIDE OUT programme.
Happiness is not just about joy.
Don’t try to force happiness.
Sadness is vital to our wellbeing.
Mindfully embrace-rather than suppress-tough emotions.
The filmmakers relied on real brain science and positive psychology to inform different scenes — so do we for our activities on our Magical Days Out and in our Toolbox for Schools.
We’re already weaving this film into our discussions with children. At Wilderness Festival this summer, our INSIDE expert, MaryLou, asked the children attending our mindfulness workshop if they had seen the film as a way to introduce our feeling the weather inside activity. They all had … and gave it two thumbs up! MaryLou explained how what they were feeling inside their minds was like the weather and that all weather was needed, acceptable and important and it was fine to be with whatever weather was there.
The children totally got it. All that was missing was the popcorn.
