Emotions are real.  Emotions are powerful.  Emotions are essential.  Emotions are mysterious! 

As a culture, we’ve crafted marketing and media to manipulate our emotions, we’ve even come up with new ways to label different emotional states during the day (a case of the Muuuundays), but we still really don’t understand how they work and how powerful the work in our lives.

The Pixar movie “Inside Out” does an incredible job helping us better understand the basics of our emotional state.  This movie is going to change the world!

The best part about the movie is the uncovering of a basic truth – healthy emotions LIVE IN TENSION with other emotions! 

JOY wanted Riley to happy all the time. She didn’t see the power of the tension that exists between her and the other emotions on the team.  Especially SADNESS.   She was really seen as the “unneeded” one of the group.  They often play into the “Sadness ruined it” over and over again to help us move to a place of understanding her role in the group.

This movie gives us beautiful insight into the POWER THAT EXIST IN TENSION.  When Joy finally understands the amazing role that Sadness plays in the life of Riley – it’s almost too late.  (to understand why, you’ll need to watch the movie).

My favorite part of the movie was in the last 5 minutes.  The “memories” that were being created were no longer just 1 color to represent 1 emotion.  They were a beautiful hybrid of colors to represent the power that tension can bring to our lives if we really understand the role it plays!

So… go rent/buy the movie.  You won’t be disappointed.  Leave a comment if you saw this picture of tension play out in the movie and what other messages this story brought to your mind!