The other day, I perceived my client had a disheartening experience at the end of our coaching call. Toward the end of our conversation, my client asked me if I was happy.

I immediately said, “Happiness is elusive.”

I don’t think this was the answer she was hoping for, especially from her Freedom from Chronic Stress Coach who lives and teaches contentment, inner peace, and joy.

For me, happiness is temporary and always will be. Because I’ve let go of the need for a guarantee, life is more at ease.

But in this moment, I wondered who was at the master control panel of my client’s mind? Who was it that wanted to be assured that at the end of the Freedom from Chronic Stress Program, she would be happy?

Was it Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, or Anger?

These are the five main characters, in order of appearance, in Pixar’s new must see film, ‘Inside Out.’

During the movie, I boo-hooed. I laughed. I felt the full range, or what mindfulness teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn calls, the full catastrophe, of life’s experiences during the movie.

As a community, we just wrapped up over two months worth of lessons on mindfulness – the practice of being present with what is – which includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Inside Out beautifully demonstrates so many of mindfulness’ most compelling and remarkable life lessons.

Here are 7 must learn life and mindfulness lessons as seen in ‘Inside Out.’

Which one is your favorite?

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1 – YOU MUST EXPERIENCE SADNESS TO EXPERIENCE FULL JOY

An open heart is a broken heart. There’s no way around it.

Joy is determined and hell-bent to provide happy experiences for Riley. Joy is unhealthily attached to happiness.

Joy thinks her job is the best (insert the ego) and has to be protected at all costs. She clings and holds to the yellow-lit happy core memories as if Riley would fall apart if she didn’t have smiley, shiney-faced memories to establish her personality around, but Joy soon learns otherwise.

It is no mistake that Joy and Sadness are sucked into the long-term memory tube together. One cannot survive without the other, and when Joy tries to make it on her own because Sadness is holding Joy back, Joy gets sent to the dump – literally and figuratively – to discover a deeper truth.

Joy doesn’t want to experience Sadness, but in her darkest moment, literally in the dumps, she realizes that on the other side of Riley’s happy core memory is Sadness.

It is the expression of Sadness, both in Riley’s core memories and in Riley’s return reunion at home, that brings Joy to everyone through human connection that can only be felt through our common human experience of Sadness.

In the end, Joy and Sadness have an appreciation for each other and work hand-in-hand.

Seek only Joy and push away Sadness and life is dull, anxiety-ridden, with a loss of true connection. Welcome them both, and you experience a deep, rich life of heart-expansion, warmth, and possibility.

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2 – SADNESS ALLOWS YOU TO EMPATHIZE AND CONNECT WITH OTHER PEOPLE

Do you know someone who has lost a child and someone else tried to console the  parent by saying, ‘God needed another angel?‘ #wtf!

Did your best friend or co-worker experience a huge injustice and you tell them to ‘look on the bright side‘ or ‘it could have been worse?‘

Folks like this have a low joy tolerance because they cannot tolerate sadness.

In Inside Out, Joy emphatically and sometimes annoyingly, dismisses ‘negative’ feelings to keep everyone looking happy. Joy even tries to recruit the other emotions to make a list of everything Riley should  be happy about (insert my beef about gratitude journals), when Riley clearly is upset by relocating to San Francisco.

But Joy could not help Riley’s imaginary friend, Bing Bong, when he was upset about losing Riley. It was Sadness who was able to sit with Bing Bong’s uneasiness, embrace him, and help comfort Bing Bong by simply sitting with his sadness.

When Bing Bong was able to neutralize and move on after expressing his candy-laden tears of sorrow with the presence of Sadness, Joy was totally surprised, and asked Sadness, ‘How did you do that?!‘

The more comfortable you are with your own Sadness, the more you will be able to empathize and connect with others that are hurting. (and I guarantee you won’t experience compassion fatigue this way.)

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3 – DISGUST, FEAR, AND ANGER NEVER LEARN

This was hilarious to me! When Joy and Sadness are trying to return to headquarters, Disgust, Fear, and Anger are left to their own devices and problem solving. In failed attempts in trying to work together to keep Riley’s personality islands intact, Disgust bursts out, ‘It’s like we never learn!‘

I laughed so hard. Exactly. Emotions left to their own devices without any neutral and compassionate consciousness, will never learn.

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4 – YOU HAVE TO EXPERIENCE FEAR TO WAKE UP!

Uh-oh. Joy and Sadness head into Dreamland to try to wake Riley up so they can catch the Train of Thought.

In a turn of events, they end up in the Subconscious, home of the trouble makers!

Joy tries to insist to Sadness they can wake Riley up with funny, happy dreams. Sadness knows and insists this isn’t true. You can only wake-up through fear. What a bitch.

Sure enough, when Riley’s worst fear, represented by an over-sized clown, shows up in her dream, she wakes up immediately.

Moral of the story? To awaken to the best of you, you must awaken to the worst of you. 

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5 – THE ONLY PLACE WHERE EVERYONE’S A WINNER IS IMAGINATION LAND

Hilarious! Bing Bong takes Joy and Sadness through Imagination Land. Yep, here in your imagination is where all your trophies, awards, achievements, and social proof of your worthiness goes. It’s all in your imagination.

In an awakened life, you are because you are, not because you did.

Only in Imagination Land is everyone, or anyone, a winner.

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6 – LET ANGER BURN A HOLE THROUGH YOUR PROTECTIVE BUBBLE TO LET JOY AND SADNESS IN

When Joy and Sadness return back to headquarters, they can’t get in because of the protective bubble-shaped glass of the building.

Anger steps in to the rescue. Anger gets so activated that he uses his fire power to burn a hole through the glass, allowing Joy and Sadness to return.

Isn’t that how it is in real life? You have to get so angry – at yourself, at your fear, your disgust, or the injustice – to fuel your energy and burn through the impenetrable so love can enter.

Don’t push away your anger. Welcome it.

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7 – A RICH + MEANINGFUL LIFE COMES BY WELCOMING ALL YOUR EMOTIONS 

We often label our emotions as good or bad. We try to not experience or show our ‘negative’ emotions like fear, jealousy, judgment, depression, or anger.

Just like Joy, we try to carry around our bag of happy thoughts with aggressiveness and clinging. By doing so, we hurt ourselves and others. We limit our experience.

When Joy and Sadness come together in the end, all of Riley’s core memories are glowing with the rainbow colors of emotion. No longer is one better than the other. None of them have to be guarded and protected against. Every memory and experience is multi-faceted, and therein, lies peace.

By embracing it all, we get a chance at a more diverse control station to master our experience. We become multi-dimensional, more flexible, more appreciative, more open, and more loving.

To live inside out, try this:

Love is kindness to yourself when no one will approach your wound. So if you are ugly, if you are messed up, if you are disturbing, open to the worst of you, and you will open to everything. 

Thank you Pixar, for a journey into our hearts and minds. Let us all live Inside Out. 

Stop Looking Outside and Look Within (we’re a little closer now),

Angela