An Emotional Blogging Tale inspired by Disney Pixar’s Inside Out

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We know we’ll get a great story that will be entertaining for both adults and kids alike, but what’s really driving our excitement are the characters!  Our emotions play such an important role in everything we do, and though we can’t always be happy, sometimes that’s not a bad thing.

What follows is a real-life tale of Joy, Anger, Fear, Sadness and Disgust.

Meet Riley’s emotions…

According to Inside Out, they don’t just exist inside Riley’s head.  Everyone in the movie has their own emotion characters in their minds.

Now imagine that our real-life emotions are little characters in our heads.

Meet James’ emotions:

 

While I’m waiting to see how the folks at Disney Pixar tell the story of Riley’s emotions, here’s how I imagine my emotions might have been influencing me over the last day or so.

 

Sunday

Lisa was relaxing, browsing on the computer and checking out updates on social media.  I imagine that during this time, her Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust were getting fairly equal time at the controls.  Social media can be stimulation overload, and for every post that makes you smile or laugh there can be another that makes your blood boil or brings you to tears.

One post stood out.  It was a share of contest being promoted by a bogus Disney page.   Lisa’s emotions of Disgust and Anger took over!

Sometimes it can be a good thing to let a “negative” emotion guide you.  In this case, Anger and Disgust prompted Lisa to create a graphic to warn people to watch out for these scam sites.

Gary Buchanan, former Social Media Managing Editor for Walt Disney World Resort, once told us that “emotions create shareable moments.”

In this case, Disgust and Anger created something very shareable.

Within a short time, that image was shared dozens of times and had reached thousands of people. Lisa’s Joy was at the controls while Disgust and Anger took a much needed break.

 

It’s no monorail, but the LIRR will get us into NYC to meet some great people at #MyPrintly see ya real soon! #cmyk pic.twitter.com/BcdmEsQLo4

— James & Lisa Cameron (@homeisthemouse) June 14, 2015

Joy was the main emotion for the rest of the day, as we had a night out in the city. (Well, there was some Disgust when we had to navigate the crowds in Times Square).

 

Monday

We discovered that someone had stolen our image and was passing it off as their own.

I won’t presume to know exactly how Lisa was feeling, but my emotions were conflicted. The emotional debate went something like this:

Anger:  Are you kidding me?? How hard would it have been to make your own image instead of stealing ours?!!  We have to make them take it down!

Disgust: Seriously?  What’s wrong with people?  That’s so rude!

Sadness:  Could have told you something like this would happen.  What did you expect? There’s nothing we can do about it. 

Fear: You’re not thinking about saying something? They have hundreds of thousands of Facebook likes.  They’re out of our league.

Joy:  On the bright side, the whole point of the image was to get the word out, and this definitely helps get the word out to more people.  It’s a good thing.

 

Disgust and Anger were definitely leading the charge, but the other voices kept them from getting too crazy.  The result was a tentative, respectful and polite attempt to discuss this with the other party.  It did not go as we’d hoped.  The post was removed, but there was a lot of finger pointing and complaining about it.  Our emotions were mixed as to how it turned out.

 

Anger: That’s not right.  We were being diplomatic and giving them every chance to do the right thing.  They know it’s wrong but refuse to admit it!

Disgust: I can’t believe the attitude they gave us.  Nobody should talk to us like that, EVER!  And they have the nerve to accuse US of being condescending?!

Sadness: I knew it wouldn’t do any good to reason with them.

Fear:  Yeah, the post was taken down, but at what price? Now they are angry with us!

Joy: Good try.  It was right to approach them in a respectful way. We got what we wanted, even if it got a little heated for my taste.

 

A short while later, the post was put up again on their main account.  We took it as a blatant thumbing of their nose at us.  Anger and Disgust were at near boiling point.

Frustrated, but still fearful, we sought help from some friends.  The advice we received leaned more toward the Anger and Disgust side of the debate, with enough Fear, Sadness, and Joy present to again keep us from getting out of control.

We tried a second attempt at diplomacy, moving higher up the ladder to the head honcho. Unfortunately, that conversation went worse than the first.  We were left with no choice:

 

 Anger:It’s about time!  What’s right is right.  They deserve whatever they get.

Disgust:  They brought it on themselves.  We tried to take the high road.

Sadness:  I know we’re not the bad guy, but it still makes me sad to see it come to this.

Fear:  I’m pretty sure we’re right, but I can’t help but be scared of escalating things.  What’s going to happen?

Joy:  At least you can say you exhausted the other options.  This doesn’t make you a bad person.  You’ve got a lot of friends supporting you on this!

 

Despite the fact that I knew what needed to be done, I chose to go out for a run before actually doing it.  The run took some of the steam out of Anger, helped lessen the Disgust and Sadness, and the exhilaration appeased Joy. Fear was still there, but at least he was quiet until the run was finished.

I was calmer and more focused when I got home, which helped me to complete the task at hand.  I am hopeful that the situation is behind us, though Fear keeps tugging at thoughts that it might not be.

So, what did we learn?

Well, we’ll definitely be more proactive about protecting what we create.  We’re also better informed on how to handle these situations.

We also came away from this experience with a new appreciation for the wisdom of Gary Buchanan.  Emotions are indeed the key to bringing people together.

The folks at Disney have always known this.  I think it’s why so many people are excited about Inside Out.

I think we can take a cue from this and make an effort to not be so hesitant to let our emotions show.  After all, we started this blog because we are passionate.  Perhaps we could benefit from letting our emotions get the better of us from time to time.

 

 

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