An Embarrassing Confession

I have an embarrassing confession to make.

This weekend I finally watched the movies Inside Out and Inside Out 2.

Why is that embarrassing?

Colleagues in my professional circles have been telling me for years to watch these movies.

As an executive coach who leans heavily into the power of emotional intelligence, you’d think I would have done so. But I just never got around to it.

My husband and I watched both movies this weekend and adored them.

And of course, just like the leadership lessons from Ted Lasso, there were unending EQ takeaways.

Here are a few that struck me:

• You have to experience Sadness to experience and appreciate Joy.
• Many of our most meaningful experiences are a blend of emotions.
• Shoving tough experiences to the back of the mind keeps us from learning from them.
• Anxiety’s intent (oh Anxiety!) is to protect us, even if it’s dysfunctional. Can we give ourselves grace for experiencing Anxiety?
• Sarcasm (“It’s a sar-chasm!”) is often a defense mechanism, and it truly can create a chasm between us and others.
• Our sense of self and beliefs always have the potential to shift based on new experiences (such as focusing on building EQ).

Some other fun bits not specifically related to EQ:

• The look on my dog’s face for the 5 weeks we had the foster dog was Disgust.
• Ennui (my favorite word!) was perfectly captured. I really want to see an Inside Out for each decade of Riley’s life, and I imagine that in her 50s the primary character at the control board will be Ennui.

We’ve continued to refer to the movies since we watched them, and I expect they’ll be top-of-mind for a while to come.

And I now have two movies to add to my leadership development resources list.

If you’ve seen one or both of the Inside Out movies, I’d love to hear what most jumped out at you!

(Full disclosure: When Inside Out won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2015, one of the other movies nominated was Anomalisa. Anomalisa is stop-motion animation, and–true story–my husband was the model for the main character puppet. I have feelings about it losing the Oscar to Inside Out. Envy?)

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Hey there! I’m a leadership team whisperer, executive coach, and speaker. I guide leadership teams in high-growth companies to achieve rapid growth in a healthy, sustainable way. I coach senior leaders to discover the path to lead with ease.

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