How do we choose what we choose? Why do we behave the way we do?

How do we better control our thoughts and emotions and channel them into the positive zone? Is it something that we can do to mentally train ourselves better on? Or is it a factor of our conditioning and our circumstances and not always controllable?

These questions have been on my mind more than once.

This weekend, as we sat down for a family movie night, I didn’t expect that these will be answered. But as I got up after those 2 hours, the fog had somewhat been cleared!

It was the animated movie ‘Inside Out’, which is a beautifully crafted story of how the mind behaves in different situations and reacts to them, depicted through a week in the life of a young girl.

The one answer to my questions – what we choose and do is a constant struggle within ourselves – one that we fight day in and day out. And the feeling we have conditioned ourselves to sense the most wins over more than the others.

That’s the reason, some of us get flustered even on small things while some don’t mind even bigger problems and smile them away. Or why sometimes we may get sad but recover while someone else becomes sad and goes into depression.

It is complicated!

One thing I did realise though is that the power to swing to one or the other direction is in our minds and hearts.

The power to move from being self-focussed, apprehensive, and angrier than we used to be in today’s hyperconnected yet disjointed world, to become more accepting, welcoming, and less exacting.

Or to move from the ‘rat race mindset’ so that we allow ourselves to experience happiness in the small things in our life, rather than being dissatisfied even when we have achieved something.

Or to be proud of even the small achievements that our kids have landed up with, instead of pushing them for more and more out of our desire to excel at all costs.

I am sure, all of these are, or will be, inner struggles for most of us. But winning over them and emerging on the right side is perhaps the only thing that’s important today, as we reset our lives and relations in this new world…