One of the things I love about going to the cinema is the trailers that get shown a few minutes before the film begins.

I always make an effort to arrive a little earlier than the scheduled film time just to catch these!

It’s a great way to find out about upcoming films of interest as well as getting you excited about what’s in store for a film you’re looking forward to watching later in the year.

I’ve been a particular fan of the recent films Disney-Pixar have produced – for example, the thought-provoking WALL-E that delivered some profound ideas and the emotional ranging UP (the first 10mins being a testimonial to the purity and magic of cinema) – and so it was interesting to see the trailer of their latest film, Inside Out.

This brief 2mins or so trailer shows that their latest animated film takes place in the head of a young girl where five emotions (Anger, Disgust, Fear, Joy and Sadness) attempt to lead her through her new life in San Francisco.

It reminded me of the fact that Thought not only interprets the world that we live in, but creates it. In other words, you don’t experience the world; you experience your thinking about the world.

From your morning breakfast and commute to work to a rainy day and a lengthy to-do list, whatever you experience is customised solely for you via the nature of Thought.

You see, 100% of your perceptual experience of life arises from your thinking in the moment.

Thought is at the heart of everything you experience and explains why we can all have different experiences about the exact same situation or event. Some will see a situation as a problem; others will see possibilities as a result of the same situation.

This points to the inside out nature of life (what Disney-Pixar’s latest film is all about) and the mistaken belief that your thoughts are telling you about something other than your thinking moment to moment.

Feelings of stress, happiness, sadness, anger, confidence and fulfilment doesn’t come from a sunny beach holiday, new sports car, experiencing something that is unfamiliar, or even winning a competition.

Instead, they come from the thoughts you have about that beach holiday, that sports car, that unfamiliar experience and that competition.

Nothing on the outside has an impact on your wellness and state of mind, unless you think it does. As William Jones once remarked: “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”

Your thoughts are like clouds passing through the Earth’s sky. One minute you can feel sad and the next happy, with everything around you looking brighter than it did just a minute ago.

Thoughts have no power over you unless you let it.

It’s why the cause of unhappiness is rarely the situation, but your thought about it. We all create stories in our head and many of these can make life miserable.

In truth, you are the artist.

The way you view life is simply a projection of your own thoughts. What you bring into your thinking, you bring into reality.

In a study conducted by Stanford University psychologist, Kelly McGonigal, she found that people who said they experienced a lot of stress in the previous 12 months had a 43% increased risk of dying in the subsequent eight years.

However, this was only true for people who thought that stress was harmful for your health. For those who said they experienced a lot of stress, but did not think of this as being harmful were no more likely to die!

Everything you perceive in the outside world has its origins in the invisible, inside world of Thought. Life acts as a mirror to your inner world.

The road to mental wellbeing begins with awareness.

As your level of awareness grows, so does your level of consciousness.

And as you become more conscious, the more power you have over reality and you, inevitably, become the author of your own destiny.