At 3:00pm CST today, many MLB players will exhale a sigh of relief. The July trade deadline will have passed, and players won’t be worrying if they’ll be sleeping in a different city tonight. For fans, trades are exciting—many of us become glued to Twitter and MLB Trade Rumors tracking the numerous transactions. We want to see who is going to make the biggest push for October. As Rays’ pitcher Chris Archer recently tweeted, “If anyone wants to know what it looks like to be all in, check out the Jays.” (Toronto has been just one of many teams moving players around the league.) For players, trades bring anxiety. While the quick trades are fun to follow, we sometimes lose perspective that trades quickly uproot players’ lives.

Now, trading is a part of the game and makes for late summer runs for a few teams, but with the ever-expanding platforms of social media, players are affected by rumors more and more often. Take the Mets’ Wilmer Flores, who thought he was being traded when he received an overwhelming round of applause as he stepped up to the plate in the seventh inning. With many news outlets, including the New York Times, reporting that high-ranking team executives were leaking a trade of Flores to the Brewers, word spread like wild fire around Citi Field. Flores, now 23, was drafted by the Mets on his 16^th birthday and had been with them ever since. He was visibly upset on the field, wiping away tears on his sleeve as he took the field in the top of the eighth. After the game when Flores was addressing the media, he said he was upset because he would have had to leave his teammates and the only organization he has ever known.

Once players are traded, they have to move their families, find new homes, and start anew in a different city. While all teams have personnel to help make the transition as smooth as possible for players, it’s still an emotional process that could always use more assistance. Players move the minute they’re traded and go play for another team; their families are the ones who have to deal with the stress of moving or not moving (which can leave months of being away from husbands/fathers). While trades have been and will be apart of sports always, a new method of coping around the trade deadline may be needed.

Tomorrow, Disney-Pixar’s newest animated film, Inside Out, officially releases in theaters. Without giving too many plot spoilers… The movie centers on a young girl, Riley, whose mind is controlled by embodiments of five emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. When her family moves from Minneapolis to San Francisco, her emotions try to help her manage all of the changes that have ensued.

I spoke with Premier’s Dr. Allie Wagener earlier this week to talk about how our emotions work and what we can do to manage them while we’re under duress.

Inside Out centers around five emotions, but we don’t operate using just five emotions—how many emotions are there/do we operate on a spectrum of emotions?

Dr. Allie: There is not a limit to how many emotions a person can experience. It’s pretty amazing being a human being that we get to feel an abundance of emotions that range from joy to excitement, fear, love, worry, jealousy, and disappointment to name a few. Emotions are often transient, and we may experience hundreds of emotions throughout our day—some lasting longer or impacting us more severely than others.

How do our emotions play a role in how we function? (In the movie, it seems as if the emotions control how Riley acts in everyday situations, but our emotions don’t control us, do they?)

Dr. Allie: It is easy to fall into the trap that emotions do control us because they can feel so powerful. However, we are the ones in control of what we do, what we say, and how we react. We may not be able to control what we feel or experience emotionally, but we do have control over how we respond to those emotions. For example, an athlete may strike out while batting and experience disappointment or sadness. Both are two emotions that are natural to feel after striking out. The athlete does not have control over how he feels about his at-bat, but he does have control about how he reacts as he walks back to the dugout. He can exhibit actions associated with those negative feelings (i.e. hangs his head, throws his helmet on the ground, or says out loud “I am terrible.”) or he can walk back to the dugout in a positive way (i.e. head held high, high-fiving his teammate who is on deck, saying out loud “I got it next time”).

Our emotions don’t control us, and we can’t control our emotions either – but how do we best manage them? Do you have any advice on how to, for example, calm yourself in a stressful situation?

Dr. Allie: Being mindful and aware of our inner experience (emotions, sensations, thoughts) and allowing room to experience those emotions without judgment can enhance our abilities to be kind to ourselves and respond in a favorable way that is consistent with what is important to us. Learning what triggers you to react in unhealthy ways is key. Monitoring yourself throughout the day to gauge where you are at emotionally can help inform you when you need a break or give you cues that talking to a teammate or engaging in a relaxation exercise may be a good idea. Mini mental check-ins can be easily placed in throughout your day to help keep you in tune, both mind and body.

Any sort of change presents its challenges—Riley’s main change is her move from Minneapolis to San Francisco—what are some techniques that we can do to help us respond to change most healthfully?

Dr. Allie: Change can be difficult but maintaining a positive perspective and finding the value in the change can be useful. Hearing different points of view can also help ground you. Finding a routine or some consistency within your day or life can help you feel more at ease. Also allowing some flexibility within that time period of change to be free flowing would be helpful. Change can mean growth, even if it is painful at times—it is through pain that we often find our values and what is important to us. Connect with those things that are important to you during this time period.

Inside Out premiers in theaters tonight. It looks like a great movie—especially since it centers on what goes on inside our minds. Be sure to check it out—we know we will!

Amy Purdy experienced what some people would call a disadvantage, but she does not use that word to describe her situation. A better word in her vocabulary would simply be a change. A change that forced her to use creativity to continue participating in the sport that she loved. This change not only impacted her life, but also inspired her to ease experiences of other athletes going through a similar transition.

Amy loved to snowboard, but when she lost both of her legs below the knee at the age of 19 to a rare form of bacterial meningitis, she had difficulty even walking. She was lucky to survive, but her determination to adjust to the drastic change of riding on two prosthetic legs, and ability to flourish after her recovery is what makes her story incredible. She could have given up snowboarding after experiencing the pain and difficulty of riding for the first time with her new legs, but she decided to get back on the mountain and find a way to compete all the way up to the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games. Although she would be the only competitor with two prosthetic legs, she knew that she would need to focus on her own snowboarding trials and not be intimidated by the other riders with at least one of their original good legs. Instead of dwelling over the fact that she did not have the advantage of at least one of her own ankles to assist her stance and performance, she looked to technology for a prosthetic solution that could compensate for the restraints of feet that are designed for walking and not the complex movements of snowboarding.

Amy Purdy continually went through changes during the search to find the most suitable prosthetic feet to strap into her boot. However, she did not view the different confinements of her artificial ankle as boundaries that could hold her back. Unlike sports that involve running that have provoked opinions about prosthetics potentially providing their athletes with an advantage, there is no pair of feet yet designed to accommodate the range of ankle movements needed to carve through challenging snowcross courses such as in Sochi. Amy still refused to be restricted between the walls of limited eversion and inversion, but decided to push off of these walls and propel into influencing other adaptive riders through organized camps and developing a plan to include snowboarding in the Paralympic program.

As Amy was adjusting to a new way of snowboarding, she did not have many resources to assist her in still pursuing her passion after the drastic change at the age of 19. She wanted to ensure that she could make and impact on others who shared the same passion of snowboarding by encouraging them to not let their impairments define their performances. Amy demonstrates the ways that we can allow changes to enable us, despite how difficult the transition may seem. She used her imagination to come up with her own outcomes to changes instead of letting a major change inhibit her as an athlete. Inspiring athletes who have gone through changes and came out on top remind us that if something does not seem possible or within reach, we can use the “boundaries” in the same way as Amy Purdy, and not be confined by them, but use them to drive us into places that we never imagined.

Check out her TED talk here.

References: 

http://xgames.espn.go.com/article/10590582/women-action-amy-purdy-debut-paralympic-snowboard-cross