GUEST COLUMN: How Movies Can Improve Your Life
Image: https://unsplash.com/photos/LEgwEaBVGMo
How Movies Can Improve Your Life
by Devin Caldwell
Who doesn't love to sit down with a good movie from time to time? Whether you rarely watch or you regularly marathon your favorites on the weekend, nearly everybody enjoys movies. What you might not realize is that your love for a good flick could be improving your life without you even realizing it. In fact, watching movies can have a profound impact on you.
Watching Movies Improves Mental Health
Research shows that watching movies can improve a person's mental health. Comedies like the currently popular Everything Everywhere All At Once can help you to release serotonin as you laugh and may even teach you a bit about how to stop generational trauma and create healthier environments for your children. Classics like Mean Girls help you to watch a feel-good movie that you've likely already seen before and have nostalgia about. It isn't only comedy movies, either. Watching sad movies that make you cry can be therapeutic and help you to process emotions in your everyday life.
Watching Movies Can Help You Come To Decisions in Your Own Life
Are you having trouble deciding what to do with your life? Perhaps you're confused about a relationship or trying to decide whether you should take a new job. Watching movies that include characters you can relate to is one way to think about the happenings in your own life and potentially come to decisions. Are you facing a divorce? Maybe you'll identify with Birdie in Hope Floats. Perhaps you're trying to decide whether to move to a new town. From Toy Story to Where The Heart Is, you'll find movies that show moving in a positive light and may even help your little ones to feel better about an upcoming move.
Watching Movies Can Help You Get Motivated To Get Fit
If you're worried you're turning into a bit of a couch potato with all the movies you've been watching, why not consume some media all about getting fit? Classics like Rocky give you a fictional take on getting fit and overcoming your own limitations, but there are plenty of documentaries that will inspire you, too. Fittest on Earth: A Decade of Fitness follows people who signed up for the CrossFit Games and spent hours upon hours training to be their best. Spirit of a Marathon follows people who train to complete the Chicago Marathon. Between fiction and documentaries, there is a range of options that will make you want to grab your Le-vel Thrive and hop on the treadmill once the credits roll.
Watching Movies Can Teach You To Be a Better Parent
These days, movies are focusing on generational trauma and how parents can learn to parent better than their own did. A wide range of movies focuses on these things. Two of the most recent ones include Encanto and Turning Red. Encanto focuses on a family whose magical powers threaten to disappear and how coming together and learning to accept each other can break the curse of lost powers. Turning Red features a little girl who finds out she can turn into a red panda and how the family becomes unashamed about their differences. Both movies are great for opening up conversations, teaching children to be gentler with themselves and each other, and teaching how families can come together.
Watching Movies Can Help You Reconnect With Friends
Has it been a while since you've seen your friends? Why not gather them together for a movie night featuring the best flicks about friend groups? If you've been friends since childhood, consider movies like Now & Then or Beaches. Are you newer friends in need of a laugh? Check out comedies like Bridesmaids or Girls Trip. Maybe you're in the mood for something a little more serious. You can't go wrong with Stand By Me. Regardless of how long you've been in each other's lives, there's not much more fun than grabbing snacks, pillows, and blankets and settling in for a night with your friends.
Whether you're looking for fitness motivation or just need a good laugh with your friends, movies have the power to improve your life both inwardly and outwardly. Try watching one the next time you're feeling low or need some motivation.
