Voices Archives - World of Psychology

What I Learned at the National Conference on Mental Health 2013 The National Conference on Mental Health convened by President Obama on Monday was a historic day — not to start a national conversation about mental health, but rather to elevate it. “So many of you have spent decades waging long and lonely battles to be heard,” said the President, in his opening remarks.

“Instead, it’s about elevating that conversation to a national level and bringing mental illness out of the shadows.”

Indeed. And while I’m preaching to the choir of voices who read this blog regularly, maybe through your social shares and Likes on Facebook, we can reach a few new people who might not know the secret of mental health — we all have it. And just like our physical health, it can sometimes go kablooey.

If I Stumble, If I Fall: 5 Tips When Failing As a toddler, we learn to walk not by walking, but by falling.

We push ourselves up, we take a few tentative steps, then we fall down.

Some might say we fail, over and over again. But a parent looks at their baby trying to walk and thinks, “Look at her trying to walk! She’s doing so good. Look, she made it three steps further this time.”

No matter what you call it, learning something new involves taking risks and risking failure. Not just once, but over and over again. It is something that we’re born into — it’s not something we choose.

Of course some of us learn more easily than others. But for most of us, it’s a hard, sometimes trying process. It may result in failure time and time again, just like a little toddler learning to walk. But unlike the toddler, we often criticize our failures as adults — we’re stupid, we’re not good enough, we can never do anything right.

Toddlers don’t think that. They think, “Hey, this walking thing is kinda cool. It’s what grownups do and I’m doing it! Ooops, I fell again. Well, I’ll just get back up and try again.”