Mental Health Training

Did you know you probably have one of the world’s most significant failures as a product sitting on your desk right now?

The Post-It Note was an accident that never should have happened.

The original creator of this innovation, Spencer Silver, was trying to find an adhesive to use in the construction of aeroplanes. Looking at the strength of the glue on a Post-It Note, it’s easy to see he missed the mark by quite a bit. There’s absolutely nothing strong or even permanent about a Post-It Note.

On the other hand, what he did create was an adhesive able to be used to hold one thing to another, which could be easily peeled off and used again…all without leaving any sticky residue.

Now, most creators would look at a failure as just that, one more failure. If they were smart, they might examine the mistake to understand better what just happened. Here’s where Silver paused. His mistake was interesting. And while it didn’t solve the original problem, he couldn’t help but think it might solve someone else’s. He started talking to people at his company 3M, to see if anyone could come up with some kind of use for what he’d inadvertently discovered.

It took time and a lot of brainstorming. While his adhesive was impressive, no one had a practical application for it and told him to scrap the idea. Only one person, Geoff Nicholson, saw this as interesting as Silver did and worked with him to come up with an idea for how to use it.

Initially, they found the wrong solution: put it on a bulletin board and you could stick papers to it without thumbtacks, then peel them away without leaving a residue on them. But the application seemed limited. It was a man named Arthur Fry who suggested putting the glue on the paper itself, rounding out the team which would eventually make this product a success.

Here was the turning point for the Post-It Note. They figured out how to apply the glue to paper, but even then, 3M had a hard time getting on board.

The initial marketing on the product resulted in no sales. It wasn’t until someone else gave the product another go at being marketed, by handing out free samples, that the world discovered just how unique and useful this product was.

The story of the Post-It note is all about failures and what we do when things don’t go exactly as planned.

It’s about being able to look outside the box and to find a use for something when the original intent doesn’t work out.

More than that, it’s about perseverance and not giving up when you know you’ve got something right, and the world doesn’t know it yet.

Situations change.

You’re set on one path, thinking all is right with the world and suddenly, the carpet is pulled out from under you.

Technology shifts, something becomes obsolete, and now what you’ve been doing for years, no longer works.

What do you do?

For Soichiro Honda, the answer was to shift and adapt. You find the next best solution, regardless of how crazy or off the wall it seems at the time.

Honda started out back in 1939 with the idea of creating a piston ring for Toyota, the prototype of which flopped almost immediately.

Undaunted, he threw himself into making this idea better, succeeding to the point where he gained the contract he desired, only to run into problems entirely beyond his control: WWII.

With a shortage of material with which to build a factory, Honda might have stopped there. Instead, he created a new kind of concrete he could use in place of more traditional materials.

But problems abounded. His new factory was bombed twice, and when he was finally ready to go into production, there wasn’t any steel.

There was, on the other hand, plenty of empty gasoline cans to be found, discarded by the American fighters.

By using these cans, thus taking advantage of what was on hand, life should have been golden—except an earthquake took out the factory completely.

Here’s where a lot of people would have taken this as a sign to get out of business altogether. Honda persevered.

In the meantime, with resources slim, especially fuel for vehicles, Honda set out to solve his own problem. What he found was a solution for everyone else as well. He motorized a bicycle with a tiny engine so he could get to work.

This engine was something his neighbors very much admired and wanted for their own. Seeing an opportunity to make a success in a direction he had never considered previously, Honda set out to mass-produce a small engine that could serve the needs of the community.

This engine went on to become the foundation of his company.

His real success came during the 1970s American fuel crisis. With a demand for cars that used less fuel to travel more miles, Honda leveraged his knowledge to build fuel-efficient vehicles, making him a leader worldwide in engine technology.

Soichiro Honda accomplished a great deal in his lifetime, entirely by being willing to adapt to circumstances and look for the opportunity rather than become caught up in the setbacks. Like Honda, we should take from his lesson the idea of not giving up, no matter what life throws at us. 

When is the last time you flew in an aeroplane?

How long did this trip take you? More importantly, how long would it have taken you to reach the same destination if you’d never flown at all?

Without Wilbur and Orville Wright, the world would be a very different place. But did you know the Wright Brothers, who revolutionized powered flight never finished high school, much less had any college degree?

To the outside observer, the Wright Brothers didn’t look like much. They started in an entirely different field from where they wound up. Initially, their interest lay in newspapers and the printing process.

In 1889 they built their printing press involving components created from such diverse objects as junk iron, a gravestone, and even an old buggy top. For the next seven years, they struggled, first to produce their own newspapers, and then as printers. The problem? They never could get community support on the newspapers they had.

Even the mechanical failed them, for a while their designs in printing presses (becoming better over the years) never gave them the clientele to do a business out of this particular service.

In the end, they abandoned printing completely. They were not defeated though and turned their attention elsewhere – at the current bicycle craze.

Even this enterprise took time. It took them more than two diligent years of hard work to create a bicycle design, both lightweight and functional enough to become famous.

You probably know the rest. From there, they turned their eyes to the skies. The same issues they’d had in bicycles they saw as being the problem with the current airships being developed: the problem lay in keeping the craft lightweight enough to attain altitude, while maintaining ease of control, with enough power to keep the plane in motion as it went. In short, they felt what was needed was a craft you could handle as easily as a bicycle in the air.

Again, the Wright Brothers had to dig in and prove themselves diligent. Early failures had them wanting to give up on more than one occasion. In 1903 they proved the idea was possible with their success at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

What can we learn from this story? First, your official education isn’t everything. The important thing is to keep learning, sometimes through trial and error.

Second, never give up. Failure is bound to happen. It’s what you do next that counts.

The Wright Brothers persisted, and because they did, they were able to attain new heights.

So will you. Hang in there and keep going. You’ll get your ideas off the ground in no time!

Even the unhappiest of beginnings can’t hold you back when you have drive and determination.

Meet Walt Disney.

You’ve heard the name before, whether from the beloved mouse who’s graced our TV and movie screens for almost a century, to Frozen and a whole slew of animated and live-action movies our kids beg us to watch repeatedly.

Disney never set out to become a household name, even though that’s what happened. His beginnings have a whole lot more to do with escaping from a bad situation and trying to find his place in the world.

Walt Disney grew up with a father so cruel and abusive that Walt’s elder brothers couldn’t leave home soon enough. Walt himself made his escape before he was even fully grown. He lied about his age so he could run away and join the army and became an ambulance driver in WWI.

With such rough beginnings, it should come as no surprise young Walt kept drawing as a way to hold onto his sanity in difficult times. After the war, he tried to make a living off his drawings, first as an apprentice to an animation studio, then later in a studio of his own, which he formed with the help of his brother. He failed dismally.

Not one to be easily put off by failure, Disney dug in his heels and tried again. He headed for California, which he felt was the future of the movie industry and set up shop.

Here he had success with Oswald, a cartoon rabbit that the public loved. So did the unscrupulous people he was working with. His animators were stolen right out from under him, as was the very character he’d created.

Most people probably would have quit somewhere around here. Not Walt. He instead created a mouse named Mickey and kept going.

From there, Disney never rested. He tried his hand at a full-length animated film with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which became very successful.

On the other hand, he also tried things that were considered ‘flops,’ such as Fantasia and Pinocchio. His was a career full of ups and downs.

When he opened Disneyland, just about everything that could go wrong, did. He dug in and worked harder to make it the success he knew it could be.

The life of Walt Disney teaches us many things. First, it doesn’t matter where you begin. The point is to get started. Second, you can’t let disaster get you down. You need to pull yourself up and move on without looking back. No matter where you are in life, keep going. The only thing that can hold you back is you.

Chocolate. So good.

So tasty. Who knew a candy bar could lead to a success story?

Hershey chocolate has become a staple in just about everyone’s diet. Whether you are a person who loves the straight-up Hershey bar or are more of a Kit Kat or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup sort of person, there’s something for every chocolate lover. We can’t imagine life without chocolate, although only 150 years ago, only the rich could enjoy the delicious confection.

Chocolate had been around for centuries, but candy was something made by hand, taking a lot of time and effort to create. Thankfully some people saw it didn’t have to be that way.

Meet Milton Hershey.

Hershey was the sort of guy who loved dessert. He also had a knack for sniffing out business opportunities. Unfortunately, most of his ideas didn’t work out very well. In fact, if it hadn’t been for relatives loaning him the money and a good bit of luck, his caramel business would have died out in the 1880s. Hershey, though, was one to keep an eye out for opportunity. He found it in 1893.

Hershey noticed few were paying attention to a contraption at World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. A German chocolatier had a machine which could produce chocolate much more simply, with a lot less work.

Although his field wasn’t chocolate, but caramel, he knew a good idea when he saw one. He purchased the machine to adapt to his own work, thinking chocolate-covered caramels might be a good idea.

This didn’t exactly work out as planned. What did, though, was making chocolate bars. These candy bars took the world by storm.

So much so, Hershey was approached in 1937 to come up with a bar that wouldn’t melt easily but could have added nutrition to send with soldiers overseas as a supplement to their diet.

During WWII, he was making 24 million bars a week for the military!

After the war, Hershey’s success was secured. He branched out into other kinds of chocolate bars, continually trying new things and expanding production until it became the successful company we know today.

Hershey might have been a failure initially, but he had a lot of drive and determination. What didn’t work, he left behind, pursuing quickly.

When he was approached to try something new, he immediately rose to the challenge, asking, ‘how can I do this’ instead of focusing on ‘I’ve never done this before.’

To succeed in today’s world, show yourself to be persistent like Hershey. Never turn your back on a lucky break. Most of all, don’t forget to embrace the sweet things in life. You’ll be amazed where they can take you!

Why does everyone know the name, Stephen King?

He’s the sort of success story every author dreams of becoming. Not only are his books popular, but quite a few of them have been adapted quite successfully as television and movies.

He’s known all the world around as being one of the great storytellers of the weird and creepy and has a considerable backlist waiting to be explored. 

So, where did he come from?

And how does his story apply to yours?

Stephen King was a writer at heart all the way back to his school days when he used to scribble out short stories for his friends.

Writing wasn’t his original career ambition, though. He’d set out to become a teacher, and only resorted to writing when he couldn’t find a job in his field.

Even this didn’t come easily though. When writing his first novel, Carrie, he was plagued with massive self-doubt, so much so he threw away his initial attempts.

But with the encouragement of those around him, he went on to finish the book and got it published to great success.

Too much success.

The stress of having to produce another book when his first had proven so popular caused Stephen King to question himself further.

He didn’t feel he was equal to the task and started drinking heavily. This was the beginning of a struggle with alcoholism that would nearly ruin him.

If you believe someone you know is displaying a change in behaviour or mood which you feel may be potential red flags of poor mental health/mental illness.  

Many people have mental health concerns from time to time. 

But a mental health concern then becomes a mental illness when ongoing signs and symptoms affect your ability to function independently.  

Anxiety

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year.

Biologically speaking, anxiety is a triggering of the fight or flight response to prepare us mentally and physically to deal with a perceived threat. 

It is believed to have evolved to keep us safe and in Palaeolithic times, anxiety was crucial to our survival to protect ourselves from the many dangers in the wild.

At any sign of danger, our body's sympathetic nervous system was activated due to a sudden release of stress hormones, including adrenaline and noradrenaline, boosting oxygen to our limbs that allowed us to flee from danger.

This 'fight or flight' response resulted in an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate, which left us trembling.

However, whilst our world has changed around us, and we no longer need to be on our guard from say, wild animals and human enemies, we still remain hard-wired to protect ourselves.

However, Anxiety disorders, keep us on a permanent high alert and prompt us to feel panic and fear at ordinary, everyday events. Psychologically, they set off a sense of dread and alarm; physically, they speed our hearts and pulses, makes us sweat, shake, or feel dizzy with worry.

Anxiety disorders include generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety and panic attacks, all of which can impact an individual's life.

Panic disorder is an anxiety disorder where you regularly have sudden attacks of panic or fear. 

A panic attack is a sudden rush of intense mental and physical symptoms, lasting between five and 20 minutes.  

Sufferers are left feeling frightened and distressed, often reporting they thought they were dying.

Successful treatments for anxiety include therapy, medications such as beta-blockers, and making life changes.

Phobias

Phobias are a type of anxiety disorder characterised by the fear of a specific object or situation.

They fall into three types:

1. specific phobia, fear of heights

2. agoraphobia, fear of leaving one's safe place)

3. social phobia, fear of interacting with other people, of evaluation or humiliation).

Even though most people with phobias know that logically their fears are irrational, this does not assuage the panic, sweating, terror, breathlessness, dizziness or even fainting that experiencing the feared object or situation triggers.

Whilst some phobias, such as the fear of spiders, may have an evolutionary background that once kept us safe in the wild, others are believed to be the result of a stressful episode, that the brain remembers and reacts to again and some could simply be learned from a phobic parent.

Who do you listen to?

It’s so easy to become discouraged when you hear the people around you, especially those who don’t quite catch the vision of your dreams. How you deal with this kind of naysaying can mean the difference between failure and success.

Henry Ford experienced just this problem.

When you think of Ford, you probably immediately think of cars, or even the entire assembly line process. His success was not immediate, though, and in fact, he failed twice before finally getting to where he wanted to go.

Ford was just twenty-three years old when he first discovered the wonders of the internal combustion engine. Fascinated, he immersed himself in the mechanics of it with the idea of attaching it to a horseless carriage. He even came up with a prototype that seemed extremely promising.

Unable to develop the project further on his own, Ford sought financing so he could take the automobile to the next level. He secured this reasonably quickly, and so his success should have been certain, right?

The problem lay in the prototype. The car he’d designed initially had too many parts that were hard to get. He had to keep tweaking the design to make it into something able to go into production. In short, he took too long to get the desired results, and the financiers lost faith and backed out.

Henry Ford dug in, though, and tried again, this time paying more attention to the production aspects. He somehow convinced his backers to give him a second chance. They did, with the stipulation they could bring their own manager in on the project.

Again, this led to failure. Ford felt micromanaged by someone who didn’t understand the vision. When this fell apart, it should have been the end of things. He still believed in both the product and his ideas regarding production and hung in there. This time he searched for backers who likewise came to see his vision and were willing to allow him the freedom to act as he saw fit to make it a reality.

This was the real beginning of the Model A Ford, which was the foundation of Ford’s success in automobiles.

Ford was a visionary in that he never allowed anyone else to stop him from doing what he knew he could. When someone stood in his way, he found a new way around the problem to keep going. In the end, he succeeded through persistence.

So can you. The next time someone tells you ‘no,’ look for the one ready to say ‘yes.’ Align yourself with supporters, not naysayers. Then go out and get the job done.

Have you ever had what you thought was a really great idea turn out to be not so great after all? Now imagine someone else picking up your discarded idea and proving it actually was quite brilliant after all. 

This is what happened to Al Fielding and Marc Chavannes back in 1957.

These two gentlemen were working on an aesthetic problem. They wanted to create a textured wallpaper to create an interesting effect in a room.

Their solution?

Take two shower curtains and put them together, so that pockets of air would be trapped between them. This sheet of plastic could be put up on the walls to make for unique and charming décor.

The world didn’t exactly come flocking to their door. 

Undaunted they tried again. Same product: different marketing approaches. Maybe this unique bubbled plastic could be used to insulate greenhouses.

Not really. It sort of worked but was not something every greenhouse owner couldn’t live without. 

It took two years for someone to figure out what to do with the product. Frederick W. Bowers, who worked for the company which made the sheets of plastic with air pockets, realized they would be perfect for the transport of computer equipment for a company which had a sudden need for this kind of product – IBM. The material, now called ‘Bubble Wrap,’ was absolutely perfect for the job. The rest, shall we say, is history.

Bubble Wrap is one of those products that seemed to come along by accident. As a wallpaper, it wasn’t a great idea. (Just imagine your kids going around the house and poking the bubbles to pop them?). On the other hand, someone who was willing to think outside the box, or more accurately, think creatively about what to put IN a box, was able to come up with a use for the product no one else would have ever considered.

Thankfully, the creators of Bubble Wrap hadn’t given up on the product. They knew they had something interesting, they just didn’t know what to use it for. Sometimes you must experiment with your ideas to discover what you really have. Sometimes you have to think more creatively about what you have at hand.

The point is not to give up. Failure should never be anything more than a marker to tell you it’s time to attack the problem from a different angle. Learn from the mistake, then move on. Imagine what you’ll come up with when you do!

Stupid. Failure. No good. Idiot.

Albert Einstein heard all these phrases about himself and more. Growing up was tough for young Albert. He didn’t express himself well and struggled in school.

Even his teachers gave up on him, deciding that he was impossible to teach. Those around him considered him mentally retarded, and no one thought he would ever make anything of himself.

This doesn’t sound like an auspicious beginning for someone who is considered to be one of the greatest geniuses of all time, does it?

Einstein seemed to meet failure at every turn. He wished to attend the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology but had to take the entrance exam twice before he was admitted. Even then, his troubles weren’t over.

His teachers laughed at his ideas, calling his doctoral dissertation “irrelevant and fanciful.” After college, no one thought much about him. He worked in a patent office.

A situation which turned out to be perfect because the work was so mindless, he had plenty of time to think.

And think he did. A lot!

Albert Einstein used his extra time to work out several theories. In fact, he became so caught up in his ideas, he grew absent-minded and oblivious to the world around him. In the grand scheme of things, maybe it didn’t matter quite so much whether he forgot to wear socks with his shoes.

The important thing was what he developed, what he created in those deep thoughts. From the Theory of Relativity to every theory that came after, it soon became evident that

Albert Einstein’s thoughts were considerable. So much so that he became a professor himself, and even won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.

Imagine what his critics had to say about him then! 

From Albert Einstein, we should learn not to let the world define us. No one truly knows what you’re capable of but you. Even if you don’t always express your ideas well, it doesn’t mean those ideas don’t have merit. 

Albert Einstein is also an excellent example of what it means to do your own thing. His ideas didn’t mesh with the way people typically thought about the world.

Even in his lifetime, not everyone saw things his way. This didn’t stop him from expressing himself and standing by what he said. 

So be smart like Einstein. Don’t be afraid to share your ideas with the world. More importantly, never let anyone else tell you what you can do. That’s for you to show them.