At the Prefect’s Assembly John Hopcroft spoke about some of the key messages the young men who were involved in the Year 12 Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Education Centre camp were left with at the end of a physically and mentally challenging week.
John spoke about information the group was provided with about mindsets: “A fixed mindset being when someone thinks that talent is unchangeable, whereas a growth one is when you think that talent can be improved upon.”
He also spoke about some of the physical and mental challenges that the group faced during their camp and some of the ‘risk taking’ activities they were involved in:
“Yet people still choose to take that risk. Why?
Quite simply put, it's because whenever we do something that is difficult, we feel a sense of satisfaction for completing it. When we know we’ve done something most others wouldn’t dare do simply because it’s so outrageous or challenging we then get a boost in our confidence. But there’s one problem about doing things that are hard, they’re hard to do. It’s much easier to never put any effort into anything because to you, hard stuff always stays hard, but as men we know that not the case. It is much easier to fail or be mediocre at something than take the risk to put more effort in. And I mean sure, you can cruise through all of your life like that, be average on every test, be mediocre in every game, halfhearted every opportunity given to you, that billions of people around the world don’t even dare dream about so you can end up with an average job, only to look back on your life and realise you’ve never done anything of note ever, you were simply a placeholder for people who took the risk to invest in their own future.
But why be like that? Why not take a risk to care about the future. Why not try every once in a while to do something you're normally too afraid or lazy to do. it doesn’t have to be a massive change. Maybe entering an event you normally wouldn’t try out for or looking at class notes for 10 minutes before you take a test. While the result won’t be immediate, the next time you do it, it can only get easier. If you believe you will always be bad at something because you were bad at it once, you will forever lead a life of irrelevance.
However, if you choose to make that change, believe that you can do something better if you do it more, and you actually make that risk in trying, then you will be giving yourself the opportunity to rise above mediocrity and lead a life of significance. Why stick to a fixed mindset, when you can achieve so much more with a grown one? So just think about that, decide if you want to stop being envious of others and have personal success yourself, and maybe, just maybe, you could act on that thought and become something you never thought possible.”
