Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,

 

One of the gifts that my son got for Christmas was a book on Bear Grylls the explorer, adventurer and television host.  The theme of the book is how to enjoy and be successful in life.  He uses a number of metaphors based on putting himself in life threatening situations and working on how to get out of them, and equating this with everyday life.  One theme that comes through strongly is to stay positive and to try to surround your self with positive people.  For many of us this maybe an aspirational goal but I know that when I work with positive people I look forward to accepting the challenge, even if I know it will be difficult.

 

I coach a cricket team with a guy who is always positive, he always sees the glass half full.  A player gets a first ball duck and Craig will find a positive.  After all the player is already feeling bad he doesn’t need any negative vibes.  Think about what happened in the cool light of day and work on it at practice.

Our team faces challenges, we have a vast range of talents.  These are mainly Year 12 and 13 boys so we have personality and attitudes to deal with, but because we have a positive environment the task never seems daunting, win, lose or draw.

Bear has a lot of points on how to maintain a positive focus, but one that I thought was really good was to look at failures as steps to success.  I think the other point is to strive to see the good in everyone and in every situation, not always easy but with practice it becomes a habit.  A great example would be the rebuild of the school, the challenges have been huge, but the gain is immense. Bear was in the SAS and their motto is ‘who dares wins’.  You can’t be more positive than this.

Have a great week.

Mike Brosnahan, Principal