Jake Bailey comes to Tahuna

We had a great day on Tuesday with Jake Bailey coming to Tahuna to share his message of resilience with students, staff and parents.

Jake shared his story and his message about resilience and it was very well received by each of his audiences. He also did a workshop with our House Leaders around the values of being a leader. Here's what a couple of Year 8's wrote about in their reflections.

Jake told us that there were four things that kept him going during those tough times. Those four things were to slow down, stand alongside, salvage and streamline.

Slow down

It means that when you're faced with a huge problem, like being told you have three weeks to live. Instead of panicking it can help to break it up into chunks. Once you do that you need to focus on those little chunks instead of the whole problem.Just like how Jake focused on every day of treatment instead of focusing on the fact that you have treatment for the next two months.

Salvaging 

It means that instead of doing what's easy and focusing on all the bad stuff and  focusing on the little nuggets of good stuff. For Jake this was knowing that he had a visitor that day or that he could have a milkshake whenever he wanted.

Streamline

This means that if you have heaps of stress in your life then take away 60-90 minutes a day and do something that makes you happy. This could be a sport, video games or even sleeping. Studies have shown that if you focus on worrying when you're young then you become really good at worrying when you're old but this impacts badly on your ability to look on the bright side.

Stand alongside

If you climb a mountain by  yourself you are less likely to reach the top than if you climbed it with others. This means if you try to overcome a problem by yourself you're less likely to overcome it than if you did it with others.

This is why Jake came to Tahuna to teach us about resilience and how to overcome problems easter. He told us how he overcame cancer and how we should live our life to the fullest and follow Jake's four values.

-RhysAfter listening to Jake Bailey say “Someone walked into the room and introduced herself as a Haematologist then she slowly told me I had Burkitt’s non-Hodgkin's lymphoma Cancer”. When he told us it kept repeating in my head but then he told us how he reacted. He knew the only way he would live was if he got treatment and he wanted it to start straight away, I thought of how brave he was. He also said having his family alongside him made it easier. That was the best thing I learned from him. So if you have any close family or friends who get diagnosed with cancer, stand by them for their whole journey. It will help. That was my favourite part of Jake Bailey’s speech.

-Olivia