I didn’t think I was at all qualified to talk about anything here. “What do I know about life?” I asked myself. I struggled to find an answer. But, if there’s one thing I do know about, it’s doubt. Self-doubt. So here we go, stay with me.

When you’re standing on this stage, you’re vulnerable. I’m vulnerable, Mr King is vulnerable, Mr Hall is vulnerable. We’re vulnerable because we know what our message should be, but we have no idea whether it’ll be listened to or interpreted correctly. That’s where the doubt starts. You can imagine then how many misgivings I have sitting there, listening to Mr Hall summing up the points that I want to make before I have a chance to make them. Will my few words mean anything to anybody? 

I tell myself they will, but then I look at the people in the front row. The prefects. Then I really doubt myself. "There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said", I start thinking, "what experience, what wisdom can I possibly offer?" And now I’m back to my original question. What do I know about life? I look around this auditorium, and I see the faces of people who are better than me: I see kinder people, smarter people, faster people, stronger people and more creative people. Every single one of you is better than me at something. How can I expect myself to match any of that? And there we go. I’ve taken that self-doubt to heart. It’s far too easy to do.

It’s always doubt that we come back to at the end of the day. Our old friend Doubt. We shake his hand when we look in the mirror, we high-five him when we play a sports game and when we go to bed at night, doubt is always there to tell us we aren’t good enough. It’s a survival mechanism, some would say, it’s our brain’s way of making sure we don’t make mistakes and hurt ourselves. But in the process we get hurt anyway.

Furthermore, there’s no cure for doubt. You can’t drink some vegan kale juice and be forever free from doubt. I wish you could, it’d save me a lot of trouble. Instead, what we all have to realise eventually is that doubt doesn’t play fair. It will always be with us and it will always try to hurt us. But there’s a trick, one sneaky strategy we can use to combat doubt.

We can give ourselves a break. Just a break, that’s all. And that’s a lot. I’m sure my teachers would agree I’m good at taking breaks.

Sure, you lost that race. Give yourself a break! Take a step back from the little failure and say “Ah well. I’ll know what to do next time.” You aren’t a superman. You can’t be everyone, do everything and be the best. That’s impossible. Instead look for the things you enjoy in life and don’t spend your time thinking you’ll fail. Spend your time with mates, play a video game, watch a movie or even read a book. Life’s too short to spend constantly comparing yourself to others. Give yourselves a chance to relax, to reflect and to recognise that you aren’t going to be better than everyone else. No one person can be the top runner, rugby player, quantum physicist, actor, musician and above all supportive friend. Our doubts would have us think otherwise, always eating away at our esteem, but we don’t need to listen to them. If we just give ourselves a break, forgive our small failings and realise we aren’t perfect, we can overcome them. As William Shakespeare once said: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”

Give yourself a break.