Developing and maintaining emotional and spiritual strength

  • I know who I am and where I’m from. That’s how I identify myself as successful.

  • Success is defined by how the individual feels. It’s an emotional thing. You have to get your mind in the right place, and that in itself is a journey. But mistakes are a good thing as well. Make mistakes - it helps you learn.

  • It’s not just about achieving the goal. It’s more about having a direction, something to strive for. You learn more valuable lessons from the journey than actually getting the goal itself.

  • I think people can motivate you, but you can only live off other people’s motivation for so long. If you really want something you have to own it.

  • My family, my friends, my teachers – they’ve been a key part of my life. With them you can strive harder in life, and become the strong person you are.

  • If you find your true friends, you’ll find who your family is, because you need that extra support at school. Just find your true friends, cause they’ll be your backbone.

  • I think it means someone that is being themselves, using their passion to get them where they want to be. Also using the support of their family around them as motivation and to make them proud, so then everyone’s proud.

  • Being a successful Māori means a real strengthening of identity. The more we succeed, the more we identify with who we are, which resonates with where we’re from, and obviously, we’re Māori. By succeeding we give more power to our people, to our culture. It just means being able to grow, become bigger and spread our wings to other people, other Māori. And it’s just really, really cool.

  • Doors are opening, the doors to our dreams are opening. We are journeying to the wider world, to our dreams. The big things on our journey are te reo and our customs, and the support of our families.

  • It’s perseverance. Māori students don’t show off in the school, like, “Oh, I’m the greatest person. I’m the man at doing whatever I do.” They’re just real. They do a lot of background work. Behind everything they’re doing a lot of hard work, but they never show that when they get awarded for it. They never show off, or they never show that they’re struggling. Quiet, working hard, doing all those little things so that they can get something big out of it.

  • If you’re getting put down all the time, you have to look on the bright side and know that you’re better than those people. If you’re not happy with yourself, then how are you going to get anywhere in life? There’s a lot of achievement coming from our school now.

  • I think it’s always good keeping your cultural values with you - as in who you are - with everything that you do, so you can always go back to them. If you’re going to succeed, you’re going to succeed as yourself, not as someone else. As Māori people, you hold that mana. I’m proud to be a Māori person.

  • Kapa haka is like a big family, a second family. You can go there upset, confused, frustrated, and by the end of it, you’re fine again. It’s that place that you can go and put all of those emotions into something like a haka. It helps a lot, for sure.

  • It gives you that little mana boost. You feel good after a period of kapa haka. It makes you more focused.

  • It’s about not comparing yourself with others and doing the best that you can, and having fun doing it - just enjoying learning.

  • Success isn’t about ethnicity or the colour of your skin; it’s about having the motivation and determination to achieve what you want to. So success as Māori for me is knowing who you are and where you come from - and being proud of who you are.
  • Having the confidence within yourself to know that you can succeed and enjoy the journey our own Māori way as well. I really like that.

  • I didn’t carry kapa haka on because I thought it was a bit too much. I wanted to focus on my schoolwork. But then I realised, sticking with kapa haka, it’s what really pushed me to do everything really.

  • I didn’t have to give up anything to do what I wanted. I just did everything.

  • Through kapa haka I learnt a lot of discipline, and that’s paid off with my schoolwork, because you’ve got to be disciplined when it comes to your studies.

  • My dad, he always expects us to do the best that we can in everything we do: “Don’t do anything half-pai.” He always talks to me and makes sure I do the best I can. So that’s why I was sort of annoyed last year that I only got Merit endorsement and missed out by four credits for Excellence. Being able to say that you’ve succeeded means that you’ve tried doing everything, you haven’t given up, you’ve tried your hardest.

  • I used to come to school just to see my friends. I was bored. Now, I’ve really changed my mind-set. I come to school and I work hard so I can get somewhere in life.

  • Just reading The Word when you’re troubled and just finding the meaning that you need. It’s really helpful.

  • Being happy and making sure your wellbeing is okay - your physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual wellbeing. You can feel good inside and outside.
  • Because of my whakapapa, my tīpuna, I can believe in who I am.

  • It’s surrounding yourself in the environment that you need to be surrounded in. You don’t want to be put, or you don’t want to put yourself, in a negative area that’s not going to help you, not going to support you, take you in the wrong direction and lead you the wrong way, when you know where to go. So you need to put yourself in that position, te haere tika (the right path).

  • Every time I feel down, I go and talk to my Nan. She gives me some advice.
  • Make yourself able to grow. Don’t limit your thinking. Allow it to expand, and allow people to speak into your life. Listen to it and filter it, ‘cause what you listen to grows in you, and you speak it. Just allow people to speak into your life so you can grow and create new paths.

  • A lot of young Māori have this thing in them, this whakamā. I’d like to break that shame.

  • We have a teacher from England who’s gone over to the kura next door to learn te reo Māori. That shows me that he appreciates my whakapapa; he appreciates where I come from; who I am as a person, and my culture. That helps me understand where they’re coming from as a teacher, and what they’re trying to teach me. I understand that they want to know who I am, so I want to know what they have to teach me. It brings them to a level where you’re able to respect them as a teacher and as a person as well. You understand that they value who you are and what you do in your life, so you value them and you want to learn from them.

  • I didn’t carry kapa haka on because I thought it was a bit too much. I wanted to focus on my schoolwork. But then I realised, sticking with kapa haka, it’s what really pushed me to do everything really.
  • I didn’t have to give up anything to do what I wanted. I just did everything.
  • Through kapa haka I learnt a lot of discipline, and that’s paid off with my schoolwork, because you’ve got to be disciplined when it comes to your studies.
  • My dad, he always expects us to do the best that we can in everything we do: “Don’t do anything half-pai.” He always talks to me and makes sure I do the best I can. So that’s why I was sort of annoyed last year that I only got Merit endorsement and missed out by four credits for Excellence. Being able to say that you’ve succeeded means that you’ve tried doing everything, you haven’t given up, you’ve tried your hardest.
  • I used to come to school just to see my friends. I was bored. Now, I’ve really changed my mind-set. I come to school and I work hard so I can get somewhere in life.
  • Just reading The Word when you’re troubled and just finding the meaning that you need. It’s really helpful.
  • Being happy and making sure your well-being is okay - your physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual well-being. You can feel good inside and outside.

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