Quick summary: A personal foray into theatre sound production challenged a fixed mindset that confined abilities to familiar pursuits like chess and sports leading to unexpected skill development and enjoyment. Initial discomfort proved to be a normal part of learning rather than evidence of unsuitability highlighting how embracing new roles builds resilience and expands self-perception with direct benefits for mental health and overall well-being. This underscores the value of encouraging growth-oriented thinking in healthcare practice and public policy to help people test unnecessary personal boundaries and pursue fuller lives.

I had walked past the school theatre notice board so many times I had stopped seeing it. Our school had run a theatre club for years, putting on a new production every single school year, and I had never once been involved. Not as a performer, not as a stagehand, not as an audience member. Theatre was simply not my world.

That assumption was comfortable until a random Tuesday at the start of summer, when one of the theatre directors sent me a message out of nowhere. The role they were offering was technical sounds. I remember reading it twice, trying to work out if they had sent it to the wrong person. Almost everyone who knew me associated me with chess, swimming, basketball, and a fairly obsessive interest in finance. Sound production was nowhere on that list.

My first instinct was to decline. My summer was already full, and I was genuinely unsure what I could contribute. But then I found out that someone I liked was going to be part of the production. Whether that counts as a good reason or a slightly embarrassing one is open to debate. Either way, I said yes.

The early weeks were uncomfortable. I had no frame of reference for what I was doing. Sound cues, mixing levels, timing everything to live performance: none of it came naturally, and I was aware enough to know I was making mistakes. There was a quiet but persistent feeling that I had overestimated myself.

What changed things was not a single breakthrough moment. It was something slower and less dramatic than that. Week by week, I started to understand the work. I began to recognise patterns in how sound interacts with a live space. I developed a feel for timing that I had not expected to develop. The role that had seemed entirely foreign started to become something I could actually do.

By the time the production came together, I was not only functioning in the role. I was enjoying it. The creative dimension of the work, shaping the way a scene feels through sound, was something I had never accessed before. It was a genuine contrast to the structured, competitive nature of chess and sport, and I found that contrast refreshing in a way I had not anticipated.

Looking back now, the experience sits with me for reasons that go beyond theatre. What it surfaced was a belief I had not fully examined: that I was a particular kind of person, with a particular set of abilities, and that stepping outside that meant risking failure or embarrassment. I had drawn a boundary around myself without realising I had done it.

Psychologists refer to this kind of self-limiting pattern as a fixed mindset, the belief that our qualities and capabilities are largely set, rather than things we can develop through effort and experience. Carol Dweck’s research on the subject suggests that people who see their abilities as expandable are more likely to take on challenges, persist through difficulty, and ultimately grow. The opposite, treating identity as fixed, can quietly close off possibilities before they are ever explored.

My theatre experience was a small and fairly low-stakes version of that dynamic. The discomfort at the beginning was real, but it was not the indicator of unsuitability I had initially taken it to be. It was simply the feeling of learning something new.

There is a quote often attributed to the writer John A. Shedd: a ship is safe in harbour, but that is not what ships are for. It is a well-worn line, but it captures something true. Safety and stagnation can look identical from the inside. The question worth asking is whether the boundaries we hold around ourselves were ever really necessary, or whether they were just never tested.

The girl, for what it is worth, is now someone I would call a close friend. The theatre role I took on a vague impulse is still mine. And the version of myself I was so certain I understood turned out to be more flexible than I had given him credit for.

Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is say yes before you feel ready.

Kyle Go is a 15-year-old writer based in the Philippines with a growing interest in personal and reflective writing. She is currently building her portfolio and developing her voice across a range of topics.