Find the strengths, even during the hardest times

Are you feeling stuck in the heaviness of this season and wondering how you’re meant to keep going without pretending everything’s fine?

In this episode, I talk honestly about how hard things feel right now. No glossing over it. No “just stay positive.” Instead, I walk through how we can hold space for both the weight of what’s happening AND the strengths we already have in our farming lives. I share some of the research-backed protective factors that are already part of what we do every day. Things like purpose, autonomy, and movement, and how we can start to notice them again when stress narrows our view.

I also bring it back to practical, small moments. Not big mindset shifts, just noticing, catching and giving yourself a bit more space in the middle of it all.

This episode is about steadying yourself when things feel uncertain, and remembering that even in tough seasons, there is still something to hold onto.

What’s one small thing you can notice or catch today? I’d love to hear from you. Come and connect with me over on Instagram @stephschmidt.farmlifepsych   

What we cover in this episode

• Why “just think positive” misses the point 
• Acknowledging how heavy things feel right now 
• How stress narrows our focus and thinking 
• The risk of getting stuck in rumination cycles 
• Introducing the idea of noticing “what else is here” 
• Exploring protective factors in farming life 
• The role of purpose and meaning in wellbeing 
• Real-life examples of meaning in farming 
• Practical ways to “catch” moments of purpose 
• Autonomy and sense of control as a psychological need 
• Reframing “I have to” into “I choose to” 
• Small, everyday choices that rebuild agency 
• Movement to manage stress
• Using physical activity to process stress responses
  
  

Connect with Steph

• Steph's website
• Digital Hub for Farmers: farmlifehandbook.com.au 
• Steph on Facebook
• Steph on LinkedIn
• Steph on Instagram
• Steph's upcoming events

The Farm Life Psych podcast shares general information and personal reflections to support wellbeing — it isn't therapy, counselling, or personal advice, and it's not a substitute for support from a qualified professional. If something's sitting heavily with you, please reach out to your GP, a psychologist, or a trusted support service. If you're in crisis or need to talk to someone now, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14. You're not alone, and reaching out is a strength.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you've ever been told to just look on the bright side during a tough season or just think positively, you probably wanted to throw something. And to be honest, that advice misses the point entirely. In today's episode, I'm not here to tell you to just find the silver lining. Instead, I want to explore how to find the real research back strengths that we already have woven and present into our everyday farming life that maybe you've just stopped being able to see. So let's widen the lens a little. You're listening to Farm Life Psych with Steph Schmidt. I'm your host, Steph, a psychologist farmer, farm wife, mum of three, and founder of Farm LifeSide. This podcast is for people in agriculture, navigating the challenges and joys of life on the land, where I share practical, evidence-based tools to strengthen your well-being, navigate stress, and manage our relationships. Follow so you don't miss an episode. And just a reminder the information shared here is general in nature and not a substitute for individual professional advice. Let's get into today. Welcome to another episode of Farm Life Psych with me, Steph. I'm not going to pretend that the world is easy right now. It's really heavy and it's really hard. And when I recorded the last episode, I said hopefully things were going to turn around. I think I'm going to stop saying that because look, honestly, I think we are in for a really, really tough year. A really, really tough time ahead. And at the same time, in that, again, just holding space for the fact that this isn't just agriculture impacted. This isn't just Australia impacted. It's the whole damn world. And I don't say that to minimize what you're experiencing at the moment. And I think in a lot of ways, for some of us who are empathic, empathetic, however you say it, and hold those feelings for everyone else, it can make why what we're experiencing right now even bigger and even harder. But just encourage a little bit of a step back. The higher the stress that we're in, the narrower our focus gets, the more we become kind of me, me, me protective mode, which is really valid. But sometimes we need a little bit of that lens widening to remember that there's so much more going on as well. So last episode was just covering off a couple of the basics of finding the and, filling a silo, slowing down a little bit, just those tips to find our feet to navigate tough times. And I think, given the world, that's going to be the running things for this season. What I wanted to dive into today, though, was I guess the and side, the strengths or the flip side, for want of a better way to put it. I just want to put a disclaimer out to start with. This is not going to be an episode to tell you to just find the silver lining and that everything is rosy and just think positively because then you'll be okay. No, that's not it. But and what I do want to highlight is that sometimes during hard times, it becomes really easy for us just to talk about the hard things and the hard times. And it's almost what our mind's driving us to do. And in a way, we can get stuck in this emotional, contagious rumination cycle where everything we hear on the media, on the news is chewing over how hard things are, where everything we hear in our conversations with our friends, where everything we hear in our minds, everything is just telling us how hard it is. And so that cycling down into hopelessness can happen really quickly and understandably. So I just want to take us a gentle step, step to the side of that a little bit, and not pretend that that stuff's not real, but just to see what else is there. Again, thinking of the acknowledging, it's acknowledge what's hard, acknowledge those thoughts that are showing up, acknowledge the frustration, the anxiety, the pain for the will, the sadness. Acknowledge that that that is there and that is real. And then notice what else is here. Notice what else is true. And so for us within farming, within agriculture, what I want to explore a little bit today is what our strengths are, what some of the benefits are, what what are some of the buffers, the protective factors of our life that sometimes we're doing it so automatically we don't always see it. And especially when the stress is high, we definitely stop seeing it. So, what are some of those protective factors that we have and how can we strengthen them even more? How can we strengthen them to build on them, especially when that stress is high? So I've been going through, and this is stuff that I've talked about a lot, but I wanted to have a look a bit more at some of the research on what is protective for our well-being, what is protective for our mental health, what helps people stay resilient, for want of a better word, but what helps people get through adversity and tough times, those protective factors. And there's a lot of it that is so inherent in our farming life. So I'm going to walk through a little bit of it with you. So one of the biggest protective factors that we have is holding on to purpose and meaning in what we do. One of the strongest protective factors is having a sense of meaning in what we do. And I know at the moment, for a lot of us, when that sense of control has been ripped out from under our feet, when we're wondering why we are doing what we do, that sense of purpose and meaning starts to feel a little bit shaky. But what the research shows is that people who can feel that their work, what they do, why they're showing up in the world connects to something bigger than themselves, they tend to have better psychological well-being, lower rates of depression, and recover and get through adversity. And that can come across in a whole lot of ways. It might be that sense of purpose in creating a farming legacy for your family. It might be a sense of meaning in building sustainability and taking on new practices in what you're doing in the farm. It might be simply knowing that you are growing the grain or growing the animals or milking the cows that actually feeds people and how vital that is. It might be recognizing that ongoing meaning that family farming has had across your business, across your farm. Last night I was pretty much done, but we're just kind of cleaning up our lambs and things that we've got in feedlots at the moment, and there were 70 lambs that needed crutching. And my 11 and 8-year-old, the five-year-old did a little bit, but he'd had enough. But they just, they just jumped in and bored into it because they really still do get that sense of meaning, that motivation, that determination that comes through it. And so what I'd encourage you is just like when you're going about the day-to-day stuff, you don't need to sit down and write a 10-page value statement or your total purpose in life. Even just like the routine work, even just when you're going and cleaning the troughs or doing a budget, whatever you're doing, see if you can just catch a moment where you can hold on to that meaning and purpose in what you do. The fact that you are providing food or fiber to feed the world. The fact that you're stewarding and taking care of land. Whatever it is, just notice it. It doesn't need to be huge. It doesn't need to be groundbreaking. It might even bring up feelings, a little bit mixed feelings, of discomfort in a way, of feeling the frustration. And that's okay as well. But just see if you can catch it. See if you can catch it. That's my challenge for you with a few of these things we're going to talk about. Notice and catch them. That's all you need to do. So we've got purpose and meaning. Another aspect that's really key for our well-being is having autonomy, which is the control over our decisions, our time, our directions, the actions we take, is one of the most powerful predictors of life satisfaction and well-being. It's also a really important predictor of our motivation and our kind of, it's considered almost a psychological nutrient, I guess, one of the key nutrients that we need. So people who have that sense of agency or control over their lives often do report better health, mental health outcomes than people who don't. And that's regardless of our income or circumstances. And I know many of you listening will probably be like, well, Steph, our autonomy has been thrown out of the window right now. There are so many extra things. Like we've been dealing with the weather for years. We've been dealing with all the other unpredictabilities, and now it feels like it's even more. Yes, yes, yes, I get it. Farming is really hard. There is so much that is outside of our control. And on the other hand, there are also a lot of ways that we have a sense of agency. We have the choices that we do that other people don't necessarily get to experience. We are making those decisions each day on what we're doing next, sometimes really small, sometimes big. And I guess it's a little bit of that mindset shift of looking at, well, I have to do all of these things. Sometimes a little shift into right, I'm choosing to do this, or this is the next step that I'm taking. I had to inject a handful of the sheet that were left and just get it done this morning. And part of my mind was like, I've got so much to get to. Here's another thing that I have to do. I don't get a choice over it. And then I went, you know what, Steph? I do get a choice. I can choose to just do it now. I could choose to try and do it after school, after footy training tonight when everyone's going to be even more tired. Or I can just choose to get into it now and know that getting my body moving is going to help me to knuckle down in the office once I get it done. Reality was, once I got it done, injecting, I think it was about 86 lambs took all of, I reckon, less than 10 minutes. So I'd put it into a bigger mountain in my head than it really was. But just taking that bit of ownership back to the decision and doing this in the smallest ways we can. Instead of feeling like everything we're doing is being chosen or forced upon us, see if you can just, again, just notice, just catch a couple of the smallest choices that you've got. They might be choices on the farm. They might be choices, I don't know, in the music that you play. It might be choices in, actually, I'm just going to head to bed a little bit earlier tonight. This morning again, I did make the call. I saved a workout on my calendar for this morning. I put my sneakers and my clothes right at the end of my bed so the choices were really, really minimized. And when my alarm went off, I made the choice to get up and do a workout before the kids got up so that I could try and be in a slightly better frame of mind. Smallest choices that we can make and then catch them so that we can feel just a little bit more of that autonomy, a little bit more of that sense of agency and control in how we're showing up. Okay. So we've got meaning and purpose, we've got autonomy or a sense of a little bit of sense of choice and control. Movement, the good old favorite that I do speak about a fair bit. Okay. Not telling you anything you don't know here, but the evidence around physical movement, exercise, getting our bodies moving is some of the strongest when it comes to managing our well-being, particularly around managing stress. Again, like it's the getting away from the line analogy. When we experience stress, we have so many stress hormones, chemicals released through our body, the best way to use this up is by movement. Again, my morning was full of analogies for today's episode. One of our dogs, he's not even really a puppy anymore. We've had a lot of trouble training him. Anyone got any training tips open to hear them? But we've got two dog yards. One is currently full of six-week-old puppies who are menaces. Um, and then the other one is where Bundy spends most of his time because he has to be either in his yard or tied up. When he's working in the sheepyards, he's not too bad, but the rest of the time he just wants to do his own thing. One of the puppies got into his yard, so I was trying to get him out, and Bundy did a runner for him. And so then he was off down to the feedlot, and credit to him. This time he didn't bail them over the fence, but he just did laps and laps and laps and laps around the feedlot, jumping over fences. And probably because I had recording this episode in mind, um, I looked and I'm like, his body is doing probably what it needs to do. He hasn't done much sheepwork for the last couple of days, so he's been in his yard, and he just needed to get out and run. And I thought, how often do we probably feel the need to get physical, to get our bodies moving, but then potentially ignore it. So when it comes to getting physical, to finding movement, I think in farming, it's a little bit of both. On the one hand, we are physically active so often. So part of it, again, is noticing when that's happening. And instead of looking at it of, oh, I'm so tired, I've just been chasing sheep around the sheepyards or being out milking goats, milking cows, not goats. I know some of you are probably milking goats, milking cows at five o'clock in the morning. Again, just that little shift of, okay, just noticing, noticing the movement, noticing how it feels in your body when you're out and active. Then on the flip side of it, just notice and see how we can bring in a little bit more physical movement. If you're in a season that's a pretty much more sedentary, a lot more office work, or just the main movement is getting up and down into the tractor. Just notice and bring in, kind of see how you can bring in and add a little bit more movement. It really is absolutely key, especially during significant times of stress. Regular physical activity helps us manage feelings of depression and anxiety. It helps us regulate that stress response. It improves our sleep and helps us also to be able to manage future stresses. So the challenge is catch and kind of, I don't know, savour those times when you're already being active on the farm. But also on the flip side, challenge yourself. If you think, oh no, I'm already active anyway, maybe just check in and see, are you being as active as you actually think? All right. So we've got movement, we've got purpose and meaning, we've got autonomy. So one of the other parts that I think is just around us so much, but we we almost become blind to it is the benefits of nature and green space. Like I saw an article this morning, I didn't even pay that much attention to it, where people are actually considering paid leave or leave from their jobs to go out and get nature exposure. Because if you're in an office in the city, surrounded by buildings, surrounded by ashfold and bitumen, getting that access to green space is really hard. Like research shows that having pictures or having videos of forests or greenery helps to regulate and manage your stress. We have it outside of our back door, more often than not. And look, full disclosure, I have more greenery around me at the moment than I feel like we've had for the last eight years or so. So if you're currently in drought or heading into drought or got still got dry paddocks all around you and you're going, Steph, it doesn't feel particularly green and luscious here at the moment. I truly get that. But there is still benefit to being outside. It might still feel a little different than lush green grass, but even stand near the trees and hear the wind flowing through the trees or look at the sunlight glimmering and reflecting through the leaves. That time in nature, particularly open spaces, has been shown to lower our cortisol levels, which spike and go up during spress. They reduce activities in those parts of our brain that is linked to kind of ruminating and threat detecting and going over and over the threats in our mind, and help kind of bring in that more focused attention that stress can erode and get rid of. Again, how often are we out in nature and actually stop seeing it? So, what I encourage you, your challenge with kind of the nature side of things, is actually to start to see it again, to really hold on to and feel that connection to your landscape, that connection to your place of belonging, to your land, to see it almost with fresh eyes. Like if you were a tourist turning up to your back door, look out your back door and just notice it. Savour it. Even for 20 seconds, 30 seconds, just notice what happens in your body when you actually just stop and see the landscape that you are sitting in. Not to assess it, not to judge it, not to see what needs doing, um, but just to sit in it, just to absorb it, savor it, like you savor a chocolate biscuit. But even those brief moments of savoring, like you get the sheep into the yard while you're closing the gate to stand there and savor it for 20 seconds. Last night my kids were coming into the house, it was dark already because they'd been crutching. And an eight-year-old was like, Mom, Mom, come out here. I'm like, Oh, what's going on? He's like, Look at the Milky Way, Mom. That's savoring, taking those 20 seconds just to stop and catch that. Each of those 20 seconds, like if you can do those 20 seconds of savoring five times a day, so one minute of savoring, that's going to help you to build up that stress buffer. Lastly, a couple of things more. And I think this kind of draws into the purpose and meaning, but what we can also build on is that idea of connection, our social connections. And yes, we have a lot of challenges in agriculture. There is a lot of times of working in isolation, there is a lot of times of working alone. There is also times, I know in our farm, where we do all have to work alongside of each other. Like last night, my 11-year-old could have potentially crutched the sheep on his own, but instead, the eight-year-old joined in, dragged the sheep for him, they put the music on. I stayed and helped while I could before I took the five-year-old to bed. And my husband kind of tagged in and they all worked through it together. If that was just the 11-year-old or my husband going through and crutching those 70 sheep on their own, it would have been exhausting. Whereas in a way, the connection that ran through it made it more fulfilling. So finding ways of just building that connection. Again, connections, social connections are so key for our well-being, are so key for managing stress. They matter more than our income, than our physical health, than where we live, even. So finding those ways, whether it's doing jobs together on the farm, like even if you don't have to, jumping in the Ute together and going for a drive, or picking up the phone, having that phone call. Again, recognizing that I think I spoke about this very briefly at the start, when times are tough, it can be easy to get drawn into all the conversations about what's hard at the moment. And yes, do a bit of that. But maybe also just see if your connections can be around what matters, making time to be together. Just sit and enjoy a cup of coffee together, or watch a movie, or get out, I always say, get out and kick the footy with your kids. Value the fact that we've got people around us who do appreciate how hard things can be and connecting with them if that helps. So, yeah, my challenge in connection is to notice around you who you have to connect with and make a plan. Just one step to kind of spend some time in that connection this week. Whatever that may look like. Righty own. Lucky last is the act of kind of competence and mastery. And this has probably been touched on a few of a few of them, but that sense of mastery, that sense of achievement, that experience of kind of being capable, meeting the challenges we face and working them out. Again, it's a really core component of our psychological health. It's not about being the best at things, but it's about that felt experience of competence of I can do this, I can handle this. And every day on the farm, you are experiencing situations that one challenge your feeling of competence. But if you catch it at the end, you can catch that feeling of competence and kind of hold on to it. So it might be working out what's going wrong with the pump or making the plan when the weather shifts, making calls at the moment in terms of your seeding program with difficult information or incomplete options. Yes, you're making calls that might not be ideal, but making those decisions, that is that sense of mastery, that sense of competence, that problem solving that we have to do, that we're doing all the time, regardless of what's going on around us. So often we're doing it and we forget almost to do that little bit of a pat on the back for it. It might even be like off farm. It might be giving yourself that sense of achievement, that sense of mastery for a problem that you worked out with the kids at school, or making a change over I don't know, putting the washing away each day, doing a shift in that. I don't know. Just think about the things you are already doing. Again, noticing at the end of the day, what's something that worked out? What's a problem that you navigated through? And even just slightly, you might not have fixed the whole thing, but just small things. And it's those often those things that make farming hard are often the same things that give us that sense of achievement or that give us that sense of meaning, of purpose. So if all of these things are here and often inherent in farming, why don't we kind of just automatically feel better? Why don't we just automatically feel it more? Part of it is our brains wiring. We have this negative bias. We are wired. Our brains are designed to notice and track and remember the threats and the problems more than the positives. I often say in my workshops, your ancestor, your great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother or grandfather who was out hunting for food. The one that was just looking for the good stuff, that was appreciating the rainbows and the wind blowing in the air and feeling really good about life, they probably died because they weren't looking out for the threats. But the one that was focused on everything that could possibly go wrong, replaying everything that did go wrong, predicting everything that might go wrong in the future, they survived. So that negative bias kept us alive. It now serves to almost narrow our attention and block out all the things that are working well or all the things that are good. And it does that even more when times are hard. The good stuff gets harder to see. There's a saying that our brain is velcro for the hard stuff or velcro for the bad stuff and Teflon for the good stuff. Right now, for a lot of people in AG, a lot of people all across the world, things are genuinely hard. So not only do we have more stuff to stick to our velcro, but our lens narrows even more. Our velcro is stickier, and there's more stuff to stick to it. Those strengths are still there, but they're not sticking. We're not catching them. So this isn't about forcing positivity. It's not about going, oh, everything will be fine, just look on the bright side. It's about just broadening that picture, widening that lens, holding the and and noticing, just notice. All you have to do is notice and catch it. And again, you're not having to notice it 100% of the time, maybe just for 10 seconds a couple of times a day. Can you do that? See if you can notice what else is there. One little tool I really like. If you're anything like me, sometimes when you lie in bed at night, you replay the day and you replay the stuff that went wrong. You replay the problems, you kind of start that mental checklist of everything you have to address tomorrow. So one little hack or exercise you can do is lie there and replay the day, but really consciously work on catching the good stuff or even catching the like the generic stuff, the mediocre stuff. So replay in your mind. Right, I got up. Hey, I already have my sneakers laid out, so I put my shoes on and I went and did a workout. Noticing that emotion that you felt when you did all of those things. Oh, actually, it was a really fun one. It was a fun dance one. I felt that. Right. Then replaying through and just going through the day when you lie there at night, it takes effort. It genuinely does. But the more we can almost broaden that picture, stick a few more bits of the good stuff into that velcro, it starts to shift the lens a little bit. All right. I think that's enough for today. It's ended up being a little bit longer than 20 minutes. But I really hope it has helped you to just, and you don't need to find all of these strengths in one sitting, but maybe just a couple of ways that you can expand that lens to catch a little bit more meaning and purpose, to see the ways you're moving each day, to find your sense of agency or your autonomy, things that you can control. Get that sense of connection and the feeling of achievement, a bit of mastery in what you're doing each and every day. All right. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, don't forget to fill your silom. Thank you so much for listening and for taking just a few moments to care about your well being today. If you'd like more practical tools or any information on upcoming workshops and events, check out stephschmidt.com.au or connect quickly on socials at stefschmidt.farmlifesite. I look forward to joining you next time on our next episode of Farm Life Site with Steph Schmidt.