Farm Life Psych with Steph Schmidt

Take the smallest step - Finding Your Way Through Heavy Seasons

• Steph Schmidt • Episode 32

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Ever had one of those weeks where everything seems to go wrong, and you’re still expected to keep showing up anyway?

This week I’m sharing a very real, very unpolished reflection on stress, overwhelm, and the pressure so many of us are carrying right now on the land. After recording this episode three times thanks to technology dramas, I decided to stop aiming for perfect and simply have an honest conversation about what helps when life feels heavy.

I talk through some of the practical tools I’ve been sharing in my recent “What the F?” sessions with farmers across Australia, including the Circle of Control, moving towards rather than away from our values, and why sometimes the most important question we can ask is: What can I do in the next five minutes?

We talk about how stress pulls us into autopilot, why tiny actions matter more than big fixes, and how giving ourselves a bit of grace can help us step out of shame spirals and back into what matters most.

This episode is a reminder that you don’t have to hold it all perfectly. You can be exhausted AND still care deeply. You can feel overwhelmed AND keep taking the next small step. If you’re carrying a lot right now, I hope this conversation helps you feel a little less alone and gives you a couple of practical anchors to come back to.

I’d love to hear what resonated with you from this episode. What’s one small thing helping you get through this season right now? Come and connect with me over on Instagram @stephschmidt.farmlifepsych   

What we cover in this episode

  • Steph shares the chaos of recording this episode three times 
  • Reflections on pressure and overwhelm in agriculture right now 
  • Overview of the “What the F?” online sessions 
  • The Circle of Control explained 
  • What’s in our control vs outside our control 
  • Focusing on the next five minutes instead of the whole season 
  • Practical examples from seeding, lambing and farm life 
  • Moving towards values instead of away from discomfort 
  • Stress, autopilot, and noticing unhelpful coping habits 
  • Small steps that reconnect us with what matters 
  • Giving ourselves grace when we don’t show up perfectly 
  • Parenting, capacity, and realistic self-compassion 
  • The tension between competing values and priorities 
  • Final reflections on stress, imperfection, and next steps


Connect with Steph

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.

SPEAKER_00

Do you ever have those weeks where you just start feeling, is anything ever going to go right? I recorded the podcast episode three times, or two times. Third time's a charm. But gosh, it's been a week. So this week's episode is short and sweet because I've finally got it working. And just recapping, I guess, some of the tools to help us navigate the challenges that we're facing. So jump in, join me, and I hope you like it. You're listening to Farm Life Side with Steph Schmidt. I'm your host, Steph, a psychologist, farmer, farm wife, mum of three, and founder of Farm Life Side. 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 back to this episode of Farm Life Cycle with me, Steph Schmidt. Would you believe this is the third time I have recorded this episode? I usually use a um video recording software, so then I've kind of got the video sitting there just in case I need it for anything. And I don't know whether it's my internet, it's frozen up. So I'm using just a straight audio one. I have got my eyes on the screen looking at the little sound waves coming across. So I know that the audio is recording because I now have like two lots of recording, which have me moving and talking and all on mute, no sound whatsoever, which isn't very helpful for a podcast. The last two that I planned, recorded, and done with no sound were quite planned out. And so I will re-record them at some point in time. But you know, once you've done something and put a bit of spark and life into it, it's hard to catch that again. So I'm literally just gonna go off the cuff for this. I really want to keep it fairly brief because I know the last couple of episodes have been longer. So if you've sat through them, I really appreciate it. But I'm gonna keep this one fairly to the point, namely because I have to run to school pickup soon. And if I don't get this recorded today, my uh podcast manager's gonna get the whip out. So what I wanted to just take a little bit of time to reflect on. If you've been following me on socials or getting any email updates from me, you will know that through April and May, I ran a series of online sessions called What the F, which were really just some practical strategies delivered online. Join wherever you were coming from to help navigate the season that we're in. Because wherever you're listening across Australia, across the world, I know there's a couple of listeners international as well, there's a lot of pressure on our plate, especially in agriculture, but across everyone's plate at the moment. And there's been some really lovely things that have come up. I always find, and this is whether I'm doing online sessions or in person, and when I ask people to share what their takeaways are, I always want to like to emphasize, I guess, that I don't care if it's something I said or if it's something another participant shared, if it's something you talked about at the coffee break, whenever. And I feel like some of the bits of magic have come about in the conversations in the sessions that we've had lately. One of the things, so this week's sessions, we were looking at decision-making tools and just some strategies at looking at what's in our control and what's outside of our control, and then how we take action on what's in our control. And one of the things someone reflected in that, because when we go through, we went through a tool called the circle of control. I've got an episode from last year where I go into a bit more detail on that tool. But really it's about looking at what's actually like just get out a piece of paper, draw down three concentric circles. The biggest outside circle is what's out of your control, but you might still have concern, like still impacts you, but you can't impact it. For example, weather, fuel prices, fertilizer prices, and availability. Then we've got the middle circle, which is what impacts and we have a little bit of impact on. So it's our circle of influence. That might be other people, it might be our relationships, might be our kids' behavior. We can do some things to influence that, but we can't necessarily have control over that. I think that's where like a lot of what we do on the farm, so we can make a lot of choices to influence our seeding program, yet there is still a lot of it that's outside of our control. And then the middle circle is our circle of control. And that's very, very small because really it's the actions that we're taking each day. And one of the things that was highlighted was coming back to what's in our control might be not like what can we control in our life overall, but what can we control just in the next five minutes? What can we choose to do right now? And I think just that reminder of bringing ourselves back to the present, making that active conscious choice, stepping out of autopilot. Because when there is so much outside of our control, our mind likes to pull us into all of that. And also, like it does like to do problem solving and planning and thinking, right, I'm gonna do all of these things in the future. But sometimes that can build into the overwhelm. So it's really literally what can I do right now? And that might be the practical stuff of right, I'm gonna get out, pen and paper, and do some old school planning of what the next week or two need to look like. I'm gonna plan out what paddocks we need to do, or we might be, by the time this comes out, I think um we'll have a lot of lambs on the ground starting to, goodness me, get into to June time flies when you're having fun, but planning right, how are we going to fit in lamb tailing around seeding and then particularly potentially some lambing, uh, some shearing as well. So sometimes it does need some practical problem solving in there. Or it might be just like, what can I do right now? It's 7.30 at night potentially, the air seeder has broken down, you've tried fixing it, but you can't fix it for now. So what you actually can do, you spend half an hour or 20 minutes playing footy with the kids because the rest of the to-do list has gone out the window. And I think one of the other things that's come up a little bit in the sessions is that idea of are we moving towards our values and how we want to show up, or are we moving away from them? There's lots of different exercises for checking in on this, but even just that simple question, am I moving towards, am I moving away? Sometimes the things that when we're on autopilot particularly, and when our brain is in threat mode and it's steering the ship and we've lost, we've almost lost a bit of control over our actions. A lot of the things that we do take us away from discomfort. They might take us away from pain. It might be chocolate, it might be alcohol, it might be cigarettes, it might be social media scrolling, it might be sarcastic comments and niggling at your partner, or it might be withdrawing completely away from other people. All of those things are really workable in the short term for getting us away from pain, discomfort, feeling bad. But they often also in the process take us away from how we want to be, how we want to show up. So it's that step out of autopilot mode and that step into awareness mode, noticing mode. What am I doing right now? How do I really want to be? What's the the smallest next step I can take as well? And it might just be that reflection, how do I move towards right now? What might a towards mode look like? And again, it doesn't have to be the really complicated things. For one participant, it's making the choice that they're gonna buy a couple of footy tickets over the coming season. So they actually have that motivation to get off farm. Sometimes it's it is the little stuff. It really is the smaller stuff that we can do to help to pull us back. I think the other part, and this is, I guess, probably showing up for me over the process of running these sessions, is that gosh, so often we're not always showing up ideally because stress does build up. We are all, I guess, really, we are all imperfect humans in a complicated world that adds a lot of layers onto what we're experiencing. And as much as we would all like to show up ideally and perfectly and as our ideal selves all the time, it doesn't happen. And so giving ourselves a little bit of grace for when we have gone off track, and then again taking that, there's almost taking that responsibility back in. So not getting in a blame, shame spiral of God, I just yelled at my kids and now I'm the worst mum in the world, and then I'm yelling at them again, and I'm the worst mum in the world, and that that spiral that takes off. But going, okay, I yelled at the kids. What can I now step back into with my responsibility? Can I sit and read with them for an extra 10 minutes tonight? Or is it recognising that my capacity is gone? I'm done for the night, and for all of us to have a nice bedtime, I'm putting an audio book on for them to listen to. As much as we all love that time of me reading to them, I'm done. And so the best choice I could make is for them to have an audiobook. Just that checking in. One of the other things that's come up, and this was one of the episodes I'd planned and I will re-record when I get myself back in line again, is that our values don't always match up either. There is sometimes a push and pull between all of the things that are important to us in our life. And we can't necessarily show up in all of them in full intensity at the same time. Yes, we may value loving and connection in our relationships. We may value hard work and perseverance on the farm. We may value creativity and connection within our off-farm business, but there is not enough time and hours in the day to show up in full capacity in every one of them all the time. So that's where when I talk about values, I come back to just holding one, maybe two, as a compass for how you want to show up. Because if we have a compass with 20 different needles directing us where to head, that gets really confusing and overwhelming. And sometimes we might have different, like different people's compasses. We might have other people also impacting how we show up. And when we get really caught in those stories around, this isn't fair, I've got no choice in this, this is just how I have to do it, it again can feel like I'm things are out of our control. Whereas pulling back to our values, it gives us that chance to check in of, okay, well, how do I want to show up? What's the one thing I can do? I've also just realized I've got a dog that's barking out in the yard. So that may be going through the podcast. But you know what? I'm not stopping. I'm not stopping because I need to get this recorded. And even like, even when it comes to recording this episode right now, it's a push-pull of values. It's a push-pull of what's important. Because there's so many important things that are important. I had a phone call, but I really need to make before school pickup. So I'm getting this done. I'm making that phone call. I need to do a quick grocery shop before I pick the boys up because it's Friday afternoon and a grocery shop with tired, hungry boys always goes haywire. So if I can get that done before I pick them up. But then once I pick them up, we need to head off. So there is just there are always so many balls that we are juggling. And look, honestly, sometimes it is the glass balls that do get dropped. My kitchen's in a bit of chaos and disorder at the moment. But I know that that's still going to be in chaos and disorder when I come back. So for me, it was going right. I know I need to get this recorded and done. It is going to be perfectly imperfect, but hopefully it's going to still be a couple of things that resonate for you. And yeah, just taking action on a couple of the things that just help in what we do next. And just trying to think of any other of the learnings that have come out. Even just the, like seriously, that honestly, the process of doing these sessions has been a massive learning for me in that decision making. So we had set up a beautiful information page, registration options, but I wanted to keep everyone happy and provide options for morning sessions and evening sessions and not put the pressure on to turn up to all four sessions. So you could just do one if you wanted. You could register for this one or that one or all of them. In reflection, too many choices for a population group that is pretty much already making too many choices. So what I probably really should have done was just say, here's the option and sign up for it. So halfway through, I had to make the call because we tried simplifying it a bit, but I still felt the registration process was too tricky. Too many click-throughs that you had to do. But in making the decision to change over just to a straight Zoom sign-up sheet, I had to also let go of a few things. I also had to recognize that for those who had already registered, potentially it was going to make it more complicated for them. And I think it did. So if you'd registered and it made it messy, I'm really sorry about that. I had a conflict in my values of kind of wanting to meet and deliver for those who had already registered, but also wanting to get this program in to as many people as I could as well, not wanting people to miss out. So it was, it was really tricky. But I ended up just having to go, right, let's do it. Let's switch over because the more I ummed and arred over it, the more my mind stewed on it, problem solved through. I couldn't, like I couldn't just think our way through it. At the end, I just had to bite the bullet. Neither response was perfect. I could have just stayed with the registration forms as they were, and we probably would have had a few more trickle through, switched over, and had some more trickle through. Like there was no perfectly right option. There was also no perfectly wrong option. But what I had to do was just make the call and then stick with it. And that's again something that came up in our decision making sessions this week was just sometimes you just got to make the call and then stick with the call you've made, even when it's uncomfortable, even when your mind might be saying, Hey, maybe you should have done this differently. So I think that's another like just little takeaway from what I've been sitting with over the last couple of weeks. The reminder that sometimes we just have to make the decision. Also checking in with what's in our control, what's out of our control. And then just taking the smallest actions. Am I doing what's taking me towards what's important? Am I doing what's taking me away from what's important? So yeah, I'm gonna leave it at that. We're at 15 minutes for once, rather than 30. I'd love to hear from you because we're four sessions in now, two or four, four episodes in, and this is a kind of an eight-part season or eight parts just to get me going with recording this podcast. So please, I would really love to hear back from you on how you've like what resonated, what hits the mark, anything that you'd like more of, anything that you'd like less of. Feel free to reach out to me on social media, stephschmidt.farmlife psych. Send me an email, Steph at stephschmidt.com.au, and yeah, we'll just keep the conversation going. Let's hope tech works in my favour from some point in time. Because I love chatting to you all, even though this is sometimes a weird little like just put it out there and hope for the best. All right, take care and we'll speak to you next time. 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 staffschmidt.com.au or connect quickly on socials at stefschmidt.farmlifeside. I look forward to joining you next time on our next episode of Farm Life Site with Staff Schmidt.