Episode 129 - From burnout to balance

And if people want to look back at your social media pages on Instagram, Abby Ear is your handle, which is nice and easy to find.

But you've also done some great work with FarmStrong too over the years.

And tell us a little bit about some of the tools that you put into practice to help your mental health because you've done such a great job with that.

Yeah, I guess the great thing about FarmStrong is it's kind of got the farmer approach.

Like when we look at looking after our livestock, It's always from like a prevention rather than a cure.

What are we going to do to stop this happening? And I think when we think about health and wellness, it should be the same for us as well.

And so it's about having all these little wee tools so that we're not at the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach, which is kind of, I guess, where I ended up.

And

I

guess what...

yeah,

everyone's trying to fix at the moment, but

yeah.

So what are some of those preventative things that you do that you try and put in place?

For me at the moment, it's just about trying to take a small amount of time out of the day for myself.

And so for me, it's making a hot drink.

At the moment, it's cacao and I just sit down and just sort of take that moment and anyone with kids will understand that maybe sometimes it's 30 seconds and maybe sometimes it's 10 minutes and it's about trying to, I guess, grab those micro bits along the way.

Another thing for us has sort of been I'm not sure if community is the right word, but bringing sort of people together.

It's been a bit harder to do since having my head injury.

But I think, especially on the farm, when you're struggling with the weather, you know that there's probably 10 other people within the radius that are as well.

And it's not until you kind of bring people together and someone might be brave enough to be like, oh yeah, I've had this problem that everyone's like, oh, me too, kind of thing.

Yeah.

So you guys have hosted barbecues and brought people together and been part of that.

You've also done some really great stuff.

I know, Abby, with learning more about breath work and the ability to calm yourself that way and meditation, I guess, a little bit in terms of the breath work and breathing well.