The Mental Health Crisis Nobody Talks About in Farming

One of the things I want to ask about, because we talk about it a lot here, is this concept of motivation versus discipline.

Yeah.

Anyone can go for a run on the days that they feel motivated and pumped for whatever reason, but they tend to be few and far between.

But the discipline to do it, even though you don't feel like it, still gives the reward and the improvement in mood and the long-term gratification.

How do you deal with, how do you reconcile, how do you identify with that motivation versus discipline argument?

Yeah, so motivation is like putting the key in the ignition and starting the car.

You know, the car fires up, you're ready to go.

Discipline is the tank of fuel that will keep you going.

Motivation is a great tool for when you want to start something.

But it's the consistency side that then leads to the discipline because discipline is a big word and often discipline you think about the discipline of running long distances or the discipline of saying no to things.

Whereas actually it's just consistently doing something that was once, that once required a level of motivation because you can't rely on motivation.

How do you take that into the working world when you're taking the understanding of those concepts in your mental health and fitness world? How do you take that into

the work world? One of the things that I always think back to is my outlook on life and my values come from helping others.

And actually what I've found is that in the world of foreign business consultancy, my role is to try and provide value to others.

Now, one thing that I've always been quite conscious of whenever I share my story is it's very individual to me and what's worked for me might not work for someone else, but there's lessons to be took there.

It's the exact same when you sit down with a client.

Your ideas and your beliefs may not be what the client deems as valuable.

So you have to try and adapt your beliefs to something that can be taken away, implemented.

There's a lot of times where that doesn't happen and I think the crossover between that is being able to walk away from the job at the end of the day and not carry that home with you.

That gap between work and life for some people is across the hallway from their office to their living room.

The drive home for a lot of people is a way to detach from the stress or anything that they've had experienced during that day.

So I always say to people, well, try and get outside and go for a walk or some way to detach from it.

And that's where a lot of the mental health challenges can arise from, especially for farmers, where we're going out to their farms.

We're having quite important business discussions on the kitchen table.

The same place where in four hours dinner's going to be served and the kids are going to be home from school.