Marina Shearer says that when stress and challenging situations stop yourself from responding inappropriately, you need to have strategies on hand to deal with these pressures

But first, an update from last week's discussions about the march of forestry through our farmland. The Government has announced that public consultation is open on how forests are managed through the National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry (NES-PF), which includes,

- giving local councils more control over where forests are planted,

- managing the effects of exotic carbon forestry on nature,

- improving wildfire management in all forests.

They say they will also be addressing the key findings of the Year One Review of the NES-PF and Confirmation that the permanent forest category of the ETS will open on 1 January 2023.

Māori and other technical forestry experts will help lead work to ensure the permanent forest category enables permanent native forestry, in line with the commitment in the Emissions Reduction Plan, the Government says. Damien O'Connor says “This consultation supports the Government’s aim to balance the type and scale of afforestation happening across New Zealand – to get the right tree in the right place.”

”We are addressing concerns about the impacts to the environment and on rural communities from the potential conversion of productive farmland to exotic carbon forests.”

While this might be heading in the right direction – does it go far enough? Well I will take a further look next week at this.

In the meantime, with all this endless policy pressure on farmers it can be a very stressful environment on the farm, and mental health rates and suicide as a percentage are very high. Every now and then I check in with Marina Shearer from Profile Coaching, Marina is a rural woman and farmer and she always has some strategies for stress and the daily pressures that come with farming.

I caught up with Marina Shearer this week and she gave me an insight into Emotional Intelligence or EQ, I asked her about self management and being in control of certain feelings and actions when confronted with a challenging situation.

“It’s not just important to recognise an emotion you have to be able to stop yourself from responding inappropriately.  Maybe you will choose to bite your tongue, or walk away or take some other action that is mature and socially acceptable.  After you have calmed down you might decide to write a letter, or phone someone to discuss the situation; but in the heat of the moment when you know what you are having a reaction to something someone is saying you choose to do nothing until you have thought it through.”

“Our society demands that people have appropriate self regulation and given that we all are frustrated by someone or frustrating to some one there is a lot of give and take required so that we can tolerate each other.  Self Management is my ability to behave in a socially acceptable way.

“Back to the example I shared about the difficult meeting. When I was aware that my body wasn’t happy and that physiologically I was having a reaction to the challenges of the meeting,  I went straight to a Mall and paid for a Chinese Massage to help my body to calm down, since it was clearly telling me that it was in distress. This action brought me to a calmer place, it helped my body to relax and I was able to think less emotionally after I had been assisted to relax.”

“When we can listen to our body and understand what it is saying we can make better choices for what is best for us in that particular moment.  Not everyone will choose a massage but the key is to know what you need to do for you to help you to cope with whatever it is you are dealing with.”

I asked Marina how important situational awareness or self awareness is, and one’s ability to understand others.

“The key word here is empathy.  Can I identify what other people are going through and experiencing and can I put myself in their shoes.   We often see the quote about walking 1000 miles in another persons shoes and it’s like YEAH YEAH I can walk in other people’s shoes.  In my work over the last 30 years I haven’t met a lot of people who actually can walk in other people’s shoes.  They might think they can, they might like the idea of being able to, they might have told themselves that they do; but none of those things equal being competent at empathy.”

“Often in staff training I’ll propose a scenario and ask participants to come up with an empathetic statement and I’m regular disappointed to find that no one in the group has been able to form an effective statement of empathy.  Most times what I hear is a statement about the policy that an organisation has for that situation. “

We all need to take the time and check in on ourselves, there is a lot going on in the rural landscape right now and there are stresses that come with farming can be significant, I would encourage anyone wanting to find out more about todays interview to contact Marina, and I would also encourage anyone who might be struggling mentally to also call the Rural Support Trust, they are on the end of the phone, ready to help.

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Angus Kebbell is the Producer at Tailwind Media. You can contact him here.