Free Lunchtime Chats To Boost Farmer Resilience

Three of New Zealand’s foremost motivational speakers on resilience and mental wellbeing will offer tips for farmers and growers in a series of free online lunchtime talks.

Isolation and the sometimes stressful nature of agriculture, with severe weather and volatile trading conditions out of their control, puts pressure on rural families.

"The added restrictions, health risks and supply chain issues of COVID-19 have added another significant layer to that stress burden," Federated Farmers employment spokesperson Chris Lewis says.

That’s why Feds, along with the Dairy Women’s Network and DairyNZ, were delighted when a bid for funding from Worksafe’s COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund was successful.

The funding underpins the Federated Farmers speaker and Q&A series featuring Dr Lucy Hone (25 January), Dr Paul Wood (1 February) and Dr Tom Mulholland (8 February), and follow-up workshops hosted by the Dairy Women’s Network and DairyNZ.

"It would be hard to find a more down-to-earth, practical and inspiring line-up of speakers on the topic of handling adversity than these three," Chris says.

"They speak from the heart, from personal experience and from sound knowledge and research."

- Dr Lucy Hone kicks off the series on 25 January talking about ‘Secrets of Resilient People’. The Co-director of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience and adjunct senior fellow at the University of Canterbury, Lucy speaks at global conferences, creates online courses, writes books ( Resilient Grieving is a best-seller), academic articles and blogs to spread her insights far and wide. Her PhD was acknowledged internationally for its outstanding contribution to wellbeing science and her research is published in leading psychology journals.

- Next up is Dr Paul Wood on 1st February with "The Challenge of Change". Paul is an expert in helping people and organisations strive towards their potential and flourish through change and adversity. He works with everyone from senior leaders at Google to at risk-teens. He is a regular contributor in the media, an author, and his recently released second book, "Mental Fitness; Build your mind for strength and resilience every day", was another best-seller. Paul’s passion for the pursuit of excellence and turning adversity to advantage comes from his own journey from delinquent to Doctor of Psychology. Paul uses this journey to illustrate key lessons for us all.

- The final Feds series speaker is Dr Tom Mulholland on 8 February with "The Power of Healthy Thinking". For the past 30 years Tom has led an expeditionary clinical life. From working clinically in hospitals, surf camps and on Russian icebreakers and being the first ambassador for Farmstrong, he has seen the highs and lows of the human condition. An emergency medicine hospital doctor and Rural GP, since 2014 he has been touring NZ in his retro chevy ambulance trying to keep people out of hospital in rural areas. He is the founder of the Healthy Thinking Institute, has written two internationally bestselling books, and founded the Kynd wellness app www.kyndwellness.com used by the likes of PGG Wrightson. His aim is to get 10,000 farmers to measure, monitor and manage their health and wellbeing risk using the KYND app.

Farmers and other rural folk who tune in to the speaker series will get a chance to ask questions of the experts.

Feds has secured as MC Matt Chisholm, the television journalist who wrote Imposter, his personal story of being the boy from small-town Central Otago, whose favourite activity was farming, and who never felt he belonged in the world of TV.

People can register for any or all of the talks here: https://www.fedsnews.co.nz/free-lunchtime-chats-to-boost-farmer-resilience/

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