From Stress to Success: Navigating Challenges in the Beef Industry - Calli Thorne
Beef producers often identify as being tough, resilient and hard-working. And quite frankly, I’d have to agree! Yet, no matter how tough and resilient we are we still face highs and lows in our everyday lives and our lifestyle. These events can take a toll on our mindset, mental health and physical health if we let them. Calli Thorne, a cattle producer and mindset coach, shares tips and strategies to help cattle producers navigate the highs and lows of the agriculture lifestyle in this podcast episode.
Let’s look at the agriculture lifestyle from a big picture. It combines legacy, business, finances and a lot of uncontrollables such as the weather and markets. It has moments that make us feel on top of the world and on the bottom. The lows can weigh heavily on a person and have severe impacts if we aren’t equipped to properly manage the stress that is created.
Navigating the lows of life and agriculture starts from within. As cliché as it sounds, mindset truly is everything. Thorne is a certified speaker and coach through the John C. Maxwell team. This gives her the opportunity to work with people of all different lifestyles and apply what she has learned to her own operation too. Thorne helps individuals understand the power of their minds and the impact of choosing which thoughts to put into their heads. “We were faced with drought for several years and we had to decide which thoughts we were going to think. We chose to look for opportunity rather than think about how terrible everything was. Yes, it can be challenging and there are hardships in agriculture but I am just not willing to live my life that way and believe that everything is hard and terrible all the time,” said Thorne. During the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Thorne and her husband made the decision to open their minds to what opportunities were being created instead of focusing on how hard running several businesses and now having to homeschool felt in the moment. They started selling beef directly to consumers and fed over 200 families that year with the 150 animals.
Thorne also leads mental health first aid trainings and helps attendees understand how to not only recognize how they are doing as individuals but also how to engage with others who are experiencing challenging times. “The first thing we need to do is pause and recognize how we are really doing. Oftentimes when we are asked this question, we give the canned answer that everything is good even when it isn’t and don’t allow ourselves time to think about it,” said Thorne. Within agriculture and entrepreneurship, one thought that has been passed down generationally is how hard we need to work to earn our reward and keep things afloat. There needs to be a shift in this thought process. “In agriculture there is always work to be done. We’ve put this mentality in our heads that we just can’t rest, and it comes down to what do we make it mean when we do rest and what are the choices we are going to make when we do allow ourselves to pause and notice how we are really doing,” said Thorne.
Comparison is another driver of stress and negative thoughts. This can be comparing ourselves to neighbors and comparing ourselves to the generations before us. “I think we need to take a pause and look at mental health throughout the generations. In agriculture, people are proud of what they’ve built and the hardships they’ve overcome and that’s okay. We can think about how generations before us put up hay in 100-degree heat without tractors or with tractors that had no cab. However, we need to focus on the now and how our generation and ourselves as individuals are handling mental health. It’s easy to compare throughout the decades and look at how easy we have it compared to previous generations, but it is still hard today,” said Thorne
As you go about your day, take time to pause and be real with yourself about how you are really doing and know that you can choose to put yourself first. Choosing to put yourself first may look like calling it a day a little early, working on a hobby, exercising or anything that helps you lift some of the weight off your shoulders. Your thoughts control your actions and only you can control your thoughts, so how will you choose to think differently about the highs and lows today?
