STAY CURIOUS AND LIVE MORE
ARE YOU preparing for success or anticipating failure in life? Which of these is your automatic ‘go to’ instinct when faced with a new challenge? Whichever outlook you lean towards will have a huge impact on how you live your life. If your instinct is to anticipate failure then you become the world’s quickest brick layer as you build a metaphorical ‘wall’ between yourself and every challenge. That wall is built in a moment of thought – a millisecond of decisionmaking.
Let’s look at what happens in those milliseconds of thought when a new challenge is presented. I believe two things happen in that moment of decision. Those few milliseconds of thought trigger either ‘avoidance’ or ‘curiosity.’ Triggering ‘avoidance’ is very often triggering a fear of failure, and that leads to the building of the wall.
Imagine if we could trigger ‘curiosity’ rather than ‘avoidance’ for the majority of occasions. This is something that comes with having a flexible mind and not limiting ourselves to living a life based on fear and withdrawal. It takes time and practice to adopt a flexible mindset. But it’s not impossible. As we grow older, we can become set in our ways. Our beliefs about our limitations can prevent us from experiencing new things, from finding new ways to solve problems. When you automatically trigger ‘curiosity’ you are still in the game. That doesn’t mean that you have to commit to the end, it just means you are willing to open yourself to the idea of the challenge and the experience. When faced with your next challenge will you decide in those milliseconds to choose avoid or curious? Our leaders faced ‘avoid or curious’ questions for the past 10 weeks. Pádraig, Sarah and Claire have just two weeks left to stay curious and achieve their goals. What will you do on April 23? Will you sign up for the half marathon or 10km out of curiosity or sit on the couch and hit avoid? We look forward to welcoming more than 1,200 curious people to Wexford Town on April 23. Hopefully you will be one of them. Online entry closes on April 18.
The means test for Farm Assist takes into account virtually every type of income you may have but it assesses different income in different ways.
Your income from farming and other self-employment (like contracting) is assessed as the gross income that you or your spouse may be expected to receive, less any expenses you incur to earn that income. From 8 March 2017, €254 of the income each year is disregarded for each of your two children (it would be €381 for a third or subsequent child). 70% of the balance is assessed (it was 100% up to March 2017).
Payments under rural environmental schemes such as GLAS and SAC are assessed separately from other farm income. €2,540 is deducted from the total amount of all these payments each year and 50% of the remainder is disregarded. Expenses incurred in complying with these environmental measures are then deducted and the balance is assessed as means. Income from an occupational pension or leasing of land or milk quotas is assessed in full. Capital (including any property that you do not live in) is assessed using the formula applied to means-tested social welfare payments.
If you have an off-farm job, €20 per day (up to a maximum of €60 per week) is deducted from your assessable weekly earnings and then 60% of the remainder is assessed as weekly means. Your spouse’s income from employment is assessed in the same way. If you have seasonal work, you are assessed on your earnings only during the period you are actually working.
When you apply for Farm Assist, a social welfare inspector will visit you and ask to see various documents. The inspector will then assess the costs incurred in running the farm. You are entitled to receive a copy of this farm income calculation. You can get detailed information on how farm income is assessed at welfare.ie.
Further information is available from the Citizens Information Centre below.