SURVIVE & THRIVE
Being innovative and agile in the face of adversity is a classic Kiwi trait, but some of us don’t just battle through life shocks, we burst through as better people. Over the next few weeks we will tell the stories of survivors, and the lessons they learned. This week, as more than 40 per cent of us agree Covid-19 has placed a stress on our finances, we’re examining how our budgets and careers can best withstand crises.
Being innovative and agile in the face of adversity is a classic Kiwi trait, but what makes some of us thrive rather than just survive? In a series launching today, the Sunday Star-Times investigates how people have survived life shocks, and why some fare better than others in crises. Over the next few weeks we will tell the stories of survivors, and the lessons they learned. We’ll talk to experts about how children will be affected by the pandemic, survivors of disease and crime will teach us about the mental and physical intricacies of overcoming anything, and we examine faith and churches’ role in helping people become stronger. This week, as more than 40 per cent of us agree Covid-19 has placed a stress on our finances, we’re examining how our finances and careers can best withstand crises.
Farmer Doug Avery faced eight years of drought in the 1990s. He laid off staff, cut back stock on his 2400-hectare land, and struggled with depression. The wind hit in 2013. A 225kph torrent destroyed fences and trees. Then, the earthquakes came.
‘‘We were smashed by a magnitude 6.6 earthquake whose epicentre was only a couple of kilometres down the road,’’ Avery later wrote in his 2017 autobiography The Resilient Farmer.
‘‘Our possessions were broken, and sooty bricks ricocheted through the rooms of our beloved home. In November 2016 we had a second earthquake that made the first seem like a pup – 7.8 magnitude. It terrorised our small rural community and deranged the land itself, lifting our entire farm... brought hillsides crashing down and tossed us all around as if we were nothing.’’
But even at his lowest ebb, Avery says he was always looking for solutions. During the drought Avery began researching the benefits of lucerne, a plant they’d always kept, but hadn’t maximised its hydration benefits. And while Avery subsequently spread the word about lucerne to his mates, there was something else he wanted to teach them too: resilience. He reckons you can’t begin to run a business without an understanding of what that really means.
‘‘I’m 65, I’ve had 60 awesome years and five terrible years but those terrible years were the starting point for an unbelievable life,’’ Avery says. The turning point was realising that ‘‘s... happens’’ no matter how hard you work.
‘‘I was broken that, given how hard I’d worked, I didn’t deserve it. Why wasn’t hard work a good enough recipe for a good life? To me resilience is a thing that can be deliberately taught but the greatest way to reach resilience is the constant inoculation of events where you are forced to teach it to yourself.’’
With a new mindset Avery expanded his business interests.
He launched a company, The Resilient Farmer, which unites farming communities through workshops and talks. He wrote a book, does speaking events, and in 2017 was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. The farm is still running – and profitable.
Since the coronavirus pandemic reached New Zealand, Avery has heard stories of broken people, but is heartened by others. Like Cantabrian Larry Waterhouse, who had worked for Bunnings for 20 years but launched his own home improvement business, after losing his job. Or the businesses across the country that, faced with going bust, instead pivoted to new models, selling hand sanitiser or homemade bread kits, and repurposing employees in different roles.
Restaurants began delivering, apps were launched and companies and employees learned how to do business remotely. Avery had heard of out-of-work pilots turning to new careers in farming. ‘‘The sheer humility of their actions will nourish their soul, and they will come roaring out of that place in great nick,’’ Avery reckons.
But quietly, resilience is all around. Day in and day out, people keep on. Three weeks ago, the Sunday Star-Times was inundated with stories of strength and agility after we asked readers about how they survived a life shock. They included tales of marriage breakdowns and custody battles, multiple health scares, sudden deaths, and surviving accidents and injuries. ‘‘What I have learned is this,’’ one wrote, ‘‘don’t try and recreate your old life, that’s gone. You are stronger than you think.’’
Former local body politician Sandra Greig was among the writers who contacted us. Three of her six children had died, she had beaten cancer three times, overcome meningitis, and been a politician for 25 years. She was widowed in 2008.
In 1992 Greig was voted in by
the people of Lower Hutt as a Wellington regional councillor, despite naysayers she worked with telling her she didn’t have enough experience to represent people. She was one of the first women to be voted in, beating out several men in the process, and she was reelected every year until
2016.
‘‘You have to rise above it and do what you think is best for you,’’ Greig says of the decision to forge on, or crumble. ‘‘You have two choices, you either go under while people are stomping on you, or you rise above it. I decided I was going to rise above it.’’
Kathryn Jackson recalls her life U-turn moment. She was sitting in a boardroom in Edinburgh when she had the ‘‘revolting, sinking feeling in your tummy’’ that life was about to change. Working in corporate financial services for the Bank of
Scotland, a strategy presentation was ominously missing Jackson and her team of 14, including a few she had just hired.
‘‘I sat there thinking, ‘my team isn’t there’. You feel your blood go cold and you think, ‘I’ve just lost my job in front of everybody’.’’
What followed was a ‘‘hideous process’’ of having to make her team redundant.
Having married a Kiwi, Jackson saw an opportunity for a new life instead. They moved to New Zealand in 2006 but, even then, life wasn’t smooth sailing. The Global Financial Crisis struck and then the Christchurch earthquakes. The couple and their newborn lost their home and had to move into a shed with a port-a-loo.
‘‘Resilient people understand it’s a temporary point in time. I used to go and walk in the forest and sob my heart out and go, ‘this is not fair, I’m really angry ... this is not how I expected life to go’. But taking control of that and saying, ‘right, how do I want things to be?’ That’s one of the secrets.’’
Jackson became an expert on resilience. She’s written two books, and does coaching, career transition and outplacement services. She says while a few decades ago people used to be loosely sorted into two camps – the resilient who would lead a great life and the ones who weren’t, and didn’t – now it was accepted that everyone has a natural level of resilience, which can be improved. She believes anyone can make a resilient choice.
‘‘Our brains are hard-wired to focus on the bad stuff. If you’ve lost your job, you’ll think it’s awful, dreadful. Your friends will say, ‘how terrible’. The reality is, if you go to the library, for example, and go to the autobiography section, you’ll find heaps of inspiring stories about people whose lives went pear-shaped, and they’ve grown stronger because of what is known as posttraumatic growth.’’
She says hope is a huge factor in whether people see change as an opportunity to move forward, and Avery agrees. He says the foundation for resilience is in connection, love, purpose and hope. ‘‘Hardly anybody goes through life without one of these things severely infringing, but virtually no-one can cope with all those things missing.’’
Reporting: Kelly Dennett, Marty Sharpe, Rachael Kelly.