The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Resourcefulness required
This is my 42nd article for The Courier. It’s also my last. Saying that isn’t a binding contract you understand – never say never – but I feel it’s time for someone else to have a go. Some folk can write every month for all their days and still come up with new thoughts and interesting angles. I can’t. I like to think these 42 have been about hope, positivity and the need for change.
I’ve tried to make them about things we can control, not about the things we can’t. Anyone with the determination to plough through them will have read enough by now, anymore and I’ll just repeat myself.
I feel lucky to be able to farm. I know many people in other jobs that see their careers as a compromise, the price they have to pay to be comfortable. I am doing something I am obsessed by and though it’s far from comfortable, I feel privileged to be able to do it.
I meet many farmers and wonder if there is any other profession in the world that has so many of its workforce so obsessed with the job in hand. It’s not quite the fashionable thing to suggest but are we not extremely blessed by being able to do what we do?
Yet my 42nd article is written in the angriest of atmospheres, where payment delays in BPS are causing great discomfort.
As I hear the frustration with the situation all I can think of is this bloke I once saw explaining about how lobsters grow. You really have to bear with me on this.
The lobster has a shell-type skin – an ecto skeleton. So to grow is complicated.
Apparently a lobster grows inside its shell skin until it pushes against it and starts to feel uncomfortable.
The discomfort forces it to go underneath a rock so it can shed its skin.
A new but bigger and better skin develops in its place. So in order to grow, the lobster has to feel uncomfortable. It’s the discomfort that forces it to change, but the change is for the better.
This probably doesn’t help anyone but I’ve been told by many that good stuff comes from bad stuff happening.
There’s a chap called Tony Robbins. He reckons that if we fail at something or even if things don’t go quite right, we blame a lack of resources – lack of time, lack of money, other people letting us down.
Big Tony has worked with Mandela, Gorbachev and Clinton, he’s worked with global business leaders and elite sportsmen and women. Big Tony is kind of a big deal. He is adamant that lack of resources is never, ever the real problem. The real problem is a lack of resourcefulness.
Resources are things. Resourcefulness is about emotion. You can get the resources if you are resourceful.
If you have no money and you are creative and determined enough, you can get the money.
Importantly resourcefulness is about positive emotion, not negative.
It’s about being in a habit of being positive. The more negative you are, the less resourceful you become, the more likely you will blame a lack of resources. And a lack of resources is never, ever the real problem.
We live in an agricultural age where the tail wags the dog.
Where policy sets the farming agenda. Growing stuff doesn’t get a look in, it’s all about what others are doing to and for us.
It takes our eye off the ball and makes us blame a lack of resources while the very thing that can save us, our resourcefulness, gets forgotten.
This industry is full of the most resourceful of people. This is a great industry crammed with great people. Maybe its time to go under a rock and come out even better than we were before.
Good luck in all that you do.