Calgary (Rural Roots Canada) – Finding energy to carry out the many tasks on the farm starts with taking small steps.

Michelle Cederberg is a health and productivity expert and the author of the book The Success-Energy Equation.

Cederberg says finding time for yourself is key to maintaining your energy levels in a hectic schedule and that begins by taking small steps.

“Your followers know that farm women, farm people in general, are some of the hardest working people across the country,” Cederberg said.

She says when you are juggling all those things, the usual way of going about things is to put your own needs to the side.

“That’s not going to help you get things done, not only with energy but with mental focus and emotional wellness and all those things that we need to be healthy, so I often push a small steps approach to finding energy.”

Cederberg says listening to your body is number one because it’s a pretty intuitive piece of machinery.

She says you have to stop and have a cup of tea or even stop long enough for a bathroom break.

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She says we often tune out signs that our body is giving us.

“It will send you all sorts of signals when it needs a rest.”

Cederberg says some of the best examples are when something requires mental focus, like reading or solving a problem.

“Sometimes, if you’re reading the same sentence over and over again or you’re trying to solve a simple problem, and the solution is eluding you, we get distracted easily by things that aren’t necessarily important.  So we might find ourselves reaching for a phone and scrolling because we don’t have the mental capacity to do the work. We might find ourselves getting irritable with the people around us.”

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Cederberg understands it can be hard to take time for yourself when you live an agricultural lifestyle.

“Sometimes, if you work on a farm, your time is not your own. The harvest is happening, and the only thing that you can do is have your focus there. The weather is about to shift, and you got to get the crops off. The emergencies come up, and there’s nothing else you can do but tend to that emergency right now because that can happen sometimes daily in agricultural life.”

She points out you have to take the moments when you have them.

Cederberg presented at the virtual Advancing Women in Agriculture Conference in November.