Building Resilience with Natalie Hormann

Inside Knowledge

Show Notes – Natalie Hormann

Personal resilience – the ability to cope with stressors, to cope with events that are potentially unpleasant. Community resilience – coloured and varied, tight knit, able to meet its own needs from within. Being resourceful and being able to put yourself in a resourceful state. Important to be able to manage our state.

Pre-traumatic stress – stress in anticipation of what is to happen – as relates to the environment. One component is grief – a feeling of loss in anticipation. Fear for our children. What sort of planet are we going to leave behind?

An underlying level of distress; a certain level of overwhelm, an inability to grasp what is going on, an inability to address it. Issues are on such a huge scale that we can feel powerless.

Burnout amongst environmental activists. Very passionate, taking action on the ground, changing their own lifestyle, being engaged in their communities, as well as working full time. It can get incredibly exhausting.

There are two circles. Your circle of concern (which is huge) – deforestation, pollution, climate change. Within that circle is a smaller circle which is your circle of influence. Get out of your circle of concern and focus instead on your circle of influence. Recycling, not purchasing palm oil, purchasing sustainable timber etc. Bring things into your sphere of power. That is where the satisfaction lies. You can also lobby companies.

Natalie has recently recorded a workshop module on how to influence others. What doesn’t work is preaching. The best way to inspire behaviour change is to give people pleasant experiences. If you want to get people involved in growing food, take them to a community garden, have a party, make it a nice experience. Cook a lovely vegetarian meal for your family.

Story telling is incredibly powerful. Also make it personal. We have a strong tendency to hide behind facts. But this usually invites argument. Telling personal stories about climate change gives it a name, and a face.

Is it worth it? Can I do it? You need to answer both of these questions before people will change.

Natalie grows her own fruit and veg. At the moment a little more than they can cope with. Has just processed 20 kg of peaches in the last few days.

2 acres with an orchard, the gardens, some chickens and some ducks. Using permaculture principles predominantly. It takes a lot less time than you might think to adopt this kind of lifestyle. Endless amounts of resources on the Internet to learn about permaculture. Lots of books. Permaculture course – two weeks full time. Natalie has just finished creating a Green Living Master Class taking you from wherever you are to having all these areas of your life under control.

Grow what you like eating, what you eat a lot of, and what is not cheap to buy.

Using these criteria, you can make your first decision. There are things to grow easier than others. Also learn about seasonality. A lot of the garden centres will sell you all sorts of seedling year-round. If you plant broccoli in summer you won’t be that successful as they will get eaten by butterflies and caterpillars. Stay away from those things that need a greenhouse to grow in. Lots of diversity of crops is good in case something goes wrong with one of the crops – such as a late frost or a storm.

80% is mindset and 20% is skill. Go in with curiosity – give it a go and make it fun.

Natalie’s personal tools for resilience – daily yoga, journaling, mindset work. Knowing what works to put me into a more resourceful state. She likes to sit by the river with her dog. Find out what it is that makes you feel better.

We can change what we do, what we focus on, and the meaning that we give to things – in order to change our mindset.

Instead of just focusing on the problem, start focusing on the solutions. Bring it back to what you can do to make a difference.

Natalie is excited about the opportunity that we have. She also feels blessed because through the work she meets so many people who are all doing that own little thing to bring about a better world. It gives her a lot of hope. We all experience loss and change throughout our lives. Not just related to the environment. Maybe the reasons may now be environmental. All we can really do is to learn our personal resilience and manage our mindset and our ability to cope with these circumstances as best we can. None of us know what is going to happen. Look at things reality but don’t catastrophise them.