Who do I want to be in this moment?
It's a simple question. Deceptively simple.
Not "what do I need to do today" or "what's on the list" or "what does the farm need from me right now."
Those are fine questions. Important questions.
But they're questions about tasks and outputs and the endless demands of a farming life.
This question is different. This question is about you.
Who do I want to be in this moment?
Not who have I always been.
Not who does everyone expect me to be.
Not who do I become by default when I'm tired or stressed or running on empty.
But who do I actually want to be. Right now, in this specific situation, with these specific people, in this specific season of my life.
That question changes everything about what comes next.
The difference between showing up and choosing to show up.
Most of us show up to our days on autopilot.
Not because we're lazy or careless. Because we're busy.
Because the farm starts demanding before we've had a chance to decide anything.
Because the default version of ourselves (the one shaped by habit and history and the accumulated weight of everything we're carrying) is always right there, ready to take over before we've had a chance to choose something different.
The default isn't bad exactly. It's just unconscious.
It's who you are when you're not paying attention.
And for a lot of farmers, the default is competent and hardworking and capable, but also reactive, depleted, short-tempered at the wrong moments, present in body but somewhere else in mind.
Choosing to show up is different from just showing up.
It's a moment (before the day starts, before the hard conversation, before the market, before the season, before the meeting with your banker or your farmhand or your spouse) where you stop and ask: who do I want to be here? What version of myself do I want to bring to this?
Steady. Grounded. Patient. Generous. Focused. Open.
The kind of farmer my mentor was.
The parent my kids need today.
The partner my spouse deserves right now.
You get to decide. Before the moment arrives and decides for you.
This is not about performance.
It's worth saying clearly because I know how this can sound.
Deciding in advance who you want to be is not about performing a version of yourself that isn't real.
It's not about putting on a mask or pretending you feel something you don't or being relentlessly positive in the face of things that genuinely deserve a different response.
It's about intention. About deciding, before the chaos starts, what you value and how you want to move through your day and what kind of person you're committed to being even when it's hard.
The distinction matters because intention is internal. It comes from you. It's a commitment you make to yourself about yourself, not a performance for anyone else's benefit.
And that's why it works in a way that external advice almost never does.
Someone telling you to stay calm doesn't make you calm.
Someone telling you to be patient doesn't make you patient.
Those are instructions aimed at the outside of you and they slide right off when the pressure is high enough.
But a decision you make from the inside lands differently.
I choose to be steady today
I choose to show up as the grounded version of myself
I choose to be the kind of farmer who handles hard things with grace
It's yours. You made it. And because you made it you're more likely to remember it when you need it most.
When to ask the question.
The beauty of this practice is that it's not tied to a specific time or ritual. It's not just a morning pages exercise or a meditation practice or something that requires thirty minutes and a quiet space you don't have.
It's a question you can ask anywhere. Anytime. In any amount of space you have available.
At the start of a season. Who do I want to be this growing season? What kind of farmer, what kind of partner, what kind of business owner do I want to bring to the next six months? Setting that intention at the beginning gives you something to return to when the season gets hard. And it will get hard.
Before a hard conversation. Before you talk to your spouse about the finances, before you tell a farmhand they're not working out, before you call the bank about the line of credit, take thirty seconds and ask who you want to be in that conversation. Not what you want to say. Who you want to be.
At the start of a market day. Who do I want to be with my customers today? Generous. Present. The person who remembers their names and asks about their families and means it.
At the start of a hard week. When you can already see that the week ahead is going to ask a lot. When the forecast is bad and the to-do list is impossible and you're already tired before it starts. Who do I want to be this week? What version of myself do I want to be available to my family at the end of each day?
In the quiet before the day starts. Not as a rigid daily practice you have to maintain perfectly, just as a question in the space before the farm takes over. Today, who do I want to be?
What the question actually does.
It moves the locus of control inside.
That's the technical way to say it.
Here's the human way: it reminds you that you are not just a function of your circumstances.
That what happens around you doesn't have to determine who shows up in response to it.
That there is a version of you (available right now, not after you've had more sleep or less stress or a better season) who can choose to be steady, grounded, present, intentional.
That version of you isn't some future self you haven't become yet.
She's available right now. She just needs to be chosen.
The question is the choosing.
And the more you practice asking it, in the small moments, the ordinary moments, the moments that don't seem to require any particular version of yourself, the more available it becomes in the moments that do.
The muscle gets built in the quiet. It gets used in the crisis.
That's the practice. Not a daily ritual you have to be perfect about.
Just a question you keep coming back to.
A commitment you keep making and remaking in the ordinary moments of your farming life. Who do I want to be here?
It compounds.
What happens with my clients who make this question a regular part of how they move through their lives?
They start making different decisions.
Not because they have better information or a better strategy or a clearer plan.
But because the person making the decisions is operating from a different place.
From intention rather than reaction.
From choice rather than default.
They start showing up differently in their relationships.
Because the version of themselves they've been choosing (the patient one, the present one, the one who has something left at the end of the day) is actually showing up.
Not perfectly. Not always. But more often than before.
And over time, something quieter happens.
The chosen version starts to become the default version.
The identity you've been practicing (steady, grounded, intentional) starts to feel like just who you are. Not who you're trying to be.
Who you are.
That's The Becoming in real time. One small choice, made repeatedly, until it's no longer a choice you have to make consciously.
It's just who you've become.
If this resonated, you might also want to read:
The Becoming — The ongoing process of growing into the person your farm and your life need you to be
¿A qué te dedicas? You are not a farmer. You are a person who farms. — The identity work that lives underneath everything else
I am not at the affect of my circumstances — The reactive version of this question — for when things go wrong and you need to find your footing fast
A question worth sitting with today.
Not tomorrow. Not when things slow down. Not when you've figured out the rest of it.
Today. In whatever moment you're in right now.
Who do I want to be here?
If you want to explore what this kind of intentional identity work looks like in a coaching context, I'd love to have that conversation.