While non-farmers make their lists of food, drink and exercise improvements, farmers are making their lists of farm improvements for 2015.Mental and written notes are being made on the slips and mistakes of 2014 with resolutions to improve in 2015.

Farmers make scores of decisions each day of the year. Selling decisions, buying decisions, cropping decisions, building decisions, financial decisions, dosing decisions, grazing decisions, crossing the road decisions and pulling a calf decisions. It's all decisions, decisions, decisions!

Farmers are often lone operators and have to learn early in life that they will sometimes make a wrong call and have to learn how to cope with that without beating ourselves up too much. But it’s never easy.

Life or death

Decisions around animal birthing events are the most difficult. Getting these decisions wrong can be a matter of life or death, of joy or despair. Happy the house where life has won and gloomy the one where life has gone.

Grief and self-recrimination are important and mustn't be denied, but we must learn ways of moving on, of focusing on the routine, of focusing on the rest of our animals, of focusing on the positive and of resolving to get it right next time.

I once heard a successful business man say that a good manager is one who gets decisions right 51% of the time. He said that without any management, events have a 50% chance of going wrong or going right. If they go 51% right then the manager is having a positive effect and little by little success can grow. I have found this idea very useful and consoling in coping with wrong decisions made on various fronts.

Resilience

Personal and farming resilience is the capacity to survive hard knocks. It is the capacity to move on from a setback, to get over a loss, to get back up on the horse that threw you, or choose a different one.

It is also the capacity to recognise and assess risk in advance, and to prepare, so that every plan A has a backup Plan B. Make a personal commitment to take steps to consider and increase the resilience of ourselves and our farms.

Yesterday is history and tomorrow is a mystery. Our natural and our economic environment is far from stable so beware of those who advise the future with certainty. Instead, build resilience by considering what events might arise in 2015 and beyond, weigh up their implications and build stacks of Plan B's around the place.