Fishing as an Analogy for Self-Care

I’ll bet there are times that you dig in deep into your self-care and times that you gloss over or abandon it.

This is part 2 of a series of 3 blogs and here I’ll use an analogy to help you develop a personalized self-care framework that transcends traditional methods.

In the first post of this series, I shared my struggle to incorporate self-care guidance from my acupuncturist. I had yet to understand my Personal Care needs and address my under-conciousness.

Now I’m showing you what I started to put into place. You’ll learn to envision a sustainable, enjoyable structure that prioritizes your needs and becomes your own Personal Care Blueprint (if you haven’t yet read my piece on that topic check it out here or see the table below because this writing will build on it).

The Difference Between Disjointed Self-Care

and a Personal Care Blueprint

If you sometimes find yourself in a game of whacka-mo trying to put out little fires related to your wellness to restore more comfort and calm, you may benefit from having a blueprint that you built, as opposed to practices that are imposed on you and disconnected from what’s personally meaningful.

A personal care blueprint anchors self-care doings into what’s pleasurable and realistic for your life.

2 column table. Left side describes disjointed self-care as Lacks intentions & Routines lack joy, More prone to stress and overwhelm & Difficult to establish layers of care, and Vulnerable to oversights related to identity, accessibility needs, and trauma-sensitivity. Right column describes Personal Care Blueprint as Has intentions & Cultivates values and joyfulness that speak to you, Easier to conceptualize Feasibility incorporates layers of care, and More likely to be affirming of identity, accessibility needs and trauma-sensitivity. Lower left image of checklist on clipboard. Upper right image of blueprint

Disjointed self-care is where most of us start; it’s a checklist of things to do. A Personal Care Blueprint is a cohesive set of practices that are woven into key points in your days, weeks, and months that are grounded in intentions and uniquely yours.

So many forces in our lives will draw attention and time away from our needs if we don’t carve self-care into a cohesive framework that matches the reality of our lives. We need community to reinforce our resistance to forces that separate us from bandwidth for our collective and individual care needs.

In Personal Care Blueprints, I describe what tends to make such frameworks viable and carry joy.

Now let’s get to some metaphor to flesh out your own Personal Care Blueprint!

What’s in the Personal Care Blueprint?

Self-care can be compared to fishing—attracting nourishment and sustenance. Like a fisherperson who values the quality and quantity of fish, we need to attract practices and wisdom that allow us to be nourished and sustained. Self-care is referenced as a singular thing, yet truly maintaining ourselves is a layered process that means more than one thing.

Drawing from this analogy, Personal Care a Blueprint contains:

Bait- your intentions that ‘flavor’ and make your self-care practices appetizing
Hooks- places in your life that your practices could intuitively fit and hook in
Fish- the actual practices and wisdom that guide your body-mind’s well-being

(I’ll go into that list in greater detail in the next post.) For now, consider this: like the fisherperson who wants an abundance of quality fish and is excited about a good catch, we want our personal care to be abundant and feel good (like *really* good) so that we develop an affinity for our self-care practices.

When we crave what nourishes us, self-care more readily becomes wholesome, robust, and sustainable.

The Fishing Analogy & What Can Transform

If you’ve ever planned a trip and didn’t pack early enough to avoid the day-before-departure-crunch, you know a particular experience of stress that can lead to not having what you need. That crunch can be a sobering reality check that it takes us a while to anticipate and plan for all our needs, which is sort of what packing is!

I experienced a number of these moments where I started to notice lost opportunities to create more calm and meet Personal Care needs. Without those built in, you may notice things like what are on the left side of the table below.

2 column 3 row table. Left side lists examples of not having a personal care blueprint: No transition time. Daytime stimulation eats into nighttime restoration, leading to less ideal sleep. Personal tasks that accumulate. Ex: sorting mail, doing laundry, scheduling an annual exam. Can lead to feelings of being rushed & preoccupation that lowers the quality of time spent with loved ones or on leisure activities. Experiencing disorganization, or inconsistency in aspects of life that matter to you. This could be managing physical clutter, maintaining a routine, or responding to communications. Can impact overall well-being. Right side lists examples of having a personal care blueprint. Intentional transitions reduce buildup of stress in your days and ready your system for what’s next and improved restoration. Tasks happen in containers you’ve created that feel more manageable and don’t bleed into other precious things. Tasks go in tandem with your priorities so you feel aligned with how you want to show up for yourself and community. (Or as much as is possible and being at peace with that.) Lower left: graphic of stress meter pointing to high stress. Right side of graph: Stalks of the herb Tulsi with its leaves and flowers.

This table shows examples of what can transform. The herb on the right is Tulsi/Holy Basil. This herb can bring down anxiety while uplifting a mood. I think it really captures what PCBs can offer! 🙂

A Personal Care Blueprint won’t totally smooth over all of your life’s kinks, nor will it quell all the structural issues you may be navigating.

Having a framework for your Personal Care can shield you from neglecting your needs and reduce distractions that cause oversight. Crafting a Personal Care Blueprint encourages awareness and a delicious kindness to yourself to support your unique well-being.

Fleshing Out the Fishing Analogy: What Does Part 3 of This Series Hold?

In the first post of this series, I described being at an acupuncture appointment where I was given exercises to maintain care for my back and how I knew I wasn’t going to do them. Through the years following that acupuncture appointment, I started to harness my disappointment of lost Personal-Care-opportunities and transformed it into motivation and focus on what I needed to feel well and be well.

And when health stuff that needed more attention from me came up, while it was never easy, I saw how it would have been much harder if I hadn’t fleshed out a Personal Care Blueprint prior.

Do you want more details of what can be in a Personal Care Blueprint? Check out the third and final post where I do a deep dive into your potential bait and fish! [coming soon]