You know what self-care practices would help.
You might even have a list. But somehow they’re not happening consistently, or they work for a while, then fall apart. What’s missing?
Knowing what to do isn’t the same as knowing what makes it stick. In this post, I’m breaking down the three essential components that transform scattered good intentions into practices that actually stick: bait, hooks, and fish.
This is the third post in a three-part blog series designed to broaden your understanding of self-care. The goal is to inspire you to create a personalized, sustainable approach that meets your unique needs, which I call a Personal Care Blueprint.
• Part 1 introduces the concept of Personal Care Blueprints (PCB), which differs from simply having a list of things you do for self-care, and explains what I call an under-conciousness.
• Part 2 gives deeper ways of understanding Personal Care Blueprints and introduces the analogy of fishing for self-care to help you begin to think about what could be in your Personal Care Blueprint.
In this third part of the series, we’ll delve deeper into essential yet often overlooked aspects of Personal Care. I’ve gathered these insights from my personal experiences and through my work with clients as both an herbalist and therapist.
Metaphors in Fishing for Self-Care
Fishing involves several elements relevant to lasting self-care. Below I break down the metaphor of fish as sustenance in our Personal Care Blueprints and the tools that make the practice of obtaining that sustenance successful.
The Sustenance of Fishing as Compared to Self-Care
If fish were your primary source of sustenance, you wouldn’t want to wait till you’re hungry to start fishing.
When we’re in touch with wellness-related needs and conscious of what sustains us, we can be prepared for what will sustain us.
You’d probably plan ahead about when you’ll fish, secure your supplies and decide where to go. Otherwise, you’d be fishing in bad shape with an empty stomach and dazed from not being nourished! Similarly, if you wait for body-mind needs to arise, you’ll have to react rather than having a plan in place for your Personal Care needs. You’ll have to react versus having some things already in place for your Personal Care needs.
If you’re already cultivating actions and restoration to sustain yourself, you can more easily adapt these when there’s a curveball in your well-being.
Tools in Fishing as Compared to the Mechanisms in Self-Care
Let’s take a closer look at the tools of fishing, the bait and hooks, and compare them to what you may need for your self-care. These fishing metaphors can be used to flesh out your Personal Care Blueprint.
The Bait & Hooks: They work together!
The bait draws in the fish, and the hook secures them in your life.
The bait holds your attention sufficiently to bring in what you need.
In self-care, the bait is your intentions and inner drive that compel you to engage in self-care activities. Examples of bait:
- I want to live as long as I can with as much comfort, joy, and energy as possible.
- I’m interested in righting what went sideways earlier in my life and/or in previous generations so I can be a cycle-breaker and model what I want the next generation to absorb.
You might think of what happens regularly in your life for your hooks. Sunrise, bedtime, birthdays, Fridays, and so forth.
The hook in self-care is where you plug these activities into your life. It’s the when and how of things that hook your activities into place. It’s what you carve out and dedicate so that opportunities to sustain yourself don’t swim by. Examples of hooks:
- Stretches are hooked into after you brush your teeth
- Scheduling your annual PCP exam in your birthday month hooks a time to re-evaluate a Personal Care need (how something is going related to your mind-body wellness).
- Each time you have that meeting/talk with that person who causes a great deal of stress for you, the post-talk time hooks in a time to use aromatherapy support.
The Fish as Compared to Practices Within Self-Care
In my fishing self-care analogy, the fish are the actual practices and wisdom that nourish, restore, strengthen, and calm your mind-body.
It can be helpful to think about categories of fish/self-care activities in the following categories.
Each care activity that you regularly do holds the potential to attach another activity.
Your Regular Practices
What you already have in place and can leverage to make your Personal Care Blueprint more complete. Examples are eating, doing personal hygiene, and planning your calendar.
How might this look? If you’re going through a stressful time and you want to regularly calm your nervous system, you can do one of those practices right before you eat (which, by the way, may help you digest better!) Examples could be using a ground aromatherapy scent, going for a walk, or using an herbal remedy.
Wisdom-Specific
Oftentimes, wisdom about our Personal Care deeply enriches it.
This is what we learn that guides our Personal Care.
When you gain wisdom from something that someone shares, or that you learn yourself, which helps you think about how you want to do Personal Care, capture it! You capture it by immediately applying it or finding a way to process what you just learned. This could be by discussing it with a friend or journaling about it.
An example of a wisdom-specific fish is:
- If you don’t take control of your life’s boundaries, such as setting aside time and energy for Personal Care, others will determine those boundaries for you. Establishing and maintaining your own parameters is crucial to ensuring that your self-care remains a priority.
Gaining and referencing wisdom will help preserve your self-care practices. It can also ensure that you carry out your Personal Care in a way that aligns with your personal preferences and values.
Supporting Vulnerabilities
This has to do with whatever personal propensities towards dis-ease you may have.
Everyone has body-mind-heart sensitivities to tend to. What are yours?
I don’t just mean disease, I mean anything that causes you to not have ease.
You may have food sensitivities and need to plan your meals. Or you may be someone who takes on a lot of energy from other people, but needs solitude. Or perhaps you are prone to specific injuries, and it helps to exercise particular muscles to protect your body.
Fishing Isn’t a One-and-Done
& Sometimes You Need to Change Your Fish Sources!
Fishing seems ideal when it’s the right fish for the fisherperson. Similarly, your self-care practices will fit you best when you’re aware of your shifting needs.
You may ask yourself, “How are these practices working for me?” The ongoing attentiveness allows you to maintain your body-mind’s needs.
Ready to create your Personal Care Blueprint? Congrats! You may want to read my post on The Ingredients to Self-Care blueprints [coming soon]. And if you need a little support, I’ll soon offer a digital course, and you can get on the list to be notified about it here [coming soon].
