How to Self-Water 🌱

Meet your new favorite form of self-care

Once upon an evening, I was having virtual coffee with a brilliant friend who’s getting her psychology degree and training to become a counselor. I mentioned I was feeling depleted. She asked me why, and when I explained the day’s stressors, she said, “What have you done to self-water today?” What followed was as enlightening a conversation as any therapy session. I instantly wished someone had taught me to do this earlier in life!

So, What is Self-Watering?

A self-watering activity is something that you get genuine joy out of doing. It can be as mundane as making a cup of tea or as ambitious as painting a portrait. The idea of building a self-watering habit is about paying attention to negative emotions or stressors during your week and then being able to pick from a menu of feel-good stress-busting activities when a particular mood (like overwhelm or loneliness) strikes you.

For example, if you’re feeling anxious or overstimulated maybe you would choose a walk in the park or swimming laps to self-water. If you’re feeling bored, a podcast or a coffee with friends could be best. The key is to make it highly individual: only the things you truly enjoy doing can ‘water’ and rebalance you. Do you enjoy doing 700-piece puzzles, playing pickleball, or cosplay? Knitting cozies? Trying new kinds of hot cocoa? It’s all good! Lean right into those things.

➡️ Here’s a template for setting yourself up to self-water ⬅️

Filling it out is very simple:

1. For each emotion listed (or for any that you want to add) write a few things that make you feel good when you do them. Remember to be very specific! It’s good to have a lot of activities that take less than 30 minutes, with some longer ones sprinkled in as well.

2. Keep the page on hand (maybe as a tab that’s open in your browser) to pull from over the course of the next week.

Here’s what a filled out Self-Watering list might look like:

Because most of us don’t recognize or acknowledge the challenging emotions that we face on a daily basis, it can be difficult at first to match up the right activity to the right emotion. Try tweaking your list of activities after the first week to see even better results.

This exercise can also help you identify things you may have been using as a crutch until now, but that you want to change. For example, if you’ve been going on Instagram or eating mindlessly to recharge your batteries when feeling blah, you may want to mix it up and give some other activities a try. Preparing your own tailored list gives you more options and puts you in the driver’s seat to better manage difficult emotions or situations that happen repeatedly.

Lastly, let us know if this template worked for you! Did you feel different at the end of your week of self-watering? Tell me about it here in the comments, or in a Groove. I’m looking forward to hearing about the quirky little things that you get joy out of doing — and I’m sure other Groovers will too.

Looking for more Groovy content? Check these out:

1. Solopreneur-ing with ADHD (Part Two)
2. One Year of Building Community in Groove
3. Or, if you’re looking to make working solo ➡️ social, cruise on over to groove.ooo to join our beta community 🏄🏼