Self-Care Action Plan

Congratulations on making it this far! It’s time to make your Self-Care Action Plan!

It is crucial to take the time to get to know yourself – what your mind, body, and soul needs in order to function at your highest level. The key is what works for you; you need a customized plan that takes into consideration your past experiences and traumas, your current emotions, and your stress and anxiety levels. This should inform the plan you create. Plans do not have to be linear and can be fluid; they can change as your needs change. The most important thing is to be kind to yourself. Being mindful and consistent with your self-care is integral to preventing or reducing stress, and to enhancing your overall well-being over time.

Are you stressed?

Step 1 of your Plan is to determine your stress level. While you may have (hopefully have!) participated in assessing your stress in the Assess Your Stress section, here are some reminders to review what stress can look like.

Physical

• Fatigue, headaches, sleeplessness, problems concentrating muscle tension, hypertension

Psychological/Emotional

• General uneasiness, depression, negativity, cynical, nervous, anxious, helpless, overworked, under appreciated

Behavioral

• Procrastination, impatience, short temper, low productivity, withdrawal, being preoccupied, complaining frequently

What is stressing you out?

Step 2 is to identify stressors that may be causing you stress. Some examples include:

• Covid-19, personal health issues, work situations, lack of time, money problems, accelerated change, unrealistic workload or demands, loss of job

How do you cope?

Step 3 helps you identify how you typically cope with stress by reviewing your self-care behaviors. This Self-Care Check-In Worksheet can help you to recognize the coping strategies you currently use and assess whether they are positive or negative for your well-being. It might give you inspiration for more ideas to enhance your well-being. Take special note of things that you would like to add to your self-care practice; these will be added to your Self-Care Action Plan. Try to make sure that each domain of self-care is in balance. Add things that aren’t on the list that work for you at the end. One of the goals of your Plan can be to decrease or eliminate all-together a negative coping strategy or bad habit.

Put it all together – Your Self-Care Action Plan.

Step 4 is to create your Self-Care Action Plan. You can access a fillable Self-Care Action Plan here; feel free to download it so you can refer to it in the future.

Use your Self-Care Check-In Worksheet from Step 3 to identify would you want to add to your self-care practice in each of the self-care domains. Think about what some of the barriers are that you may encounter, and brainstorm about how you can address them. If you’ve decided to limit or eliminate a negative coping strategy that you currently engage in, write it down, too. By keeping this Plan you’ll be able to revise it as your life changes.

The following is an example of how to use your Self-Care Action Plan and what it could look like. The Self-Care Strategies are just a few examples; there are more suggestions on the Self-Care Check-In.

Do it!

Step 5 is to actually follow your Self-Care Action Plan.

Obviously doing all of the work to make a Self-Care Action Plan is worthless if you don’t do any of it. Your success depends upon implementing your plan and following through with it. If you keep track of your progress, it will help your commitment to the Plan as you see your successes and recognize those things that need more work, because you can revise your Plan as needed.

Remember that self-care will always be a work in progress and will ebb and flow over your lifetime! All the best to you on your journey!