At first, my plan was to tell you in this story how meaningful and beautiful it is to see with your own eyes how food comes from nature to your plate. But then I realized that before talking more about that, I have to talk about another topic: the importance of self-realization called “I CAN”!
At a first glance, it may seem that winter fishing with nets and getting food from underneath the ice is an everyday thing for our family. In reality, the journey has been quite long for us and we needed many trials and errors to get to this point where things look simple and easy.
Lowering the fishing nets include many phases. You need time and patience when clearing the fishing nets in cold winter weather. This time we survived this couple’s relationship test pretty well!
Of course gathering information and learning in practice has played an important role, but personally, the biggest thing for me has been to realize that I CAN DO this, and if there’s something I don’t know, I CAN LEARN to do it.
As this self-realization was such a major thing for me, I also wanted to highlight it to those who participated in SaimaaLife online course about improving emotional processing skills last autumn. Afterwards, I thought about why did it feel so important. After all, it is a quite obvious: Of course we all can, if we decide so. But there is a big difference between just knowing something, and feeling something to be true from the bottom of your heart.
Only after years of working with myself, I reached that point. But when I did, miracles started to happen: I realized that I CAN overcome my depression, I CAN make a better future – and I CAN learn winter fishing, if I want to.
You can, too. Just like anyone else.
As a small child, I saw my grandfather clearing the fishing nets many times looking very relaxed. No matter the weather, I remember that he was always in good spirits after spending some time on the lake. No wonder that I have the urge to learn these same traditions and include them in my life.
When we are facing something new, fear is often quite near. We are afraid of failing or looking silly.
It is often fear that whispers inside our heads: “No, you can’t do that. It’s the other people who CAN, not you.”
The voice of fear is destructive. Think about it: How many dreams that voice has prevented from becoming true? How many moments of success has it has prevented us from experiencing?
I’ve learned that fear or an uncomfortable feeling that we get in front of something new will always be there, but we can learn to push ourselves over that feeling so that it does not prevent us from doing the things we want.
We managed to lower the nets underneath the ice together. Next time we’ll take more time for clearing and lowering the nets.
Three Ways to Learn Something New in an Encouraging Way:
- Mental training: When you hear yourself saying to yourself “I can’t do this”, consciously replace that with “Yes, I can!”. Repeat that over and over again as long as your mind starts to believe it, too. The famous quote rings very true: “You become what you think.” See this SaimaaLife video for inspiration.
- Practicing self-compassion: When learning something new, you can’t avoid trial and errors. With a compassionate attitude towards yourself, those learning steps don’t feel that bad and you can get over them faster. Don’t be afraid of mistakes, but take them as learning opportunities.
- Patience: Some things we can learn in a day, some in a month, some may take years. The main thing is not to give up, but to keep on going slowly but steadily. A Japanese proverb says “Fall seven times, stand up eight” – The feeling of I can, gives you the strength to stand up after every fall.
The nets have been underneath the ice for five days. It was exciting to see what kind of catch we would get and how much fish would we have to cook for dinner.
Sounds like hard work? It may be, but it’s worth it.
The biggest reward is not the ability to do and experience new things in life. It’s the confidence and feeling of personal growth that you get.
With confidence and personal growth, your life may become more meaningful. Your eyes will open to new possibilities in a new way, which will have a positive effect on your quality of life, as well as the quality of life of your closest ones.
As a fisherman, my husband has better fish cleaning skill than I have so I gave that task happily to him. Instead, I focused on finding a suitable recipe for our catch of the day.
The purpose of this story is not to say that everyone should learn fishing, but as I said in the beginning, I do think that everyone should learn to get food from nature in one way or another. Just because the feeling is amazing when you can do it with your own hands and skills!
Here in Finland, the evenings are still quite dark in February, but little by little the amount of daylight is increasing. In a month, it will be already time to start growing food indoors. Maybe that is also something that you could do, too? If you feel inspired by the idea, check out these SaimaaLife Instructions How to Grow Peashoots Indoors.
The recipe of this delicious fish meal coming up in the next SaimaaLife story!
If you are interested in hearing more about our family’s winter fishing experience, feel free to watch the following video that we made for you!
You can watch this 360° video on mobile by opening this link https://youtu.be/FWQ4ZEOaglM in your Youtube App. For the best experience, use the virtual reality headset!
