The Parenting Coach Podcast with Crystal

S05|14 - Habits for Women (and not getting stuck in perfectionism)

Oct 17, 2022

Monica Packer is passionate about teaching practical-but-deep transformation. As a podcaster and coach, she guides women to find sustainable growth by adopting progress over perfection. Monica is a former middle school teacher, a forever Oprah fangirl, a perpetual cookie dough maker, and an ambitious walker (last one is a joke . . . sort of). 

You can find more about Monica at aboutprogress.com and by listening to her podcast, About Progress.

What we talk about today:

  • What perfectionism is and how it shows up in our life
  • Perfectionism keeping us stuck from aligning our life to who we really are
  • How habits have been taught traditionally and why that might not be the best way for us (especially as females/moms)
  • Changing our ideas of habits around consistency and opening up our minds to a new way of habit-forming

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Coaching has changed my own life, and the lives of my clients. More connection, more healing, more harmony and peace in our most important relationships. It increases confidence in any parenting challenges and helps you be the guide to teach your children the family values that are important to you- in clear ways. If you feel called to integrate this work in a deeper way and become a parenting expert, that’s what I’m here for.

My coaching program: click here
Find me on the ‘gram: @the.parenting.coach
Work with me 1:1: click here
Website: click here

 

 

Episode Transcript

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hi, I'm Crystal The Parenting Coach. Parenting is the thing that some of us just expected to know how to do. It's not like other areas of your life where you go to school to be taught, get on the job training, or have mentors to help you learn. Now, you can get that help here.

I believe that your relationship with your children is one of the most important aspects of your life, and the best way that you can make a positive impact on the world and on the future. I've made parental relationships my life study, and use life coaching tools with connection-based parenting to build amazing relationships between parents and their children. 

If you want an even better relationship with your child, this podcast will help you. Take my Parenting Quiz, the link is in the show notes. Once we know what your parenting style is, I'll give you some tips tailored to you and a roadmap to help you get the most out of my podcast. I invite you to help me spread the word by sharing your favorite episode on social media or with a friend. 

 

Habits for Women (and not getting stuck in perfectionism).

 

What Monica Packer does and how she got started

Monica Packer is passionate about teaching practical-but-deep transformation. As a podcaster and coach, she guides women to find sustainable growth by adopting progress over perfection. Monica is a former middle school teacher, a forever Oprah fangirl, a perpetual cookie dough maker, and an ambitious walker (last one is a joke . . . sort of).

You can find more about Monica at aboutprogress.com and by listening to her podcast, About Progress. 

Hi, Monica. Welcome to the podcast today.

 

Monica Packer: I'm excited to be here again. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I'm excited again too because you're my first repeat guest. 

 

Monica Packer: Ooh, that feels great.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: It feels crazy that I've had my podcast around for this long that I can like actually have somebody on again. But Monica and I had a conversation that was awesome about a year ago, just under a year ago. 

And it was such a great conversation, and I saw her posting on Instagram recently more about habits and habits…and just how we do them differently as females. And so, I wanted to really get on and have a conversation about that. 

Before we dig into habits and all the things, I'd love for you just to reintroduce yourself, just tell our guests kind of what you do and also a little bit about how you got into doing this in the first place. 

 

Monica Packer: Sure. So, I'm primarily known as a podcaster at About Progress; and it's a personal development podcast and community that is focused on growth outside of perfectionism, which is all going back to my own path of really being bound by perfectionism and both types. 

And there's the whole spectrum of it, but there's the overachieving and underachieving kind, and everything in between; and I was all of the above. And trying to find a new way to grow and to also find myself again outside of, you know, perfectionism and shoulds. 

And a large part of that was actually spurred by how I recognized I wasn't showing up to motherhood as myself, that I was someone different and it wasn't someone I liked either. 

And, you know, having those moments is what helped me see that I was stuck and I was lost and I was still on the sidelines of my life because of perfectionism; and working back to find myself again, to grow, to develop myself, to support myself better--  

I mean, the biggest why behind that was so that I could show up as the mom I wanted to be and that I knew I could be. And that's, of course, an ever-ongoing path of constantly working on yourself and also working in your parenting. 

But I can say with confidence, you know, almost seven years later after I started this, that I am far more myself as a parent than I was seven years ago; and I am so much more fulfilled by motherhood and feel really confident in my parenting. And it all goes back to this route of progress over perfection, even with getting to know myself and support myself. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Oh, that is so good and exactly what we talk about on this podcast. I'm so glad that I had you on here. But yeah, it is like, that was my journey also; just kind of, finding like, this is not, I am not parenting in the way that I always thought that I would and that I wanted to. And like it was so unaligned that I just felt so much dissonance all the time between like who I viewed myself as and who I was showing up as.

 

What perfectionism is and how it shows up in our life

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I would love for you to, before we dig into the next question, talk a little bit about perfectionism. Like, if somebody's on the podcast and they're like, 'But what does that actually look like?' Like if they don't really know that term? 

 

Monica Packer: A lot of people automatically think perfectionism looks like someone who has it all together; it's almost always the opposite. They might—

They might appear to have it together – there's that type – and they do not inside. Or they are on the sidelines' version; they don't have their lives together because they're only going for this all of the all-or-nothing model that we've been taught our whole lives and that we've internalized as the way to grow and to be better.

And so, that's a big-- That's a big thing that you're asking right there, because it looks different for every person, but the root of it is holding up a shield of, you know, I call it The Shield Of Perfectionism and actually comes from Brené Brown's work too, but it's holding up the shield that basically prevents you from being seen and seeing others. And it's all based in this fear of not being enough. 

Either way you slice it, you are basing your worth on your outcomes, whether they're the outcomes you are working so hard to get – and they'll never be good enough, just as a spoiler alert. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. 

 

Monica Packer: Or the outcomes you think are representative of how awful of a human you are. You're misplacing your identity as your outcomes. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. We really tie our self-worth to productivity, I think, so much so as women. We're just like, if we do things that are amazing, then, you know, we feel better about ourselves when we have a bad day and we don't do all the things we feel bad about ourselves

And like what you said, it's never enough, our brain will never intentionally just be like, 'Okay, you finally reached enoughness, you can feel good about yourself' just on its own. 

 

Monica Packer: Yeah. Yeah. You never arrive. And owning that for many new recovering perfectionists is really kind of depressing, like a depressing thought. Like, 'You mean I never arrive, I never get there?' 

But as you really embrace that limitation – like that you will never arrive – it changes the game for you because not only can you choose progress over perfection and actually grow exponentially more that way, which I would say I 100% have…but also like, it's exciting. Like your potential becomes limitless. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. And because there is no 'arrive' then, like you're already there. 

 

Monica Packer: Yeah. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: You're like, 'Oh, wait, like this is it.' Like, 'I'm here already and I don't need to become a totally different person to love myself and accept myself.' 

 

Perfectionism keeping us stuck from aligning our life to who we really are

Monica Packer: One of the biggest lessons that has come from the last seven years is, for me, that the transformation lies in the process, not the outcome. It's not the outcome or even lack of an outcome that transforms me – that makes it all worth it, that helps me to be the person I want to be – it's the process of getting there.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Wow. It's so much more about the journey and we're just like, 'When we get to there, then I can feel good about myself.' 

But that goal post is constantly changing. We get closer to it and we're like, 'Oh, no, no, no…when I reach that like business goal or when I reach that whatever goal, or when I reach that weight, or when I exercise every day for 30 days…then I'll feel good about myself.' 

But the closer you get to it, your brain just starts shifting that, and it's like, 'But you should actually do it for longer, you should actually get more.' And you never actually arrive to that feeling of relief of like, 'Yep, everything's okay and good in the world.'

 

Monica Packer: Yeah. You're nailing it. And one thing that is really interesting about this too is that when-- You know, we talked about accepting it, but there are circumstances that do matter too. 

Like, it's not an either/or thing. It's not just the transformation in the process, but it's also like recognizing there are factors in my life that do need to improve so that I can feel more supported as I'm working through this process, so that--  

Some of it can be just purely, like I said, it's circumstantial…like financial or, you know, a child that really needs help and you need support and you need to hire a coach or a therapist. But it can be as simple as you having a habit that you need so that you can be, again, more supported as you're working through the process too.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. It's totally both, right? It's like, 'Here, I'm going to hold myself and I'm going to love myself, and I'm going to believe in my value and my worth, and like do the healing that's necessary…but also how can I support myself during this? Like, what systems and processes and people can I have around me to help me in that journey?' 

Because you can't just like go heal yourself without anything – no help, no support, no guidance. 

 

Monica Packer: You can, it'll just take a really long time. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. 

 

Monica Packer: It'll take a really long time. Yeah. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. Okay. Thank you for-- Thank you for indulging me in that because I love talking about perfectionism. And I often like, I think in the Coaching, podcasting, self-help world, we use a lot of terminology that we kind of just take for granted that everybody knows. Like, I was talking to somebody about people-pleasing the other day; and they're like, what is that? 

And I was like, 'Yeah, I guess that's not-- not everybody just talks about perfectionism all the time.' 

 

Monica Packer: Sure. That's a good point. Yeah. I need to think about more about that.

 

How habits have been taught traditionally and why that might not be the best way for us (especially as females/moms)

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. So, my first question for you is, I would love to talk about habits; and I want to talk first about how habits have been taught more traditionally – or like what we think of as habits being in the way that they've kind of always been taught forever, before we dig into some different ways to think about habits. 

 

Monica Packer: So, I actually want to tie this to something I think your audience knows really well – and I know really well too – is when you come into parenting, you have ways that you just know are the way to parent. Like how to get your kids on schedules, how to help them sleep better, how to raise them so they're not entitled, how to have allowances. 

Like, you know, you have these just like built-in ideas of what it should look like. And for many of us in parenting, especially if you have kids with unique needs or unique personalities, you find that the books and the rule books and the internalized prescriptions and shoulds aren't working in real time. 

And then you blame yourself because you just think, 'Well, I'm not doing this right' or 'It just must be something especially broken about me that these like amazing expert research-led methods for parenting aren't working for me'. 

But hopefully, you know, if they're listening to this show, I'm hopefully hoping that they have gotten to this point…you come to realize that there's other ways and that there's different ways; and they are more tailored, designed to your life and your child's life. 

And how unique and different that is, than maybe all the research that they had backed their parenting techniques on. I definitely felt that way with one child in particular-- I have two kids with special needs, in particular, but one especially is neurotypical. I have one that's neurodiverse, but he's neurotypical and he is my most challenging child. 

And it's mostly because of the emotional variance and discipline has to look different for him. And that has been really difficult to wrap our heads around. But once we fully owned that, then he's become, I would say, a different kid. But actually, it's more he's become himself. 

So, with that lens in mind, that's what's going on with habit formation. Now, I could give you at least a 20-minute spill on all the ways we've been taught, like how habits are supposed to, like habit formation…but to distill it down to one example, the one I like to use is just asking a simple question. And the question is, how long does it take to form a habit? And everyone, everyone I've ever asked this question to has a number in mind. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: 28 days. 

 

Monica Packer: How many did you say? 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: 28 days. 

 

Monica Packer: 28. Yeah. So, most people say 21, 28, or even 100 days. Okay? 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. 

 

Monica Packer: Because some research says that, right? 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. 

 

Monica Packer: This is an example of a habit formation method that we've all internalized and we're trying to follow that for most women do not work because it relies on 100% rigid consistency, a kind of consistency that we as women cannot rely on in the way that it's taught. So, the fundamental part of why this example, why it doesn't work for women is because the way they define consistency is wrong for us.

And so, that really-- I could teach you all about that, but I think if we can just use that as an example and I want you to then open yourself up and then think about the connections to parenting that you've already experienced in your life about how there's some fear in letting go of these old methods. Especially because they work for some people, or at least in our minds, we think everybody, it works for everybody. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. 

 

Monica Packer: It does not, I'm telling you. I've got thousands of podcast listeners and hundreds of women I've coached on this that can tell you you're not alone and these methods not working for you. 

And I actually have researched back reasons on why that is…but if that one example can just free you up to just know, huh, maybe there's a possibility that these methods, they might be so popular, there's all these books on them – and believe me, I read them all – and they're research-backed and people are talking about them all the time; but they aren't right for me

If you can open yourself up to that, then I think you're going to begin to see the power in doing things differently, and that's something you can do. And in doing it differently, you're going to also find that you're not to blame as much as you thought you were. 

And even that shift alone opens up so many doors for women especially – oh, I guess and say, including habit formation. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. This is really fascinating because I talk a lot on my podcast about doing things in a different way – kind of like leaning into, you know, cycles, like cycle tracking. We had a couple podcast episodes on that or just like--  

 

Monica Packer: Fascinating.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: -more feminine energy versus masculine energy.

 

Changing our ideas of habits around consistency and opening up our minds to a new way of habit-forming

Crystal The Parenting Coach: But I'm struggling to understand, so I'm like, okay, if I give up the idea that I have to be consistent to achievable-- Let's just use 'movement', for instance. Like, I want to try to exercise every day or whatever. 

And in my mind, that looks like it has to be at the same day and the same time, and the same kind of workout or some sort of rotational schedule of working out. That if I give up that idea of consistency, that I'll still be able to achieve the outcome that I want, which is to like be more fit. 

 

Monica Packer: So, let's level on this 'consistency' piece, because the truth is habits do still live and die by consistency, but we've been taught consistency wrong. And so, let's start by just redefining what consistency is. This is obviously my definition, but again, I have lots of experience and work to back this up.

And maybe this is a definition you can open yourself up to; Consistency is doing your best most of the time over time.

 

Two factors that make consistency more applicable to women

And there's two factors here that make it especially applicable to women. 

 

 

  • Your 'Best'

 

One is your best. Your best is allowed to change. It's allowed to change season to season. And I mean that literally or figuratively; like from summer to fall, your best is going to look different. My habits are different in the summer than they are in the fall, the same habits. They have some flexibility in there. 

But also, my best can change day-to-day. You talked about cycle tracking. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Mm-hmm. 

 

Monica Packer: You know, honoring that cycle tracking means that you also have to have flexibility with your habits so that you can honor what your body needs. Right? But even just having circumstances come up…like a kid getting sick or, a new sport season starting, a kid's up all night – things like that, your best is allowed to cha to change.

So, it means, it's allowed to be flexible. Okay? And I can teach you more about specifically what that needs to look like. 

 

 

  • Most of the time, over time

 

The other factor though here is most of the time, over time. So again, the old model of consistency; 28 days, same workout routine, same time, same intensity, right? We already talked about the intensity and the how piece with the flexibility, but also with the timing there, we're still shooting for most of the time

That means, you know, four out of seven days of the week – or can even be half the time, honestly, and that still counts as most – but doing that that is-- Having the consistency you need, that does create a habit; and it creates the consistency you need to then build on it too. 

So, that flexibility piece is always there, but so is a baseline version of this that we can talk about too, so that you always have it in place in some way. And most of the time, version is the always part too. Like, literally doesn't have to be seven out of seven days a week, but most of the time. 

And having that freedom actually helps you get more of the most of the time instead of less of the most of the time because of both the flexibility and this idea of release. Like it doesn't have to be; every single day, I'm doing this perfectly. Hopefully, that made sense. I know I just threw a lot at you. And I had a thought, but now I lost it.

 

How to create a baseline of consistency and setting up new habits

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Tell me more about the 'baseline thing' because that totally makes sense, and I think that also releasing that-- Because I think lots of times, I'm sure that people are like me also. 

I'm not the only one saying this is that it's like, 'Oh, I only did it twice this week.' And so, then the next week I'm like, 'Oh, well, it's not--  

 

Monica Packer: Yeah. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I didn't, might as well throw it out the window, right?' That all-or-nothing thinking like it's not working or I'll never be consistent. So, I think releasing the idea of what consistency means can be helpful in actually empowering us to keep going at that habit, for sure. But I'd love to hear more about like how you could set up a baseline here. 

 

Monica Packer: Okay. So, this is another part of how we're taught habits wrong. We're taught, you know, you decide what the habit is, you decide when you're starting, you decide for how many days you're going to install it until it's there. 

What we are missing there is that we are starting with the ideal version, a best of day kind of version. We're starting with what we want; and we need those ideals, we do. And so, we're not saying don't have them, but that's not where you start. That's one of the biggest mistakes we make with habit formation and routine in systems too, is we are starting with the ideal. 

Now, if you want your best likelihood of actually getting to the ideal – instead of reaching for the ideal, which I call like the highline…you know, the high, the high of what you want – you start with a base, a baseline version of it. 

A baseline version of a habit is the smallest and simplest version of the ideal that you can do on your worst of day – the day that your cycle needs you to, or the kids need you to or just a hard depression period. 

You know, like this summer I was really sick with morning sickness. And some of my habits, I let go of during the summer – like journaling for myself just went to the wayside…strength training, time to let go. 

But almost all my other personal supportive habits stayed the entire four months that I was basically couch-ridden; and I'm still sick, but not like that. Right? 

But they were able to stick around because of these baselines and because I had those baseline versions of these habits – when I started to feel better like a couple, like a month ago or a couple weeks ago, I've been able to build back up towards the ideal version far faster, far easier because of that baseline version. 

And because that baseline version was there, I was able to hit that most of the time target; and I'm talking like six step days out of seven, if not seven out of seven. So, the two really do work hand-in-hand. 

If you're struggling to keep a habit – if you're only able to do it sporadically, you're not able to get most days, it's most often because you don't have a baseline version; you're only having the ideal in mind. 

So, start with that baseline version of the habit. And it's always there for you on the days where you can't meet halfway or even to the ideal that you want. 

The hope here though, let me tell you one thing, I remembered the thought I was going to bring in; the baseline is not where you end up. It's always just the starting place and the go back to place; you know, the fallback. Right? 

The great thing about having a baseline though, is you can install a new habit in a couple of days, literally in a couple of days. You don't have to do it for 21, 28, 100 days to build a new habit. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah.

 

Monica Packer: You can have that new habit in just a few days if you have a good enough baseline. And from there you will build far quicker than you would ever expect, otherwise. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. So, one thing I want to mention about baseline, because this came to me as you were speaking, was like, is like, "What is the most important for me?" Like, what are my core? Right? So, when everything else went out the window for you, you were like, these are my core things

 

Monica Packer: Yeah. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, for me, I'm thinking, 'Okay, I do have a core daily practice…like I always do some sort of devotional, I always do some sort of like breathing or meditation.' And so like, what are my baseline there and how can I create a baseline? 

And I immediately knew like, 'Oh, for movement, for me, it would be even just doing like, you know, 10 minutes of like stretching yoga poses in the morning.' 

 

Monica Packer: Perfect example. Yes.

 

How do we build from that baseline?

Crystal The Parenting Coach: But how does it-- My next follow-up question would be then, how do we build from that baseline? 

 

Monica Packer: Most of the time, this happens quite organically because you do start with a vision in mind…so, you know where you're headed. It's not just like this aimless wandering. 

And with most women, it just happens organically because once you have a baseline, another part of this is you also have momentum. 

So, instead of waiting for the energy to do something like that we usually say is discipline or motivation--  

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. 

 

Monica Packer: Having a baseline gets you in movement, which often in the moment or at other titans of the day help you feel like you have more energy to give. So, even if you don't hit the full ideal, you might naturally be like, 'Well, I did one minute of deep breathing instead of my full 10-minute meditation…that is my ideal.' 

You do that minute and you think, 'I can do another minute,' and you do another minute. So, maybe you still don't hit the ideal, but you're building naturally. And so, with that organic version--  

Here's another bit of hope for the women listening is; what is so cool about baselines is they also rise up

So, you have an ideal, right? Your highs are still highs, right? But what's cool is that as your highs stick around, your lows also get higher too. So, your baselines change. 

So, an example for this for me is with journaling, my baseline version when I was trying to finally get back into journaling after years of not doing it because of the all-or-nothing version I had in my head that I was holding myself to – which made me more of a nothing – my baseline version initially was to just write one incomplete sentence, and now my baseline is I write like a small paragraph and I can do that on my worst of days. 

Now, I said this summer, that habit, it was time to say goodbye to that habit. Right? But I was able to jump back on that baseline really easily, back in--  

So, now, I do that most days of the week; I write just a small paragraph, and sometimes it turns into a couple paragraph and other times a page or two pages. 

So, organically is one, and then-- I'm going to keep this brief. 

 

The other way is more intentional; and this is where you decide what that looks like and you either maximize the habit, so you do more of it or more intensely. 

So, with exercise, your example, it could be you do 15 minutes of stretching or 20 minutes--

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. 

 

Monica Packer: -or yoga moose or whatever it is you do; that's more of it maximizing it…or you can add to it, and that's doing another habit alongside it, but they kind of go together. So, maybe for you it's 10 minutes of stretching and you're ready to add on. So, you do a 10-minute walk too. 

So, there's a lot more to this that I explain more in my course that I have called The Sticky Habit Method. And it's a method for women, but that's the whole premise of what I teach there; adding or maximizing.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. I love that. We're going to have a link to that also, for those of you that are listening and are loving 

 

Monica Packer: Thanks.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: -this conversation and you're like, 'Yep, I want to learn more about this.'

I love what you talk about with most days because whenever you said that, I felt like, 'Oh, so she doesn't do it every day, and it's still a habit.' Like it almost feels like even just hearing it that way feels more empowering. Like I could-- I can do it, I can do it, I can do it my baseline and I can do it most days and it can then be a habit. 



Monica Packer: 100%. And another factor to this too is your life doesn't have to be totally bound by habits all day, every day to be a habit person. 

I'm a habit expert; you know, I've read everything you can think of for habit formation. I have studied it, I have been trained in it, especially. I've done research on it with my clients for years. And you would see someone in, if you like, watched me through a day, you would see like my supportive habits that I always have for myself and the baseline versions of them at the morning and the night. 

But someone who is very flexible during the day, who's able to respond to the varying needs that happen differently each day because of those supportive habits in place, it doesn't take too much to be more supported. And you don't have to be-- The habits don't have to be ball and chain that you live your whole life by all day, every day.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. I love that because I'm not-- I don't know if you know much about personality types, but my personality type is like Anagram 7 human design Manifesting Generator; I'm very like flowy. 

 

Monica Packer: Yeah. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: And so, when I started getting into habits, I was like, 'This is not who I am, this is against my personality.' Like, I just felt so opposite. But you're right. Like if I look at my life, I do have habits; I work every Monday and Thursday, I have like a start time and an end time.

 

Monica Packer: Yeah.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I have like my morning devotional; I have my evening thing that I do. Like there are things that we have, but we also, having those supportive habits allows me to be way more flexible during the day and just decide that I'm going to go randomly on like a, you know, last-minute hike or something…or like play some game with my kids because I have lots of open-ended hours of time where I don't have something scheduled. 

 

Monica Packer: And a lot of what we do as women especially, is we put out fires a lot. A lot of our responsibilities are urgent in nature. They require us – and like literally us – to show up and not because we're just like raising spoiled children, it's just the nature of our responsibilities. 

And this is for women who work and don't work, by the way; this is all women, this is even for women who don't have children. And I can say more on that – about where they can find out more about it – but because of that, that's also part of the flexibility. 

Like you can-- You can respond in real time to what's going on in your life, and show up to meet these very flexible and also demanding buyers that you're going to have all the time…but be stronger, you know, and do it more as yourself, which is the ultimate goal of why I told you I got into this work. It's the relationships, honestly. 

And it's the same thing with habit formation, having the-- I never intended to get into habits, believe me. It was not something I set out to do, and put on a vision board and work towards it. 

It was all tied to this deeper work I was doing of trying to show up as myself to do my responsibilities. And we can replace responsibilities there with relationships. I already said that's what has improved my motherhood, is being myself and supporting myself. Habits are very much a part of that. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. I love that. And I love how you said it's like that's not the end goal; the end goal is to be more of yourself. And I think that is the end goal of all this, right? Like self-help and psychology and coaching and therapy and all the things that we talk about is so that we can get to a space where we have permission to just be more of us. 

 

Monica Packer: Yeah. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: And that that's how we can benefit the world and ourselves and our families and all of those things is if we allow ourselves to be more of us.

 

Monica Packer: Even that's actually where I start with habit formation. So, in that sticky habit method course I mentioned, where we start is figuring out what are the shoulds – the internalized expectations they have about habit formation – like, what are they bringing to the table? Like what kind of habit baggage? 

We all have a habit story, but as part of that, it's getting really clear about what habits are actually for. 

And when you give yourself permission to make them about supporting yourself, rather than being about, you know, the prescriptions and the shoulds, which by the way, shoulds can be chosen – but when you give yourself that permission to make them about you and how to be more of you, it can't be understated how important that is in successfully forming habits because they're about you. 

They're not about Sally down the street, or so-and-so on the news, or that bestseller that you read and what they say makes a good person…what habits they say you need to have in place. You're allowed to have you as part of your habit formation process; that's the whole foundation. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Which makes so much sense when you say it, but it's easy for us to be like looking at others and being like, 'No, but I should do it like them.' But I feel like everything I talk about on the podcast is so like intuition and like You and what feels good for you. Anyways, I think this is a perfect place to end. 

 

Monica Packer: Yeah. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Because I love the idea of like, just be more you. Like, that's what it is. And that habits can be part of that; it doesn't have to be so opposite of like your inherent nature.

 

Monica Packer: And I think if you open yourself up to, you know, seeing habits differently and doing them differently, then you'll be able to experience that…that we've been talking about.

 

Where to find Monica Packer's resources and connect with her

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love that. I love that. Thank you for opening up my mind and for having this lovely conversation on the podcast with us today. 

 

Monica Packer: Yeah. And do you mind if I share about the resource I mentioned a few times--

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Sure. 

 

Monica Packer: -because I've talked about the actual course, but I've talked about-- We've talked about this too, about doing things differently; we talked about with parenting and have information. 

So, I have a class where I spend 45 minutes teaching the research science-backed reasons why women particularly must do habits differently; and it's called The Number One Reason Why Women Must Do Habits Differently. It's a free class; and I would love for them to go and watch it.

And more so, it goes back to the what we talked about, knowing better so you can do better here. Like just knowing like you don't need to blame yourself and that the methods you've been using is wrong will free you to not just do better, but to do things differently. So, they can sign up for that free class at aboutprogress.com/habitclass. And that's singular 'Habit', 'HabitClass'. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. Perfect. That sounds so good. I'm totally going to check that out. I will definitely have a link in the show notes for anyone that wants to listen. 

 

Monica Packer: Thank you. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: And also, do you want to just let us know how people can connect with you? 

 

Monica Packer: I think the number one place to go is my podcast, since they're already listening to one. Just tap on over to search for About Progress and listen to a few episodes; and hopefully, it's in your wheelhouse and helpful enough that you'd like to subscribe to. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, it's great. So, go check it out. Thank you so much, Monica. 

 

Monica Packer: Oh, I enjoy this so much. Thank you. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Thanks for listening. If you'd like to help spread this work to the world, share this episode on social media and tag me, send it to a friend, or leave a quick rating and review below so more people can find me. If you'd like more guidance on your own parenting journey, reach out.

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