Reflecting on the chaos of the last week while my husband has been out of town, I realized how it echoes past times when this hectic pace was the norm for me. Those times were what sparked a shift in prioritizing showing up more as myself, in my own life. My journey towards embracing this led to a deep appreciation for the power of habits, not as rigid routines but as flexible tools to navigate life’s demands.
Today I’m sharing four key habits, and how these simple practices have become my anchor amidst the chaos. I hope these insights inspire you to identify and prioritize small habits that can make a big difference in your own life’s juggling act.
About a few other things…
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TRANSCRIPT
Monica Packer: Hi, this is Monica Packer and you’re listening to About Progress, where we are about progress made practical.
Things are pretty nuts in the Packer household, especially today, but lately in general. I mean, right now, Brad is out of town and has been so for a few days, so I’m writing solo and it feels like each day is this full out sprint from the time that I wake up, luckily around 530. I have more to share on that later on this week in the Messy Middle episode, but until I go to bed, then around 10.
It’s made me so grateful for Brad, you don’t realize how much someone, uh, really influences the family culture and what they contribute until they are not in the household. So big hats off to Brad. And as I’ve been moving through this week, I have been reminded. That this is what it used to feel like all the time when Brad worked really long hours and had a really long commute.
And it, it kind of reminded me of these moments I’d have, where I was triggered into reacting rather than responding to my children and in ways that did not line up with both my values and my personality. And my own inability to show up as myself to those responsibilities, mainly the people in my life, is what actually started.
A big shift in my life, both internal, but eventually external that led to about progress starting and then eventually this podcast starting now along the ride habits became an essential piece to this puzzle because I figured out finally that even though I was getting to know myself better, which was originally what I was trying to work on, trying to figure out who was Monica, if I’m reacting this way, then who am I anyway?
And I, I got a lot of clarity on that. I was making a lot of progress internally. But I finally realized that my exterior, my, my, my, my outside life, my day to day life had to support that identity. Without having habits that propped up my values, then my values and knowing what they were weren’t really doing much good for me, nor anyone else.
This is what began another shift for me from a non habit person to a habit person. And I can officially say, like, I am a habit person now. And not because my life is so rigid and every moment of every day is about systems and routines and habits. It’s not about that. It’s about my life demanding so much flexibility from me and how having a few stable habits throughout my day, just for myself, is what helps me be able to show up better to that flexibility that is demanded of me.
I can tell you that habits are what help me. Show up. So in that spirit in this episode I’m going to share the four habits that are helping me show up lately. That’s coming up after a quick break
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Let’s do this. I’m going to share the four habits that are helping me show up lately. And when I say that, I want you to know that habits are so subjective. What’s a good habit for me may be a bad habit for you or vice versa. For me, the biggest purpose of habits is that they help support me enough that I am able to show up and that’s what they’re for.
So let’s go with number one. The first habit that has helped me show up lately is meal planning on Mondays. When I say this, picture something that is very, very simple. I have this darling stand that I got from Home and Kind. Brittany Hanks has been on the show in the past to talk about her Costco one stop meal cookbook that I love.
Anyway, this cute board has a notepad on it that gives that week’s menu and it clips onto the stand that you can put upright. And I just have it on our counter next to our Alexa, but all I do is on Mondays I just sit down. For even three minutes. And I decide the meals that week, Wednesdays are always leftover nights because it is our craziest day of the week with multiple kid activities in the evening and us running around.
So we usually do just leftovers. Uh, but I always know Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, I need meals. Saturday, we usually do. Macaroni and cheese for the kids and Brad and I go on a date or we eat the macaroni and cheese too. Uh, Friday’s always homemade pizza. So that takes care of us. And then Sundays, sometimes we make something and other times we go to my family that’s nearby.
So that means of the week, I only have to make sure I have Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday are new meals. And what I do So I just go for my head most of the time. What are the meals that are kind of in season right now? Like it’s still kind of cold. So we’re making some warmer meals, the things that we typically make often.
And I write those down, the things I don’t really need a recipe for. Uh, this week, for example, Monday we had chicken noodle soup. Tuesday we had flatbread cheesy melts. And I just used a rotisserie chicken from Costco on both of those days. Wednesday’s is leftovers. That’s today. Uh, Thursday we’re going to do chili.
And Friday we’re going to do homemade pizza and Saturday will either be mac and cheese or leftovers. And Sunday I put, uh, baked chicken and veggies because I always have those things in my freezer and I can make that if we’re going to stay here instead of going with to eat dinner with my family on Sundays.
So. I know it seems so simple, but just sitting down for a few minutes and having those meals laid out helps me not carry it around in my mind all the time, which I didn’t realize I was doing until Brittany brought that up in our, uh, meal planning and, and dinner making episode that we did together. I was like, wow, no, that is a mental load piece to the puzzle.
And just writing down those meals each week makes me know what we’re doing that night. So I can get on it earlier if I need to, like Monday, I was making dinner at 1 PM because Brad was going out of town. Um, early afternoon and I was going to be, uh, just running the kids everywhere. And so I was able to make it earlier, but most of the time it’s just for that mental load piece.
And sometimes I do take out a cookbook and have a new recipe or two, but most of the time we just make the same food and eat the same kind of dinners. Week after week with just slight variations. Like there’s usually a burrito bowl in there or burritos or tacos or breakfast burritos. Another night, like I said, we always have homemade pizza.
Other nights we have some kind of soup with bread. When in doubt, we always have bread and we can just have eggs and bread. I still make a lot of sourdough bread. So that is the first habit. That’s really simple, but somehow makes a big difference for me and is helping me so much lately. The second one I want to share with you is getting ready for bed earlier in the night.
I have a pretty in depth skincare routine. I do have a baseline version, which is just washing my face and putting on lotion. That’s it. But most of the time I’ve got a couple different things that I use and Taylor and I are going to do an episode on this and more personal soon, where we share about our, our recs for skincare, um, especially with aging in mind.
So. Stay tuned for that and become a supporter for that. But most of the time I have a couple steps and also like the gouache or how you say that. And I, I use that. And I also have these facial patches that I put on for regals too. So it can be a bigger deal. And because of that, even though it actually takes me about five minutes, it feels like it takes a lot of energy.
And I find if I sit down after my kids go to bed, it is, Oh. So much harder for me to get up after I’m already sitting down and comfortable, like after Brad and I watched a show where I finished up work. I have to work a lot at night, but when my alarm goes off at nine, that tells me to get ready for bed.
I don’t want to do it because it just seems like it’s so much work, even if it’s five minutes. And that’s why. Getting ready earlier in the night for bed is a game changer for me. And I’ve known this for some time, but once I’ve really committed to it, I feel the difference so much that it’s becoming more of a habit.
How this looks for me is I have a good one, then pairing when I put my baby down, then I get ready for bed and. It’s pretty simple because my baby’s room is right next to our room So I close the door and I walk right into my bedroom put on my pajamas Even if it’s like 7 30 or 8 o’clock at night and then do my whole skincare routine The only thing I don’t do is brush my teeth because I am one of those people that I really love A snack and a treat at night.
And so I have one of those after I get ready for bed and either I’m working or Brad and I are watching a show. So it’s just kind of part of my night time routine to have that little treat too. So I usually have that treat or snack then. And then right before I get to bed is when I brush my teeth and floss my teeth.
And then it’s just like. Feels like a miracle. I can just go right to getting next to my bed and doing the rest of my nighttime routine. And when I’m sitting on the couch or I’m finishing up work and I know my alarm went off on my watch, that means I need to get ready for bed now. Guess what? I’m already like three quarters of the way there.
And it’s so much easier for me to take a deep breath. And get up off the dang couch and get to bed. And when I tell you this is huge, it’s huge. Brad, um, we’ll tell you about years of our marriage where I fell asleep on the couch, like all the time. It has been a lifelong habit for me to stay up late, to doddle, To be productive or to be creative, just really delaying bedtime.
I procrastinated bedtime so much for so many years. And a large part of that was because I just needed time to myself. I also needed time to do some things, but the other half of it was just getting ready for bed. And so having this piece of the puzzle now solved and prioritized in my life is making a big difference.
So I highly recommend getting ready for bed earlier in the night. Two more habits are coming up after a quick break. One
of my favorite messages I get is when women tell me that they think we would be besties in real life. And I totally agree with them because I believe this is the coolest, most generous, smartest community of women online. Do you know there’s a way for you to be my bestie or even my ride or die? If you become a supporter of the show at either of these levels, then we get to hang out together more online.
And I get to be more personal with you and my private premium podcasts of the same name. More personal. We recently did our first ask me anything night, and it was so fun to be able to share with the women there in an even more unfiltered way than I typically would online. I shared about some pretty embarrassing stories from my teaching days, including me saying a word so bad that my very grown up students fell to the floor when they heard me say, uh, Brad and I also share about some of the behind the scenes with our lives and our relationships.
And I also answered the question, what’s the name of the woman you were supposed to interview and you forgot about it and she was real mad and will never come on the show. It was such a blast to hang out with women in real life from this community. And I have to tell you, you get access to this replay.
If you become a supporter now, I would love to hang out more with you online. We have more ask us anything nights coming up as well as office hours and some in person events that I’m planning soon for the supporters. To find out how to become a supporter and especially the bestie and ride or dies level, go to aboutprogress.
com slash support. I would love to be your bestie. The third habit I want to share with you is a really fun one. It’s watching a YouTube video while I eat lunch. Yes, my friends, that is a habit. Habits don’t just have to be about productivity and responsibilities. It can be about inserting joy into your day to day life.
And this has been one of my favorite ways to do this lately. And it usually takes like five or ten minutes because that’s all I have, but I just sit down with my lunch and I watch a YouTube video, usually something that is either design oriented or sourdough slash homestead oriented, even though I don’t have a homestead and likely never will.
And also I don’t have a super big rich house with all this money to spend, but I love watching other people. Who do this simple habit makes me feel more like myself. It also helps me detach from my stress on the days that I really need it. Even the days where I feel like I do not have a lot of time or any time at all.
Again, just taking five to 10 minutes at very most to sit down, eat my meal YouTube video helps insert some fun. And joy and me into my day. And you know what else it does? It makes me scroll less on my phone overall, taking that little bit of a break and detaching from my responsibilities weirdly makes it so I don’t slip into nummy behavior as often or as long.
So weirdly spending some time on my phone helps me like watching that YouTube video helps me spend less time on my phone overall, when I’m feeling overwhelmed and stressed and just. needing to detach. So I highly recommend doing something like that routinely, including watching a YouTube video while you eat your lunch.
The next and final habit that has been helping me show up lately is day planning. This is a habit I put on the back burner. All of 2023, that was simply not my season for day planning. Each of my days were revolving around a newborn to an infant, to a little bit bigger of a baby, uh, who, you know, all babies are unpredictable, but it felt like ours was particularly so, and just with him and our other four kids and work and just trying to stay afloat, it felt like anything I planned for the day.
Always went up in smoke, so it was just better for me to have a few supportive habits, to have some systems and routines as a family, but to be very, very flexible going into every single day, and now I’m kind of in a different place. Now, he’s a little bit, a lot more predictable, I would say, a lot more malleable, and he can go places and do things a lot more easily with me, um, but, because of all that, my work has been ramping up, and, The things I need to do and can do more now have been wrapping up.
I’ve been bringing back some other habits and routines and systems that have been on the back burner slowly, but surely over time and in ways that are helping me show up even better and in ways that help me feel like I’m. More and more like myself after this postpartum, that hard postpartum year. Um, and day planning has been one of those habits.
And the main reason for me is because it helps me make sure I have clarity going into my days. Not because I am very regimented about making sure I’m checking it throughout the day and checking things off. I’m actually not very good at that. But somehow making sure that I have, um, my top priorities of the day written down the night before.
for makes it so that I am more on task without even having to check my planner. So how I do this is usually on Sunday or Monday, I do a bit more of a week planning session and I do a brain dump. And then I write out what I have schedule wise for my week and my top priorities for the week. And then the night before each day, so Sunday night, I’m still planning out Monday, I put down my top priorities and to dos for that day, both with work and home and family life.
And then Monday night, I check things off or I decide what needs to be carried over to the next day, and then I keep doing that at night. Again, I don’t really check it too much during the day, sometimes I do, I actually do leave it out on a counter, where I, I’m a lot, I’m in my kitchen a lot, I, it’s the main area of our home.
It’s the biggest area of our home. So I’m passing it often. So I am more likely to check in on it, but it’s not so one of those things where I know I have to check in on it every hour or so. It’s just like I pass by and I can check in here and there. And some days I don’t, but I still, again, I remember better what had to be done that day instead of feeling like I am just constantly putting out fires or remembering things last minute.
And this has been really essential. I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of things so urgently. Everything has been so, um, urgency driven. So having that clarity of mind and things literally laid out for me, um, even if I don’t get to them perfectly, it helps me feel like I’m not as urgent, like I’m not writing this.
Cortisol right wave all the time and constantly doing things last minute. It’s, it’s been really, really helpful. I wouldn’t say I’m like super good at this, but I will say that I do it more times than not, and more times than not, it really, really helps me. Let’s recap these four habits that are helping me show up lately.
The first is meal planning on Mondays. The second is getting ready for bed earlier in the evening. The third is watching a YouTube video while I eat my lunch. And the fourth is day planning. I hope this episode gave you the hug and kick in the pants you need to grow and to prioritize some simple habits that are going to help you show up too.
Because just a few simple habits can make a big difference in your life. If you have one or two or three that you know you want to work on, I want to encourage you to choose one. And that’s what I’m going to have you do for our Do Something Challenge this week. Choose one simple habit that you will like to better prioritize and just keep that in mind.
And if you want some more help on that, we have lots of episodes in our archive that you can dig through and get some help, but we also will have a sticky habit intensive coming up in the spring. This is our 21 day live. course, habit, challenge, and community. And right now you can get on the wait list at aboutprogress.
com slash intensive. As I’m recording this, we are wrapping up our first intensive and it was so transformative and connective and hope giving. One of the biggest surprises from our first intensive is that women are changing their habits, but that’s not the big surprise. They’re changing. How they see themselves.
And while I knew that was a big part of how we do habits differently in our community, it’s been even more apparent as I’ve been working with women face to face virtually and helping them as they transform, not just their habits, but their identity, their sense of selves. So I would love to have you part of the next intensive again, get on the waitlist at aboutprogress.
com slash intensive. This show is listener supported. This week on More Personal, we’re going to have a casual convo on aging and it’s one I’m like nervous to air But I’m also really glad it’s behind a paywall because that means I really trust the women who are listening better that they’re not Gonna judge me and so I hope you can become a supporter so that you can take a listen.
I’m soon going to be teaching a private workshop for all ride or die level supporters. It’s called Beyond Bubble Bass. Serious self care habits to help you better manage your stress. Being a supporter of About Progress starts at just 2 a month. You can check out the three levels as well as their exclusive benefits by going to aboutprogress.
com slash support. You can support the show for free though. by simply sharing this episode with a friend. Thank you so much for listening. Now go and do something with what you learned today.
