In this episode, I’m thrilled to air my return to Amber Brueseke’s podcast and delve deep into the world of habits. We revisit our initial conversation from years ago and explore how our approaches and evolutions have shaped our current perspectives. Specifically, we unpack why habits often feel like a ball and chain, redefine what habits really are, and discuss how to create supportive habits that align with your true self.
Whether you’re struggling with where to begin, overwhelmed by a heavy mental load, or just wanting to build a life you don’t need to escape from, this episode offers practical insights and actionable steps to help you transform your daily routines. Listen in, and let’s discover how to make habits work for you, not the other way around!
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TRANSCRIPT
Amber Brueseke: I’m so excited to welcome back to the podcast, Monica Packer. We were just laughing because she was back on episode number five, and now we are here 330 something episodes in and it’s, it’s fun to have you back. I’m glad you’re back on the podcast.
Monica Packer: Well, it’s a joy. It’s a joy to return, but also a joy to be one of your first interviews. Yeah, it’s really cool. Yeah. Well, so if you don’t know you, you listening may not know the history, but actually back in the day, probably t what, like 2017? Mm-Hmm. . When, when did you start your podcast? 2016. 20. 2016. At the end of the 2016.
Amber Brueseke: Yeah. So, and, and Monica asked me to be on her podcast back when she started it, and that was the first podcast I ever interview I’d ever done. I think both of us were a little nervous. We didn’t really know what we were doing, . And so when I started my podcast, it was like, well, of course Monica’s gonna be one of the first people that I bring on because.
I feel comfortable with her and I know that she’ll, she’ll do a great job. So she was on episode five and now we get to kind of come full circle and many, many years later.
Monica Packer: And we both evolved so much too, which is really fun to, when you re uh, interview someone, you just get to see the ways they’ve evolved and changed.
And I’m, I know I have.
Amber Brueseke: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And today’s topic is one that I’m very excited to dive into with you, with you, because. You are an expert on this and have really dove into figuring out habits and how to really, um, make them a better part of our lives, make them work for us. And this is something that is such an important topic that my, my audience is just going to eat up.
So can you start with just kind of sharing a little bit about maybe your journey with habits, right? We talked about some of the pivots that we’ve done and over the years, some of the things that we’ve explored and gotten better at. And this is, you know, what led you into specializing and getting really to dive into habits and helping people to be able to set better habits.
Monica Packer: I’ll start by saying it was not the plan. I did not think I was a habit person at all. Yeah. I didn’t particularly have a super big interest in habit formation. And it all, why all goes back to my struggles with perfectionism. And I believe that’s what we talked about in episode five. Yep. So, um, working on adopting this mindset of progress, not perfection, which is why my work is all about progress.
That’s what it’s called. And that’s what our work is doing. Uh, it changed so much of my life, but primarily how I started was with identity, you know, trying to figure out who I was again, outside of this all or nothing pendulum swing that also really connects to identity of like, who am I, if I’m not my outcomes, bad or good or anything in between.
And as part of that, I, Worked on, you know, hobbies or making time for myself. And I got to this point where I hit a big plateau with my personal development, and it was because I knew who I was, but my life wasn’t matching that identity, those values anymore. Like I wanted to have time for myself, but that time was hard to create without having a habit that made that possible.
. I knew what I wanted to feel like, but I wasn’t feeling like that when I wasn’t sleeping at all or when I wasn’t prioritizing, um, some self care habits that were just about me. So I really fell into it by accident. And just that plateau was something I hit. And I realized I could take what I had been experimenting with about progress, not perfection with all other personal development categories and apply it to habit formation.
And how can I, how can I anchor into having good habits without that all or nothing pendulum swing being the guide, like, how can I, how can I have good supportive habits but in practical ways is that even possible because it’s such a black and white world. So that’s been several years in the making of me one working on it myself and just.
And, and making huge strides in that, in that part of my life. And then also helping my clients who, they, they were there to work on their identity too, but they got to the same plateau. Like they needed help with their habits. So it matched their lives. And, um, it turned into me creating, uh, My own habit formation method that’s designed for busy women, uh, especially busy moms to help them form habits that stick.
So if anyone is listening to this and they see the word habits and they want to run to the hills, that was me. Yeah. And it’s a large part of my audience. And the biggest reason why, and I know we can talk about this and a whole number of things is you’ve been taught habits wrong. You’ve been taught habits wrong.
So you’ve also been told you’re not a habit person if you don’t meet these prescription bound metrics of what it looks like to be a good person who has good habits. So there’s a lot to redefine and untangle there. And that’s my work. That’s what I get to do with women is help them untangle that and also help them form habits.
That’s it. Oh, good. Okay.
Amber Brueseke: And we’re going to say the word habit a ton during this episode. So let’s start with like a definition. We, you know, when you say the word habits and when we talk about habits, what are you, what are you meaning with that?
Monica Packer: This is such a funny thing because I think if we ask someone to define habits, they actually don’t really have a definition.
They have a feeling and it’s almost like this heaviness. It’s this burden. It’s this thing they’re carrying around because For so long habits have been about metrics. It’s about, about prescriptions, like I’ve said too, you know, of having certain things you’re supposed to meet in order to qualify as a person who meditates or who exercises or who meal preps, like there’s a standard and you hit it.
And in order to meet that standard, you carry this habit, the standard around with you all the time. And you have to strive, strive, strive to hit it exactly. And like exactly the same time of day and day after day after day. Habits need to be redefined. We have to redefine the way we look at habits. This is what I have come to and it’s changed so many women’s lives, just this one shift.
And it’s that habits are the small and simple ways we support ourselves. So one nutshell is habits are supportive. That’s it. Their only purpose is to help us feel more like ourselves. From, us feeding ourselves and exercising and sleeping and all those basic things that changes the way that we feel like you’ve got a bad night’s sleep.
You don’t feel like yourself the next day. If you’re going months on not moving your body, you don’t feel like yourself very much. So that’s their purpose. They’re there to support yourself, who you really are. That’s it. They’re not balls and chains.
Amber Brueseke: It’s so good. And I was thinking as, as you were talking earlier, as we often talk about habits in terms of like good habits and bad habits.
And I never even really stopped to think about how maybe detrimental that is in this conversation about habits. If we categorize good habits and we categorize bad habits. And then if we tend towards the bad habits, then we’re like, No, no wonder we, yeah, we hate habits. Like it’s like, I always tend towards the bad ones and I can’t figure out how to get rid of the bad ones.
So what thoughts do you have on this idea of like good habits versus bad? Cause I didn’t hear that in any of your definition, right? It’s like small and simple ways we support ourselves. Doesn’t really fit with my definition of good habits and bad habits or how we often talk about them.
Monica Packer: So another saying that they can adopt.
We’d already talked about habits are supportive. Habits are subjective. What’s a good habit for me? Yeah, that’s good. Could be a bad habit for someone else and vice versa. One of my best good habits that I have right now is watching a YouTube video while I eat lunch. That’s probably a bad habit for other people.
Sure, yeah. Okay, or eating a treat at night. That’s a good habit for me. I love that. That’s the thing I look forward to. It makes me feel supported. It gives me time to myself. It gives me something to look forward to. I love my night treat, but someone else, it may be a bad habit. So habits are subjective.
It’s less about what the habit is, and it’s more about what you’re doing. Why we have that habit and the effect the habit is having on us. I actually have a whole bonus module on my course on this about bad habits in particular. And one of the things we tend to focus on a lot is numbing behavior.
So those are things like scrolling a phone or emotional eating. , but also organizing can be a numbing behavior or going through your emails or, you know, cleaning out the kitchen pantry, like There are so many ways to numb, but the reason why those numbing behaviors are quote unquote bad habits is not because the behavior itself is bad, innately bad.
They don’t have, unless your bad habit is killing someone, you know, which shouldn’t be anyone here or like something like very immoral, you know, very, very immoral against your values. That’s like not 99. 9 percent of people here that the behavior itself is not what’s bad. It’s the lack of intention. And it’s that effects of it are bad.
Yeah. Scrolling your phone can be a good habit if you’re doing it intentionally and you know when and how and why you’re doing it.
Amber Brueseke: So as people are listening to this, I have to imagine that they’re kind of scrolling mentally through some of their habits and now they’re, they’re trying to make a determination on, Why am I doing this?
And, and sometimes that self awareness can be challenging, right? It’s much more black and white to say, scrolling on your phone after 9pm is a bad habit and you should stop. And, you know, meditating every day is a good habit and you should start that. Like that’s more black and white and easy for people to comprehend.
But this nuance that you’re creating around habits, which I love is, is less about what the habit is and more about why you’re doing that. So how does somebody get self reflective or self aware so that they can, you know, reflect and say, why am I doing this? Is this a habit that is supportive or is it a habit that I need to work on shifting for myself?
Monica Packer: This is a good question to be asking. Uh, and like you said, awareness, I think is the key. Here’s, here’s though, where I would tell people to start. Don’t be aware of all the things. You don’t have to go down this meta wormhole of like questioning your entire life and what is the purpose of life because you’re now trying to decide, is this a good habit or a bad habit?
Just start with one. You know, think about one thing that you tend to navigate too often and, and then just kind of build some awareness. Is this a numbing behavior? Am I trying to numb an emotion that I don’t want to feel right now? Am I trying to avoid some responsibilities because of how they feel in my body?
Because they add stress. So I’m just scrolling my phone because I’m trying to avoid the stress I feel with finishing cleaning up the kitchen for the night. Start with just that curiosity of one area in your life. Don’t do all the areas. And actually, this is another point I would make too, is a lot of women come to me wanting to work on a bad habit.
We do that, but not to start to start. We actually work on implementing a good habit, one that actually oftentimes counteracts the bad habit to begin with. If you show up to the end of your night, because you have zero energy and you’re scrolling your phone because you have zero energy to like actually do a habit that feels more like self care to you.
or even intentionally scrolling, then we work on creating a habit that helps you have more of that energy that gives you more of that time to yourself. So you are less inclined to go down that numbing behavior loop at night.
Amber Brueseke: So it’s a little bit about like building, building a life that you don’t need to escape from.
My goodness. Right? Like literally that’s
Monica Packer: Yes, I do. I do a whole thing on revenge, bedtime, procrastination. And that’s the thing we literally say like, the goal of habit formation is building a life that you do not need to escape from. Yeah. Say that again. Revenge. Revenge, bedtime, procrastination. It’s, it’s a mistranslated Chinese, uh, phrase, Uhhuh and our, but yeah, it went all, all the rage during the pandemic, especially when people realized that they were putting revenge on themselves by procrastinating bedtime, like revenge on their daytime responsibilities, like screw you all the things that you make me do all day. I am going to delay bedtime all night. I finally have time for myself. Yeah.
Amber Brueseke: And then that just comes back to bite you in the butt. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So interesting. Our brains are so fascinating.
I just find our brains like super fascinating. Um, one of the terms that you said, um, previously that I want to kind of dive into this is idea of a ball and chain. You said that term, um, can you kind of define what you mean by that? And like, how does that relate to habits?
Monica Packer: I think this is why I didn’t believe I was a habit person for a long time, because as someone who was the stereotypical overachieving perfectionist, and then crashed and burned into becoming an underachieving perfectionist.
By the way, the roots to those are the same. You’re putting your identity on your outcomes. I knew the metrics I needed to hit, right? For it to qualify as having a habit, in quotes, like to exercise. Well, that means you exercise this many days of the week for this amount of time and doing these types of exercises.
And, and having like those metrics, they become a ball on chain when you’re just finding, if you are, dragging around the habits, like you are serving the habit, then that’s wrong. The habits are there to serve you. That’s the shift. So if the ball and chain is like that, Oh, feeling when you’re thinking about habits, if that’s the feeling you have, then that the way you’re viewing the habit or doing that habit is the ball and chain.
And here’s, here’s one thing though that matters. You know, we talk so much online. You hear this all the time. Do away with the shoulds. No more shoulds. Right. Yeah. So I’m shoulding all over yourself. Yes. Yes. I love that sentiment, but it doesn’t match reality. Guess what? I hate doing laundry. It’s a should.
Yeah. It’s not a want. It’s not a want. Not fun. But I do it and I, and I need to do it. So shoulds, some shoulds, not all of them can be chosen. So that ball and chain habit that you may have, you can choose it. And when you choose, you can do it in a way that reflects you. Instead of it being about a metric you’re dragging around.
So I may choose, I don’t love exercising. I’m giving an example here. Maybe I say I hate exercising because I have all these metrics I’m dragging around. Do I want to exercise? Will it support me? Will it give me time to myself? Will it give me more energy? Will it help my health? Like, okay, yes, yes, yes, yes.
So I want to choose the should of exercising, but I’m choosing it. Sure. So that means. I get to choose to do it in a way that matches me, what I like, how I like to exercise, how I like to move my body and in ways that match my reality, my season. So maybe I know I don’t have to exercise by doing high fitness, even though I love high fitness six days a week.
I know the exercise for me is going for a 20 minute walk. Oh, that feels good. That’s a, that’s a, should I chose? So that’s a difference.
Amber Brueseke: So if somebody is listening and they’re feeling that heaviness that you’re talking about, they feel like, Oh, I’m, I’m resonating with this. I feel like I understand what Monica is saying about this ball and chain and these metrics that are like holding me hostage.
Cause I definitely feel that way. Uh, and someone feels this way. What are some of the steps that they can take to start to relieve that I heard you say, um, you know, asking yourself how, like, how could this look different for me, or am I holding myself to some outside expectation of like what this is supposed to look like?
And can I make it look different? Are there any other ideas that we can have of ways that people could implement right now of starting to make that ball and chain habit that they have feel a little less oppressive?
Monica Packer: Yes. Okay, this is a Funny thing that people don’t expect, like, so let’s say you’re working on a habit that typically happens in the morning for you or the night or the afternoon.
So it’s actually start with a time of day that you want a habit or you want to feel more support in. So it’s less about. Journaling, but it’s more of like, I I’m going to insert journaling at night because that’s the time I need a lot of support. So you can start with a time of day where you were lacking, feeling like yourself the most.
You can start there. And then even before you decide the habit, I want you to think about how you want to feel. During that time of day, you start with feelings like who knew habits were also about feelings. So you think about, well, how do I want to feel let’s do with the nighttime thing again. Okay, so I actually did this with a client the other day.
How do you want to feel at night? And some of the responses that she gave were, I want to feel like that I am relaxed, I want to feel like I’m off the clock, that my responsibilities are over, I want to feel relaxed. So you kind of get clear on what the feelings are. And then from there, you think about what particular habits.
Would help you feel those feelings. And this is where, again, habits are subjective for some people, like feeling relaxed would be for this client. It was, she wants to read at night and that was a revelation to her. Oh, that’s a good habit. Yeah. Like actually having downtime to yourself and reading instead of being productive, because that’s what was making you delay bedtime for hours and hours and hours.
Yeah, that’s a good habit is sitting down and reading, but for someone else, it might be, I have to have a clean kitchen or I can’t relax. So that’s my good habit I’m going to be working on is getting a clean kitchen so I can relax. Yeah. So start with a time of day feeling and then go from there now, which is, which is brilliant.
Amber Brueseke: Like, I think it’s so brilliant to start with the feeling because that’s what we’re in our actions. We’re always trying to create feelings, right? That’s what we’re really is really driving us. So if we can start with the end in mind, like Stephen Covey said, which is, what is the feeling you wanted to create?
Then we can reverse engineer to be able to get to that point. I, I wonder how societal pressure plays into this. I mean, especially speaking with the clients that you were talking with and this idea of like, Having to be productive or my productivity is, is tied to my worth. Do you see that as uniquely, and maybe not uniquely, because I’m sure guys deal with it as well, but like that there are some certain societal pressures placed on women that, that result in a lot of us feeling that way of like, we always have to be productive, or we always have to be caring for somebody else, or we always have to put other people’s needs above our own.
That leads women to this ball and chain idea of habits, feeling oppressive rather than. Giving them freedom.
Monica Packer: Mm hmm. Absolutely. And this all goes back to a piece of the puzzle that is missing in all habit formation methods I have seen out there, and it’s the fact that women’s lives are different than men’s lives.
Yes. And this actually isn’t about politics, it’s not about religion, it’s not about culture or anything like that. This is true across the board. For the entire world that women’s lives are different than men’s lives and all comes down to the disparity of labor within a home. And this has been true for me with my clients, regardless of if they had children in the home or not.
Regardless. Yeah. Women’s lives are different. So for the women who are feeling in that place of, I always have to be productive. That’s actually true. That’s the position you’ve been put in. That you are carrying around all these pieces of the giant puzzle that it takes to be in a household.
Even if you’re not a stay at home mom, you have those all in your head. Like mental load, right? That’s what you’re talking about. The mental load. Yeah. So, so another way to phrase that is the invisible labor that we carry. And there’s so much research on this, like decades worth. I love Eve Rotsky’s Fair Play.
I also love Caroline Criotta Perez and her book, Invisible Women. Um, on the, on that topic alone, but this is to not like disparage men. Like there’s good men. I am, I’m married to one of them. And people who, you know, uh, who do try to help, with that disparity and that load, but this is to validate the women who are thinking, I, I can’t just, you know, clock out or there’s always, there’s always more to do.
There’s always more to carry and the habits can just become another thing. So this is to say, We know that, so this is why you need habits that are just about you because you are caring so much and there’s so much that needs to change societally for that, you know, in terms of better valuing the work that women do and better supporting them and sharing in the labor, but until that day comes.
And even when that day comes, we have to work on supporting ourselves and, and having that internal system of self care and support so that we can show up for all the other things. And actually, you know what, Amber, that was the biggest reason why I started this shift in general is it wasn’t because I decided I had to have some good habits.
It’s because I was yelling at my kids. Because I was so, I was so burnt out of just like the parenting and the invisible labor that was so, um, I was so entrenched in, which I still am. I’m a mom of five now and I started this when I was a mom of three and I don’t yell at my kids like almost ever now. And it’s not because my life looks different.
Very much on the outside is because I feel different. I am more myself because I am supporting myself better too. Mm hmm.
Amber Brueseke: Yeah. Well, I’m going back to what you said at the beginning of the episode, you talked about your identity shifting and how maybe like some of the actions or the habits hadn’t quite lined up.
Right. And yes, we feel whole and complete when our actions shift. Align up with the identity that we hold and there feels like a incongruence when we held an identity and that’s not supported by the actions. And so what I’m hearing you say is when we can align our habits when we can line the things that we do with who we want to be and our self concept, then we feel much more whole and in alignment to be able to move forward with a better life, right?
Yes. All, all, all in all of the areas. Exactly. It’s so fascinating. Um, talk to me about starting a new habit. So let’s say somebody is listening to this and they have kind of done some self reflection. They figured out how they want to feel. They’ve identified, you know, let’s take your client. For example, she identifies that she wants to read at night very rarely.
And maybe, maybe you have a different experience. Very rarely do I have clients who say, I would like to start this new habit. And then it’s like, boom, they’ve started it and it’s easy. And it’s like, That’s it. We fully solved it. Right. It’s like, there’s usually there’s usually that’s how we’re taught.
Monica Packer: Like, isn’t that funny?
Isn’t that like all the habit challenges out in the world? It’s like everyone, 30 days of working out and we all just work out for 30 days. Great. We just do it. Right. That is way too reliant on willpower. And another way to praise willpower is energy. Yes. That’s it. It just all comes down to energy. So I’m going to come back to the energy thing in just a sec, but most of us have not very much energy, especially by the end of the day, right?
Amber Brueseke: When we’re talking about the invisible labor, we’re talking about the mental load. It’s, it’s a, it’s no wonder that you feel like you don’t have energy to be able to do the thing that you said earlier in the day that you’re going to do. So how do we, How do we, how do we implement it? How do we get past some of those barriers that are going to come up when we say, I want to read at night, but then we have the struggles of actually implementing it, making it happen.
How do we move past that? So we can get the habit to stick.
Monica Packer: This is where I’m like, I’m so excited to dig into this because it’s going to change so much. So not only have we redefined what habits are, which is actually where you have to start with everybody. Sure. We also have to redefine the habit formation process because so many people who are listening, think that they’re bad at habits when they’re not like the, They don’t fail at habits.
The habit formation methods they’ve been following have failed them for years. And mostly just because of things we just said, decide the habit, start it, do it for 30 days. Boom. You got it. Um, not relevant to real life because sometimes we do that for 30 days, but what they don’t see is our house is a disaster or we are yelling at our kids or like we’re paying a price for expending and doing it that way.
So let’s break this down for people. Once you have selected the habit that you want. You’ve walked through what I just did, the time of day, the feeling, and now the habit that you want to work with. You do still need to start with the end in mind. Like Stephen Covey said, you have to have a vision in mind of what you want this habit to look like.
So you cast a vision. So let’s, let’s talk, take that woman who wanted to read at night. Okay. So she was going to read her ideal version of this is she would love to be able to read for 30 minutes to an hour each night. Hey, after dinner was over. That was our vision. You do not start there. You do not start with the ideal.
The reason why is even if that seems like a small and simple habit, like reading for 30 minutes, like, Ooh, sounds like a vacation. If you don’t do that currently, that is going to require too much energy for you to just start with it. So instead of starting with the ideal, we begin with what I call is the baseline.
And the baseline is the smallest and simplest version of the ideal. Of your ideal habit that you can do on your worst of day. Now I’m not thinking about the literal worst day of your life. Everybody gets a pass on a literal worst day kind of day. Like, I don’t know. I’m thinking about like, I had a kid who literally almost died a month ago.
Like I wasn’t going to worry about meal planning that night because it was Monday or whatever, you know, like you get a pass, but on the types of days where you are the lowest in energy. Okay, so maybe a kid’s sick, or maybe you’re on your period, or maybe you’re struggling with a mental health day, or maybe you just have so many things that have to go do that day, or you’re putting out proverbial fires all the time.
Okay, like something has to be done fairly quickly. So You have a vision and then you create your baseline. People don’t like to start with the baseline because they want the ideal. Right. Here’s the thing. Working with starting on the baseline is what gives you the foundation you need to build towards the ideal.
Yeah. And it also gives you the consistency you need to have that habit because habits still live and die by consistency, but consistency is not rigidity. Consistency is actually based on flexibility. They’re not competing ideals. They’re complimentary. If you want to be consistent as a busy woman, then your habits need to be designed to be flexible.
And we do that by having a baseline version that we can do on our worst of day. So for this woman, she believed she can do 10 minutes. On the days you have the worst amount of energy. We start there, but here’s the coolest thing. I talked about how you build towards your baseline, your ideals, because of the baselines, your highs get higher, you move towards ideals.
Your lows get higher too. Your baselines will build as well. So your worst of day. Eventually will be the 30 minutes. Mm-Hmm. , which was your ideal to begin with. This is true for exercise journaling, day planning, meal planning, any kind of habit that you know will support you in your life. You have to have those baselines.
So that’s, that’s where we started. There’s one other piece that may help them, but. But that’s it. Cast a vision. Start with your baseline.
Amber Brueseke: That’s so good. Yeah. And it’s super actionable too. I think we get, we do get like stars in our eyes of overachieving what we think we can accomplish. Uh, you know, there’s that saying of like, we always overestimate what we can accomplish in a day and under estimate, underestimate what we’d accomplish in a month or a year or whatever.
And I think it’s that idea of like just starting with something and then building on that foundation instead of expecting perfection from yourself.
Monica Packer: Because you’re going to pay a cost for that. I mean, you could do that. You could do the ideal, but you’re going to pay a price. And often times that price is consistency actually.
It’s the reverse of what happens. Right? If you start with that ideal. The price is consistency. Consistency. You’re paying the price of consistency. That’s so good. And this is where I just want to add here. We’ve, we’ve talked about, you know, A lot of things about what habits are, habits are subjective, habits are supportive, habits are also brain hacking.
Mm-Hmm. . It’s not about us trying to become super humans. Mm-Hmm. . It’s working with the brains we have, and that’s where baselines come in. When you have baselines, your brain will know. It requires such low energy that it’s easy for you to do and, and actually that can create momentum and you do more than you think you can do.
But if you start with the baselines, when you actually have a day where your energy is lowest. You’re brain’s going to believe you when you say it’s a baseline day for this habit because you’ve done it. Sure. Yeah.
Amber Brueseke: Sometimes I feel like having examples can be really helpful for people who are trying to make some of these changes.
And so I am curious, what are some, and you can either share from your own personal life or even from some of your clients lives. What are some of the habits that you’ve seen that have really changed the game for that person or for you that, again, not, not because, um That’s the right habit to have. But if you can kind of walk people through the process of like how it changed the game for you or for a client, maybe people can step back and start to see areas in their life that they could address and create some of the habit that would also be supportive for the lives they want to live.
Monica Packer: There’s this short list of habits that are the most common that women want to work on, and they can include things like exercising, uh, journaling, meditation, sleep, um, but I would say the biggest deal breakers are, In my experience, the ones that like, they think they want to work on this habit, but we, what we end up working on instead, because it will actually make that habit more possible for them is better sleep and to do that, you can’t, you can’t just drop that and like walk away.
We got to like define this. We got to like figure it out. Cause I think you’re right. And I think, yes, a lot of people need this. Yeah, they do. And I, that was the one I had to start on because I’m a lifetime night owl from infancy. I was a terrible sleeper.
Yeah. I like die at the nighttime. I’ve gotten so much better. I have to tell you, I look forward to my earlier bedtime and I look forward to waking up. I don’t think everybody has to be early to bed early to rise. So let me just state that. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. Hey, this isn’t what we’re saying when we’re saying getting better sleep.
We’re not talking about the metrics again. It’s not like, Oh, you, so you’re in bed and asleep by 10 and you’re awake at five. Nope. It’s still about what does good sleep look like for you? And what do those hours look like for you? But having better sleep period is a make it or break it for so many women in ways that they are in dramatic ways, understating in their lives. And that has a lot to do with, especially our American culture on productivity, right? And, You’re less of a strong person if you need more sleep and all that. So sleep, but this is where it gets complicated because to work on sleep, you’re not usually working on just like, Oh, well, I just go to sleep, you know?
If getting better sleep was easy, everybody would do it. You would just do it. It really goes. Okay. Let me give you another statement here. Habits go deeper. Habits are always about deeper things. So this is where we get to go back to the self awareness piece. What is going on objectively? Look at your nighttimes and get clear about what are the circumstances that are leading to you delaying bedtime or getting less sleep, whether that’s at night or in the morning, get clear on what is happening.
And then you go to, you got to go deeper because they often do. Why do I think I can’t rest? Or sometimes it’s going deeper within your household relationships. You know, why is it that I am the one who’s worrying about all of these things that other people are capable about worrying about and taking care of too?
Okay. Or if you’re scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, like why am I scrolling? What void am I trying to fill? I maybe I need more connection and that actually is going to help me get better sleep at night. Maybe I need better movement. Maybe I need a wind down routine. Nighttime is not about productivity. It’s about winding down.
So this is where, unfortunately, and this is the bummer for those of us who are loving those black and white, easy answers and prescriptions is I’m not in the business of giving prescriptions. I’m in the business of helping you come up with your own prescriptions. So that means. You’ve got to do the nuanced journey, but actually is the right journey of figuring out what that looks like for you to get better sleep.
And this is why I hate so much of what happens on in the personal development world, because they thrive off of the message of certainty. Yeah. Right. And the how that here, the prescriptions, like those don’t work unless they match you and your needs, your season, and actually what’s really going on. So if there was something to work on I would say, honestly, almost every woman who I’ve ever worked with, it’s come back to sleep and often sleep is made better by some self care habits another time during the day or the night. Hmm. That’s so good.
Amber Brueseke: What was one of the things that you implemented that helped you to improve your sleep?
Monica Packer: It’s the clocking out for me.
Like turning off the, turning off the mental load, like being like, I’m, I’m done. Yeah. Everything’s done. And because I have five kids and I have I do often have to work at night, so I have to have a clock out time where I know I’m off the clock for both my literal like work that you see me doing online and my literal work I’m doing at home.
So it’s like 9 PM is my, you’re off the clock and I have an alarm that goes off on my watch. And then here’s the kicker though. I will never get off the clock unless I have something to look forward to because I’m already in motion. That’s good working, you know? Yeah. So I have the best nighttime routine that I look forward to every night.
Oh, I love that. That is what helps me get to bed. Amber is because I have a whole nighttime routine. Um, do you want me to share what it is? So I would love it. Yeah. And actually one of the things I do that helps is I also have a habit that helps me lower the hurdle to getting to bed.
And one of the hurdles to me to getting into bed is getting in my pajamas and washing my face and doing my whole skincare routine, because I am a FOMO when it comes to skin care, and I, I have a too big of a routine. It needs to be simplified. I know this. I have a baseline version of it, just so everyone knows.
But, so I start with when I put my baby to bed, I get on my pajamas, and I do my skin care right then. While I still have some energy. Yeah. Get it over with. This is like 8 PM. I’m not going to bed yet. So then that’s when I, I have to work and I work for a while or I’m cleaning the kitchen or I’m doing stuff around the house, but then I’ve got my 9 PM cut off.
That’s when I get my treat and these can be protein balls. It can be a yogurt bowl. Like it could be something like that, or it can be a bowl of ice cream. Depends on the night, right? I get my treat. And then I get to watch my show, whether it’s with my husband or on my own, and that helps me wind down.
It helps me, clock out. And once I’ve watched a little while, sometimes it’s 30 minutes. Sometimes it may be an hour, it tends to be less time because I actually look forward to what’s coming. Still. I brush my teeth. I do my journaling still. Um, I say my prayers and then I get in bed and I read a book until I fall asleep on my Kindle because that helps me.
And I, I still. deal with insomnia. That was a big problem for me years ago when I first started to work on this. And I know it’s different for every person, but for me, Oh, by the way, I plug my phone in outside of my room. My phone is plugged outside of my room. Um, but I, my Kindle helps me fall asleep even in the middle of the night because now my body’s my brain, brain hacking again, it’s used to it.
My brain knows when the lights off and I’m reading my Kindle, it can go to sleep. And that happens even at 3am. If my baby wakes up and I have to go back to sleep and my brain is turning, I Put on my book and I’m able to drift off.
Amber Brueseke: So good. Oh, it’s so fun. And again, right? We’re not saying that this is the bedtime routine, right?
Like this is an example of something that you have practiced. You have tested out, you’ve tried different things and you found what is what works for you to be able to get you into that state. And that’s what we’re advocating for, right? Is you figuring out what works for you.
Monica Packer: And what I just shared, by the way, is an ideal and it’s a routine.
So one thing to think about is habits are not routines, but routines can become habit. So if, if you’re, so habits are not routines, but routines can become habits. Okay. And that’s kind of a plan words. But what I’m saying here is a lot of times we think we’re starting a habit, but we’re really starting a routine and that’s going to require a lot of energy.
So you got to break out what’s that routine because a routine is a series of habits stacked together during a certain time of day during a certain timeframe. So if I were to give you my baseline of my whole nighttime routine, the one habit I would do for me, this is how I started and I don’t do it now.
Um, what got me to bed? What helped me? You know, clock out was I had people magazine on my nightstand. That was when I got to read my people magazine. That was my habit. Yeah, that was it. That was, that was the way I started. That was it. There was no nighttime routine. There was no like 10 step routine that I just shared with you.
That was it. I get to read people magazine at night and that would get me to bed sooner. And I gradually was able to move it up gradually, gradually and have, and also build up a routine more too. And now my routine is a habit. Because I started with the building process towards that bullet routine, if that makes sense.
Now I don’t have to think about all the steps. Because now the routine is a habit. Yeah.
Amber Brueseke: Well, and the other thing I heard in you describing this too, is that it’s, it’s enjoyable. And I think that that’s a piece that’s missing for a lot of people. Sometimes I even think about this with going to the gym as a habit as like, if you hate it and you hate every moment that you’re there and you hate everything that you’re doing, it’s no wonder that you can’t make it into a consistent habit.
So how can we figure out something that you like? How can we figure out something that is enjoyable for you? So you actually look forward to the habit. You don’t have to force yourself into the habit.
Monica Packer: And how can we make a habit that’s still a blah habit at the end of the day, like laundry for me, or meal planning I hate?
How can we still make it feel good? That’s another way we do brain hacking with habit formation, is we make it feel good. So it may not be the habit itself, it may be something you pair it with. That’s why I listen, and when I say pair it, I’m not talking about the bird. P A I R, separate word, I T, pair it.
That means you pair a blah task with a yay feeling, or yay task. So, that’s why I listen to audiobooks. While I’m washing the dishes or cleaning the kitchen or doing the laundry, or you can light a candle. You can blast your favorite music from the, from the aughts, the early aughts, right? Like you’ve got to, you can find ways to still make the blah habits feel good.
Amber Brueseke: Yeah. That’s so good because there are things that we just need to do and like, we got to brush our teeth and I don’t think anybody’s like super excited about brushing their teeth. Yeah. I still hate doing my skincare, but I love the results. So I always save some podcasts for that.
Like I saved my pop culture podcast. So for getting ready, I saved the, this American life for other times. Yeah. That was so good.
Yeah. It’s so smart to, I mean, and it seems so like, duh, but it is, but it’s not to like, make it fun as possible. It’s a blah task. Let’s make it as fun as possible and saving like something special for that time helps to make it a little bit more enjoyable and something that you can, you can do every single day.
And your brain’s going to want to do it. Yeah. Which is brilliant. Like the, yeah, the brain hacking part of it is, is so, so fabulous. Um, how can, because we’ve talked about this idea of flexibility, like I love that you said. Consistency isn’t rigidity. Consistency is built on flexibility. So how do we maintain this balance between doing our habits, having them be supportive and knowing that the more that we do them, the more they are supporting us, but at the same time, allowing ourselves the flexibility of not feeling constrained or bound by them.
Monica Packer: This is where we have to prove ourselves wrong because what you are working against is not only an entire world’s worth of culture and societal pressures on what habit formation is, you have internalized these so deep in your subconscious that they are Really what happens is we’re retraining our brain.
We are changing the neural pathways in our brain. I know that sounds dramatic, but you literally are doing that as you’re trying a new way. Yes. So you have to be willing to prove yourself wrong. You have to be willing to believe that baselines count. And there’s actually another brain hacking thing we can do to help with that too, and it’s practicing it.
This is something you do outside of real time. You go through your, habit three to five times in a row, almost like an actor blocking out where they are in a stage. So you’re not like literally running for 15 minutes because that’s your baseline. But you might, you know, run through like what I do. Um, and that can help your brain remember it easier, more easily too, but honestly just comes back to you got to prove yourself wrong.
Be willing to take a chance. Is this way? Like, let’s do Dr. Phil. How’s it working for you? Like, is it working? Maybe there are some things that it’s working pretty well. Okay, cool. Then you’ve, then you’ve got those habits, but where it’s not working, try something new. I’m going to make it worse. It’s really good.
Amber Brueseke: This has been so awesome and really turned a lot of what I think people think about when they think about habits on its head. Kind of show them a little different way and a way that we can have habits really support who we are, what our identity is, what we want to create, the feelings that we want to evoke, um, which is just such a awesome way to be able to think about habits.
If somebody is wanting to connect with you, Monica, they’re wanting to learn more about your habits course. Thanks. Where can they find you?
Monica Packer: Yeah, so I’m primarily a podcaster at About Progress and habits, funnily enough, are just one of the arms of the things that we talk about. We talk about everything personal development with progress, not perfection in mind.
Um, but they can find me on Instagram where I do talk more about habits and my course is called the Sticky Habit Intensive. It’s a live course now. So it’s more of a, uh, Um, and then I have a live community and I teach and we coach as we go and there’s a private Facebook without the Facebook online community we have, but that’s not going to be happening until the fall.
So just make sure you’re, you know, listening to my stuff and following me on Instagram and you’ll see when it’s opening up likely in September.
Amber Brueseke: Awesome. Yeah. And this will air more towards the end of the summer. So that’ll kind of coincide really well with being able to go and learn from Monica and wait for her, her stuff to open up for you.
Awesome. Yeah.
Monica Packer: And if you think I have a lot to say about habits, like you should, we just got, yeah. But at the same time, um, it’s very practical. Like you will make change and the funnest change that women make when they do habits differently is the way they change seeing themselves. Yes. I mean, it’s the best, right?
Amber Brueseke: Like it is the best when you can help a woman see herself in a different light and feel empowered to be able to go out and create the life that is that she wants to create. So good. Thank you so much, Monica. This is fascinating. Appreciate you coming on.
Monica Packer: Well, it was a joy. Thanks for having me.
