075 Creating flexible, self supporting habits with Monica Packer
In this episode I have such a great chat with Monica Pack of the About Progress podcast about how to create flexible self supporting habits for overwhelmed moms.
Monica shares the 4 types of "habiteers" which are:
1. The martyr: they believe habits are balls and chains, they are ruled by "shoulds" and believe habits are all or nothing.
2. The Dropper: believes habits are full routines and they drop the full routine because they can't accomplish it
3. The Overacheiver: They shoot for the stars and try to create enormous habits they can't achieve so they believe they aren't capable of keeping habits.
4. The Dangler: Somehow they believe habits will just get inserted into their life if they just want them bad enough. So they are left dangling without having habits that stick.
Monica shares that she has read hundreds of books about habits and self improvement and the majority are written by men. She said women need more flexible, self supporting habits and need to remove the shame and find self compassion.
Monica's sticky habit method is to build supportive habits on a daily basis to take care of our needs and desires so we are better equipped women and mothers. She shares that flexible consistency is key. For example, if one of the habits you want to nurture is working out, an all or nothing approach is that you have to do it the same time every single day for an hour. A more consistently flexible approach would be to prioritize it, but maybe it's split up. You walk the kids to school for 15 minutes and then come home and do yoga later for 20 minutes. The workout still happened but it wasn't so rigid there wasn't wiggle room for being a mom, being interuppted, being up all night with a baby etc.
We are much more likely to create a habit that sticks when we are compassionate and flexible with ourselves.
Monica is teaching a FREE master class about Sticky habits and you can register here!
https://workinprogressacademy.mykajabi.com/women-habits-class