Rigid vs Flexible Habits (feat. Monica Packer)

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[00:00:25] Until you burn out or you stay safe in the nothing, which also means you stay stuck.

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[00:00:47] Are you ready? I'm having salad with a side of fries. Hey friend. Welcome back to Salad with a side of Fries. I'm Jen Cheick, your host and health coach here with you every week for wellness without the weirdness. [00:01:00] In one of our episodes earlier this month, I shared that I feel like the word habits has become kind of trite.

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[00:01:35] Today we're gonna dig deeper into that and explore this idea of rigid versus flexible habits, and I have a truly wonderful guest to help us. So let me introduce you. She's a recovering perfectionist who uncovered the truest model to lasting growth. It's progress made practical, sound familiar. So as a writer, podcaster, and coach, she guides women to [00:02:00] find sustainable growth by adopting progress over perfection.

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[00:02:22] What a great intro. Well, thank you. Welcome officially to Salad with a side of fries. That is so good. I love everything about what you teach in your community too. Well, likewise. So detour to plug City for a second. Monica's podcast about progress, episode 6 95 features yours truly. And so good. When you talk about the practical, we got it done that day.

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[00:03:11] You know, kind of attempting to unlearn or

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[00:03:14] Jenn Trepeck: Yes.

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[00:03:25] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah. So friends, when you finish listening, pop over to about progress. We'll put the link in the episode notes for everybody too. Thanks, Monica. Thank you again for having me. I'm thrilled that you're here and we'll start with your story and then kind of. Unpack habits from there. Really quick though, one more bit of housekeeping.

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[00:04:53] Frankly, what I love the most about it is not just that it's a wrap, which is a great way to change it up, but also [00:05:00] it's so easy. You could honestly make it mostly with leftovers, like whatever you have in your fridge. So when you see the ingredients, you'll get it. So if you want this recipe, if you want this episode in full video plus access to our community chat and the 24 7, ask me anything, go to a salad with a side of fries.com/membership.

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[00:06:11] Monica Packer: life? We have to go actually back like 20 plus years for me to begin. But I will do a nutshell version.

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[00:06:36] And I definitely thought that Type A was best, and that's the way I needed it to be in order to do good things in the world. So it started out with good intentions, but throughout my entire youth, and then up until I turned 20, I was in that boat of not, yeah, not only did I know I was a perfectionist, I wanted to be one.

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[00:07:12] But in the process, I went from all to nothing. It was in large part because I was trying to, one, prioritize my healing. So good intentions, but those good intentions again, got taken too far to the nothing side. I thought the only way to improve was that model. And because I had paid such a heavy price for all after so many years of, of being that person, I thought the only other alternative was nothing.

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[00:08:09] Thankfully my recovery was doing a lot better at that point. But the mental health side was the exact same, like severe depression and panic and anxiety and all those things. And I got myself back to a great therapist, and this was a new one to me who likes to tell it like it is. And she pointed out that I was a perfectionist and that was like.

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[00:08:49] And the root is fear. It's also coping mechanisms, especially for those who have been through trauma. But for typical people who maybe don't have the trauma background, it's all about basing your [00:09:00] identity, your sense of self off of your outcomes, whether you have them or you don't. Whether you hustle, hustle, grind until you burn out or you stay safe in the nothing, which also means you stay stuck.

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[00:09:35] Yeah, really paired with that, and so that's where it became a 10 year experiment that has. Radically changed my life without my life actually changing much on the outside. My life looks pretty much the same as it did 10 years ago. Like it's not like I suddenly got a new family or that I got like all these house cleaners or won the lottery.

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[00:10:11] Jenn Trepeck: So there's so many nuggets in there. I love what you said about how the circumstances and the outside perspective look exactly the same. Mm-hmm. Right? What shifted was you and how you operate in that? Sort of umbrella, right? That makes all the difference. And I think sometimes so often we like, well, if only right?

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[00:10:48] Monica Packer: And it's, this is one of those tricky things because for a while there was a lot of like life coaching about how circumstances are neutral, and I actually have a big resistance to that.

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[00:11:19] It's that same kind of thing. I think there's a way to validate, Hey, I am experiencing a massive depression, or someone I have a special needs child, or we've lost a job in our dual income household or. Solo and like there's a way to validate those things without becoming victim to them, while also being move through them differently.

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[00:11:41] Jenn Trepeck: a thousand percent with you. And I think it's, it's valid and important because our conversation today, or any conversation we wanna have with ourselves, if we are forcing, almost ignoring pieces that feel very real.

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[00:11:58] Jenn Trepeck: Anything we talk about [00:12:00] is going to be superficial.

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[00:12:08] Monica Packer: Well, and I know you're so good at this and this is what you do, especially when you get more, collect more information with the people that you're working with. You know, anyone who has hypothyroid disease that you're dealing like what you're working through, it's gonna have to look different for them.

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[00:12:41] What we're experiencing most often is women and what's interfering with their habits.

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[00:13:12] Yeah. Right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So I guess maybe stepping back before we dig deeper, I think. Sometimes that word habits elicits an eye roll. Yeah. Right. So like, here we go again. Right? This conversation about habits. So how do you define habits and how do we wanna think about them? So that we can actually take in what we're talking about today.

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[00:13:53] Ah, toxic positivity habits or like Right. All certainty or bro marketing habits like [00:14:00] today's your day and get up and you're the only one responsible for your life. Like, I don't wanna hear it again. Same. I wanna hear it. I get it. I get it. And that's in large part because of how habits have been defined for us and in ways that are so.

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[00:14:36] I mean, I get a lot of answers, but they're almost all about prescriptions. Metrics. I need to hit standards. I must complete perfect consistency, doing the same things in the exact same way, at the exact same time, every single day, day after day. And instead, what we need to shift and unlearn really, is that habits are supportive.

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[00:15:27] For those who have kids who do baseball. There's gonna be multiple factors that influence the way we do habits. And so when we can redefine it, we have both the freedom and the path to have good and supportive habits that help us show up as ourselves no matter what, without that magic wand that you also brought up earlier.

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[00:16:03] Monica Packer: do it. Right? So this is an important thing because I think so much of how we define habits is about shoulds, right?

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[00:16:35] So I don't meal plan three meals and snacks every single day at a time. I just do dinners, and I actually do mine two weeks at a time. When I day plan, I do a big brain dump, and then I don't time walk down to the hour. I just know from my brain depth, I pull three things I need to make sure I do that day.

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[00:17:17] Jenn Trepeck: I'm hanging on your every word. And I wanna go back to what you said about how we fail at habits because of what we've been taught. Mm-hmm. And so we can hear what you're saying about choosing our shoulds. Yeah. And thinking about how to make it work for us. I'm also curious for us to talk a little bit and point out what we've learned about habits that isn't serving us, that maybe led to the burnout that you experienced, so that everybody kind of sees both sides of the coin.

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[00:18:08] But if certain things aren't, maybe you can analyze it from this perspective and see, well, okay, maybe if I do it this way, that would help me with that. In terms of thinking about how the habit formation methods we've learned from have failed us. Not the other way around. The best way I have to illustrate that is by talking about consistency.

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[00:18:38] Jenn Trepeck: right? Well, I think we've learned over the years, right? The old adage is 21 days. Mm-hmm. I also learned since the pandemic.

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[00:18:51] Monica Packer: the funny thing is no matter what, there's a number, right? Everybody has at least one number in their head, and mostly it's usually 21, 28, 30. Sometimes it's a lot more [00:19:00] days, but everyone, what we're centering in is everybody has a number. The thing is that number is built off of consistency, so doing the ideal version of the habit.

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[00:19:34] Like the whole challenge is like thrown out the window or how many of us have gotten to that? 21, 28, 30, 60 days and it's great. We have the habit. We also have like failed relationships or burnout on the side, or we are not ourselves, like we are grumpy in other ways. So, you know, there are certain things that do demand that of us, like we just jump right into it.

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[00:20:17] Flexibility is what makes consistency possible, and I'll teach you more about how you can do that with habits specifically. But one other thing I wanna highlight about this is it's the target for consistency is actually more times than not. If you are hitting the habit that you want more times than not, then you have the habit.

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[00:20:59] I [00:21:00] just do not have the time or the bandwidth. The energy or something came up where I don't even have to do the brain dump and sketch out what I'm doing for the week and who needs to be where. All I do is just write down the top three priorities for the entire week. Just three. That's it. Same thing with meal planning.

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[00:21:41] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, it's so interesting. So I often talk about this as like, you know, consistency and intensity are inversely related. Hmm. Right. And that intensity is the perfectionism that intensity. Yeah. Is, you know, and as you were talking about, you know, 21 days, 30 days, whatever, I also, what popped to my [00:22:00] mind is everybody who says maybe they make it two or three days and it's them starting over on Monday.

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[00:22:26] So like I wanna get into some examples and all of that really quick, let's highlight our partner for this episode. Big thanks to snap cleaning products for supporting salad with a side of fries. Make household and industrial cleaning a snap with their eco-friendly, economical, multipurpose snap products snap's.

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[00:24:39] Monica Packer: Yeah. Well, let me just walk through Yes. What that looks like. So, yeah, you're right. One of the ways we define consistency is we start with the ideal, okay. The ideal version of what we want. So if we're gonna take, let's take movement for example, that's one of the most common habits people tend to want to work on.

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[00:25:16] But then if they, if I ask them, Hey, so how much of that do you do? And they're like, nothing. Okay. So even that realistic version is still an ideal version, and I'm glad it's her ideal. That is important. You need to still have a vision in mind. Stephen Covey was right like that. Like you do need to start with the end in mind.

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[00:25:50] You have to craft that vision of where you're headed with the habit. Now, I would say most of the time, because sometimes there are times, but most of the time we [00:26:00] do not start with the ideal. We don't start with the ideal. I'm gonna tell you a couple of reasons why in a bit, but let me tell you what you do.

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[00:26:29] Maybe she knows on my worst of day I could do a 10 minute walk. Okay, and this is gonna be really subjective. For many people, the 30 minutes is their baseline. That 30 minute ideal that she just shared actually is someone else's. Like, I can do that on my literal deathbed. It doesn't matter. What matters is what's going to be right for you.

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[00:26:54] Jenn Trepeck: right?

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[00:27:07] Like, no, we actually have to be up at a certain time and out the door and at school all by certain times. But with most cases, you can start with the baseline, the smallest and simplest version baselines give you the support you need even in the smaller amount of time. Baseline create momentum. So most of the time when you think it's a baseline day, you're actually able to do even a little bit more, and sometimes a lot more because it's just the laws of physics, like a ball in motion stays in motion.

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[00:27:54] Baselines build, baselines build because of the other two factors I just shared. They [00:28:00] build quicker and more sustainably towards the ideal. So you could be doing the ideal in a short amount of time. The reason I have most people start with the baseline is because we're trying to train your brain to believe you on a baseline day.

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[00:28:39] So what you can do on your worst of day grows as well. So my baseline I shared about day planning. Just write down three things for the week I need to do. I rarely need that baseline. I very rarely need that minimum baseline, and that's because my baselines have built over time. So now I can usually do at least jot [00:29:00] down my three things for the day.

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[00:29:25] And now. Two and a half years later, my baseline is 30 minutes. And I didn't even intentionally work towards that. It just gradually happened. So this is where people are gonna feel a lot of resistance. And again, it's like you have the ability if things work for you, if you've been able to apply ideals with certain habits easy, then that worked, you're doing well.

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[00:30:07] Jenn Trepeck: I love this idea that baselines build and that just because this is where we're starting doesn't mean that that's the only place we'll ever be. Yeah. And then one of the things that's coming up in my mind as you're sharing this, is also this idea of what versus how. And so, you know, I could imagine somebody saying, okay, the, what is the 10 minutes or 30 minutes of movement going with that example?

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[00:30:51] Monica Packer: So to me that's going back to your season. Okay. And where you're starting.

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[00:31:15] So I wouldn't recommend that even for a shorter amount of time, you know? So yeah, if the skull goes back to, even as you're casting a vision of the ideal version, do that, the how part. Can be different. The way that you journal can change from winter to summer, maybe in the wintertime. You just love getting nice and cozy and like writing long, luxurious.

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[00:31:53] And that's when journaling for the summertime can be a one line a day journal. And that's still an [00:32:00] ideal for you and that still works. So yeah, I think both factors. Okay. It's just all has to go back to, there's not a, well one meets all prescription. That's one of the biggest pet peeves I have in this personal development world.

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[00:32:22] Jenn Trepeck: Yes. And then where does motivation fit in? Because I often say motivation comes later, right? Yeah. It follows momentum. But I could hear someone listening and saying, I'm just not motivated to start.

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[00:32:39] Monica Packer: Mm-hmm. That's where it goes back to the baselines. The baselines are, if it's not something you can do on a day where you have no motivation or you feel like no motivation in your body, then it's not a baseline yet. It needs to be smaller and simpler, and for the clients who continue to face that roadblock, if I don't feel like it, that's where we have to get real about.

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[00:33:17] But I love the results so much, but because I've challenged myself to do it differently, I can see, oh. It's still worth pushing through this no motivation. And because a baseline's so small, it's not reliant on energy. That's a big, big factor with habit formation too. The old models are so dependent on being, having this like reserve of energy.

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[00:34:01] You could work to have more reserves over time. Like you can work to get better at it, but it still will tap out. So if you've had a really crappy day, you're gonna have lower energy. So that's why our habits seem to be flexible to match us on those low energy days. So we're not relying on motivation. We are working more to create momentum instead of being reliant on the motivation.

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[00:34:43] Monica Packer: mm-hmm. So I think the butt for a lot of people is even before they start, they think that's not good enough.

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[00:35:11] And she had been pretty high achieving for many years, and she achieved great things, like amazing things. And she was down a different place in her life. Her energy levels were different. Her circumstances had changed, and she was trying to find a new way to grow. And she was terrified. She was terrified of being messier.

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[00:35:51] She said, I learned it takes the greatest of courage to do the smallest of things. I'm a person where things just go in and out. Like I'm a [00:36:00] great learner, but I'm not great at retaining. That has stuck with me for years because she was so right. It does take the greatest of courage if you are someone who's on that pendulum swing of all or nothing.

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[00:36:34] There are prices to pay for all, but you are also paying the prices for nothing. And I think everyone gets to a point where they have to decide, and I willing to take on some courage to do the smallest of things to get messy. To fail, potentially to not go all or nothing, to believe in the power of the small and to try it differently.

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[00:37:17] Like I was like on the high honor society in college, I almost got straight A's. I got a full ride scholarship without even trying, like I didn't know I was trying to get a scholarship is what I'm trying to say. Like I just got the grades and like, oh, congratulations. Now we will cover your, I was like, okay.

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[00:37:57] I'm not on any front pages of [00:38:00] newspapers. I don't have a full ride scholarship anywhere, but I am a totally different, exponentially grown person than when I was on that pendulum swing.

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[00:38:18] It's all possible.

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[00:38:38] Jenn Trepeck: I love it.

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[00:38:42] Thanks for giving me my soapbox.

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[00:39:01] What's the naughtiest thing you've done related to your help this week? Really because it's balance and all the things are part of our lives. Sure, sure. I love that.

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[00:39:23] Like I took a nap after I took my kids to the dentist today. 'cause I was like, I'm falling asleep on the freeway, like tapping my foot on the floor trying to keep awake. So I, yeah, don't say that's naughty, but yeah. I get what you mean though.

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[00:39:39] If you weren't a writer, podcaster, and coach, what would you do? Oh, easy.

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[00:39:55] Jenn Trepeck: on that line. Favorite book on any topic other than your area of [00:40:00] expertise?

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[00:40:02] Monica Packer: Ooh, this is tough for me because I love to read. Oh gosh. You know, I have to say, I think Read Fair Play by Eve Roski. It is so good. It is so good. It will help you. Like we didn't even get into the whole women issue with habits, but Oh yeah, that's a big one right there.

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[00:40:23] Jenn Trepeck: Perfect. All right. I'm adding fair play to my list too. Yeah. If you could cure one ailment disease or sickness, what would it be?

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[00:40:37] My first instinct though was like depression. I think that's, yeah. Yeah, the big one. If you were a superhero, what would be your

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[00:40:51] Monica Packer: peeve? I think people who think they know everything and are really certain.

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[00:41:05] Monica Packer: I think it's anything to do with women and not making all of the research and advice and expertise be as gender neutral as people think it is, when it's really not a thousand

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[00:41:21] Tell everybody how to connect with you, where to learn more about you, your work, listen to about progress, all the things.

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[00:41:38] I am halfway through writing a book on habit formation, so hopefully in 2026 that will be out and hopefully they'll be able to share the title soon, but if they're following me, they'll, they'll learn.

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[00:41:54] I'm at Gen Tpic, J-E-N-N-T-R-E-P-E-C-K. Website is a salad [00:42:00] with the side of fries.com. Pick your platform, send a message hearing from you is the highlight of my day, your key takeaways, your ideas, your questions. This is also the easiest way to learn more about working with me and Monica Packer, you're a gem.

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[00:42:34] On top of this week's episode, in full video with Behind the Scenes pieces and your 24 7, ask Me Anything, you'll get this week's recipe for the Mediterranean wraps. So until next week, remember, sometimes our desire to get it right and do it well shows up in how we build habits. Those are rigid habits.

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[00:43:13] Share us with a friend and we'll be back next week. Always remember you deserve it and you are worth it. Happy, healthy.