How to Make Habits Stick When Your Life Is Unpredictable with Monica Packer
EPISODE 330How many times have you been in the middle of a habit challenge and quietly given up? You make it to day 19 of 21, then your kid gets sick, your period starts, or life blows up and you don’t have the time or energy to do the habit that day. The problem is that so much popular habit advice teaches consistency as doing the same thing, the same way, day after day. As Monica Packer puts it, what we’ve actually learned is perfectionism, not habit change.
Monica is a recovering perfectionist and the author of Sticky Habits. Her work looks at something most habit advice misses. Women often have less predictable time and energy because of caregiving, invisible labor, hormones, and the million moving pieces they’re managing. That doesn’t mean habits can’t work. It means we need a model for lasting change that accounts for how our lives actually work.
In this episode of Truce with Food, I sit down with Monica to talk about how rethinking consistency can help you build habits that actually stick. She explains what she calls gentle diligence, why doing your best isn’t the same as doing something perfectly, and how creating a baseline gives you a version of your habit you can maintain when life doesn’t go according to plan. We also get into what long-term social change can teach us about our obsession with quick results and why sustainable change requires measuring something different than speed.
3:36 – A short overview of Monica’s background
6:33 – Why the habit advice that works for men can quietly set women up to fail
12:37 – A solo trip that revealed how much invisible work it takes to keep a family running
15:17 – Male-centered authority and leadership in the habit change industry
18:49 – Why a habit challenge stalls out right around day 19, and the redefinition of consistency that has nothing to do with perfection
24:07 – How to establish a baseline version of your habits for less-than-ideal days, and what shifts when you start to believe in it
30:00 – An example of how showing up matters more than doing it right, and how Monica’s perfectionism inspired her book
36:17 – The point of habits and the flexibility to renegotiate them when circumstances come up
39:48 – Reframing what "fast enough" means for your own change, and being sold the lie of overnight success
44:47 – Two things Monica often says to her clients who are worried about consistency and doing things right
46:27 – Monica’s hopes for how she wants her book to impact both women who read it and the self-help and wellness industry overall
47:28 – Monica’s message for you if you fear you can’t change
Mentioned In How to Make Habits Stick When Your Life Is Unpredictable with Monica Packer
Sticky Habits by Monica Packer
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