How Everything Changed When I Learned to Accept my Limits

Free yourself from resentment, anger, and blame by accepting and owning your limitations.

Today's topic was inspired by an early June morning when I wasn't feeling well, I woke up late, the kids were home from school for summer, and I missed my usual workout, so the day just started off on the wrong foot. I knew in that moment the difference between how the old me would've reacted and how I actually choose to react now.

I say "choose" because I now own my limitations - in this case my motherhood season, my physical health, and the time of year. I accept the limits on my capabilities and release the resentment, anger, blame, and other negative emotions that used to incite a reaction from me.

In this episode I dive into certain other seasons of my life, and how I've navigated the change from one to another in 3 major ways. At the root, I try to stay connected to my priorities, then allow my actions to reflect those even if it's in the smallest of ways. It's time to stop waiting on the sidelines of your life, to think about how you can support yourself, and not waiting for the support to come.

About a few other things...

Reclaim your creative power and rediscover who you actually are! If you’re ready to come back home to yourself, to be able to say that you know who you are and what matters to you, take my foundation course, “Finding Me.” It’s OK that you’ve lost parts of yourself along the way; but as you learn to anchor back into who you are and align your life to what matters to you, you’ll find that you have more strength, more fulfilment, and more creativity to bring to your important roles and responsibilities.

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TRANSCRIPT

Monica: Welcome to about progress. I'm Monica packer, a regular mom and recovering perfectionist who uncover the truest model to dramatic, but lasting personal growth it's progress made practical. Join us to leave the extremes behind and instead learn how to do something to grow in ways that stick.

If you like this podcast, then you will love my new course. All about habit formation outside of perfectionism, it's called the sticky habit method. It is already changing so many women's lives and helping them develop supportive habits outside of the all or nothing. Pendulum swing. You can check it out by going to about progress.com/sticky habit method.

Every now and then I have this weird experience where I wake up in the middle of the night or earlier in the morning with an idea for the podcast. And that happened early June. It was right after school had been let out. And I hadn't been feeling well off and on for a couple weeks. And I woke up that morning later than I typically do.

And as I was laying in bed, I was thinking about the old me who would've immediately been very frustrated, not by just my own waking up late or snoozing or blaming myself for my lack of energy. But also the resentment, I would feel towards my responsibilities that were making it so I couldn't get up and do the things I typically would do that day because I had kids waking up soon and needing me for their summer days.

That meant I couldn't do the workout I normally do before they wake up or after they've gone to school. But instead of feeling resentful or frustrated, or even blaming myself that morning instead, I felt flexible. I felt calm and I felt like I was still in control and those feelings and the contrast of how I used to feel in the same kind of scenario helped me think about the topic I want to teach you about today.

And it's how owning your limits can strangely set you free. Yes, I couldn't do my same intense workout, but because of my limitations that morning with a combo of waking up late, less energy, more needs for my kids, I still could find ways to support myself by going on a shorter walk with my kids in tow.

And because I owned those limitations I was able to be flexible enough to make choices where I still felt in control. Owning our limits is actually liberating. And how can that be? How can that be? When we are owning the ways that we are limited in our capacity, in our energy, in our time, whatever it may be, how can owning those limits actually liberate us?

For me, the number one way we are liberated and made free when we own our limitations is because doing so frees us from resentment, powerlessness, anger, sadness, and blame, including self blame. When you own your limits, you're actually empowering yourself to own your ability to still choose in ways you would not be able to do if you were resisting or resenting or angry about the limitations.

Owning these limits can actually give us more choices because we're able to look at these limits with objective and clear eyes and find more ways to work within them. And today what I'm going to teach you is how to do that. But before we dig in, I want to do a quick note and this is a kind of a disclaimer, but it's also like a caveat to what I'm gonna teach you today.

Accepting your limits is far, far different than some coming to martyrdom with your limitations. Those are very different things. And as I teach you today, I want you to be thinking about how you can notice the difference between the two of being a martyr to your limitations. Or still being an agent, an actor within your limitations.

Because when I say accept your limits and get set free, what I'm really asking you to do is carry this fine balance of both acceptance, but still action.

So let's talk about acceptance and I'm gonna frame this in three deep ways that you can own your limits through acceptance and action. The first is accept your season. Back in my college years, I was a very diligent day planner. I always carried my day planner with me, wherever I went and most of my days were divided up into different blocks of going to classes, work, study, exercise downtime, dinner, spirituality, like everything had a time block. And I even had these color coded and I had, you know, running lists of todos that I would check off diligently. And it honestly did feel really good to be in so much control of my daily schedule and my productivity. and that kind of, you know, time blocking season carried in over to my teaching years, somewhat because I had built in structure with my teaching and, and the different periods I would teach and the different classes and when I could work and all of that.

But all of that changed once I had kids, I found that organizing my time by time blocks, like different responsibilities being inserted into specific times of my day on repeat was not practical. Instead being a mom entailed me needing to be more responsive to my children and their needs. And this has been true for the times that I was strictly purely a stayat home mom and other times where I worked as well as being a mom at home primarily.

And I've seen this be true across the board for all women who have kids, whether they work inside or outside of the home. But for me for years, this lack of regularity of dependability of consistency with my schedule made me feel very frustrated, but more than just frustrated, I actually found myself blaming myself for my own seemingly lack of self-control or my lack of determination or willpower.

And this translated to my habits too. Like. I would blame myself. Why can't I stick to this habit of waking up at the same time every day and doing the same routine minute by minute, when I used to be able to do that, why can't I do that anymore? I would blame myself. I didn't have enough self control. I didn't have enough determination.

Or I would blame my family or society for punishing me for being a stay-at-home mom for keeping me, keeping me captive by my roles. It was this weird kind of whiplash between anger and self blame and, you know, kind of just bouncing back and forth. Do you wanna know when I really feel like I became a, a bonafide mom when I really learned to love motherhood?

It was years into my motherhood. And honestly, since I probably started this podcast so years into my motherhood is when I began to really love motherhood. And why was it? It's because I accepted that motherhood entailed some limitations for me. I could accept the limits that my time was not completely my own anymore.

I was going to get interrupted more. I could accept that my habits would need to be more flexible, both when I did them and how I did them. Another limit I could accept is that my days needed to be based off of rhythms more than strict time blocking. And as I accepted the limits of my season as a mom, it freed me.

All of those bad feelings. I was feeling all of the blame in all directions and all of the resentment and the powerlessness. And instead in accepting that season, I could act more as an agent within my season. I'm going to talk more about that too, on how to act more as an agent, but just so you know, motherhood is just one example.

What season are you in? And even seasons of motherhood change all the time. So even within maybe some limitations you experience with a thing you're gonna be for a very long time, even though seasons will change. So how can accepting your season and its limitations help for me, it just comes down to one word.

Prioritizing, when you accept your season, it gives you a right to prioritize within that season in ways that best match where you are at. A lot of us will have the same priorities, like family, faith, personal development, health, whatever they might be. These big buckets of priorities. Right. But the ways that we approach these buckets of priorities need to be allowed to be different and to change based off of the season we are in, maybe this is a season of very creative multi-step meals at night, or this is a season of 10 minute meals on repeat.

And that matches your priority of feeding your family a home cooked meal. Maybe this is a season for you of intense training at the gym. Or it's a season of walking during your lunch break, because that's all you have time for either way, you are honoring your priority of health, but you're doing it in a way that matches your season.

One more example for you, let's say you have a priority of faith and there's been seasons where you've been able to spend an hour deep in reflection or personal study or meditation or combo of all those things. But perhaps perhaps now your season is 10 minutes at the beginning of the day, listening to a spiritual thought.

When you accept your season and its limitations, that allows you to be an agent on how you are going to approach your priorities in different ways. I am super good at prioritizing, and I was telling this to my strive hive members the other day, I am so good at prioritizing. And do you know why. It's because I'm good at not doing things.

When you accept your season and you accept how you're going to approach your priorities differently, that also means that you need to get good at letting things go. So if I were to give you a nutshell on how to accept your season, it would be let things go. So that you can still show up to the priorities you want, but in different ways.

So think about that right now. What's your season. Maybe this is a season of rest, or it could be a season of challenge. Like you want to challenge and push yourself more either way. Whatever your season is owning your season and its limitations is what can free you up to live out your priorities to act as an agent in ways that are both practical to your season and still feeling in alignment with who you deeply are.

We talked about accepting your season. The next one I want you to accept is your experience. When you accept your experience, what I'm asking you to do is to accept how you. Personally navigating this season, including accepting the hard feelings of adjustment, maybe the emotions that are coming up, the problems that are coming up and your interaction with those problems, accepting that it's okay that you are messy and interacting with those.

A little example I have of this is actually, if we're to revisit a coaching call, I aired with a woman named Sharon earlier this year. And Sharon is a special ed teacher. And as you all know, education during and post pandemic times has been incredibly difficult.

She was working with extreme, special needs kids with under in an under staffing situation, including. A a principal not being on her site. They had to have a virtual principal cuz they could not hire a principal. And Sharon was always working with less staff and high needs for her kids. And she had been a teacher for decades, I think over 30 years.

And as we were talking through her struggle with this, I found that Sharon kept trying to instead resort to like, wanting to just brush over the negative feelings or to, to just go right to tell me how I can think about this differently so I don't feel so bad, but instead what we really had to do was to get her to feel the feeling.

So one thing she said to me, she's like, well, it feels draining. And I said, Sharon, it feels draining because it is draining. Many of you know, that I have a couple special needs kids in my family. There have been seasons in our family with these special needs that are things I've never spoken about publicly.

Just doesn't feel quite right. I'm sure I will at one point. So let me vaguely tell you. That there has been, there have been seasons as a family with these special needs kids that have been all consuming, exhausting, depressing, and demoralizing times where we have felt completely helpless.

One of the things has helped me navigate these seasons the most is accepting that it's okay. That I felt all those things, that it was the fact of my experience, that I was exhausted, that I was demoralized, that I, I was hopeless in many ways and sometimes helpless.

Now I, as a teenager under my name in ninth grade, ninth grade was the last year of our junior high they put one word to describe the person. And my word was optimistic. I can honestly tell you that is not me anymore. Optimism for me in the past meant I had to just put on a brave face muscle through and just say all the things you're supposed to say. Like when God closes a door, he opens a window or it's gonna get better.

And while I do think there is power and mindset and thoughts and the way we word and see things, the first step towards moving to those positive mindsets for me and for the many women I've worked with and the many professionals I've interviewed on this show therapists and coach alike is that we have to first accept the hard we have to allow that to be part of the process.

I actually think I still have pretty good attitude. I might not be a bonafide optimist anymore, but I would say I'm an optimistic realist because I accept the experience. I accept the limitations of my season and it somehow weirdly helps me navigate it better. So the second one was to accept your experience.

I have one more tip for you, but first let's take a quick break.

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Quick recap. So far, the first two tips we've covered are two ways that you can own your limits through acceptance and action is one accept your season. Two accept your experience. Now, the third is more of the action. One, accept your choices. I talked about early in the episode that accepting your limits isn't about succumbing to martyrdom because of those limitations. I want you to instead become an acting agent within your limitations. We don't just roll over and die. We don't just lay down and say, I can do nothing. I might as well, not even try. When you own your season. And when you own your experience, you are owning the ability to be creative about what can still happen within this season.

To support your needs and your wants and your fulfillment too. Some ways you can accept your ability to still choose within your limitations is a word we call repotentialize. And this is something that comes from the optimized coaching program that I am a certified coach in re potentialize.

This is when you put on your objective goggles and you look out something zoomed far, far out. Sometimes when we are not accepting our limitations, we weirdly have this like these huge blind spots. It's almost like the horse that have the blinders on, right? Like we can't see outside of limitations.

All we can do is see the limitations, the ways that we are being limited. And when you accept that, you can still choose within this, this, these set of limitations and you repotentialize, you zoom out and you find other ways, let's say that you really want to go on date nights again, and you have not been able to for years, because you can't afford a babysitter.

I have been there for years, right. Instead of only sitting in how we can't afford a babysit. Repotentialize, zoom out and ask yourself questions. How can I still go on a date night? How can I trade with a friend? How can I, you know, have a, have a, a babysitter that's brand new and needs to be trained or finding other ways to help that same thing happen.

Maybe you have a special needs kid and you have so many appointments to go to. And because of that, you have less time for your own hobbies and your own interests. Maybe instead of just saying, I don't have time, you can instead rep, potentialize and zoom out and maybe then you'll see that you have an option to still listen to books or podcasts that are really centered in your interests that you have.

And so you can still learn and nourish this side of yourself even while you're driving to all these appointments. Maybe one more example for you, let's say that you can't have the career you wanted for so long growing up, and maybe you even tried to work towards this career, but for whatever reason, you had to stop trying to pursue that thing.

So while you still have to accept your limitations of not being able to pursue that career, you still can repotentialize and think about other ways you can explore the parts of that career that you were the most attracted to. And ask yourself those questions while you're rep potentialize. Well, what about this career did I love, why did it interest me and how can I bring that into my life? Now, repotentialize is one way that you can still accept your choices.

Another way you can accept your choices, even with these limitations is still, and this is also using repotentialization start with choosing to support yourself.

A lot of us are waiting on the sidelines of our lives, but we're also waiting for more support so that we have the time and the energy to do the things that we would love to do for self care for fulfillment or even for ambition purposes. Right. I want you to think about how you can start by supporting yourself and not waiting for the support to come.

consider starting with just a few supportive habits, ones that are flexible in nature and maybe responsive to your season, but still there to support you in the ways that you can. Just like, I kind of shared with that story. The beginning of the episode, maybe I couldn't do a full workout that morning that I normally would do, but I could still choose to support myself by going on a walk, but with my kids, Choose to support yourself through supportive habits.

And as you do that, I wanna remind you that that might mean you have to do the, the ways that you typically used to support yourself. You have to do them again, but in new ways. And this is something that I coached another woman on, on the podcast named Amy. And it was just a couple episodes ago. And in that we help her see how she can do the, she can still honor her priorities, but do them in ways that are different than maybe she did in the past.

it's really important to me that this community believes that they are agents in their lives, that they are people who can act, you know, one of our big mottos here is do something. This is not in the positive, toxic or toxic positivity way where you're like, just do something, get it done, get up, have the motivation, do it all.

It's not that it's honoring that for all of us, the most healthy way for us to move forward with our life is to not do all and not do nothing, but to do something, we do something to accept our choices and to support ourselves. And as we're doing that, as we're repotentializing, as we're still finding ways to honor our priorities, even if it has to be different, your life experience will feel different.

A lot of my life does not look any different than it did years ago when I felt that resentment, anger and sadness much of my life is still the same. in fact, right before I came up here to record my almost seven year old son somehow was trying to show me the vacuum that he thought he broke and was holding it right next to my body.

And it somehow opened up and the whole contents of the vacuum spilled over my clothes and my shoes. And I had just finally gotten showered and dressed literally three minutes before at noon, no less. Right. So I was finally like proud of myself. I look, look at me, I supported myself. I got dressed. The old Monica would've snapped.

She would've been very frustrated by that and gotten angry. This version of me has the same, same stuff happen, but because I've owned the limits of what happens in my life right now, and just the nature of messy kids and all of that, I was able to just say, okay, that's okay, let's sweep this up and then you can vacuum the rest of it and I'm gonna go change and wash off my feet.

And it took three minutes for me to do that too. So let's review the three ways that you can accept and also act, accept your limits and still be an actor within them. The first is to accept your season. The second is to accept your experience. And the third is to accept your choices.

Before we end the episode today, I want to give a quick note. Many of the women in this community struggle because their biggest limitations are other people and their lack of support. And I'm just gonna be really blunt. This mostly happens with women not being supported in their homes. an unsupportive partner, someone who's not willing to chip in or carry more of a load or sacrifice some things of themselves so that they, the women have more time and ability to honor themselves.

If this is you, when I ask you to accept limitations, there are some times, and maybe this doesn't have to do with just an unsupportive partner. Maybe it's something else, right? Where the limitations. Are are things that are too, too hard to bear there. They're not okay. The limitations are not okay. When I ask you to accept limitations, there are going to be some, and sometimes many, depending on what season you're in, that these limitations do need to shift.

Once you, when she was on our show early January, I believe Eve Roski said that the research shows in order for relationships to improve. There almost always needs to be one partner who is willing to be the change maker, the person who was willing to hold their hand, to draw a line in the sand to not just request change, but to hold people to it.

This is admittedly really complex and hard to do. And in my opinion would be best done. If a couple therapist is involved. But if you lack support in the home and it's not changing, and those are your biggest limitations, and it's related to a partner who was unwilling to change and support that, I want to encourage you to step into the role as a change maker.

And this is really difficult to do, but in my experience, being a change maker, even with your relationships, especially, and if, and especially it's hard, Will lead to better things, whether it's an improved relationship over time, or you finding other ways to support yourself. Or even having a different relationship, both doctors, Jennifer Finlay, and Fife, and Julie Hanks have wonderful podcasts that have episodes more geared towards us.

Now I'm not gonna give you a full list of where to go, but I just encourage you to go check out the things that they teach and how to be someone who was lovingly setting boundaries, lovingly requesting change lovingly. Saying that I need this support, or I need these times for myself, or I need help in these ways and how to do that within a relationship with your committed partner.

So on that note, I do want to give you encouragement though. I think Brad would tell you that I have been a change maker in our relationship and it has been difficult. It sometimes could feel that it would be easier to just accept things as they were. But for both of us, when we have risen our hands and said, this needs to be different, this needs to change as we've worked through that.

And the, the hard feelings that come up for both of us through that, cuz it can happen on both sides. Right. We have moved forward to more of a relationship that I would like to have the rest of my life. And we're still a work in progress for sure. But I wanna give you hope in that. And I've seen so many women be able to do it too.

Okay. So my friends. Here are ways that you can accept your limitations, accepting and owning your limits, and somehow be set free. I hope this gives you some ways that you can act and ways that you can view your season differently and also still do something to support yourself. I'm not gonna share intense progress pointers from this episode, but I will share just the three big ways, the three keys or deep ways that you can own your limit.

So first is to accept your season. Second accept your experience and third accept your choices. Your do something challenge for this week is to simply answer the question, what is my season? That's it. And I want you to really get honest about what is my season right now and how, what limits does that bring for me?

And then with time, if you want to do some extra credit, I want you to revisit the buckets of priorities that you have and ask yourself, how can I show up to these priorities differently? Because of my season and still act within this season to honor the things that I need to best meet these priorities.

One last thing, I am going to do a growth spurt in a while about practical ways you can set limits for yourself. And this is more on the productivity and time management train. And I don't wanna give it all away here, but just know that that's coming up now that would've normally been like next week.

But if you listen to the messy middle episode from last week, then you'll know that I'm about to take a month long break. We will have one more episode later this week, and then I'm taking off two weeks in June and the first two weeks of July, or sorry, last two weeks of July. And the first two weeks of August, I will be back August 15th.

I am so glad that you are here. And I wanna encourage you to dig into the archives and listen to any episode that is really calling to you. Although I won't be sharing new episodes or even Encore episodes during that month break please make sure that you dig in and still get the support you need through the podcast.

And when we come back, we are going to have a new ad system, which is such a blessing. Every time you hear an ad on the show, I want you to say a big thank you in your head because these ads are honestly an answer to years of prayer and ways and work . For making this podcast possible. So I hope you can be as excited as I am for this new phase in the podcast and accepting an ad network on our show and hearing ads and different voices other than my own, which I think you might grow to appreciate.

I'm so glad that you listened now, go and do something with what you learned today.