What to Do When You Can’t Do What You Used to

When a recent cycling class (a home set up I used to always use and love!) felt exceptionally difficult I was reminded of how we can unnecessarily judge ourselves when we are struggling to do something that we were able to do competently, or even easily, in our past. In this episode I'm sharing a lot about my own personal struggles with this, particularly with comparison and shame.

Comparison doesn't always come from external sources, sometimes it can be us versus other versions of ourselves. I hope it's helpful for you to know that even with the growth I have done, I still always have room to grow some more. As this has come up for me, I've discovered certain thoughts that I can use to coach myself out of that trap, and away from feeling overwhelmed with discouragement. Tune in to hear my three thoughts, and understand how self compassion can help you move past comparison.

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TRANSCRIPT

Monica Packer: Welcome to About Progress. I'm Monica Packer, a regular mom and recovering perfectionist who uncovered 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. Are you tired of failing at your habits?

You should also be tired of blaming yourself. For those habit fails, learn the number one reason why women must do habits differently by signing up for my free class of the same [email protected] slash habit class.

We moved into our newly renovated house almost two years ago, and one of the things I was most excited to dig out from our pod that housed like everything we owned was this cycling bike, an indoor exercise bike that I had bought off of Amazon and used for maybe two years before our move. And one of the reasons I was most excited to dig this out was not because I'm an amazing indoor cyclist.

But because I got to finally try out something, a Strive Hive member, my old membership group had told me that you can do with any indoor exercise bike and it's, you can do the Peloton bike rides from their app on your phone without having the really fancy, also expensive, official Peloton bike. And why I was excited to try this is because I knew it would actually help me get on that bike more because I'd have someone teaching me what to do on that bike.

And that was true. I actually had so much fun learning how to exercise on this exercise bike with the Peloton app. I got really into the series they have, I called an artist series and I did like all the Hamilton rides and a ton of the Beatles rides and. Taylor Swift ones that really had me like in tears, felt like a spiritual experience riding to one of those.

I loved it so much, but once I got pregnant, I did not get on that Peloton bike for many months because it was just too hard and I did it here and there leading up to the birth of my child and it felt a great way to exercise. But I also was really gentle with how, how I did things. Of course, I was just trying to be careful and mindful of where I was at right then.

But after I'd had enough recovery period after the birth of our child in January, I was ready to hop back on the bike. And yes, that's, that pun is intended. And as I get got back into my bike workout ways and I was leaning into the Peloton app and doing some artist series. I found myself really discouraged with something.

I was discouraged over how very difficult, even the simplest bike ride was Now for me, and why this was so discouraging in particular was because, I had had many months of recovery by that point, and I was feeling pretty good physically and in in many ways, like not like totally recovered or like ready to go on Century rides, but I was like, I am capable of a 15 minute really easy ride.

And yet those rides were so difficult. I found myself feeling really nauseous and really winded, and my heart rate was, was too high for something that was supposed to be so simple. But the biggest reason why I knew I was struggling was because of my Amazon exercise bike.

I knew based off of where the resistance knob was, what number they were advising me to have it on. So since I didn't have the fancy bike on the knob, I would judge what number of resistance I was on based off of where the plus sign was on the knob. And looking at it almost like a clock and where it was on the clock. So if the plus sign was down on the number six, then that was like 30 in resistance.

And then, It the same ways going up around clockwise. So that helped me know where my resistance was, even though I didn't have the official number in front of me. And I was basing that resistance off of that number. And that's what I found so confusing. I'm like, I am doing this like below what they're giving me and I'm doing it the last and amount of time.

The, like I'm doing a short workout and I'm doing it on an easy workout. What is wrong with me? This didn't use to be that hard. And luckily one day while he was doing what was supposed to be an easy workout and really struggling, I finally realized that it had been a really long time since I had applied lubricant to wear the pads, meet the whale.

That's the thing I did initially and every couple of months when I first had the bike, but it had been a long time. So I applied a little lubricant and what do you know? I felt all right back to normal. That resistance number was now accurate, whereas before, it was probably double, if not triple what I thought the resistance actually was.

And this moment made me think of the many ways we can unnecessarily judge ourselves when we are struggling to do something that we were able to do competently or even easily in our past. I think we all have at least a few things like this where we are comparing our current selves with our past selves.

What is that for you? Maybe it's working out like it was for me, or it can be other things like making time to read books. Maybe in the past you were a bookworm and now you can barely struggle to get through one paragraph. Maybe it's getting up early or writing in your journal. Or even something as significant as parenting or communicating with your spouse.

Something that used to come more easily for you in the past or that you enjoyed more, you were quote unquote better at. And now none of that's the case. When we struggle with something we were able to do with confidence in the past, our self-esteem can take a real big hit. And with that, how we view ourselves.

In September of 2022, I talked about what I call the comparison monster while I was speaking to that tendency we can fall into when we get into that comparison trap of comparing ourselves to others. I hope you can see how this trap is something we can fall into for ourselves too, especially when we compare our current selves with our past selves.

Like I taught you, then it applies here for ourselves. Comparison is rooted in judgment, and when judgment is self-inflicted, it is often coming from a place of intense shame. And what we know of shame, and I'm speaking scientifically, research backed, Brene Brown has researched this a ton. Shame does nothing but perpetuate more shame.

And with that, staying stuck, shaming yourself does not promote change or progress or healing or relationships. Today, what I want to help you with is to step back from this comparison monster, when it is hyper-focusing on comparing your current self to your past self. And in doing so, remove the shame that is blocking your progress.

To illustrate this all I want to share about a period of time where I went through some pretty intense self comparison. I went down a lot, I would say, of a shame spiral after the birth of our fifth child in January. So let me back up though when I tell you more about this experience. First it helps you to know that this was and is our fifth child.

And with all the kids that we've had, I feel like we've seen almost everything with our babies from projectile spit up to major skin issues, to having to go on a special diet while I'm nursing. Babies that struggle to sleep intense colic and more. Her oldest was definitely the hardest in terms of babies and, and we know better now why that is.

She's autistic and it makes her baby time a lot, it makes it make more sense, especially when we look back on how hard life was for her. Primarily. So, you know, I went into having this baby knowing a lot, not only how to care for a child, but also realistically what a huge thing it is to have a newborn and how it's always.

Just a gamble of what the baby's personality's gonna be like, what physical issues they're going to struggle with, and, and also the bigger adjustment as a, as a family of, of how to take the time to care for this newborn as you're recovering from giving birth and all that entails. I tend to go into having a baby as more of a realist.

While I can definitely have a lot of things to look forward to and excitement around a birth, I mostly just come into it with eyes wide open, you know, just expecting this is going to be difficult. I was also pretty excited about this birth because we had thought about it for nearly five years.

Deliberating can we, should we, have a caboose baby to this family and we were so lucky to even have that option, especially because I was 36 years old. As I had this child. We were able to have this child, and with that all in mind, I was excited to meet him, especially because my first four children were born in six years, so this would be a really different experience for me.

Because of the five-year gap, I'd be able to give this baby more of my attention, and he actually had my only attention the first half of the day because my five year old, my youngest was in preschool for half the day. In addition to that, Brad works from home. Now this is a huge shift compared to our other children when he worked about an hour commute away and he also worked a lot longer hours, and I lived far from home meaning states away from my family.

So with that all being said, I still was entering this birth with a lot of realistic expectations and also knowing I'd have more help than I'd ever had before, and I felt as prepared as I could be. So, now he came and he was, and still is, just the sweetest little child. And that was clear from day one. I feel so grateful for his delightful personality.

And while there definitely were some hiccups to the newborn period, including him having tongue and lip ties that were fixed and, and thrush for me, definitely an experience. I've never like to repeat beyond the typical, like struggling with waking up and. The postpartum like recovery. It wasn't abnormal, but the way I was handling all of it felt extremely abnormal to me and to my family.

I found myself over the top, overwhelmed, highly emotional and beyond anxious, so much so that I could not sleep at night when I finally had that moment to get under my own covers. And I could also find myself struggling with sleep. When I had a moment to try to nap during the day. In addition to that emotional stress, my body really felt like it was hit by a truck like it normally does after birth, but it didn't feel like it was easing up or getting significantly better as it had in the past.

Now, all these things were adding up to a degree that I had not experienced since having my first baby. To top it all off, I found myself unable to get a single thing done during the day. In addition to caring for the child, of course, I found it nearly impossible to even do something as simple as loading a few dishes to the dishwasher and getting in the shower for myself.

Through it all. The worst part was how I felt about myself. That comparison monster creeped in and took over my thoughts. It really compounded all of the emotional and physical distress I was experiencing with this shame, drenched voice that was criticizing where I lacked, especially as I compared myself to my past self.

I found myself doing this, especially as I thought of my transition to our fourth child. When he was born, we were in the middle of a lot of crazy, crazy things in our family. We had a botch kitchen renovation on our hands. We barely got drywall installed before he came, but nothing else. And since we lived in a 1200 square foot home, that kitchen took up almost half of our house and all the destruction that went with it took over well over half of our home.

We were doing dishes in the bathroom sink and we were cooking dinner on a griddle and the instant pot, and we did it for months. And we did this like in one of our kids' rooms. Anyway, despite all that, and despite my, my oldest being in preschool, so I had three other young kids all day every day. And her the other half of the day, he also had emergency life saging saving surgery on his bowels, and he was recovering from that.

And despite all of that, I remember feeling good enough to paint cabinets in my garage while he slept at three days old. I also remember back splashing the kitchen when he was six weeks old, and I found this remembrance of me caring for myself and all the other kids and the craziness that was going on with a lot of capableness.

I know that's not even a word, but I felt capable and remembering how capable I felt despite how awful our lives really were circumstantially made me feel so bad about my present day self and how with all the help I had additional in my life right now, how my life was so much easier, circumstantially.

I was so incapable. I was sinking. And the resistance I felt in my life didn't match up to the resistance I felt like I should be feeling. And these thoughts kept circling my, in my mind, I have more support than I've ever had. I have more to give to this baby than I did with my last three. Why am I struggling so much?

What's wrong with me? I hope this can help you illustrate or illustrate to you just how confusing this can be and how the worst part of that internal shame monster is, how it makes you doubt who you are, even more than what you're seemingly unable to do, compared to your past.

I wasn't just overwhelmed and stressed and anxious. I was questioning my very identity. If you can relate to this on any level, I want to share with you how I walked myself through this time and how I was able to move that inner shame monster to the back of my proverbial car and put myself back in the driver's seat, and it was a messy process.

I'll tell you that right up front. If you're comparing yourself to your past self in any capacity, To your body shape or ability to how you used to play an instrument or take a test to even something as basic of as having passions that light you up and now you don't. I want you to keep listening. It's time for you to put that comparison monster back in this place.

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One of my biggest goals as a coach for women who were working on their personal development is to get them to a place where they can coach themselves, and that means they use the tools that I taught them and we worked there together on their own as they. Learn to, to navigate their lives outside of a coach relationship.

So that's what I do for myself too. I try to coach myself through when I am struggling, and that's what I'm gonna share with you right now, how I coach myself through this self comparison hole I was in, and how you can do that as well. But first I have to be really honest with you and tell you that I didn't do this anywhere close to perfect.

Coaching ourselves can look like reminding of ourselves of what we already know, logically practicing it, failing to some degree, and then trying again. And it took me that kind of process and several months of restarts to get to a better place mentally, and to put that comparison monster fully in its place.

I can honestly tell you I'm not struggling nearly as much as I was. A lot of that likely has to do with hormones as well. I'm well aware, but this has also helped me with many other ways I've compared my current self to my past self. I'm going to frame these tips as thoughts and mantras that I would think to myself that would also help trigger me into a place where I could better access deeper tools behind them.

So let's share each of these three thoughts slash tools that helped me put the comparison monster in its place. The first thought is hard is hard, period. This is what I like to say to myself when I am judging how hard in quotes something feels when I say, oh this, this resistance shouldn't feel this hard.

Or, why is this so hard? Or Why am I struggling with this? This isn't that hard. And I step in with that thought hard is hard, period. If something feels difficult to you and you're judging that it feels difficult, you're only piling on the shame, which also keeps you stuck by judging that hard. When we're thinking of that exercise bike I told you about and how I was looking at the resistance knob and judging how hard the hard felt because it wasn't supposed to be that hard, the same thing applies here.

Judging the resistance only adds more resistance to your struggles. This thought, hard is hard, is something I want you to do and to say to yourself and then be able to use these two tools. The first is to zoom out and get some real perspective of your circumstances and why.

Whatever's feeling hard, feels hard, and then to zoom in with more compassion for yourself to be able to acknowledge for yourself that your resistance may be different than it was in the past, and it's okay that your performance is too, and it's okay that whatever is hard for you is hard for you right now. How this looked for me is I started with that zoom out. I gave myself the bird's eye perspective, an objective look at what was going on in my life so that I could better embrace that.

Hard is hard for myself. That meant for me I looked at what I was going through and saying and said to myself more like, yeah, there's a lot going on. You are exhausted. You are hormonal, you are postpartum. You are also older than you were with any of your other births.

You went into this birth more emotionally ragged, thanks to whatever went wrong that could go wrong if you don't know, fell down. The flight of stairs, broke my finger, had to have surgery, and lots of other things happened with my heart. So you are more, more emotionally exhausted and while you have more help circumstantially and better c circumstances, of course, this is still difficult.

It helped me embrace my heart a little bit better to acknowledge the facts there. And doing that also helped me then step into insert compassion to be able to say to myself, no wonder this is hard. And that compassion helped me move on better than I would if I were just stuck in that shame.

And I'll share more about what that looked like in a moment. For those of you who are afraid to honor your hard because it feels like you're giving yourself a pass or that maybe you can be luxuriating in the hard and become a martyrdom or a martyr to the hard. I want you to know the opposite is true.

Really honoring your hard helps you find your way out better. Just believe me if you can't believe it for yourself right now. The second thought that I tried to tell myself and then access the tools behind them is, you are more than this. When you first hear, hear that, you're probably gonna think, wow, that's pretty harsh.

And the tone of this is not like, you're more than this, Monica, just get up. Just do it. What's wrong with you? It's not that to me, it's you are more than this Hard meaning there is something deeper inside me. That is more than where I'm lacking right now. I didn't know just how much my identity was banked on productivity until I couldn't achieve even 1% of what I could do in a typical day.

When you remind yourself that you are more than this, you are reminding yourself that you are more than your hard. You're also more than your inadequacy. You're more than your self-doubt. You're more than this comparison monster that's breathing shame in your heart. You remind yourself of who you truly are.

Deep down, absent of all the accolades, all the outcomes, all the achievement metrics and appearances. Who are you really deep down? What is your truest identity? When I would tell myself, you are more than this, it brought me back to that heart foundation of the work I do, which is helping women know who they are and what they, what matters to them.

And doing that for myself helped me move better through the hard, so, One of the ways that I could be reminded of my identity, a kind of more helpful tool, is I just tried to find small ways that helped me remember who I was by helping me feel like myself. That included something as simple as just trying to put on clothes each day.

If all I did was even at three or 4:00 PM shower and put on some clean clothes, that helped me feel like myself more. Maybe once a week. Another thing that could help me was baking bread. It just brought me back to this is who I am. Everything else in my life could be falling apart, and it was, but just making that bread somehow made me feel more like myself.

It reminded me of my deeper identity. So the thought is, you are more than this, and the tool you can do to access that greater identity inside you is to find small ways to feel like yourself. The third thought is, Don't make it harder than it needs to be. Just because you were able to do something in the past doesn't mean you can't do the same thing.

Now with more support, it's okay to try to find ways to access support. I see the support as that lubricant that I applied to my exercise bike. I didn't change the knob. I changed by, I changed my experience with the ride and my resistance by making things easier from the outside in. We can do that in many ways, I know women struggle with this advice, and I do too.

When women or experts in the field just say like, get help. Hire a babysitter, hire a house cleaner, eat out. Like they, they say all the ways that you can get help that cost money. And while that can be, yes, very helpful. It's only helpful for those of us who are privileged enough to be able to afford those things, and I haven't been in the past, and right now my only way to really afford any of those is having the babysitter.

I have two hours a day, a few days a week, so I can make this podcast, and that alone has never been something I could afford in the past. So with that being said, Here are two big ways I want you to access more support. First, we start with habits by internally supporting yourself better with even one small habit that makes you feel stronger inside.

For me, that meant on a meant I went for a walk each day and that walk could take 10 minutes. A baseline way of just supporting myself by giving myself a mental and physical break from all the ways I was feeling overwhelmed. So you can do that through habits and start with a baseline version of a simple, supportive habit for yourself.

The other way is, Help. And when I say this, I mean asking for help that's free and accepting help that's free, and that largely is gonna be within your own household, but it also can include friends and neighbors if your household is unable or unwilling to support you. I give you permission to ask friends and loved ones or even people on the internet if they can help you.

Whether it's literal help, like making meals like Brad has for us and doing laundry. Or my kids are now cleaning up dinner, which is awesome. And also can just be internal help. Can you listen to me while I just share and rant and rave about what's going on in my life? Can you tell me I'm gonna be okay.

Can you send me a funny meme? Can you check in on me? Don't make things harder than it needs to be. Remember that you are worthy of support that can help lessen your load and you can access that support via habits and help. My last tip is just a little thought that I also heard on a Peloton ride, and I hope you can do this.

By the way, if you're interested in this, just get the Peloton app and get a cadence monitor that you clap onto any cheap exercise bike. And there you go. You can do this too. This one comes from a bike instructor named Cody, who is really popular. He also has a mouth, so if you don't like swearing, you might not like his workouts, but I happen to think he's hilarious.

One of the things he said though, on a recent bike ride, I thought was just perfect for how we can wrap up this episode. He shouted out the metrics we were supposed to be hitting both resistance and cadence wise. But then he said, If you can't hit it, just do your best. Don't overcomplicate it. So I say that to you, just keep doing your best.

But remember, your best is allowed to change.

I hope this episode gave you the hug and kick in the pants you need to grow. I'll now share the progress pointers from this episode. These are the notes I took so you don't have to those on my newsletter. Get them in a graphic form each week. You can sign up at about progress.com/newsletter. Number one, one of the most damaging ways comparison affects our lives is when we compare our present selves with our past selves.

Number two. When you struggle with this, adopt these three mantras and the tools behind them. The first is hard, is still hard. Zoom out and insert compassion. The second is you are more than this. Remind yourself of your deeper identity. And the third is, don't make it harder than it needs to be. Access, support via habits and help.

And number three, keep doing your best. Remember, your best is allowed to change your Do Something challenge for this episode is to find one small way you can feel like yourself. Whether that's putting on a lipstick that just is your perfect shade that reminds you of this point of your life, or you were feeling on your A game listening to a song.

That helps you remember who you are. Going for a walk outside and kind of doing a meditative walk and getting present with where you are. Just find one small way to feel like yourself. I. And when you follow through with this challenge, I would love to hear about it. You can email me at [email protected].

You can DM me on Instagram or tag me on Instagram, and I'd love to pull from these shares and highlight at least one of you in each gross spur. I do that happens twice a month. Those are very short episodes, so I'd love to hear from you. A quick reminder before we wrap up. Big things are coming this fall.

I am so excited to be sharing it all with you soon. If you wanna be the first in the know, get on the wait list at about progress.com/banging me Academy. I am doing the best I can to prepare for this, and I hope to have an official. Date for you soon about when you can expect more information. Did you think of someone while you were listening to this episode?

If so, shoot them a text and tell them about this episode and the show. Any shares Does an incredible amount of helping the show grow as do any ratings and reviews that you can leave, especially on iTunes slash Apple podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Now go and do something with what you learned today

if you're tired. Wow. So,