"Did I Agree to This Rule?": Ditching Impossible Standards for Working Parents | Jess Weisz

The ManFlu | Exploring Gender Dynamics, Partnerships & Raising Boys Who Care

In this episode of 'The ManFlu,' host Lucy McAfee interviews Jess Weisz, creator of the Rule Breaker Reset program, about the unrealistic expectations that

Key takeaways

• The belief that we must be perfect in work, parenting, and self-care is rooted in unrealistic expectations, not personal failure.
• Social media amplifies the illusion of perfection, reinforcing a 'must do everything better' mindset even when it's unattainable.

Main topics

• Working parent burnout
• Unrealistic societal expectations

Notable quotes

"Did I agree to this rule?" – a simple question that can stop self-criticism before it starts.

Conclusion

Jess Weisz challenges listeners to reclaim their autonomy by questioning whether they truly agreed to

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Welcome to the man flu, where the flu is just the metaphor. We're not here to hand out tissues. We're here to challenge the cultural norms that keep relationships off balance. I'm Lucy McAfee. I've spent years studying how gender dynamics play out at home. And as a wife and boy mom, I'm living them too. Each week we dig into the old scripts and unspoken rules that often go unquestioned, but still end up running the show. in our marriages, and in how we are raising our kids. You'll hear perspectives from researchers, thinkers, and parents, and leave with one small shift to try with your family. Hi, everyone. This is Lucy. Welcome back to the Man Flu Podcast. Ever get to the end of the day, a day where you genuinely did not stop and still feel like you somehow failed? If that's you, keep listening. My guest is Jess Weiss, creator of Rule Breaker. Jess is a former McKenzie consultant who chased the have-it-all dream with more effort, better systems, and way too many color-coded calendars. until she realized it wasn't her that was broken. It was the rule book. We get into the heaping pile of impossible expectations we're all quietly holding ourselves to, and why we've confused being capable of something with actually having the capacity for it. At one point, Jess literally pulls out her childhood report cards to make a point about the invisible scorecard most of us are still grading ourselves against. And she leaves us with one small shift you can try this week. A single question that can stop a spiral before it starts. Stick around for it. Speaker 1 (1:39) Jess, welcome to the Man Flu Podcast. Thank you for having me. Speaker 2 (1:45) So those not familiar, Jess has a program called the Rule Breaker Reset. So I wanted us to start with you giving an overview of what Rule Breakers is all about and how you came to this work. Speaker 1 (2:03) It can be best summed up when I say, well, what do you do? And I always go and I tell people, well, I help high achieving working parents figure out why the end of the day feeling like a failure. And then mostly people are like, oh, hi. Me? Exactly. Exactly. And I basically do this. How I came to this was like, is it is this is personal therapy turned outwards because I saw that it was helping others as well. I am that exact person that would and frankly still does at times in the day feeling like a complete waste of space. And in my most sane, lucid moments after having my kids, I was like, this shouldn't be. This is silly. And I know we're not supposed to call ourselves silly and put ourselves down. But I could see how objectively I was fine. I was safe. I was doing good, but still couldn't hold that in my heart. And that led me down a very windy, long path of figuring out why and then also what to do about it. And so that's where the group coaching comes in and the whole Rule Breaker philosophy and what I basically, smartly or not, have decided to dedicate the next tranche of my life to. Speaker 2 (3:25) So in that windy path, what is the why or some of the whys that you came up with for how we get to this place at the end of the day? Speaker 1 (3:37) Yeah. So what I realized was we face this heaping pile of unrealistic expectations. And I'm sure many of you might have seen this little quip on Instagram or something. Work like you don't have kids. Parent like you don't have a job. I add in as well, be a self-care superhuman. One of the ways I came to this was six months, I was six months postpartum with my first. And my partner, Dan, he handed me a notebook. The guy loves his notebooks and journaling. And so do I, frankly. I have my journals from when I was in grade seven. And he basically handed me this notebook and he said, you are going batshit. And frankly, I was driving him batshit. Please write down all of the things that are on your mind. And initially, I thought this was going to be more of like this, like better divide and conquer, because it also kind of stemmed from one of the classic fights that everyone, every couple has with kids of how did you not notice that pile of laundry sitting there on the steps the last seven times you walked up and up and down those stairs and you did nothing about it. So I wrote in the list and day one, but had things like that pile of laundry. that was sitting on the stairs, things for work, things that I felt like I needed to get done for my daughter, passport photos, some check-ins on some vaccinations. Day two, I wrote in it again. Day three, I wrote it in it again. And what I saw from the list was less about, oh, we need to better do the fair play system and divide and conquer our activities, but more this. true heaping pile of absolutely, freakingly unrealistic expectations I was holding myself to, there was no possible way I could get everything done, let alone even attempt to try to do it in not a day, not a week, not a month. And so it was that insight coupled with the fact that this is basically how we are groomed and is reinforced in so many aspects of our lives, which that led me to this, the why of why we feel like a failure is because it is absolutely impossible to do. And yet we hold it in our hearts and our minds day in, day out. Speaker 2 (6:04) And of course, social media has not helped that way that we see these comparisons and these expectations and. The feeling like a failure because your house doesn't look like that or you didn't celebrate your kid's birthday with that extravagance, whatever it might be that. Speaker 2 (6:27) seems to get us in that failure Speaker 1 (6:30) loop as well. Totally, totally. I mean, social is the best classic example of that. I actually did a fun experiment where I intentionally doom schooled for 30 minutes and I wanted to see how many ways I was told to be more, better, different. It was all the things, and this is very telling, I suppose, what shows up on my algorithm, but apparently my kids are mouth breathers and I need to be fixing that. Side note, I have a myofunctional therapy appointment with for my daughter today. So we are, in fact, trying to fix that. Speaker 2 (7:03) Didn't get rid of that expectation yet. No, Speaker 1 (7:06) only because she snores and has sleep apnea and her teeth are coming in all sorts of wonky. So it actually is issues. Yeah. But there was a straw that would fix it. Apparently, I needed to have the 10 step face routine. The home, exactly as you talk about, neatly organized. All the bins, all the bins for all the toys. Labeled, of course, with this nice cursive thing. And if at work, if I'm not on a path to be making a million dollars while also being a parent, apparently I have missed the script and I am not following what I should be doing. So, yeah, it crossed all aspects of my life, career, caregiving and self-care of what I could be doing. And in there's I call it kind of like being bamboozled. It's like these subtle. It's not actually even subtle. It's here are the solutions. So to make a million dollars through that course, to crush it at work and make all that money and also be a parent. For my kids mouth breathing, there is that straw. And so there are all of these solutions and hacks and tips and guidance. But there is that subtle message of this is what the bar looks like and this is what you should be achieving. So for sure, social is definitely a major perpetrator of that. It's not just social. I get a lot of people tell me, well, I've quit socials. I'm fine. I've closed all of those apps. The thing that I would say is that it's not just social. It's everything in our world that is reinforcing us to try to be more better, different. Speaker 2 (8:51) But I find it interesting if we take socials out of it, how we got to this mentality that. We've got to set everything up for success, productivity, optimizing, but then also, as you said, being the best parent and spending this present quality time and then also killing it in our careers. I think we've talked about this before, but there is those statistics that say that we working moms spend more time with our children. than stay-at-home mothers did in the 70s and 80s. So they clearly thought it was cool just to be home, get some stuff done, but they didn't have to get on the floor with us and do all the STEM activities and work through all of the pieces and being so present and engaged. I just wonder... where all that came from for us. If we didn't see it with our own moms and dads, why we then got this message, that's how we need to parent and how we need to run our families or be engaged with our families. Speaker 1 (10:10) Yeah. Oh, wow. I mean, there's so