EP143: Designing a Life That Works for Your Family

Interview with Courtney Cecil / CEO of the Working Moms Movement

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Balancing work, parenting, and partnership takes effort. Courtney Cecil, an expert in work-life balance, shares her insights on how companies can better support parents in the workforce, how to create a more equitable household, and the importance of intentionality in carving out time for yourself and your partner. Creating space in your workday, delegating household responsibilities, and making time for your marriage - Courtney offers practical tips to help working parents navigate the complexities of modern family life.

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Transcript

00;00;00;05 - 00;00;17;22
Courtney Cecil
Because I believe that our generation, when we're more informed, like and and the generation after us will be that much more informed. So you think about something like seatbelts when growing up, we would ride in the back of a pickup truck and like, now, could you imagine throwing your kids in the back of a pickup truck and riding around.

00;00;17;22 - 00;00;26;14
Paul Sullivan
Town, but like an eight year old, an eight year old back there who's so excited to be with her older cousins and they're all horsing around, and there's a dog there and there's some others. Yeah. Oh yeah.

00;00;26;17 - 00;00;39;09
Courtney Cecil
Yeah. Happened all the freaking time. That's why I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that was our reality.

00;00;39;11 - 00;01;07;17
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the company dad's podcast. I'm your host, Paul Sullivan. We're focused on lead dads, working moms, and how small changes at home or at work can have a big impact on their lives. Each episode promises to deliver actionable advice on some area of concern at home. Hard work. Short. Direct. Again. Actionable. Five questions. Five answers. Today, our guest is Courtney Cecil, the chief executive of Working Moms Movement.

00;01;07;20 - 00;01;28;09
Paul Sullivan
She coaches working parents are managing their time and mitigating their stress. She's the go to for the two. She's also the host of a great podcast called The Life Management System. A mom of two. She and her husband live in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she is the head of culture at a fortune 50 company. Welcome, Courtney to the Company Dads podcast.

00;01;28;11 - 00;01;30;25
Courtney Cecil
Oh, what a pleasure being here with you, Paul.

00;01;30;28 - 00;01;45;25
Paul Sullivan
I love it. I love it. All right. We started off so positive. So let's go right to the negative for question one. What's the top mistake working parents make when managing their to do list and their time in general?

00;01;45;27 - 00;01;49;00
Courtney Cecil
Goodness the top. Like if you're making you can give me you can give.

00;01;49;00 - 00;01;59;17
Paul Sullivan
Me like 3 or 4. I mean you know it's not it's not a comparison. Like what are the mistakes that working parents you know, make. They could that obviously could be avoided.

00;01;59;20 - 00;02;23;24
Courtney Cecil
I feel like the single biggest mistake is that they try to do it alone. So, so often, particularly when you think of dual income families, we are stretched in ways that, historically speaking, never existed. So if you think about like fast forward even 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, most families did not have dual income, or in society.

00;02;23;26 - 00;02;52;09
Courtney Cecil
Most families were not dual income. And then even beyond that, or in other countries, literally villages are raising the kids. The entire positive families are staying together. For example, we had, our first au pair was from Italy. And in Italy, they don't leave home, they stay at home, they grow up together. The whole family is living together in many countries that we believe as very similar to the US.

00;02;52;09 - 00;03;26;07
Courtney Cecil
It's just not the same. So here, when many people move away from home and you're not living in the back door of your parents, we don't have the same village system that other places do. So I believe the single biggest mistake we have is trying to do it all alone. And part of that, most particularly, is this land of perfectionism we live in now because the world is flatter, we are exposed to the best of the best on things like social media, on TV, and that becomes the comparison of what our measuring stick is.

00;03;26;07 - 00;03;47;18
Courtney Cecil
Compare it against. And so we're not staying in our own lane. We're comparing our land to everybody else's, which puts that much more pressure on us to do more and do more and do more. And you just physically can't do more when there's only 24 hours in a day. You have to have to have to have to delegate out and, learn to build your village.

00;03;47;18 - 00;03;53;07
Courtney Cecil
If it's if you're not lucky enough to have one, in your, your backyard, which most of us do not.

00;03;53;14 - 00;04;09;05
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, I love that answer. And I remember I am a child of the 80s, and I remember, my parents just cared less. And I don't mean that in a disparaging way. Like they didn't care about me. They just, like, I would go out and ride my bike spoiler without a helmet on, and I would ride it and I'd be gone.

00;04;09;05 - 00;04;26;17
Paul Sullivan
And as we all know, as a sunset, you know, it takes a while for your eyes to adjust. And I would come home some nights would be pitch black and obviously I'm still here. In 2025, I made it and I cannot imagine, you know, our kid and I, and we live in a way nicer neighborhood, a way better town, a way safer place.

00;04;26;17 - 00;04;45;24
Paul Sullivan
And I don't know, you know, if my my kids don't have that love affair and nobody does, and I think it's, you know, how would you categorize that? What is it that. Are we are we more nervous? Are we more concerned? Are we are we more trying to, you know, control the outcome and get them into something? What is it that that allows us to be a lot more.

00;04;45;24 - 00;04;47;06
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Tell us. Okay. So all the.

00;04;47;06 - 00;05;14;00
Courtney Cecil
Things so I it's ironic that you ask this question Paul. This is something that I, this is day three of talking about this very topic, because I believe that our generation, when we're more informed like and, and the generation after us will be that much more informed. So you think about something like seatbelts. When growing up, we would ride in the back of a pickup truck and like, now, could you imagine throwing your kids in the back of a pickup truck and riding around town.

00;05;14;00 - 00;05;22;08
Paul Sullivan
But like an eight year old, an eight year old back there who's so excited to be with her older cousins and they're all horsing around, and there's a dog there and there's some others. Yeah. Oh yeah.

00;05;22;09 - 00;05;47;19
Courtney Cecil
Yeah, happened all the freaking time. I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that was our reality. But guess what? Now we know that seatbelts save lives. So not only are kids not riding around in the back of the pickup truck, but they're going to be seat belted in all the time. And not only that, they're going to be in booster seats until they're a certain height and weight in order to be able to make the seatbelt effective like part of it's we just know more.

00;05;47;26 - 00;06;07;28
Courtney Cecil
But the other part of it is, I believe we are trying to compensate for things that we believe our parents generation did not get back to us in the same way. And and I'm sure the next generation will do the same thing, like we're all trying to fix, quote unquote, fix something that we believe could have been done better by the generation before.

00;06;07;28 - 00;06;32;04
Courtney Cecil
And some of that is truly generational, and some of it might just be our parents. But I always think about, being part of a small group. Once at church, they said, essentially all of us are. If we're to blame something we're screwed up by, it's because of something our parents did. Our parents are also just doing the best job they could do, just like we're doing the best job we could possibly do with our with our kids.

00;06;32;06 - 00;07;03;21
Courtney Cecil
But generationally, we are inspired by some a gap that we believe the generation before us had. No. I think the biggest theme for our generation of parenting is really leaning into IQ. Like most of us and this is a broad brush statement. It is certainly not, it's not intended to be about everybody, but many people and the generation of parents now are were terrified growing up to have real, honest conversations with their parents because it was more ironclad parenting.

00;07;03;26 - 00;07;31;20
Courtney Cecil
I mean, we got the belt, I got the soap in the mouth, I got the wooden spoon over my knuckles. Like that was just the generation that we were raised on. Now, I can't imagine anybody in my close circle using the same type of tactics to parent. But also we are trying to create a space where our kids are a lot more open with us and how they talk to us and and what they what part of their lives they expose as to and that sort of thing.

00;07;31;22 - 00;07;51;01
Courtney Cecil
Because that's not the relationship that many of us had with our parents. And again, that is a broad brush statement that is not everybody. But I think that creates a societal norm for this generation of parents. And there's probably something that we're doing wrong to that our kids will say when they get older, like, you know what? My parents said this and it just didn't work for me.

00;07;51;03 - 00;08;16;26
Paul Sullivan
When my kids get older, they like, I'm not going to have a dialog with my children. I'm going to go back to like one way, though. Yeah, because it's you're right. Like the conversation that we have at the dinner table, you know, the seven year old is is sort of a bystander, but the 12 year old and the 15 year old, they they challenge us and it's robust and sometimes they're right, you know, and it and I but I also but I also think like it's teaching them a lesson when mom and dad can say, you know what?

00;08;16;28 - 00;08;22;27
Paul Sullivan
It's a good point. You're right. I hadn't thought of that way. Or you know what? I made a mistake. I'm wrong. You know, it's giving them something a little bit more.

00;08;23;00 - 00;08;52;28
Courtney Cecil
Yeah, I really, really, really fully believe. And the vulnerability of owning your accountability, owning your mistakes, that sort of thing. Not only from my day job and culture, but also from a from our parenting perspective. I think it's absolutely critical that we demonstrate that level of vulnerability and saying, you know what? I'm not perfect either. And that is something I know most of my clients, the working mom clients, all have perfectionist tendencies.

00;08;53;01 - 00;09;14;14
Courtney Cecil
It's something that I certainly suffer with, and it's something I'm already seeing in my youngest. Like just last week, he got in trouble for it and he is truly like the straight. A rule follower has high standards, but he got in trouble for doodling on the back of a seat on the bus on the way home and he was mortified, crying like beside himself because of it.

00;09;14;21 - 00;09;35;14
Courtney Cecil
So then we had we spent the whole weekend unpacking some of the mistakes I made when I was a child to be like, listen, I also have very high standards for myself and let me tell you some of the stories that that I had or that I did or I was responsible for. But, you know, so part of that just humanizes you as a person.

00;09;35;17 - 00;10;02;20
Courtney Cecil
And but it also demonstrates that we're not perfect and we're going to make mistakes. And I love the psychological safety, Paul, that you are creating at the around the dinner table with your kids to be able to to keep pushing the boundaries and ask questions and be provocative and, that level of integrity that you're able to foster just as a result of the culture you're creating around the dinner table.

00;10;02;20 - 00;10;04;12
Courtney Cecil
That's pretty neat.

00;10;04;14 - 00;10;26;03
Paul Sullivan
All right. Question two. Similar question I have that that first question, more of the micro. This is more the macro nature of life. So the second question is, you know, what are the common mistakes that the working parents make around managing the totality of everything, managing that whole, you know, work life equation, not just the kids and what needs to be done and the need for help and ability.

00;10;26;03 - 00;10;33;16
Paul Sullivan
But but that whole, you know, work and life and everything that goes into what are some of the common mistakes they make, they're,

00;10;33;18 - 00;10;44;04
Courtney Cecil
So are you asking specifically to the impact that it has on their family or the impact that it has on the workforce? Because those are two very different questions. When you think about macro.

00;10;44;04 - 00;10;58;09
Paul Sullivan
I was asking from the individual's, point of view, but I'd love for you to answer it how you want. It's out are always open ended question. So if you want to talk more, of what the company can do to help the individual, that would be wonderful. Or answer them both.

00;10;58;11 - 00;11;26;05
Courtney Cecil
Yeah. Okay. Well, let's start with a company then. So one of the things that I believe the company can do to help the individual is setting standard working hours that are Common Core to the, to the, to the employees. Because one of the things when I think about modern day working society, our, our world right now is very different than it was even before the pandemic.

00;11;26;05 - 00;11;46;06
Courtney Cecil
And what I mean by that is before the pandemic. You think about the amount of times you're hopping on an airplane to go to a meeting. Well, all of a sudden when you're doing something like that or when you're having to have defined in-person meetings because you need to be face to face for certain topics and relationship building or whatever it may be, you are inherently creating buffers in your day.

00;11;46;09 - 00;12;08;17
Courtney Cecil
You are taking time to travel. You are taking time to transition between meeting one and meeting two because you are. I mean, that was just the nature of how you had to get work done. Fast forward to today. What do we do back to back to back to back stack calls? Because we do have this gift, like you and I have right now, of leveraging video conferencing in a way that never existed pre-pandemic.

00;12;08;23 - 00;12;26;23
Courtney Cecil
Yeah, but fast forward to now when that's the world that you live in, there is no breathing room in the workplace for you to be able to keep your head above water, essentially, let alone create the space for heaven forbid, you have a, you know, you have a dentist appointment that you need to sit on or whatever it may be.

00;12;26;23 - 00;12;40;24
Courtney Cecil
So I think having core hours to just, that, that their employees need to get work done is critical to creating the space for parents to stay in the workforce, for them to feel like it's sustainable.

00;12;40;28 - 00;13;04;05
Paul Sullivan
When you mean core hours, do you mean, a set number of hours, or do you mean a set number of hours synchronously? And I ask this question, right. Okay. Because one of the things we talk about at the company desk, we talk about people who can opt into care shifts, and what a care shift is, is you agree to a certain number of hours, say, 930 to 330, you'll be working, you know, synchronously, which doesn't mean you'll get you'll only work six hours a day.

00;13;04;05 - 00;13;30;19
Paul Sullivan
It means you'll do other stuff at other times. Is that what you're you're sort of aiming for it. Yeah. Yeah. It's initially because I'm, go out to visit a client on Friday in Boston, and I live outside of New York City, and I'm going to have a three hour train ride. And I am so looking forward to the train ride up and back, because I already have some sort of deep thinking work that I'm going to do on the way up, and some deep thinking work that I'm going to do on the way back, because I know that, as you said, it won't be back to back to back because too often, I think

00;13;30;19 - 00;13;50;21
Paul Sullivan
during our waking hours, oh boy, I could get another meeting and, when you think about what inner managers can do, in helping people manage this equation of life, have anybody or any manager sort of saying, why don't you, you know, put in 20 minutes between meetings or 15 minutes between meals? Because that's what we used to have.

00;13;50;21 - 00;14;06;15
Paul Sullivan
We used to walk to a meeting when I was working here. You'd walk to a meetings, you get outside. And why is that good? It's not the exercise that's good. But it's the time to think. It's the time for your brain to sort of wander a bit and come up with a thought as opposed to, okay, on the hour I got another call.

00;14;06;15 - 00;14;09;12
Paul Sullivan
I got to keep going. So are any of them building in that buffer? And.

00;14;09;13 - 00;14;34;00
Courtney Cecil
Yes. And we absolutely ignore it, Paul. So everybody builds on that buffer and nobody actually holds to it as an example. A lot of my team will try to have 25 minute meeting. So everybody has a five minute buffer for even a one function break. That of course gets just demolished. What I try to do is institute 45 minute meetings.

00;14;34;00 - 00;14;58;08
Courtney Cecil
But what happens there is people will see that there's a 15 minute break and they'll be like, oh, if it's a 45 minute meeting, then she can get everything she needs in that half hour. She doesn't need the 45 minutes, so they'll schedule whatever it is, truly. I mean, the expectations in corporate America are so intense right now because everything is moving astronomically faster than it did even five years ago.

00;14;58;15 - 00;15;27;16
Courtney Cecil
So I think that's part of it, is just to keep up with your competition and to keep up with the pace of the economy and the changing of the world and corporate. You're just moving that fast. Yeah. And that's absolutely exhausting. But that doesn't mean that there aren't things that managers can't do. While that while realistically, I have not seen a successful company implement shorter meetings and actually be able to create that breathing room, what I have found is the effectiveness of managers.

00;15;27;16 - 00;15;46;18
Courtney Cecil
Leave it like leading through it themselves where they're not putting themselves on camera, or they are saying, guys, I have to, I have to leave because I have my dentist appointment or my kid has a dentist appointment, or that they're encouraging and pre meditating and advance this, this catch up call that we're having as a team every week.

00;15;46;21 - 00;16;10;04
Courtney Cecil
That's a walking call. That is a call where all of us are going to be off camera and we're going to be outside spending that hour together, but we're going to spend it on a walk to be able to get away from our desk and at least be able to get on the steps. So there are things that managers can do to lead through it, but most of them, unfortunately, don't take the time to create space to do that.

00;16;10;06 - 00;16;33;08
Courtney Cecil
And that's kind of shame on them. But I think that that is absolutely critical to not just the engagement and sustainability of careers, but humanizing the experience of the workforce now and in a ways that I feel like we're very quickly getting away from and the pandemic, there is a very vulnerable environment where you're seeing people's lives happen behind you on screen.

00;16;33;08 - 00;16;54;26
Courtney Cecil
And now all of a sudden with a with a strict and fast enforcement of return to office, we have quickly gotten away from that, and we're still relaxed in some ways. Like I get to wear jeans now, I have suits in my my closet that will probably never be worn again, and I'm fine with that. So there are some good things that we have still gotten from it.

00;16;55;00 - 00;17;02;26
Courtney Cecil
Yeah, but it's amazing how quickly or forgetting that humanization that happened during the pandemic. And that's just unfortunate.

00;17;02;28 - 00;17;21;18
Paul Sullivan
I love it, but I'm ping pong back and forth between, work and home. So the third question is, what do you think the secret is to creating a more equitable household where, you know, mom and dad and the kids are all pitched in together and one person isn't carrying all the mental load?

00;17;21;20 - 00;17;43;06
Courtney Cecil
I think that I first of all love this question, because that is one of the problem areas that many of my clients have is, you know, in a world of dual income families where our activity levels have increased. I mean, I remember I didn't I had one activity essentially before middle school, maybe when I, when sports, competitive sports really started picking up.

00;17;43;13 - 00;18;04;04
Courtney Cecil
But now I'll try to see a friend and they're like, sorry, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Saturday. Like we have something six of the seven days a week. It's exhausting. So life just looks different and it looks faster and it's it's far more intense. And I experienced certainly growing up. And many of my peers did so in order to sustain that one.

00;18;04;04 - 00;18;21;17
Courtney Cecil
As I talked about earlier, I think you really need to build your village, whatever that means. Like learn to delegate both at work and at home. And part of delegating is certainly to your kids. A lot of people, have tendencies to feel like they need to do things themselves, as opposed to sharing a load with their kids.

00;18;21;17 - 00;18;26;09
Courtney Cecil
Like, the cleaning lady is coming up. Oh, I'll pick up after them. Or.

00;18;26;11 - 00;18;37;20
Paul Sullivan
Oh, I'll never do that. It drives me crazy when I hear my neighbor as they clean before the cleaning person comes on. Like, why are you paying a clean person? Like, I'm like, because you don't want the cleaning person to think that your house is dirty. Like, why else would the cleaning person be coming? Come on. Yeah.

00;18;37;22 - 00;18;41;03
Paul Sullivan
I mean on the anti pre clean before the cleaning are you.

00;18;41;06 - 00;19;02;27
Courtney Cecil
I am not I'm a I'm a cleaner but it's because of the clutter I hate clutter Paul. So what I'm able to use it for is the excuse to teach my boys like this is how I get do things. So I use it as a pinch point because I've got boys and I'll be damned if if 20 years from now or my teacher or daughter in laws aren't like, what did she do?

00;19;02;27 - 00;19;29;28
Courtney Cecil
Did she not teach them anything? But I think that so often we have tendencies to over donate and doing things for our kids because we want them to stay little because it's easier. That's like, that's a common excuse because it is certainly easier. Delegating is hard. Learning to delegate is hard. But what I fear is that by doing that, we are we are not enabling their independence.

00;19;30;00 - 00;19;48;18
Courtney Cecil
And I think back to, gosh, my childhood, I was weeding the yard, I was mowing the yard, I was doing my parents, sheets and making their bed every Saturday, like things like that, that I never ask of my boys. The least I can do is ask them to pitch in and unload in the dishwasher and things like that.

00;19;48;18 - 00;20;07;10
Courtney Cecil
So part of it is learning to delegate. But I think the biggest, the single biggest thing that can make a difference is clear delineation of responsibilities. So when you don't know when you and your partner don't know who owns what, who's on first base for anything at any point in time, then you're going to be tripping over each other.

00;20;07;15 - 00;20;31;19
Courtney Cecil
And I'm all about building, helping people build calculated, intentional decisions and the way that they do life and part of that is the ownership of the tasks at home. Because when you get clear on that, all of a sudden you know how you can flex for yourself or how you can flex for your work in ways that you otherwise wouldn't, because you know you can trust your partner to do that other thing because this is your responsibility.

00;20;31;19 - 00;20;37;14
Courtney Cecil
So it just gives you more agency and how you do your life, but in a way that serves the entire family.

00;20;37;16 - 00;21;00;13
Paul Sullivan
Awesome question for going from work to home to now the the social. You know, presuming, you know, both parents are married, they're working, you know, but you got to set up boundaries. They want to have some time either for themselves or for each other together. We often forget that, the person we kids with is somebody we fell in love with first and had a lot of fun with before we were kids, and had more responsibilities.

00;21;00;15 - 00;21;24;07
Paul Sullivan
What recommendations do you give to sort of dual income couples so that they can carve out either time for themselves to do whatever their hobby is or, you know, to, to go out, you know, them dinner every, every couple weeks of, you know, long weekend, you know, quarterly. How do you, you know, help them give themselves permission to care for themselves?

00;21;24;10 - 00;21;42;20
Courtney Cecil
Gosh. I it's funny you say that because just yesterday I kicked off of the new client, and I told her, the way that I do it, I go when I, when I kick off as we go through their entire routine, I have a series of questions, but I'm asking about what is their end to end week look like essentially over a two week period.

00;21;42;23 - 00;22;03;13
Courtney Cecil
And never once did I hear her talking about something that she's doing for herself. So you better believe by the end of that call, when I'm giving her the homework to go into the next week, I'm saying by the end of our six months together, I. I never want to here again. You going through your week and ways that you're not talking about something that's for you.

00;22;03;15 - 00;22;24;29
Courtney Cecil
So part of it is we just live so selflessly for our kids. I mean, parents are very selfless individuals. We we want to give all of ourselves to them, but we tend to get it's it's not that most of us don't want time to ourselves or don't want time to reconnect with our spouse. We're just not intentional about creating it.

00;22;25;02 - 00;22;50;10
Courtney Cecil
So my stick, and what I will probably have written on my grave is around intentionality. Because when you're intentional, all of a sudden you have time to do things that you never realized you did before. So. And in fact, yesterday during my kickoff call with this client, she kept using the word frittering away time. And I was like, I like that because it perfectly, synthesizes.

00;22;50;13 - 00;23;13;12
Courtney Cecil
What people tend to do is we have more time than we realize we have, but we're not because we're not intentional with it. We're not tackling our highest and best use items. We're not putting first things first. We're not, creating time for ourselves, our spouse, because you just find yourself in the moment and it's like, okay, well, now I'm going to bumble around a little bit until it's time for bed.

00;23;13;15 - 00;23;39;12
Courtney Cecil
But when you when you're very intentional and calculated with scheduling, how you spend your time, all of a sudden you have time you didn't realize you had. And part of doing that, and the exercise that I take my clients through, is figure out what you value first. So when you figure out what you value first, then it informs what you prioritize, prioritize spending your all of your resources on actually your time, your money and your energy.

00;23;39;14 - 00;23;56;17
Courtney Cecil
And when you so when you know, when you prioritize, it informs how you spend your time. And if your marriage is one of those for self-care, like working out or your relationships with your friends or something of that nature as one of those, all of a sudden you're saying to yourself, I have to figure out how to make this happen.

00;23;56;19 - 00;24;19;10
Courtney Cecil
So I believe everything goes back to what you value. And because it does inform those priorities. But most especially when you figure out what you prioritize figuring out how to make that stuff happen, like create the space on your calendar to make it happen. I promise you probably got some, but you need to look further out than just the day that you're in right now that that's just not going to happen.

00;24;19;10 - 00;24;38;25
Paul Sullivan
I love this like you're so intentional. It's going to be on your tombstone. I kind of fast forwarded down like, Gary Larson type rabbit hole of, like she died on Monday early. It made it the most convenient for everything to have, you know, a service on Friday. Nobody was inconvenienced. Like, how intentional is the all right, we're coming to the end here.

00;24;38;27 - 00;25;07;21
Paul Sullivan
This is, a quick, last question. Question five. We've talked, we've touched on home, work, kids, self-care, everything here. And at the end of it, it's, you know, there's a lot and it's overwhelming. So or can be overwhelming. We we've got to sort of fight the overwhelm. So what are your top three tips to avoid overwhelm and get past the constant treadmill of To-Do list?

00;25;07;23 - 00;25;09;28
Courtney Cecil
Oh three. That's a very specific request.

00;25;09;28 - 00;25;16;00
Paul Sullivan
Or 2 or 5. I'm trying to be intentional. I want to be an intentional I don't want to do. What are your top tips? You know?

00;25;16;02 - 00;25;41;01
Courtney Cecil
Yeah. Okay. So I think the first that I mean, the two that automatically come to mind, one is relaxing our standards. We have again going back to where we started earlier, we have very high expectations for what our life looks like. And some of that is not written by us. It's written by our our neighbors and our coworkers and society and entertainment.

00;25;41;03 - 00;26;05;03
Courtney Cecil
And we are just not staying focused on what's true to us and what it is that we value. And that level of exposure that you have to other people inherently puts pressure on ourselves to be something that we're not or we don't care about. So part of it is just being really true to what you want so that you know where you can relax your standards and what does and doesn't matter.

00;26;05;03 - 00;26;12;26
Courtney Cecil
So as an example, my husband, Richard values time to himself every single night. Like he needs that.

00;26;12;26 - 00;26;16;23
Paul Sullivan
So do I, so do I. Oh yeah. Oh what he said when.

00;26;16;23 - 00;26;20;09
Courtney Cecil
You know that and I think it's a do thing. By the way, like most.

00;26;20;12 - 00;26;27;13
Paul Sullivan
I'm an only child. I think it's an only child thing. But maybe it's a do thing. I'm an only child. So like having time for my brain to just decompress. That's super important to me.

00;26;27;14 - 00;26;44;20
Courtney Cecil
Yeah, well, that's that's very much Richard. Whereas meanwhile, like, I'm still listening to audiobooks at two times of speed just before I turn out the lights, like, I like, I don't know, I, I can take all the stimulation and I don't get overstimulated, but because he knows he needs that, there are many times that his to do less.

00;26;44;20 - 00;27;06;07
Courtney Cecil
He is pushing off and pushing off and pushing off because he knows he needs to prioritize that. I less like that. I definitely have more of a high, like I have a harder time feeling settled at my to do list isn't done, but at the same time, because I know I value certain things, I put those in first and work everything else in around it, right?

00;27;06;07 - 00;27;35;05
Courtney Cecil
And so I really am good at putting first things first. But what happens when you do that is the only way to fit those things in is you have to relax your standards. You have to let go of control. You have to just be at peace with not being perfect. And sometimes that perfectionism is something like leaving the laundry unfolded on your floor for three days because you have to choose between something you value, like putting your kids down to bed, or getting a good night's rest.

00;27;35;05 - 00;27;49;26
Courtney Cecil
Or you have to value spending the time doing the laundry. So some of it's stuff like that, but oftentimes it's you get the for being a parent, you have control over more of your ecosystem. You have control over more.

00;27;50;00 - 00;27;51;25
Paul Sullivan
Understatement of the day right there. Oh my.

00;27;51;25 - 00;28;15;28
Courtney Cecil
Gosh. Like I often refer, maybe you have a better experience with girls, but I call my boys animals like they're absolute animals. But part of it is in the way they wrestle and that sort of thing. And the other part is just the amount of mess and clutter and yeah, I don't know, they're like little tornadoes. So part part of being a parent, I think is learning to relax your standards.

00;28;15;28 - 00;28;28;14
Courtney Cecil
You have to in certain ways. And as you probably experienced when you added your second, your ability to control your environment with one looks a lot different than when you add a second. And I can't even imagine your life with a third.

00;28;28;14 - 00;28;30;18
Paul Sullivan
And you give up. You give up when you have three.

00;28;30;20 - 00;28;43;00
Courtney Cecil
But that's it. Like, you gotta relax your standards. Like you can't be so perfect. So that's one of the biggest things. And the other is around building the muscle of delegation. That is nice.

00;28;43;00 - 00;28;43;21
Paul Sullivan
I like that firmness.

00;28;43;25 - 00;29;06;18
Courtney Cecil
It's a muscle that needs build. It's very uncomfortable. And I'm working with several of my clients on this now, both at work and at home, because when you are you it's kind of like when you first become a manager. And when you do, you're used to being able to have like, you know, that you can trust yourself to do the good job.

00;29;06;18 - 00;29;24;11
Courtney Cecil
You know that you have a certain level of standards that are going to be met, but you have to figure out how to leverage down in order to take on this new responsibility that you have at work. And it is not easy. It's something you get better and better and better at, and that you kind of sometimes have to slow roll yourself into.

00;29;24;11 - 00;29;45;16
Courtney Cecil
But it is a critical life skill for you to be able to balance it all, both at work and at home. And the later we get into our lives, the more responsibility we have. You know? Of course, it's a little bit of a bell curve, but many parents that are probably listening to us, Paul, haven't hit the top of that bell curve yet, or they are at the very top of that bell curve.

00;29;45;18 - 00;30;06;25
Courtney Cecil
So in order for you to maintain the level of responsibility that you have, which includes caring for yourself and your marriage and your kids and your work and whatever it may be, you have to learn to delegate. So building the muscle and getting more comfortable with that, both at work and at home, is really important, and critical to your balance.

00;30;06;27 - 00;30;15;01
Paul Sullivan
Courtney Cecil, chief executive of Working Moms Movement, thank you for being my guest today on the Company Dads podcast.

00;30;15;04 - 00;30;25;26
Courtney Cecil
It has been my absolute pleasure, Paul. I'm grateful for you, grateful for that connection. And I'm looking forward to 20 years from now when something like the Company of Dads and Working Moms movement no longer exists.

00;30;25;28 - 00;30;26;22
Paul Sullivan
That's right. Where people.

00;30;26;22 - 00;30;31;13
Courtney Cecil
Because we are, you know, we have broken all the down, all of these walls.

00;30;31;15 - 00;30;33;09
Paul Sullivan
I love it. Thank you again.

00;30;33;11 - 00;30;35;01
Courtney Cecil
Thank you.

00;30;35;03 - 00;30;55;09
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to another episode of the Company of Dads podcast. I really appreciate you tuning in week after week to really use this moment here, to thank the people who make it possible. Number one, of course, Helder Moura, who is our podcast editor. We also have skipper Terry Home for many of you know, from the lead diaries he's taken over our social media.

00;30;55;09 - 00;31;16;03
Paul Sullivan
Terry Brennan is helping us with our audience development. And Emily Servant is there, each and every day helping with the web development and can't do any of this without, an amazing board, of advisors. So I just want to say thank you to all of you who help. And I want to say thank you to everyone who listened.

00;31;16;03 - 00;31;19;16
Paul Sullivan
And, hopefully you'll tune in again next week. Thanks so much.