I was taking a walk this morning and reflecting on many wonderful things happening in my life, and I had the thought that I make a terrible single mom.

It’s not that I’m bad to my kids or or that I’m a bad mom.

It’s that I’m flabbergasted by role of being a single mom.  I don’t know how to do it all by myself.

As I walked along, I thought about how overwhelmed I get, about how I always look to the invisible partner next to me for support, about how I always seem slightly undone by the fact that I’m alone.  I feel scattered and crazy behind in my to-do list.  I feel like I’m always running to catch up.  My thoughts went from sunny springtime smiles to dark stormy frowns.

And yet none of this made sense.

In reality, I run my household pretty well as a single mom.  For the most part, I get people where they need to be.  The kids are not dirty and naked because I couldn’t get around to getting them clothes.  They have everything they need and a lot of what they dream about.  Sure, I’m busy and I don’t hand in forms to my daughter’s school on time, but who does?  And so what I told the vet the dog had been sick for 6 weeks but when I looked at my calender it had actually been 3 months (did I let it go that long??)

And I have great support.  Cathy would do anything for me.  Dominica and Mary are my constant cheering squad.  My father and Bonnie have been unfailingly supportive.  I have lots of people who believe in me.

In other words, while I would love to have a partner, while I would love to have someone who loves me intimately and who supports me and the kids, and who actually helps me in the day to day workings of a household–I don’t need that person.

Habitual Negative Thinking

Why do I think I make a terrible single mom when I’m actually doing OK?

I have the habit of thinking those negative thoughts.  I think  I need a partner.

I think that I need the support.  I think that I need the love.  I think I need the help.  I think that without it, I’m overwhelmed and barely keeping up and that I’m doing a terrible job.

I’m sure you won’t find this remarkable, but every time I have those thoughts, I become overwhelmed and can barely keep up.

Even though I have a lot of evidence that I’m actually doing fine, my mind defaults to this habitual negative thinking.

True Leaders Train their Minds

Habitual thinking, and especially negative thinking can be the end of any progress we make in our life or in our business.  If we want to be true leaders, to really help the people we serve, we must be very aware of habitual thinking.  It is rarely accurate and usually serves to undermine what we are doing.

The first step to correcting your habitual and negative thoughts is to become conscious of when you think them.  Notice what your default story is–what do you tell yourself every time something happens.  When I feel challenged about the many details of running my family, I automatically think,  “Julia, you’re bad at being single.  Other single mothers handle all of these details with much more grace.  Other single moms get so much more done than you.  Other single moms don’t have a son who has needed a haircut for 2 months.  If you had someone who loved and helped you, you’d be Ok.  Your son would have short hair.  But instead, you’re barely keeping up.”

The second step is to notice how these thoughts make you feel.  In my case, I feel overwhelmed and I screech to a halt.  Since the reality is that I’m a single mom, having these thoughts doesn’t solve anything.  My son’s hair is still too long.  They aren’t constructive.  I start to frown and I feel tense.

Next, ask yourself if these thoughts serve any purpose.  Does feeling bad and overwhelmed do anything to correct what you’re worrying about?  I certainly don’t get less overwhelmed by thinking about how bad I am at something.

Finally (and this step is a doozie), acknowledge your habitual thoughts and then let them go.  Don’t focus on them; don’t promote them.  Just like you would do with a whiney child, you hear them but don’t play into them.

This last step takes discipline and practice but it is truly the key to moving beyond them.

I have been challenging myself to move past my habitual thinking.  This morning, I had those thoughts and then put them aside.  I kept walking and in a few minutes, I was sunny and accomplished again.  In a short time, I didn’t feel overwhelmed and I realized that I’m a lucky woman and that I am doing just fine.

Habitual thinking happens all day long.  When you run your business, you will have thoughts which are not constructive and which can bring you down–it’s the human condition.  The real question is what you do with those thoughts.

To be a true leader, you must learn to manage your habitual thinking.  Replace negative thoughts with positive ones, and learn to let negative thoughts pass with no impact.

I get overwhelmed and it is hard to manage a modern family on my own.  But I’m not a terrible single mom.

It’s important to remember to keep the human touch when you build your business.  Ustream can help you do that.

Building your business with the internet can mean that you gain your lead, build trust with them, complete a purchase with them and never interact personally.

Sometimes this works well for people.  They want to buy what they need and move on.

But when you business involves service (and even if it doesn’t), it is a good thing to remember peraonal, human interactions.

Ustream.tv, a website which allows you to stream live video to the internet in real time is a great solution.

With Ustream, you can interact with your customers, answer their questions and build your rapport with the;m.

I’ve made a short video on  how Ustream.tv can help your business.

When your customers have a question, need to see a demonstration, or just want to see who your are, Ustream is a great solution.

And if you’re feeling tech-challenged or don’t know how to apply Ustream to internet Attraction Marketing, I recommend Renegade Professional for your one stop shop for internet marketing training.

You can’t reach success without failure.

I never knew that you had to fail to succeed.

When I was growing up, I was taught that failure was, well, failure.  Failure was not supported.  Failure was something to be ashamed of.

It has only been though building a business that I have made friends with failure.  I fail.  I get up.  I move on.

It’s not leading because it’s easy…

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.

Once again, Seth Godin crystallizes the truth in his book “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us“.

Up until a few years ago, I believed that leaders were born.  There was some innate talent or drive or karmic force that caused one person to be a leader and the other not.

I observed children growing up and watched some of them emerge as leaders.

In groups, I observed how people would automatically gravitate to my friend for direction, often looking right through me to get to her.

But as I have been growing, I have come to a new understanding, one that reflects what Seth Godin describes.

Leaders Choose to Let Themselves Lead

While some people are more inclined to be leaders because of facets of their personality, no one is excluded.  The only requirements for leadership are vision and a willingness to be uncomfortable.

This summer has been a crash course in leadership.  I began a masters level class called Renegade Breakthrough Mentoring Program with Ann Sieg.  And I set my goal to stop running my business like a shy, wallflower, hugging the wall at a party while everyone else gets up to dance.

I began blogging and reaching out to people.

I stepped up my commitment to Dane Buy Local, a business group I’m a part of.

And from taking the risk to stand out, I have been welcomed as a leader.

I won’t discount how uncomfortable it can be.  To be a leader I have had to face everything that Seth lists:

It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers.
It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail.
It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.
It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

My summer has been filled with anxiety and niggling self-doubts.  I leaned into all the places that caused me pain.

But in the end, I have found key positions in projects and am finding my place in Ann Sieg’s  organization.  I’m finding my voice and my vision with internet marketing.  And I’m refusing to compromise.

Leadership is not easy.  Decide to ignore the pit in your stomach, and start taking risks.

Sometimes someone comes along who captures the essence of a moment–someone who distills the moment to its essential core.  This is the talent that is the unique voice of Ukrainian artist Kseniya Simonova.  Kseniya uses a big light box and draws in sand to tell the story of Germany’s invasion and occupation of the Ukraine during WWII.  She does it beautifully and dramatically.  She is artist, dancer, historian and storyteller.  This video is her winning performance in Ukraine’s version of “America’s Got Talent.”

Kseniya shares her unique voice when she draws in the sand. She takes an experience shared by many, the memories of WWII, and wraps them in her own artistry.  Because she is so raw, so authentic, and yes, so skilled in her presentation, she gives us all a deeper understanding of our shared memories.

As business owners, we must share our unique voice as well.  We must take a common experience, and wrap it in our own understanding to bring people deeper to what can help them.  Bringing ourselves into our business makes us unique.

I’m reminded of my friend, Jodi Barnhart.  Jodi has unique story to tell about how her heart was beating so fast because of stress that you could see her clothes move on her chest.  Imagine–her blouse was fluttering to her heartbeat.  She would carry a folder in front of her chest to cover it up.  Her doctors couldn’t believe that her heart could continue day after day at such staggering rates.  Later, she learned to regulate her heartbeat through nutrition, and now she is determined to help others with the same condition.

And I can’t help but flash on the image of her blouse moving to her racing heart.

That image is Jodi’s unique voice.  Her story captures the essential core of what it is to live with a racing heart.

And her story is what will move others to seek the help they need from her.

Find your unique voice, your sand drawing, and you will be free to help the people you want to serve.

Coaching lessons are found in all parts of your life.  I have been a Thai Massage practitioner for years and here are some of the lessons that I have learned which help me to coach people better.

For more instructions on becoming a good coach for others, join the free Coaching Webinar.

I just saw a training video and in it, I learned that I don’t need to be an expert to create a business, I just need to know a little more than the person I’m helping.

I believe this. I love how we can all extend a hand to the person behind us while grabbing the hand of the person in front. It is through the helpful hands around us that we grow.

I love shedding light on someone’s problem.

I love being the one who comes up with the solution.

But does being one step in front of someone make me an expert?

I picked up a very controversial book from the library, “The Cult of the Amateur: How Blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today’s user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values” by Andrew Keen. The title made me gulp.

The book is written by a self-proclaimed elitist. He feels there is a very different, very tangible difference between the advice you find in an article on Wikipedia, written by an amateur, and an article by a professeur who has studied a topic for decades.

When everyone becomes an expert and hosts their own private YouTube channel, quality suffers, he claims.

At first blush, I am appalled. Haven’t we all had experiences where the kid next door fixes the computer problem that your “expert” missed? Your Aunt Joan paints pictures that rivel anything you’ve seen in a museum.

Proclaimed “experts” have let us down countless times.

Yet–perhaps he has a point.

When I take a yoga class, I can feel a tangible difference in the teaching from the teacher who has lived, breathed and eaten yoga for years, with the one who thinks yoga is cool.

When I listen to talk radio, I may be intrigued with the caller’s questions, but it’s the expert who has been in the trenches for years who gives me the insights I value the most.

I can get help from anyone who knows more than I, but there is “solidness”, a depth, an authority to the person who has mastery.

And a master is rare.

I think we can all be helpful to each other. I think we all pocess expertise. But to be a master, to contribute to the world in a unique way, you must have more. You must have a devotion to your topic which makes you stand out among the crowd.

We can all become an expert at something. But will we all become a master?

In “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, Malcolm suggests that all expertise is preceeded by 10,000 hours of practice.

This idea began with a study of elite musicians in Berlin’s Academy of Music.  When they asked the question, “What distinguishes the musicians who were destined to go on to be the world’s finest artists, from the ones who would be merely very good?”, they found something very interesting.

The very best musicians had practiced 10,000 hours*.

All of the students were exceptional.  Just making it into this music school meant that they were already among the very elite players.

But the very best had practiced more.  The merely very good averaged 8000 hours of practice and good musicians had practiced only 4000.

Malcolm goes on to show this trend in everyone from the computer geniuses of our time (men like Bill Joy and Bill Gates), to leading athletes to the Beatles.  It’s all over.  Great people put in hours and hours of practice.

This is very important to those of us starting a business.

Often we hear of the “instant success” story.  We marvel at the grandma from Cedar Rapids who, within a year of starting her business, was earning 6 figures.

What we don’t hear is that she was practicing for years.

All of us need to practice our skills.

And like children learning any skill, all of us need to allow ourselves to not be very good.  We become accustomed to skillfulness as adults.  Being clumsy is uncomfortable.  But clumsy is what we must do to become great.

What do you need to practice?

What are your scales that you must repeat over and over to get right?

For today, write down one thing to practice for your business and do it.  Do it poorly or well, but commit yourself to practicing fully.

And by the end of the day, you only have 9999 more hours to go.

*By the way, 10,000 hours comes to 20 hours/week for 10 years.  LOTS of practice.