Vol. 2: Entrepreneurship isn't hard.

I'm sure you've experienced something that goes like this...

you get together with your girlfriends and one starts talking about how her husband can't put the dishes in the dishwasher. 

Someone else chimes in with "mine can't be bothered to help with the kids at bedtime."

and so on. Pretty soon, you're involved in a husband bashing sesh. 

Maybe you just listen the first time, and don't chime in. 

Then next time you all hang out... same thing. But this time, you also had a particularly hard time with your partner that day, so joining in doesn't seem too hard.

Well, I've seen similar stuff play out in business, where there's just client bashing happening: 

Complaints about how hard business is. 

How hard it is to get good clients, let alone clients at all. 

How impossible it is to find team who know what they're doing. 

and then the "I can'ts" start rearing their ugly heads:

I can't charge my clients that much, They won't pay that. 

I can't find anyone willing to work, and do a good job. 

Not with that attitude. 

^ this is my all time favorite response. 

No with the attitude you have toward your clients, or your team, the sheer unwillingness to reflect on your side of things; it's no wonder entrepreneurship is so hard. With this attitude, and surrounding yourself with people also complaining, you are feeding that mindset. 

Even if you don't start out this way, if you hang around women who bash their husbands on the regular, or gossip about other people, or complain about how difficult motherhood is, it's going to be really difficult to stay positive about your own situation. 

Yes. Entrepreneurship is challenging. It is what you signed up for. 

Motherhood is challenging. We signed up for this. 

But it will feel a whole lot harder if you're surrounding yourself with negativity that feeds that feeling, under the guise of "venting."

If you're in groups in business--or personal--where the negativity is wearing on you, it's ok to opt out. Take a step back for a while and look inward. 

If this [business, life etc] is really what you want, when you shift your attitude toward it, it won't seem so hard.