You did everything you were supposed to do today. Maybe that looked like packing lunches and surviving a morning meltdown. Maybe it looked like navigating a hard conversation with a teenager who barely spoke to you. Maybe it looked like checking in on a grown kid who is struggling and wondering, quietly, if you missed something years ago. Whatever the version of today was for you, you got through it. And then you lay down at the end of it all and the quiet comes, and right behind it, the voice. The one that says you still didn’t do enough. That your kid is struggling because of something you did or didn’t do. That everyone else seems to have it more together than you.
That voice is not telling you the truth. But it is very loud, and for solo parents carrying everything alone, it gets a lot of airtime. The mental load of single parenting is not just the tasks. It is the internal running commentary that never fully shuts off, the self-judgment that shows up in the small moments, the comparisons you make to a life that looks different from what you expected or hoped for. Learning to interrupt that voice, to actually replace it with something true, is one of the most practical things you can do for yourself and for your kids.
In this conversation, Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, and Elizabeth Cole, single parent and co-host, sit down with Jon Acuff, New York Times bestselling author of multiple books including Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking. Jon is also the host of the podcast All It Takes Is a Goal. He has spent over a decade studying the repetitive thoughts that shape how we see ourselves and has developed a practical, approachable framework for replacing the ones that hold us back. The result is a conversation that is honest, funny, and grounded in the kind of real-life struggles solo parents know well.
Solo parenting creates a specific kind of mental noise. Not just stress, but the deeper, quieter kind of self-talk that builds over time and starts to feel like fact. The feeling that you are failing your kids even on your best days. Measuring yourself against a two-parent household, a lost partner, or the life you always imagined this would look like. The imposter syndrome that whispers you are not qualified to be doing any of this, whether you are parenting a toddler, a teenager, or a young adult who has left the house but still needs you in new ways. Negative words spoken over you, by an ex-spouse, a former partner, or even a well-meaning family member, that still replay without permission. The weight of carrying a story that not everyone around you fully understands. The exhaustion of feeling like mindset work is just one more thing you do not have time for. If you have ever wondered whether the voice in your head is telling you the truth, or whether it is just a very old, very loud recording, this conversation goes there.
Key Insights from This Episode:
- Your Broken Soundtracks Have a Source
- There Is a Three-Question Test to Tell Real Concerns from Toxic Overthinking
- New Seasons Deserve New Scorecards
Your Broken Soundtracks Have a Source, and Naming That Source Is the First Step Toward Changing Them
One of the most disorienting parts of solo parenting is that the heaviest weight you carry is invisible. Nobody sees the internal monologue that runs alongside every decision, every drop-off or late-night worry call, every moment you wonder if you are getting it right, whether your kids are five or fifteen or twenty-five. Jon Acuff calls these repetitive internal messages “soundtracks,” and his work over the past decade has been built around understanding where they come from and what we can actually do about them.
Jon explained that broken soundtracks often begin much earlier than we think. Sometimes they are inherited, passed down in phrases said so many times they became family doctrine. He shared the story of a man whose father used to say “Scoggins don’t get ahead, Scoggins get by,” and how that single message shaped the way that man related to success for decades. Sometimes, Jon reflected, a broken soundtrack is born of a moment in adolescence when someone in a position of authority, a teacher, a parent, a coach, said something that landed hard, and the young person had no emotional framework yet to reject it.
Elizabeth connected this directly to the solo parent experience, noting that the damaging messages do not only come from childhood. Many single parents carry words spoken by a former partner, comments made by someone who had power over them at a vulnerable moment, and those words replay long after the relationship or the person is gone. The path to solo parenting looks different for everyone, whether through divorce, loss, or never having had a co-parent to begin with, but the internal weight of doing it alone has a way of amplifying every doubt. Robert added his own honest admission of imposter syndrome, the recurring sense that if people really knew the full picture, they would see through him.
What Jon offered was not a dismissal of those thoughts, but a reframe. The presence of imposter syndrome, he pointed out, is actually a sign that you are trying. Mindset dragons, as he described them, only bother people going after something. They do not visit people who are standing still. Recognizing that the voice shows up precisely because you are putting in the effort gives it a very different meaning.
There Is a Three-Question Test to Tell the Difference Between a Real Concern and Toxic Overthinking
Not every difficult thought is a broken soundtrack. Some concerns are real, some fears are informative, and part of good mental health is learning to tell the difference. This is where the conversation got genuinely practical.
Jon laid out a three-part test for identifying whether a thought is a toxic soundtrack or a legitimate concern. First, look for absolutes. Words like never, always, everyone, no one, nothing, are almost always a signal that the thought has moved from truth into distortion. When Elizabeth mentioned offhandedly that she had no idea what she was doing with her son Jax, Jon pointed right to it: “no idea” is an absolute. It erases everything she actually does know.
Second, look for invisible ink, the words that are not spoken but are underneath the thought. “I don’t know what I’m doing” often has a quiet addition: “and I never will” or “and everyone else does.” Surfacing those unspoken additions helps you see how far a thought has traveled from reality.
Third, look for rigidity, the belief that you cannot change. Jon described meeting executives in their late forties and fifties who were still pulling back from opportunities because of something a teacher said when they were fourteen. The thought had calcified.
Once you have spotted a broken soundtrack, Jon’s three-question filter is: Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind? He was careful to note that some things are true but not helpful. Replaying a failure does not change it. And the kindness question gets real fast when you ask: would I say this to my child if they came to me with the same fear? Jon put it plainly, reflecting that he would never look at one of his daughters and say what he regularly says to himself, that she does not have the skills, that someone smarter has already done it, that she should probably not bother. The question of why we hold ourselves to a standard we would never apply to someone we love does not have an easy answer, but asking it is a start.
New Seasons Deserve New Scorecards, and Solo Parenting Is Absolutely a New Season
When Robert asked Jon what one new soundtrack a solo parent should start using immediately, the answer came quickly and cleanly: new seasons deserve new scorecards.
The weight of that idea for solo parents is hard to overstate. So much of the internal suffering in single parenting comes from measuring this season against a different one. Against a two-parent household, whether that is one you lost, one you never had, or one you had to leave. Against what the neighbors seem to be doing with a full support system in place. Against an imaginary standard of what good parenting is supposed to look like, built on assumptions from a completely different set of circumstances.
Jon used the example of a solo parent who once measured success by cooking dinner every night, a standard that made sense in a different season of life, but now creates a daily sense of failure in a season where they are doing everything alone. The new scorecard does not abandon the goal. It right-sizes it to the actual season. Maybe two dinners a week is the new A plus. Maybe getting through a hard school year without burning out is the win. Maybe staying emotionally present for a struggling adult child, even when you are running on empty yourself, is exactly what success looks like right now.
Elizabeth expanded the idea further, noting that the scorecard does not have to apply only to the broad arc of solo parenting. It can be reset for summer when the kids are home. It can shift when a toddler enters a new developmental phase, when a teenager pushes every boundary you have, or when an adult child moves back in and the dynamic changes again entirely. The permission to define what winning looks like based on the actual season you are in, not some inherited or idealized version of it, is one of the most quietly freeing things a solo parent can give themselves.
Jon also had practical advice for the parent who feels too depleted to even begin this kind of mindset work. He pushed back gently on the idea that it has to be a big undertaking. One note card on the dashboard. One song on the commute. Fifteen minutes reclaimed from the app you are using most. Fear comes free, he noted, hope takes work, but that work does not have to be a second job. It can start small and still matter.
The Voice Is Not the Truth
There is something that solo parents often do not get enough credit for: the sheer courage it takes to keep showing up in a season this hard. The broken soundtracks that build up over time are not a sign of weakness. They are what happens when a person carries a lot, for a long time, without enough support and without anyone teaching them how to handle the mental weight of it all.
Jon said something near the end of the conversation that reframes the whole thing. He talked about how when we see other people admit they are struggling, we think they are brave. But when we imagine doing the same, we feel like we will be judged. The truth is the same thing that is courage in someone else is also courage in you.
You are not behind. You are not failing. You are in a new season, and it deserves a new scorecard. The voice that says otherwise is not the truth. It is just old. And old things can be replaced.
God sees you in this. So does this community.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Jon Acuff
- Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking
- Procrastination Proof (released April 2025)
- All It Takes Is a Goal podcast by Jon Acuff
- That Sounds Fun with Annie F. Downs
- Chip Dodd / 8 CORE Feelings framework
