I didn’t plan it. It’s how I’m wired. I taught accounting and finance for years, and I have an MBA. You’d think I was watching the numbers. Nope. I was watching what people did with them.

What I noticed first was the overing.

Overdoing. Overthinking. Overgiving. Overholding. Overcommitting. Overindulging. Overing. It showed up in my students. In my colleagues. In my friends. And yes, in me. (I’m not exempt.) I started calling myself the Overing Queen.

What did I notice?

So glad you asked! Nobody overs because something’s wrong with them. These were capable women. Smart. Responsible. The ones who got called when something needed to be done.

So then, I wondered what pushes a capable woman into overing.

Pressure. That’s it. Pressure.

Pressure to keep everything running. Pressure to get it right, to get it done. Pressure to be the one who takes care of it. Pressure to see it through.

I kept observing and watching. I noticed that we manage the pressure in different ways. Some women are the Go-To. Everybody turns to them. Some are the Driver. They move things forward. Some are the Improver. They’re all about how to make it better. Some are the Holder. They keep everything together. And some are the Observer. They watch and think and take it all in before they act.

Same pressure. Five different ways that it runs through us. When I saw her pressure style, her overing made sense.

Then I followed it into the wallet

I didn’t set out to study money. But following the pressure led me there.

Because pressure hides in your money.

I saw the woman who watches every dollar like a hawk. She’s keeping things under control.

I saw the woman who handles it all alone. She pays the whole bill when the person who agreed to split it didn’t follow through.

I saw the woman who’d rather not look at her accounts. Opening that account feels like too much, so the app stays closed.

And I saw the woman who finds herself spending without meaning to.

That last one is me.

My story

I grew up hearing “money doesn’t grow on trees.” I also heard “we don’t have enough money for that” All. The. Time.

So I made myself a rule. If I wanted something, I’d figure out how to get it myself.

I did. I got the degrees. I built a career. I taught accounting and finance. I took every money program I could find.

And even with all of that, I still found myself spending before I noticed. Yeah. I know how that sounds. But it happens. To a lot of us.

I’d be in Target with my kids. Wind my way through the store, looking for the items on my list. And – ooh – what’s that? That’s really special. Into the cart with you.

One of the boys points out a different thing. Ooh – that would be a solution to the closet organization. Into the cart it goes.

One of the boys is SO EXCITED because the game he’s been searching for and waiting for is FINALLY back in stock! Into the cart it goes, after he’s promised to pay me back. (Any bets on whether I ever collected that money from him?)

The third son reminds me that he needs a new notebook for school.

We make our way through the store in this fashion. Get to the checkout and – yikes! THAT’S the total!?! Holy crap!

And off we go to the car.

I remember thinking, “I teach this stuff. What’s going on?”

Pressure. What was going on was pressure. My money habits were a response to it. It’s not a personal flaw. Once I saw that, things started to loosen up.

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Why this matters to you

If you’ve ever thought “I should know better,” hear this. Knowing better was never the missing piece. Most capable women know plenty about money.

What’s missing is seeing how you handle it, and why. When you can see that, you can choose differently. You’ll make them because you finally understand what’s been going on.

Loosen Your Money Knot

That’s why I built Loosen Your Money Knot.

It’s a six-week program. Each day has a small step called Today’s Untying. You’ll see how you handle money, why you handle it that way, and what you can do differently. There’s a community, so you’re not doing it alone.

Day 1 starts the day you join. Everything’s in the portal when you get in. You keep access for six months.

Join Loosen Your Money Knot here.

I’d love to see you inside. Here’s to untying the knot!

Find your happy. Love what you do. Make a difference.

Linda

I wasn’t.

I’d been living in respond mode in my business. Reacting. Answering whatever showed up, when it showed up. My days filled up fast, and I called that busy.

I know how to design. I’ve used my personal power to design my personal life. I made choices and built it on purpose. But I haven’t brought that same power to my business. I held it back, and my energy went to whatever was in front of me. That’s reacting. It builds nothing.

So I’m making a shift, and it comes with a simple test. At any point in the day, I can ask myself one question: am I responding or reacting right now, or am I designing?

Here’s what a reacting day looks like.

A couple of weeks ago, I found water on the floor of my basement laundry room. The pipes were leaking. Our house is 100 years old, so repairs are part of life. My husband can’t help the way he once did, so most of it falls on me.

The plumber came, and I worked right alongside him. I cleared an entire storage closet: all the extra serving pieces, platters, and large cooking vessels. Everything had been leaked on. He fixed the pipes. The repair made a huge mess, and I spent most of that day starting the cleanup.

That day was entirely responding and reacting. I held my power that day. I took responsibility for my stuff. I just didn’t get to my intentions, my design.

Responding when life calls for it is part of living. When reacting becomes my default, I don’t even notice that I’ve stopped setting intentions to design my day.

Here’s what a designing day looks like.

Last week, I set an intention to start using what I’m learning in my AI classes. I got started on creating photos and graphics. I made two images I’m happy with: me as Mrs. Claus and me as the Snow Queen. So much fun! I’ll use them in my Black Friday and holiday promotions.

Nobody asked me to make them. No emergency required them. I chose it, and I did it.

Here’s how I make that happen. Most nights, I close out my day with a reflection. Sometimes I write it. Sometimes I say it out loud. Sometimes I say it silently in my head. I ask myself: Did I hold my personal power? Or did I hand it over to someone else instead of taking responsibility for my stuff?

After a day like the plumbing day, when life was life-ing, and I went far afield from what I intended, I revisit my original intentions for the day. Sometimes they become tomorrow’s intentions. Sometimes they wait until they fit my energy again.

Then I set my intentions for the next workday, so I know exactly where to start when I sit down at my desk. Some mornings, new ideas come while I’m writing my morning pages. When they do, I adjust the plan, my design for my day.

Here’s how I know when it’s working. When I look back at a day and it’s a blur, I know I spent it reacting. A day I designed is one I can describe. I can tell you what I set out to do and what I did.

That’s how I’m holding myself accountable now. I’m asking whether I designed my day, not whether I was busy.

What about you? Think about yesterday. Was it a blur, or can you tell me about the day you designed?

Find your happy. Love what you do. Make a difference.

What I’ve been noticing isn’t new. It just gets more and more noticeable, the more women I talk to.

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Capable women don’t wait to be asked. They just start carrying and handling...everything.

You don’t get a job title that says, “the one who handles it,” or “the one who takes care of everything.” You never overtly chose this. You just became that. I used to call it the “mom job,” because we do the things nobody else either WANTS to or WILL do. The project nobody claimed. The conversation everyone avoided having. A decision that needed to be made and you were the one there at that moment. It’s never been announced as a life role. It just piles and stacks up, hidden away, until it becomes who you are.

Always Stocked, Rarely Restocked

The ones who give the most to everyone else are often the ones who feel they get the remnants and leftovers. At best.

There’s the tired from doing too much. Then there’s the tired from giving so much, all the time, that giving starts to feel like it’s the only thing you do. You notice everyone else’s needs before they’ve even spoken, and somehow you feel guilty asking for anything in return. Because somewhere along the way, being needed became the evidence that you matter.

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The Human Filing Cabinet

Some women become the keeper of every detail no one else tracks. You never applied for that job.

You know. You prompt and remind everyone. You know which appointment is Thursday, which relative needs a call, and which deadline is real. Everyone else is allowed to forget things because you always remember them. From the outside, it looks like competence. From the inside, it can feel like a trap. You’re the only one holding the whole picture together, all the time, and heaven help you if you put it down. You’re everybody’s trapper keeper.

My family is so used to me remembering everything and their dad not remembering things, that a couple of years ago when my grandson was scheduled to have surgery, I was dealing with a lot and I didn’t write down the date. And…I forgot about it. So did my husband. I was the one who received a scathing call about not caring about my grandson and his surgery, which had gotten cancelled, but still, I’d done the unthinkable. I hadn’t called to check in. Not one word was said to my husband, who had also forgotten. They expect him to forget. It’s a really big problem if I forget.

The Midnight Re-Trial: Court is Now In Session

Everyone else has long since moved on, but your mind won’t let the thing go until it feels fully resolved.

You’ve got a conversation from three days ago still replaying in your head. The decision was already made, but you’re re-arguing it. At midnight. Everyone else walked away, case closed. Your loop stays open, spinning in the background, because some part of you doesn’t trust that it’s REALLY finished until you’ve checked it one more time.

Default Setting: Reliable

You didn’t choose to be the reliable one. It just became who you are.

Ask yourself when it started and you probably can’t say. There wasn’t one single moment. It was a thousand small moments where you were just being your capable self, handling what needed handling. The moments stacked up. And somewhere in all of that, capable stopped being something you did and became who you ARE.

This isn’t random. This is what happens when a pattern gets rewarded so often that it starts to feel like identity instead of a pattern.

You became this way for a reason. Just sit with that a bit.