Untangling Draining Habits – Overspending

If you have been in my world for a while, you will know that I am passionate about habits and untangling draining habits to live a fulfilling and whole-hearted life as a well-being. So I am writing a series to shed some light on some draining habits that have come back in to my awareness recently.

Before I start sharing about draining habits, let’s have a look at what draining habits are.

What Are Draining Habits?

Basically – habits can be useful or not so useful, helpful or not so helpful, stress inducing or not. Sometimes we are conscious of our habit/s (i.e. often chosen and intentional) or the habit/s can sit within our blind spots or the unknown.

When I refer to draining habits, I am referring to habits that are impacting our overall life, business or well-being. They could be adding extra stress, suffering or draining life force energy in our lives. The draining habits could be showing up in one or a variety of areas within our lives (i.e. physical, emotional, mental, financial, environmental or social).

In order to start to untangle from draining habits, we need to develop self-awareness, so we can be more responsible and take ownership of our own life. Today I wanted to introduce overspending.

Draining Habit: Overspending

From looking at the dictionaries, overspending was a little harder to define. The couple of definitions, I found for overspending were –

• “the act of spending more money than you have or more than was planned or agreed” ~ Cambridge Dictionary,
• “to spend or use to excess” ~ Merriam-Webster,
• “the act or an instance of spending in excess of one’s desires or what one can afford or is allocated” ~ Collins Dictionary, and
• “The spending of too much money” ~ Your Dictionary.

I would also add –

• “Overspending is the pattern of spending more than you have, or more than aligns with what actually matters to you – often without fully registering it in the moment.”
• “Spending as a way of avoiding a feeling, rather than meeting a need.”

How would you define overspending? Feel free to share below.

Where Does Overspending Show Up?

Overspending can show up in many places within our lives. For example –

• Buying something to lift a mood, rather than to meet an actual need,
• Avoiding your bank balance because looking feels worse than not knowing,
• Saying yes to a purchase in the moment, because saying no felt harder,
• Letting small, repeated purchases add up without really tracking where they went,
• Paying for convenience again and again, rather than pausing to plan ahead, and
• Spending to keep up with what everyone else seems to be doing.

Don’t worry, I imagine most of us have over spent in our lives until we develop self-awareness, so BE self-compassionate 🙂

Over to You…

Now you have this awareness, what is your next step? Feel free to share any insights on overspending or a reflection below. Sometimes change can take a while, so be patient and of course self-compassionate. Also – remember when overspending is consciously understood it supports our adventure of wholeness and heartful living.

If you are ready to take yourself on the adventure of getting to know yourself (your true Self), why not join the Newsletter? A place where I share tools, inspiration and ideas to live a courageous and openhearted life.