If the Weight of Responsibility Is Driving You

If you ask a woman in leadership what’s stopping her from pursuing a calling like coaching, she probably won’t say fear.

She’ll say something more practical: “I don’t have the time.” Or “Other people are counting on me right now.” Or “It’s just not the right moment.”

But underneath those logistical reasons, there’s something that deserves more honest examination happening: It’s not just that she doesn’t have the time… It’s that she believes her role in life is to be the one who holds everything together.

I’ve heard her say she’s the ‘glue’ and even ‘the fixer.’

This belief shows up in women who are strong, successful, and highly competent. They’re the ones who stay late, remember the birthdays, carry the emotional labor, and make sure nothing falls through the cracks. They take pride in being dependable. And they’ve often been this way since childhood—praised for being mature, responsible, and selfless.

But over time, this role becomes more than a strength. It becomes a default identity. Responsibility stops being something they carry; it becomes who they think they are.

That’s where the problem begins.

It seems to me that when your sense of self is tied to managing everything for everyone, anything that challenges that balance—even a positive, life-giving change like becoming a coach—feels dangerous. Pursuing your purpose feels like threatening the stability of the entire system you’ve worked so hard to maintain.

I wrote my ebook Prioritize Your Calling: A Quick-Start Guide to Becoming a Life Coach with Credibility, Purpose, and a Clear Path Forward for women who are at this exact point in their journey– women who feel the call to become life coaches, but keep putting it off—not because they’re unqualified or unsure, but because they’ve never been shown how to restructure their lives to support something new.

This book is not going to ask you to abandon your responsibilities. But it will ask you to redefine them. It’s going to ask you to step back far enough to realize that your role as caretaker, leader, and protector is not the same thing as your purpose.

It’s going to suggest that you recognize that your experience holding all of that weight—the logistics, the emotions, the long nights and early mornings—can be part of your calling as a coach. But not if it continues to run your life.

What should be running your life? YOU! Hehehe!

In the book, I walk through what coaching actually is (and isn’t), what the certification process looks like, and how to think clearly about what you want—not five years from now, but today. It also includes honest guidance about the internal shifts required to move out of the “responsible one” identity and into a new form of leadership—one that’s sourced from clarity, not over-functioning.

When women tell me they don’t have time to coach, I DON’T try to convince them otherwise. I simply ask them to look at how their time is currently organized—and who it’s organized around… And what’s driving that organization.

If you’re ready to explore what your next chapter could look like—not just in theory, but in practice—this book is a grounded, manageable place to begin.