🧠 Weekly Mind Sweep No. 166 | Mind Your Business | Hope
March 2025
Week 165: Curated Conversation: Hope
*Week 166: Mind Your Business: Hope
Week 167: Manage Your Mind: Hope
Week 168: What’s On My Mind: Hope
Let’s sweep the brain…
🎬 Rather watch or listen instead of read? Now you can!
In the MindSweep this week:
Curated Conversation with curated GIF’s & puns (for your entertainment).
Jamie’s Second Brain Corner: Links to references. Need a map? I’ve got you!
What’s I’m Reading - The Frozen River - Maine 1789
Collaborations with Terri Hamilton (Thursday) & Shannon Giordano and the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce
My face 💜 and a link to schedule your free consultation.
Hope as a Business Strategy: It’s More Than Just Positive Thinking.
Forget what you've heard about hope being optimism or just wishful thinking. It's not just a feeling—it's a strategy. Backed by science, hope is a cognitive process that blends motivation with actionable strategies to help you navigate even the toughest challenges.
According to psychologist Dr. Charles R. Snyder, hope combines two powerful elements:
"Willpower" (the motivation to achieve your goals)
"Waypower" (the strategies to reach those goals)
Hope isn’t just believing things will work out—it’s actively planning how to make them work and believing in your ability to execute those plans, even when obstacles arise. [1]
“In essence, hope rewires the brain for positivity, enabling us to navigate life’s challenges with greater ease and resilience.” [1]
For creative entrepreneurs, this distinction is game-changing.
Let’s sweep the brain…
🎬 Rather watch or listen instead of read? Now you can!
Why Hope Matters, Specifically for Entrepreneurs
If you're like many of entrepreneurs I work with, you probably chose this path partly because traditional work environments weren't built for your brain.
But entrepreneurship brings its own challenges – unpredictable income, shifting priorities, isolation, and the constant need to self-motivate. Add in the unpredictable shifts of the economic landscape of 2025, and it’s not for the faint of heart.
For the creative entrepreneur, these external challenges compound the internal ones you already navigate daily.
It's precisely in these moments – when everything feels overwhelming and you're considering whether you should just pack it all in – that you need more than just another productivity app (though those certainly have their place). You need something deeper:
Hope as a strategic tool.
Even when the path ahead is unclear, obstacles lurk unseen, and your destination seems impossibly far away. You have a tool in your toolbox that’s always been there, buried deep at the bottom of your bag.
The inner light of hope.
It won’t change the length of your journey or remove all the obstacles, but it will illuminate the next steps, help you identify pitfalls, and give you the confidence to keep moving forward when everything in you wants you to turn back.
Hope isn't just a fluffy feeling or a fantasy. It's a practical, neurobiologically grounded tool that directly impacts your capacity to persevere and succeed.
Hope is a light at the end of a tunnel or a seed waiting to grow. It's a concrete resource you can develop and deploy strategically in your business.
Scientists have discovered that hope actually protects your brain against anxiety. This finding is crucial for ADHD entrepreneurs—that lower anxiety = greater access to executive function (where decision-making, problem-solving, and planning happen). [1,3]
In practical terms, when you cultivate hope, you're literally creating neural pathways that help you:
Reduce anxiety about business uncertainties.
Become more resilient when facing setbacks.
Improve your problem-solving abilities.
Maintain motivation through challenging phases.
What makes hope so powerful isn't just its emotional impact but its neurobiological foundation.
When we experience hope, specific brain regions activate, including the areas involved in motivation and decision-making and the supplementary motor area that connects our thoughts to actions. The brain's reward system engages, releasing dopamine—a neurotransmitter many ADHD individuals already have a complex relationship with.
The dopamine release from hope helps ADHD brains, bridging the gap between motivation, action, and long-term success.
Once we are in action, our brain can turn our hopes into reality with evidence, creating the faith and trust we need to persevere.
This is where hope becomes not just helpful but essential.
The Traffic Jam of Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship can feel like navigating a busy city.
Traditional advice tells you to stick to the highway—follow the plan, and success will come.
But creative entrepreneurs know highways often have detours and traffic jams. Hope isn’t about wishing the road clears; it’s about finding alternate routes—side streets, shortcuts, or scenic paths—that still lead to your destination. Sometimes, those unexpected detours lead to the most valuable discoveries. [4]
If there's an accident on the I95 or construction on the Mass Pike, we have to work around that to reach our destination. You can't just stop in the middle of the highway and give up.
This week, let’s start your Hope practice.
Today, begin training your brain to notice and cultivate hope in business.
Here's a simple exercise based on the science:
The Daily Reroute Journal
Take 3-5 minutes at the end of your day to reflect on a challenge you faced in your business (or life) and write down:
What was your original goal?
What obstacle or detour appeared?
How did you find (or could you have found) an alternative pathway?
What personal strengths helped you navigate this challenge?
Tomorrow, repeat this exercise, but try to catch yourself in the moment when an obstacle appears. Notice how your awareness of multiple pathways changes your response.
Over time, this practice will train your brain to see obstacles as opportunities and strengthen your ability to adapt—key traits of successful entrepreneurs.
This simple practice strengthens agency thinking (belief in your ability) and pathway thinking (finding multiple routes to goals), the two essential components of hope.
Every time you find an alternative route around an obstacle, you're not just solving a problem – you're physically strengthening the hope networks in your brain, leading to greater success in your life and business.
Here's to finding new pathways and building the business we’re proud of!
My questions for you this week :
How has hope (or a lack of it) influenced your ability to navigate challenges in your business?
What strategies do you use to maintain motivation and problem-solving when business uncertainties create anxiety?
Reply and share with me!
Are you a like-hearted entrepreneur ready for support? Let's connect.
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Jamie’s Second Brain Corner:
[1] https://greenhillsla.com/the-science-of-hope/
[2] https://www.ttncoaching.com/blog/adhd-brains-love-entrepreneurship
[3] https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/scientists-find-out-how-hope-protects-the-brain/
[4] https://news.asu.edu/20210615-solutions-science-hope-more-wishful-thinking
[X] Did someone say MindSweep MAP?! Learn more about my Personalized MindSweep Mapping Process.
MONDAY: 8 am - Curated Conversation - Zoom
Changing the world, one Monday Morning at a time. Learn more + Sign Up for a Monday morning reminder!
What I’m reading
The Frozen River
Author: Ariel Lawhon
Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death.
As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community.
Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.
Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.
Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard.
The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.
Find it where you browse
for books.
Collaborations!
Join us Friday, April 4th, at the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce for this two-hour interactive business community experience.
We'll discuss ways to cultivate business through Sales, Marketing, and Communication methods that support relationship building, showing up authentically, and connecting deeper with colleagues and the people you serve.
9-11 am - Open discussion, community support, brainstorming ideas
Join me in meeting business owners in our community. You'll leave with new tools to help you make connections and build your business!
Free; Registration is required: REGISTRATION.
Mindful Connections
Connecting like-hearted entrepreneurs to build relationships, offering support, understanding their passions, and sharing their names in rooms of opportunity.
Join us Thursdays, 12-1 pm EST.
12:00 - Take 5—a guided meditation with Terri Hamilton of Positively Terri to ground your week with peace and focus.
12:05-1 pm Round-table Share
Who you are
The gifts you bring to the world
Who you serve
The answer to a Curated question to spark conversation.
If you found this on the web, sign up to join us!
In other news…
Feeling #FOMO about Curated Conversations? Join us!
