🧠Weekly MindSweep No. 80 | Manage Your Mind | Discernment
June 2025
06/02/2025 - Week 178: Curated Conversation: Discernment
06/09/2025 - Week 179: Mind Your Business: Discernment
*06/16/2025 - Week 180: Manage Your Mind: Discernment
06/23/2025 - No Curated Conversation, Weekly MindSweep, or Mindful Connections.
06/30/2025 - Week 181: What’s On My Mind: Discernment
Let’s sweep the brain…
🎬 Rather watch or listen instead of read? Now you can!
👉 Click here to Listen
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 - Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Collaborations with Terri Hamilton (Thursday) & Shannon Giordano and the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce
My face đź’ś and a link to schedule your free consultation.
Discernment Over Dopamine
A few years ago, I sat across from a mentor who told me something that’s stuck with me:
“Garbage in; Garbage out. Your intuition is only as smart as the data you give it.”
At the time, I was chasing every exciting idea with the enthusiasm of a kid in a bounce house, no brakes, just vibes. If something felt exciting, I followed it. If someone needed help, I jumped in.
I thought people were born with discernment, like high cheekbones or an aversion to balloons. (No? Just me? Weird.) But here’s what I’ve learned since:
Discernment is not a trait. It’s a trained response.
It’s a habit. A practice. You can strengthen a neural pathway like trust, confidence, or biceps.
And if you’re a creative entrepreneur who thrives on freedom and possibility?
You especially need a way to filter the noise from the knowing.
Let’s sweep the brain…
🎬 Rather watch or listen instead of read? Now you can!
👉 Click here to Listen
🧠How the Brain Builds Discernment
The brain isn’t wired for clarity; it’s wired for survival.
Discernment helps your brain move from reflexive action to reflective strategy. Let’s break down the regions that work together when you’re learning to trust yourself and decide wisely:
Prefrontal Cortex (PFC): The Strategist. This is the part of your brain responsible for executive functioning. Think planning, delaying gratification, evaluating consequences, and managing emotional responses. It strengthens through repetition and reflection. You create a stronger mental model for future decisions every time you pause and evaluate.
Insula: The Inner Compass. Located deep within the brain, the insular cortex interprets internal signals (your heartbeat, gut tension, breath rate) and translates them into felt experiences. This is where interoception lives. The more you tune in to your physical cues, the more accurate and trustworthy your gut feeling becomes. [1]
Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC): The Conflict Monitor. This region tracks errors and detects cognitive dissonance. It flags when your actions don’t match your values or when you’re about to say yes out of misalignment. But it can’t do its job if you don’t give it space. When your pace is nonstop, its subtle signals get lost in the shuffle.
🧠Why This Matters for Your Business
When your brain is trained to discern, you:
Say yes to aligned work that fuels your mission
Say no without guilt to shiny distractions
Use your energy more wisely
Build a brand that reflects consistency and clarity
Protect your focus, your offers, and your revenue
Discernment isn’t just a mindset; it’s a strategic edge rooted in brain science.
🧠Tools to Train Discernment
Here are four ways to support your brain and body in becoming a better decision-making team:
1. Decision Journaling After each decision, especially big or sticky ones, jot down:
What you chose
Why you chose it
How it felt
What happened next
You’re training your brain through reflection and pattern recognition.
Over time, you’ll spot your own tells and tendencies.
2. The 24-Hour Rule Before committing to anything new, say: “Let me sit with this and get back to you tomorrow.” This gives your prefrontal cortex time to step in and weigh long-term implications instead of short-term flattery or urgency.
Discernment needs time to surface.
3. Body Scans Before Commitments Before responding, ask yourself:
Do I feel open or contracted?
Is this excitement or obligation?
Am I grounded or buzzing with urgency?
The insula needs you to listen in.
The more you practice, the better your brain identifies trustworthy inner signals.
4. Discernment Anchors
Keep a visible list of your:
Core values
Current capacity
Ideal client/project/pace
Revenue goals
If a new opportunity doesn’t align with one or more of these? That’s a no, my friend.
Let your strategy do the talking when your people-pleasing wants to answer.
🧠Practice This Week
Start small. Use one of the tools above to make tiny choices—what to eat, when to work, what to decline. Every moment of intentional decision-making rewires your brain to pause, evaluate, and trust.
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about creating a brain and a business that trusts itself.
When I was bouncing from one decision to the next, I was ruled by vibes, urgency, and the rush of being needed. I didn’t realize that every yes was shaping a business I didn’t fully recognize.
One built on reaction instead of reflection.
Things changed when I decided to treat discernment as a practice, not a personality trait. I stopped treating discernment like a mystery and started treating it like a muscle. With every pause, every journaled decision, and every body check-in, I gave my intuition better data to work with.
Now, my gut doesn’t just guess; it guides because I’ve trained it with strategy, systems, and stillness.
So if you’re still saying yes too quickly, doubting your no, or wondering why your business feels scattered even when you’re working nonstop, that’s not a failure of discipline; that’s your bounce house brain asking for structure.
Discernment is the structure.
This is not to box you in but to point you toward the choices that will build the business you actually want.
My questions for you this week :
What’s one thing you can do to practice discernment, not just expect it?
What helps you feel clear, and what clouds your clarity?Reply and share with me!
✨ Let’s Build a Business That Feels Aligned—Not Just Busy
As a creative business consultant, I work with heart-centered and neurodivergent entrepreneurs to turn scattered efforts into clear, confident strategies.
Together, we’ll:
Design a business that reflects your values and your capacity
Create decision-making frameworks that protect your time and revenue
Build systems that support your gut instincts with a smart strategy.
Because you’re not just the available one. You’re the visionary. The CEO. And your business deserves to be led with discernment.
Learn more about my MindSweep Mapping Process, your custom roadmap for getting unstuck and moving forward with clarity.
Ready to work together?
Are you a like-hearted entrepreneur ready for support? Let's connect.
Was this blog forwarded to you? Sign up!
Jamie’s Second Brain Corner:
[1] Interoception is the sense that allows you to perceive and understand what's happening inside your body, such as feeling hunger, a racing heart, or the need to use the restroom. It's like having a sixth sense, but instead of external stimuli, it's all about internal sensations. This sense plays a crucial role in how we experience and regulate our emotions, make decisions, and maintain overall well-being.
[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
Demon Copperhead
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival.
Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.
Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society.
Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story.
Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.
Find it where you browse for books.
Collaborations!
Join us Friday, July 11th, 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!
Note: because of the 4th of July holiday we’ll meet the 2nd Friday!
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.
FYI: We will NOT meet Thursday, 06/26/2025
If you found this on the web, sign up to join us!
In other news…
Feeling #FOMO about Curated Conversations? Join us!
