🧠 Weekly MindSweep No. 197 | What’s On My Mind | Self-Worth
October 2025
Week 194: Curated Conversation: Self-Worth
Week 195: Mind Your Business: Self-Worth
Week 196: Manage Your Mind: Self-Worth
*Week 197: What’s On My Mind: Self-Worth
Let’s sweep the brain…
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 Mind Electric by Pria Anand
Collaborations with Terri Hamilton (Thursday) SEE UPDATE BELOW & Shannon Giordano and the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce (First Friday)
My face 💜 and a link to schedule your free consultation.
Reclaiming the Brain’s Definition of Enough
Between confidence and doubt lies the space where worth lives, where we pause long enough to remember our value was always there.
There’s a single moment between confidence and doubt and mine happened over a blinking cursor.
Last week, I was writing a proposal for a local brand on a project perfectly aligned with my skills, my values, and my zone of genius.
I know their industry, their audience, and the psychology of what helps people not just connect with a brand, but belong to it. Still, halfway through writing, my fingers hovered over the keyboard as my brain whispered its familiar line:
What if it’s not enough?
What if someone else could do this better?
What if my ideas aren’t impressive enough?
What if the proposal itself doesn’t capture the depth of what I bring?
It wasn’t the first time that voice of self doubt showed up, and it won’t be the last. You know deeply that quiet echo that lingers after a launch doesn’t land, a post goes unseen, or a client ghosts before signing.
But this time, I didn’t chase the question and instead I paused. I placed my hand over my heart for a simple grounding technique that I’ve learned from years of brain work and reminded myself:
My worth was here long before this proposal ever existed.
That was the shift.
The moment where the wiring met the work.
The space between doubt and knowing where self-worth lives.
We Began with Self-Worth Awareness
Let’s take a moment to reflect on our month of Self-Worth
When we began this month’s conversation in Week 194 on self-worth, I asked a simple question: What if your brain has been running a loop that confuses your value with your output?
That’s how this all started with awareness. Awareness that somewhere along the way, our worth becomes tangled up with how much we produce, how quickly we respond, how “on top of it” we appear to be.
Our brains love proof and chase the dopamine hit of completion, the validation of being seen, the relief of “done.” And, for those of us with ADHD, that hit can feel like oxygen.
But awareness is only the beginning.
It’s the light switch that lets you see the wiring, and not the rewiring itself.
We Minded Our Business
In Week 195, I shared my confession: I used to think I loved productivity, but realized what I really loved was proof.
Proof that I was doing enough.
Proof that I wasn’t lazy.
Proof that I was still keeping up with everyone else who seemed to be doing it all.
My to-do list wasn’t a tool; it was a scoreboard. Every check-mark was a little permission slip to rest, to breathe, to exist without guilt. And that hit of relief? That’s our favorite brain chemical; dopamine. The brain’s way of saying, Yes! You did a thing. Gold star for you.
But when the check-marks stopped coming and when the list grew longer than the day that same circuitry flipped. My brain reads the absence of proof as danger. The brain’s error detectors fired up, signaling that something was wrong. And before I even knew it, the story loop began again: I’m behind. I’m failing. I’m not enough.
That’s when I realized that it wasn’t productivity I was addicted to. It was permission.
We Managed Our Mind
And last week in Week 196, we peeled back the layers and talked about awareness as the spark but not the solution. Because once you see how your self-worth and productivity are entangled, the next step is to give your brain a new script.
Neuroscience teaches us that every thought we repeat strengthens a neural pathway.
The brain doesn’t care if it’s true only if it’s familiar.
So when we constantly rehearse the story that worth equals output, that loop gets reinforced. Rewiring it requires gentleness and practice.
That week, I asked you to imagine what it would feel like to interrupt that loop. To teach your brain a different pattern, one that says, My worth doesn’t live in the check-marks.
And what I heard back from you was overwhelming messages that said:
“That gave me chills”
“I’m going to try not to cry. That spoke to my heart on every level.”
“I’m becoming more aware of what I want and how I want to see the world.”
It told me this isn’t just about work.
This is about identity and how deeply our worth has been shaped by systems that reward proof over presence.
What’s Been Living On My Mind
Which brings us to today and what’s been living on my mind.
I’ve been writing the Weekly MindSweep for 197 weeks. We’ve covered forty-seven topics, and I’ve shared hundreds of stories. But somehow, this one — self-worth — has gone deeper than the rest.
It’s a topic that has entrepreneurs rolling out of bed to unpack what it means. The one that tugs on a thread so deep it aches. The one that’s pulled something buried beneath all our busyness: shame.
Most of the voices that reply to these emails, that show up week after week for our Curated Conversations, belong to women like me; creative trailblazers who spent years doing everything “right.”We studied. We climbed. We checked the boxes. And then, somewhere between the promotions and the proof, we heard the quiet truth rise: this isn’t it. So we left. [1]
We walked away from predictable paychecks and well-worn paths.
We built something of our own that is heart-centered and purpose-driven.
We traded certainty for meaning. [2]
And still, every morning, we show up trying, in our own small ways, to make the world gentler, wiser, and more human; one Monday at a time. We acknowledge the challenges we face, and we support each other in this journey of self-discovery and self-worth.
We’re building our life’s work in a world that still measures worth in currency, productivity, and proof. A world that doesn’t yet know how to price creativity, empathy, or care with the same green paper that props up the patriarchy.
And yet still, we rise.
We rise:
for the student who doesn’t fit the system
for the parent learning how to breathe through a diagnosis.
for the anxious teen stepping into the unknown.
for the artist who aches to create without apology.
for the women to unlearn the shame braided into their stories about food, money, love, and life.
We rise because we see them.
Because they are us.
If there’s one truth this month has carved into me, it’s this: Self-worth isn’t earned through outcomes. It’s remembered in the quiet knowing that what we give, what we hold, what we create – matters.
Your brain might not fully believe it yet and that’s okay. Awareness is the first spark. The belief is the slow burn that follows. And belief grows through repetition, through living the story you want to write next.
Every time you rest without proof.
Every time you say no because your energy matters.
Every time you celebrate a small, invisible act of impact you’re teaching your brain that worth doesn’t need witnesses. That’s the rewiring. That’s the new loop.
We are the ones teaching the world a new economy: one built on care, creativity, and connection.
It may never trend on LinkedIn.
It may never fit neatly on a balance sheet.
But it’s changing everything.
And it starts right here and it starts with you.
An Invitation of Self-Worth
When I think back to that proposal where my brain whispered, ‘What if it’s not enough?’ I can see it differently now. That hesitation wasn’t fear, it was an invitation to meet myself without proof, to write from knowing instead of needing.
Maybe that’s where you are too? Standing before something that matters, feeling both the pull of your purpose and the tremor of your doubt. That isn’t weakness; it’s truth.
Because self-worth is what allows us to hold both.
It’s what lets us turn toward the tender parts that question, hesitate, or hide, and still keep showing up anyway.
Because beneath the striving, beneath the silence, beneath the second-guessing lives something we’re about to face together next month: shame. Not as a verdict, but as a voice that’s been trying, in its own misguided way, to protect us from pain and keep us safe.
If we can meet that voice from the steady ground of our own worth with compassion instead of judgment, we’ll find our way back to the quiet truth we’ve been circling all month: [3]
We were already enough.
My questions for you this week :
In your own creative business, what would change if you believed you were already enough right now, before another client, project, or post?
When your brain starts humming the old song of “not enough,” what truth can your heart sing back to remind you who you really are?
Reply and share with me!
✨Reclaiming the Brain’s Definition of Enough
If this conversation stirred that quiet ache between confidence and doubt, it might be time to see your work, your worth, and your energy through a new lens.
That’s where I come in! Together, we’ll turn chaos into coherence and confusion into clarity. I’ll help you spot distractions, refine your focus, and move from doing to being and from force to flow.
We’ll translate your energy into language that reflects who you are and why your work matters. We’ll uncover the essence beneath the noise so your message, mindset, and momentum finally align.
Because when your energy is seen clearly, everything else realigns too.
If you’re ready to reconnect with the worth that’s been there all along, start with a MindSweep Mapping Session. It’s where insight becomes strategy and strategy becomes ease.
🧠 Your brain. Your business. Mapped.
👉 Book your free MindSweep Chat: www.chickbookcreative.com/mind-sweep
Already know where you need to work on your business? Book a free consultation to learn how I can support you and your business.
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Jamie’s Second Brain Corner:
[1] What is Curated Conversations?
[2] Did you miss our month on Meaning?
[3] Did you miss our month on Compassion?
[X] Did someone say MindSweep MAP?!
[X] Follow Chickbook Creative on Substack!
[X] NEW>> Now on Apple Podcasts!
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 Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains
by Pria Anand
Stories are etched into the very structure of our brains, coded so deeply that the impulse for storytelling survives and even surges after the most devastating injuries. But our brains are also porous—the stories they concoct shaped by cultural narratives about bodies and illness that permeate the minds of doctors and patients alike. In the history of medicine, some stories are heard, while others—the narratives of women, of Black and brown people, of displaced people, of disempowered people—are too often dismissed.
In The Mind Electric, neurologist Pria Anand reveals—through case study, history, fable, and memoir—all that the medical establishment has overlooked: the complexity and wonder of brains in health and in extremis, and the vast gray area between sanity and insanity, doctor and patient, and illness and wellness, each separated from the next by the thin veneer of a different story.
Find it where you browse for books.
Collaborations!
Join us on Friday, November 7, 2025 from 9am-11am.
For November, Shannon and I will welcome Tim Holtsnider of Passages
How the Workplace Has Evolved, the Challenges it’s Creating and Possible Solutions.
From Fortune 500 boardrooms to four continents, Tim Holtsnider has seen the workplace evolve. He’s sharing what’s changed, what’s next, and how to prepare. Join us!
Join us for this engaging presentation in community with other business owners. You'll leave with new tools to help you make connections and build your business!
Free; Registration is required: REGISTRATION.
Mindful Connections
Dear friends,
Terri and I, with gratitude and care, have decided to pause Mindful Connections for the time being. After much reflection, we recognize that Mindful Connections hasn’t evolved in the way we envisioned.
Please know, from both of our hearts, how much we’ve loved connecting with each of you every Thursday at noon. Your presence, energy, and encouragement have meant the world to us, and we’re deeply grateful for the support you’ve shown our collaboration.
We would still love to gather Thursday 10/23, and to say a warm “see you later” on 10/30/2025—please join us if you can!
Looking ahead, we plan to revisit this collaboration in 2026 to determine whether we restart Mindful Connections or create something new together.
With gratitude, Jamie & Terri
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In other news…
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