🧠Weekly MindSweep No. 198| Curator’s Perspective | Unmasking the Performance
November 2025
*Week 198: Curator’s Perspective: The Unmasking
Week 199: Curated Conversation: Shame
Week 200: Mind Your Business: Shame
Week 201: Manage Your Mind: Shame
Week 202: What’s On My Mind: Shame
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: Last one with Terri Hamilton (Thursday) & Shannon Giordano and the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce (First Friday)
My face đź’ś and a link to schedule your free consultation.
What Hides Beneath Doing It All
The badge of doing has always felt like armor.
For years, that badge gleamed under the big overhead fluorescent lights of late-night emails and shimmered in every color-coded sticky note I swore would keep me “on top of things.”
I was clinging on for some sort of control. That armor made me feel safe, or at least, it looked like safety. Sprinting from one idea to another on adrenaline, with the dopamine and adrenaline of a tag-team race, I told myself:
This is thriving.
Then, after a new client signed on and notifications fired off dopamine, I celebrated the “win.” Yet, alone at my kitchen counter, hands trembling beside an empty coffee cup, the contrast hit me: Outwardly, I looked like the model entrepreneur—creative, resilient, adaptable. Inside, I felt a cold silence, like the heavy pause between playing the same familiar song on repeat to soothe my nervous system.
When will I finally feel like I’ve done enough?
Masking: The Entrepreneur’s Secret
ADHD masking is a conscious or unconscious effort to hide, suppress, or overcompensate for ADHD symptoms to appear more “typical” at work or socially. For entrepreneurs, masking drives a relentless pursuit of productivity and outward success but often leads to emotional exhaustion and a sense of disconnection from your authentic self. [1]
It’s a story I hear again and again from creative entrepreneurs and ADHD business minds. The compulsion to turn setbacks into innovation and pressure into performance, all while hoping no one notices the panic that bubbles up when momentum stalls.
Small missteps lead to complex fixes; disorganization spurs clever workarounds. Masking turns struggle into apparent resilience, but beneath, it’s a quest for belonging, a survival disguised as strength. We call it resilience, but sometimes it’s just survival in fancy clothes.
If I stop moving, they’ll see me.
So why does success feel so fleeting? Why does each achievement feed a hunger that only grows stronger, even when it seems like it should be satisfied?
This isn’t just ambition or ego, it’s a brain wired for constant proof-seeking, making masking feel necessary but never satisfying.
The Story Beneath the Hustle
As Brené Brown reminds us, shame isn’t “I did something wrong”; it's “I am wrong.” For ADHD entrepreneurs, that story gets turbocharged.
Our brains run on anticipation and novelty. Every win is amplified, and every stumble is magnified to 150 percent. The mind crafts stories swiftly, always searching both for proof of worth and for warning signs of inadequacy.
Adam Grant describes performance as a double-edged sword: it can motivate progress, but over time it can easily become a mask that hides vulnerability, fear, and a longing for connection.
The excitement of achievement is a quick burst of dopamine in the brain. But when the praise fades and the next task appears, other parts of the brain quietly signal stress, inviting shame in, ever so softly, and insistently.
Was that enough?
Will they still like me?
Shouldn’t I be doing more?
Performing for Proof
On our busiest days, we can feel it physically. Our shoulders tense, our hearts race, thoughts darting from the next pitch to the last unfinished task. Maybe you check your phone compulsively, craving the relief of a new notification, which is really using action as self-soothing.
You convince yourself that “doing” equals belonging, and that movement makes you safe.
The mask tightens.
And as for rest? Pfft. Rest feels less like relief and more like exposure.
When the performance stops and your nervous system panics, your breath becomes shallow, fidgeting kicks in, and there's an urge to fix anything to keep moving. That discomfort isn’t weakness, it’s wiring.
The creative ADHD brain adapts through action, seeking reassurance through movement, dreading the discomfort that stillness can bring.
Yet, stillness is the only place where the real work happens.
When the Mask Slips
And then, sometimes, the mask slips.
Not with grand failure or public embarrassment, but through small, private moments:
an unfinished project,
a gentle critique,
or even the absence of response.
Shame makes itself known in the ordinary:
the quiet comparison with a friend's curated feed,
a rejection that stings longer than expected,
or an inner voice whispering, "not enough."
We turn to our usual solutions, quick fixes, and routines. We call it innovation because being an entrepreneur means adapting, but deep down, there’s a quiet feeling that our worth depends on what we achieve next. It can feel like our identity is tied to our latest success.
That our identity is only as strong as the next performance.
And the brain, bless its pattern-loving heart, believes it.
The Neuroscience of Self-Worth
What we rarely see in the entrepreneurial community is the true cost of masking:
emotional exhaustion,
a distorted sense of self.
We’re so busy performing that masking our true selves obscures our true value, making authentic self-worth feel distant and unreachable.
Research shows what many people have felt but struggled to explain:
Self-worth isn’t something you earn; it’s something you remember.
It’s built into our minds, shaped by our experiences of belonging and safety. The Default Mode Network, the voice in our heads, keeps repeating old stories unless we step in and change them:
“Why do I feel so bad? Because I’m behind. Because I’m lazy. Because I’m not enough.”
But those are just stories your brain tells when it can’t find new evidence.
That’s why micro-evidence matters.
Empathy Over Achievement
Brené Brown’s research reminds us that “shame cannot survive being spoken.” The most powerful antidote isn’t hustle or perfection. It’s empathy.
Adam Grant’s work echoes this: “psychological safety fosters creativity, resilience, and authentic connection.”
When entrepreneurs name their fears, allow for imperfection, and show compassion to themselves and others, real rewiring begins.
Slowly, the nervous system learns to feel safe in presence, not just in performance.
Awareness disrupts the cycle; intentional pauses signal to the brain, "I am safe, even when I am still."
Practicing Micro-Evidence of Enoughness
New pathways form one small moment at a time:
pausing before we prove ourselves,
replacing frantic action with intentional breath,
writing out facts to separate reality from the brain’s old stories.
Each conscious rest and honored boundary builds evidence: your worth exists now, not as a result of endless performance or masking.
No, you don’t rewrite your neural pathways in a single epiphany. You do it in tiny, deliberate moments.
Each time you choose presence over performance, you teach your brain a new language.
That’s where the rewiring begins.
Redefining “Enough”
ADHD entrepreneurs love metrics. They are tangible, measurable, and oh, so comforting. But “enough” isn’t a number. It’s a state of regulation.
It’s a nervous system state, arriving when the outside world no longer has to be the mirror for your worth. Only then can you rest without guilt, return to undone tasks without self-blame, and build new circuits of meaning.
A New Kind of Showing Up
This month, The Curator’s Perspective steps outside our usual template. A transition, a pause, an invitation. Before we talk shame, let’s honor the invisible labor of masking, the cost of constant proof-seeking, and the courage it takes to unmask, even for a moment.
This is for the entrepreneur who turns setbacks into new directions but also needs rest.
It’s for the restless minds who create while quietly facing doubt.
Let’s take a collective breath together before we explore shame in more depth next month.
Your wins deserve celebration, but your worth was never in question.
As we begin next month’s topic, let it be a journey of remembering: you are more than your mask, and your enoughness is already waiting.
You are deeply seen. You are profoundly heard. And you are understood here.
My questions for you this week :
In what ways has masking or performance held you back from real connection or creativity?
When you unmask (stop performing) how do others respond, and how do you feel about it?
Reply and share with me!
✨ If the mask is starting to feel heavy, that’s your signal.
Let’s lighten the load.
If you’ve been performing your way through business by smiling, achieving, and producing, but still feel unseen beneath it all, maybe it’s time to unmask.
That’s the work we’ll do together.
Schedule a MindSweep Mapping Session to uncover the stories your brain’s been performing and rewrite them into strategies that align with your truth; not the performance of it.
Together, we’ll transform coping into clarity, doing into being, and noise into knowing.
🧠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:
[X] What is Curated Conversations?
[X] Did someone say MindSweep MAP?!
[X] Follow Chickbook Creative on Substack!
[X] NEW>> Now on Apple Podcasts!
MONDAY: 8 am - Curated Conversation - Zoom
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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 to say a warm “see you later” this Thursday, 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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