🧠 Weekly MindSweep No. 203 | Curated Conversation | Belonging
December 2025
*Week 203: Curated Conversation: Belonging
Week 204: Mind Your Business: Belonging
Week 205: Manage Your Mind: Belonging
Week 206: What’s On My Mind Belonging
Let’s sweep the brain…
🎬 Rather watch or listen instead of read? Now you can!
In the MindSweep this week:
Weekly MindSweep: 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 Inspiring Me: The Art of Self-Approval by Elaine Blais — friend, mentor, creative force, and a grounding presence in our Curated Conversations—writes with a truth-telling that goes straight to the heart. Hearing her voice rise from the page was a gift every midlife woman deserves to experience.
Collaboration: with Shannon Giordano and the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce (First Friday of every month) THIS FRIDAY!
My face 💜 and a link to schedule your free consultation.
Belonging: The Breath Your Nervous System Has Been Holding
Last week, after our final conversation on Shame, I closed my laptop and sat there staring at Walter (our Cockapoo) in the quiet of my in-laws’ finished basement. He was sleeping soundly beside me after the previous day’s 740 miles in the car.
When the laptop clicked shut, he opened his eyes, took a deep breath in, then let out a long exhale through his nose. I nodded in agreement and took the cue to do that for myself.
I took a few more slow breaths and thought about our month on Shame.
Every single story we shared about old art scars, fawning, over-explaining, discomfort in raising rates, defending creativity, wanting to be understood, second-guessing our legitimacy, and questioning our value wasn’t actually all just about Shame.
It was also about belonging.
Not the external belonging of the younger version of us that whispered, “Do they like me?” But the quiet, internal belonging that emerges the moment you finally allow yourself to take up space exactly as you are.
When we landed on the idea that not being immediately understood did not equal not being enough, I swear our entire grid of Zoom faces softened at once.
Because that is belonging.
It’s being misunderstood, and choosing not to abandon yourself.
It’s standing inside your work, without shrinking.
It’s letting your weirdness, your brilliance, your creative wiring be seen, without scrambling to edit it for someone else’s comfort.
That was the thread beneath everything we shared, and for December, we’re devoting our conversation to Belonging.
What Belonging Really Means
Let’s start by naming what Belonging is not:
Belonging is not approval.
Belonging is not fitting in.
Belonging is not contorting yourself into a version that feels digestible.
Real belonging is the emotional safety that comes from recognizing yourself in the world you’re building.
It’s the moment you:
Stop convincing and start expressing.
Stop proving and start being.
Stop apologizing and start choosing.
Belonging looks like being:
seen without performance
valued without bargaining
understood without translation
held in community without having to shape-shift or mask
with the people who don’t require you to be smaller, quieter, cheaper, or more “reasonable.”
It’s the moment someone says, “I get you,” and your nervous system unwinds like they just handed you back your breath.
But here’s what we’ll begin to explore this month:
Belonging doesn’t start with other people.
It starts with how you belong to yourself.
Why Belonging Feels Like Survival
From a neuroscience lens, belonging isn’t a preference; it’s survival.
Your brain tracks social safety using the same neural networks it uses to track physical safety. So when you fear judgment, misunderstanding, or rejection, your amygdala activates the same threat response you’d feel if someone stepped suddenly in front of your moving car.
Which is why you might:
over-explain before anyone asks
discount your price preemptively
fawn instead of saying no
avoid visibility
shape-shift your language, tone, or energy to fit the room
step into perfectionism as protection
Your brain is asking, “Is it safe to be myself here?” And for many of us, the historic answer to that question was: no.
What we’re doing together in these Curated Conversations every Monday morning, is rewiring that.
The neural progression of creative confidence is Awareness → safety → self-acceptance → belonging.
Awareness & Noticing Tools
This month isn’t about “finding where you belong.” It’s about noticing the moments when you leave yourself out of fear. Here are a few noticing tools to begin our month on Belonging
1. The Self-Exit Scan
Notice the exact moment you begin to shrink:
When do you adjust your voice or tone?
When do you soften your opinion?
When do you lower your price in your head before saying it aloud?
When do you translate your creativity into “more professional” language?
That moment is the doorway into Belonging.
2. The Nervous System Check-In
When entering a new space like a new client consultation, a group meeting, or any conversation, ask: “What would help my brain feel safer right now?”
A pause?
A breath?
A boundary?
A reminder?
A reframe?
Belonging expands where safety begins.
3. The Ideal Person Reflection
Write down the people who “get” you, and begin to look for the patterns.
Your belonging is hiding in those commonalities.
4. The Creative Permission Slip
Finish this sentence for yourself: “I feel most like myself when…”
Then ask: “Where in my business do I hide that part?”
Belonging requires visibility to yourself first.
The Moment We Returned to Ourselves
As our shame series ended, the chat lit up with lines like:
“This resonated so deeply.”
“I feel seen here.”
“I’m going to begin letting my freak flag fly.”
“I realized I’ve been carrying other people’s shame.”
And what struck me most wasn’t the vulnerability; we’ve already created a safe space for that. It was the familiarity.
You weren’t just sharing pain, you were recognizing each other. Your stories echoed one another, and the experiences mirrored one another. Your language synced with the same emotional frequency, and you felt seen.
It reminded me of something Brené Brown once said: “We don’t negotiate our worth with the world. We carry it in.”
When she talks about worthiness, she names the difference between fitting in and Belonging:
Fitting in requires shape-shifting to be accepted by others.
Belonging requires showing up as yourself so you can accept yourself.
Worth is not a referendum; it’s a foundation you walk in with.
Most of us learned early on that worth had to be earned, proven, justified, or granted by others.
So we spent years trying to be:
good enough
agreeable enough
impressive enough
understandable enough
And in entrepreneurship, this becomes:
lowering your prices so clients say yes
over-delivering so no one is disappointed
discounting your lived experience
adding “extras” to feel legitimate
apologizing for your brilliance
fawning when challenged
shrinking your creative language to feel “professional.”
micromanaging yourself so no one sees the mess
All of that is negotiation. All of that is asking the world to confirm something your nervous system was never taught to hold:
“Am I allowed to take up space?”
Belonging flips the question and becomes:
“I take up space because I am here.”
No performing. No discounting. No contorting into comfort for others.
Belonging in business, creativity, relationships, and community begins the moment you stop negotiating your value and start living from it.
You stop asking the world for permission to be who you already are. You carry your worth into the room, and you don’t wait for the room to stamp it Approved.
That is belonging.
As last week’s call wrapped up, and each of you waved your goodbyes, I realized that we didn’t create Belonging by accident. We created it right here in Curated Conversation through awareness, honesty, and the courage to be seen, even when being seen feels risky.
This month, we’re going to turn that courage into clarity and explore how Belonging shows up in your business, creativity, pricing, visibility, and self-trust.
Not so you can fit in, but so you can finally feel at home in your own work.
Welcome to Belonging. Not as a destination you earn, but as the place you return to inside yourself, again and again, until it becomes home.
My questions for you this week:
Where have you been negotiating your worth instead of embodying it?
Who are the people in your life or work who make you feel “I don’t have to translate myself here”?
Reply and share with me!
✨ Build Belonging Into Your Business
If this conversation stirred a recognition, a longing, a moment of “Oh… I’ve been leaving myself behind”, you don’t have to navigate that alone.
Belonging isn’t just a feeling. It’s a strategy. It’s a nervous system state. And it’s the foundation of every aligned business decision you’ll ever make.
In a MindSweep Mapping Session, we’ll trace the moments where you disconnect from yourself in your work—pricing, visibility, creativity, client dynamics—and map a way back to belonging that feels safe, grounded, and authentic to you.
Together, we’ll reconnect:
your values
your voice
your nervous system
your creative wiring
and the way your business supports the real you
If you’re ready to stop shape-shifting and start showing up with clarity, confidence, and belonging: let’s map!
🧠 Your brain. Your business. Mapped.
👉 Book your free MindSweep Chat: www.chickbookcreative.com/mind-sweep
Already know you’re ready to build something powerful, sustainable, and true to you?
👉 Book a free consultation to explore how I can support your business and your brain — as a strategist, creative partner, and thought-partner who actually gets how you’re wired.
Was this blog forwarded to you? Sign up!
Jamie’s Second Brain Corner:
The words in bold within the Weekly MindSweep are all topics we’ve covered in Curated Conversation. You can dig into them here:
Want to see Walter White Boots?
Did someone say MindSweep MAP?!
Follow Chickbook Creative on Substack!
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 Art of Self-Approval: Midlife as a Sacred Return to Yourself
by Elaine Blais
Elaine Blais—friend, mentor, creative force, and a grounding presence in our Curated Conversations—writes with a truth-telling that goes straight to the heart. Hearing her voice rise from the page was a gift every midlife woman deserves to experience.
What if you were never the problem?
What if there was nothing to fix—only more of yourself to remember?
For generations, women have been conditioned to play small, chase perfection, and earn approval by being agreeable, productive, or “good.” But the truth is simple and liberating: there was never anything wrong with you. You don’t need fixing—you need remembering.
The Art of Self-Approval is Elaine’s invitation to reclaim the parts of yourself you’ve hidden, quieted, or abandoned. Through honest storytelling, grounded reflection, and practical tools, she shows you how to:
Break free from people-pleasing and self-abandonment
Rewrite your stories with compassion
Stop negotiating your worth
Trust your inner voice and choose yourself
Part memoir and part spiritual companion, this book is a gentle rebellion against a culture built on women’s self-doubt. Elaine’s midlife reinvention—marked by truth-telling, boundary-setting, and sourdough baking—reveals what becomes possible when you nourish what matters.
If you’re in the messy middle of midlife, craving change, or simply done asking for permission to be yourself, this is your guide home.
You are not here to improve. You are here to remember you are already whole.
Find it where you browse for books.
Collaborations!
Join us on Friday, November 7, 2025 from 9am-11am.
Join us THIS Friday, December 5th, 2025 from 9am-11am.
Join Shannon and me at the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce for an inspiring session with Andy Hoffer, a former rocket scientist turned mindset mentor.
Andy helps professionals and entrepreneurs identify and overcome the mindset blocks, self-limiting beliefs, and money stories that hold them back from success.
Discover how shifting your perspective can open the door to greater confidence, clarity, and abundance—in business and in life.
This event is free; REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED
In other news…
Feeling #FOMO about Curated Conversations? Join us!
