🧠Weekly MindSweep No. 207 | Curator’s Perspective | 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
*Week 207: Curator’s Perspective: Belonging
New to the Weekly MindSweep? Past issues live here.
Let’s Sweep The Brain!
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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
Collaboration: with Shannon Giordano and the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce (First Friday of every month)
My face and a link to schedule your free consultation.
Belonging, Without Translation
This Is What Safe Feels Like
One of the most honest things anyone has ever said in Curated Conversation was:
“This is the first room where I don’t have to translate myself.”
No one laughed it off or rushed past it. Heads nodded. Shoulders dropped.
In that quiet pause, it felt like everyone in the room let out a breath and shared the same thought:
Oh. It’s safe to be me here.
For entrepreneurs and small-business owners, especially those with creative, ADHD, and neurodivergent brains, that experience is not the norm. It’s the exception.
Running a business is already mentally and emotionally demanding. In fact, 87% of entrepreneurs say they face at least one mental health challenge. [1]
Over 50% struggle with anxiety
Over 45% are managing high stress
Almost 40% have financial worries
Over 25% of entrepreneurs struggle with loneliness and isolation
When you add years or even decades of masking, rejection sensitivity, and too much / not enough feedback, building a business can start to feel less like freedom and more like you’ve been exiled.
Curated Conversation has become an antidote to that exile.
Not as a mastermind.
Not as a networking group.
Instead, it’s a weekly, coffee-fueled experiment in what happens when you build a business community around how people’s brains actually work, not how they’re expected to work.
In January, our community celebrates its fourth anniversary.
We’ve gathered for over 200 Mondays.
We’ve covered over 40 topics.
It has become a living brain-trust space for the neuroscience of belonging and for the slow, sustainable growth that becomes possible when people stop bracing for social pain.
Belonging and the Brain
Belonging is a hard-wired survival need.
Neuroscience shows that social rejection and exclusion trigger many of the same brain pathways as physical pain. The brain reacts to being ignored, left out, or dismissed much like it does to a twisted ankle or a migraine.
When people feel accepted, seen, and valued, different systems come online: reward, motivation, and learning. Social rewards, like being listened to, reflected back, and affirmed, will feed the brain in ways that lower stress and nudge the nervous system toward regulation rather than threat.
For entrepreneurs whose days are filled with uncertainty, delayed feedback, and risk, that kind of predictable, prosocial reward isn’t a nice-to-have.
It’s a stabilizing force.
Why Entrepreneurship Feels So Lonely
Entrepreneurship asks people to make decisions on their own.
Absorb risk alone.
Often fail in public.
Then process it in private.
Leaving a regular job often means losing daily social contact. Long hours and money worries make it harder to keep up with friends, hobbies, and healthy habits. Add working from home, and loneliness becomes part of the routine.
For ADHD and neurodivergent entrepreneurs, there’s another challenge: a mismatch between the person and their environment.
Our brains are wired for novelty, pattern-spotting, idea-generation, and risk-taking. These traits can be great strengths in entrepreneurship, but only if the environment supports them.
Many neurodivergent founders choose entrepreneurship because traditional systems didn’t work for them. But without the right community, it’s easy to end up with the same shame, pressure, and isolation in your own business.
A community built for these kinds of brains needs to do more than just offer networking.
It has to:
Normalize nonlinear paths, rest, and changing your mind
Offer structure without rigidity
Allow for both creative bursts and low-energy days, while making sure everyone still feels they belong
This is what Curated Conversation has been doing quietly, week after week.
How Curated Conversation Became a Safe Room
Curated Conversation began as Coffee Connection—a simple Monday Zoom for like-hearted humans who were tired of traditional square-hole networking and just wanted a place where we cheer when someone makes it to the call.
The intention was simple:
It’s a weekly touchpoint where creative small-business owners can show up as humans first, entrepreneurs second. When I asked members what this space means to them, they said: support, friendship, together, belonging, and community.
From there, the space grew into the Weekly MindSweep framework, where we explore a monthly theme through:
Curated Conversation
Mind Your Business
Manage Your Mind
What’s On My Mind
And from time to time, we get one of these: Curator’s Perspective—a reflective anchor to a month.
Themes like Community, Trust, Capacity, Neurodiversity, Permission, Compassion, Boundaries, Self-Worth, Shame, and Belonging weren’t random. They matched the emotional challenges creative entrepreneurs were already facing.
Each month offers:
A relatable entrepreneurial story that invites honesty instead of performance
Practical business tools that respect how ADHD and sensitive brains process information
Brain-based explanations for topics like freezing, masking, or self-sabotage, so these patterns make sense instead of feeling like 'proof that we’re broken.'
Over time, this created exactly what neuroscience predicts: A reliable, rewarding social ritual that quiets the brain’s threat response.
People show up on Mondays not just for the content, but because their nervous system have learned:
When I log in here, I won’t be shamed. I’ll be understood.
When entrepreneurs grow in a space where they feel they belong, their brains regain energy and focus.
Instead of burning energy on thoughts like 'Do they like me? Am I too much? Am I already behind?' the brain relaxes, making more room for planning, creativity, and getting things done.
Research shows that giving and receiving support activates the brain’s reward circuits, much like earning money does. Community gives the brain dopamine and oxytocin, not just stress hormones.
For ADHD and neurodivergent founders, this matters deeply because:
External support: Regular calls, shared language, and gentle accountability work like an extra prefrontal cortex, helping with prioritizing and follow-through when time blindness or rejection sensitivity show up.
Changing how we experience social pain: Every time someone shares a 'too much' story and is met with empathy instead of criticism, the brain learns that social risk isn’t always harmful. Over time, this makes it easier to be seen, change prices, collaborate, and lead.
Making sure people and their environment fit includes things like cameras-off days, quiet participation, and co-regulation. These are not just accommodations; they are choices that help people stay and grow.
This isn't a dopamine-chasing hustle. It’s about steady growth at a pace you can handle, with small changes that add up over time.
Neuroscience calls this repeated, low-threat learning: trying new things, feeling accepted, and slowly changing your expectations.
Belonging Is an Entrepreneurial Strategy
In a world where entrepreneurs face more mental health challenges than most, belonging isn’t just a nice idea—it’s a smart strategy.
Entrepreneurs who feel less isolated persist longer, recover faster, and make better decisions because they aren’t doing it alone.
For ADHD and neurodivergent entrepreneurs, spaces like Curated Conversation can be the difference between thinking, 'Maybe I’m not cut out for this,' and realizing, 'My brain works differently, and I can build around that.'
A truly safe business community is one where:
The room expects divergence, not performance
Psychological safety is held intentionally, not accidentally
Brain science and lived experience are honored side by side
You don’t earn belonging by being perfectly productive or by 'finishing the year strong.'
Belonging is something you practice every week, even when you’re tired, feeling shame, or life feels overwhelming.
Curated Conversation began with a handful of people and a simple invitation: Start with coffee. 8 a.m. Every Monday.
It has grown into a community where creative, ADHD, and neurodivergent entrepreneurs aren’t just running businesses—they’re building communities.
They’re rewiring their relationship to work.
To worth.
To one another.
That’s the quiet strength of belonging.
It changes what feels possible inside a person’s nervous system, and from there, inside a business, a community, and, little by little, a world that is safer for brains like ours.
We’re changing the world one Monday morning at a time because we value the 1% growth and rewiring we practice each week.
My questions for you this week:
What kind of community support helps you take risks you might avoid on your own?
How has community (or the lack of it) shaped the way you make decisions in your business?
Reply and share with me!
✨ Join us for Curated Conversation
If you’ve been looking for a business space where you can be yourself, Curated Conversation is here for you.
Curated Conversation is a weekly live gathering for creative, ADHD, and neurodivergent entrepreneurs who care about real connection and meaningful conversation. We meet every Monday morning to talk, share insights, and support each other in a safe and intentional space.
We’ve made this a membership community so we can protect it, keep it going, and care for everyone involved.
Your first month is free.
Come join us. You can listen quietly or share when you feel ready. Take your time and do what feels right for you.
If it feels like the right place for you, you’re welcome to stay as a member.
If not, you leave with clarity—and no pressure.
Start with coffee.
8 a.m. Mondays.
Belonging included.
✨ You Belong Here. I can help.
Your brain isn’t the problem — the expectations placed on it are.
I help ADHD and creatively wired entrepreneurs stop forcing themselves into strategies that don’t fit and start building momentum in ways that honor their nervous system, energy, and ideas.
Through MindSweep Mapping and small-group experiences, we slow things down, make sense of what your nervous system is signaling, and build a business that supports how you actually think and work.
If you’re curious, start with a conversation.
No fixing. No performing. Just clarity.
🧠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.
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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:
[1] founderreports+4​
NEW>> Now on Apple Podcasts!
MONDAY: 8 am - Curated Conversation - Zoom
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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 Friday, January 2nd, 2025 from 9am-11am.
Join Shannon and me at the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce
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 us 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: https://bit.ly/MWCoC_January2026
In other news…
Feeling #FOMO about Curated Conversations? Join us!
