🧠 Weekly MindSweep No. 219 | What’s On My Mind | Resistance
March 2026
Week 216: Curated Conversation: Resistance
Week 217: Mind Your Business: Resistance
Week 218: Manage Your Mind: Resistance
Week 219: What’s On My Mind: Resistance
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In the MindSweep this week:
Weekly MindSweep: Past issues live here.
Jamie’s Second Brain Corner: Links to references & MindSweep Mapping
What’s Inspiring Me - Fawning by Ingrid Clayton
Collaboration: with Shannon Giordano and the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce (First Friday of every month)
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When Everything Changes: A Real-Time Look at Resistance
Because we don’t live in a vacuum, this past week I’ve experienced nothing but resistance.
For weeks, we’ve discussed the concept of resistance as something we can observe from a comfortable distance. However, this week brought a different perspective: the kind of resistance that arrives unannounced and very much uninvited.
Even while I was in the middle of it, feeling unsettled, I could still see value and gifts in the experience.
Wednesday night, I was sitting in the rhythm of my regular life. A simple, quiet evening with my husband and Walter. It’s the kind of night that doesn’t stand out because it doesn’t need to. It’s built on familiarity, predictability, and safety. We had a plan, even if it was simple. We’d watch the next episode of Minx, I’d move into my bedtime routine, pick up my brand-new book, and fall asleep in my own bed with the quiet confidence that I knew what the next day would bring.
I had a big day ahead: the annual spring breakfast for Leadership MetroWest, where I’d be hosting more than 100 leaders at Framingham State University. I’d prepared a speech for potential academy members, and people were counting on me to show up.
And then the phone rang.
And everything changed.
The call wasn’t what I expected, and my plans for the evening and the next day disappeared in minutes. Instead of relaxing, I had to jump into action, booking flights, finding hotels, and sorting out logistics. I had to make quick decisions without the usual comfort of routine.
And that’s when the resistance began.
The flight I usually take wasn’t available. The place I usually stay was fully booked. The rental company I rely on had no cars. Somewhere in the middle of trying to piece this together, I realized something almost laughable in hindsight. I had no idea it was spring break week in Florida. Sitting in the comfort of my home, inside my routine, my brain had no reason to account for what 8.3 million other people were doing. It doesn’t track that level of complexity. It can’t.
And yet in the blink of an eye, I was inside it.
I was trying to navigate a situation that no longer fit my expectations.
My brain did what it’s meant to do: it pushed back.
This isn’t how this is supposed to be.
This isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing.
This isn’t how this is supposed to go.
There’s something fascinating about that moment. The gap between expectation and reality.
Nothing I was doing was wrong or unsafe. But because it didn’t match the plan my brain had made, that was enough to cause discomfort.
That’s where resistance lives.
So I did what I had to do: found a flight, a car, and a place to stay. None of them were my first choice, and all were outside my usual routine. From the moment I left home until I landed, and even after, resistance stayed with me.
Sometimes resistance was loud and obvious. Other times, it was quiet or simple.
No matter how strong it felt, one thing stayed the same: resistance was always there.
The Moment Awareness Slips In
We spent this entire month talking about resistance. Naming it. Understanding it. Looking at it through the lens of business, neuroscience, and lived experience.
This week, I saw what happens when all those ideas become real life.
Even in the middle of the chaos, I could feel things start to shift.
“Oh… hi, resistance. I see you.”
I realized that what was happening wasn’t failure or something wrong. It was just my brain trying to make sense of things that didn't match its predictions. My mind, built to keep me safe and efficient, was suddenly dealing with new and unfamiliar information.
What Your Brain Is Actually Doing
I could see clearly that my brain works like a prediction machine. It uses past experiences to build models and move through life efficiently. But when something doesn’t fit those models, it sends up a warning.
I quickly went from feeling uncertain to noticing the mismatch and treating it as a possible risk.
That’s when we start to feel discomfort, frustration, and resistance.
It’s not that anything is actually wrong; it’s just our brains doing what they’re supposed to do.
When It All Starts to Stack
What I also didn’t expect was how quickly it would compound.
One disruption turned into another, and then another, and then another. And somewhere in the middle of that accumulation, I could feel something shift in me.
I was more tired than usual, more easily overwhelmed, and less flexible in moments where I normally would have had more range, empathy, and compassion. It felt like my capacity meter hit zero.
My brain was working overtime. Constantly updating, recalculating, reorienting.
That takes a lot of energy.
A lot more than I realized.
Looking Back on What We’ve Learned
Looking back over the month, I can see how every conversation brought me to this exact moment.
In Week 216, we discussed resistance as something far more subtle than procrastination—a quiet, nervous-system-level hesitation that shows up even when you’re clear on what to do. Resistance not a personal flaw, but a collective response to building and creating in an uncertain, dysregulated world. That continuing to create, show up, and share your work becomes its own form of resistance. We learned that for ADHD creative entrepreneurs, it often disguises itself as productivity, responsibility, or “waiting for the right time.”
Resistance isn’t something to get rid of. It’s something to notice, understand, and create alongside with.
In Week 217, we explored how resistance shows up in business not as avoidance, but as productivity—full days, completed tasks, and constant motion that quietly keep you from being seen. We discussed the critical gap between knowing what to do and actually taking action, where resistance often lives. For many creative entrepreneurs, especially in uncertain conditions, visibility feels risky, and the brain defaults to safer, familiar work.
The real change comes when you see that resistance isn’t stopping you from working, it’s just keeping you from moving forward in the ways that matter most.
In Week 218, we looked at the neuroscience of resistance and saw it as a protective response, not self-sabotage. The brain is always weighing safety, clarity, and reward. For ADHD creative entrepreneurs, resistance can look like 'procrasti-working' or telling yourself stories about not following through. We talked about practical ways to work with resistance, like making it easier to start, getting quicker feedback, and changing how you talk to yourself.
Resistance isn’t something to fight. It’s something to understand, support, and gently retrain.
This week brought all of that together, and for me, it wasn’t just in theory, but as something I had to practice in real life
What’s On My Mind
So, what’s on my mind this week?
Resistance isn’t the problem—it’s a signal.
It happens when reality doesn’t match the plan your brain made for safety and efficiency. When that mismatch keeps happening, your system reacts.
Of course it does. There’s nothing wrong with you in those moments. There’s nothing to fix. It’s important to remember you’re not failing, not behind, and not whatever story you might be telling yourself.
You’re adapting.
Where This Leaves Me
There’s something about resistance that came up that I don’t think I fully understood until this week.
I’m learning to shift my focus from trying to get rid of resistance to recognizing and getting curious about it. It’s not about pushing through, but about understanding what it’s asking of me.
When you can see resistance for what it is, even briefly, something inside you changes.
You start to have new experiences, and those become your new sense of safety. Your brain begins to rewire itself as you learn you’re safe in new situations.
You create space. And inside that space, you get to choose. Intentionally.
Sometimes, that’s all you need to keep moving and take the next step, even if it’s not what you expected.
This week didn’t go the way I expected, and that’s exactly why it mattered.
The real work is understanding resistance when things change and making a conscious choice about how to respond.
This week, I felt resistance as I tried to make space to write the Weekly MindSweep while dealing with everything happening around me. I also felt resistance to sharing such a personal experience from the past five days.
But I chose to create anyway.
My questions for you this week:
This week, how might things change if you approached resistance with curiosity rather than trying to fix it?
When you think back on a time you felt resistance, what do you think your nervous system was trying to protect you from?
Reply and share with me!
✨ You Belong Here. I can help.
If you’ve been noticing resistance as something subtle or loud and obvious that keeps you circling instead of moving, you don’t have to untangle it alone.
This is the work I do.
As a brain-based business strategist, I help creative, ADHD-wired entrepreneurs understand what’s actually happening underneath the hesitation, the overthinking, the full days that don’t move the work forward. Not by pushing harder, but by building clarity, structure, and strategy that work with your creative, multi-passionate brain.
If you’re clear on what you want but not moving the way you’d like to, let’s look at that together.
Let’s start with a conversation. A safe space to think clearly about what’s next.
👉 Book a free consultation and learn more about working together at chickbookcreative.com
Curated Conversation
If this conversation resonated, you don’t have to navigate resistance alone. Curated Conversation is a weekly live space for heart-centered, ADHD-wired entrepreneurs to slow down, reflect together, and understand what resistance is actually protecting, rather than shaming themselves for feeling it.
We look at the subtle stalls. The overthinking. The “I’ll start tomorrow.” We untangle avoidance from nervous system overwhelm and create small, supported movement forward.
If you’ve never joined us, your first month is free. Come sit in the room. Listen if you want. Speak if you’re ready. Stay if it feels like home.
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Jamie’s Second Brain Corner:
Words in bold within the Weekly MindSweep are all topics we’ve covered in Curated Conversation. You can dig into them here by searching for the word.
What I’m reading
Fawning.
I’m inspired by the shift from performing for worth to living from inner alignment, where success, visibility, and money feel safe because they’re rooted in self-worth, agency, and self-compassion.
Business Community & Collaboration
Be sure to join us in before our final gathering, June 2026!
Friday, April 3, 2025 Join Shannon and me at the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce for this special session. Different Thinkers. Stronger Teams. Autistic and AuDHD professionals offer valuable strengths like focus, creativity, integrity, and systems thinking. However, many workplaces are not set up to support the way they work best.
In this session, Melissa K. Berger from thriving with autism will talk about the hidden challenges that can slow teams down. She will share simple, practical changes that help neurodivergent team members do their best work, leading to better collaboration, productivity, and innovation for all.
Free: Registration is required: https://bit.ly/MWCOC_April2026
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