🧠Weekly MindSweep No. 239 | Mind Your Business | Interdependence
August 2026
Week 238 | Curated Conversation | Interdependence
*Week 239 | Mind Your Business | Interdependence
Week 240 | Manage Your Mind | Interdependence
Week 241 | What’s On My Mind | Interdependence
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🧠Weekly MindSweep No. 239 | Mind Your Business | Interdependence
Interdependence: The Skill Independence Never Taught Me
The Exit Ramp
Entrepreneurship wasn’t just a career choice for me. It was an exit ramp.
Exit ramps take you off one road, but they don’t automatically point you in the right direction.
In 2020, while working for someone else, I found myself sitting at my desk late into the night, still logged in, still working, on a project that wasn’t even mine to save.
I could see the pitfall of this project coming for months. My brain can see the workflows that can run more efficiently, the bottleneck nobody else even seemed to notice, and the three extra steps that existed for no reason other than that “it had always been done that way.”
Inefficiency is frustrating for me.
I’d spoken up more than once. I’d consistently inserted myself into meetings that I was not invited to, rewritten processes nobody asked me to touch, stayed late fixing things that would’ve been someone else’s problem if I’d just let them be.
I gave everything to someone else’s passion and called it commitment. Ugh.
What I Thought I was Leaving Behind
But that night, something in me finally said enough. Why am I using up all my energy when we’re all just living on a big moving rock, and none of this really matters in the grand scheme of things?
I was burnt out, and a few months later, I left.
I told myself the same story many of us do when we leave a job to start our own business: I’m doing this for freedom, for flexibility, and for the chance to finally build something my way, on my terms, without anyone telling me I’m doing it wrong.
And for a while, it worked.
Starting my own business gave me something I didn’t realize I needed: control. I learned I needed the kind of control that helped me feel regulated. Six months into Chickbook Creative, I felt calmer than I had in years. I no longer had to manage someone else’s chaos or be surprised by their deadlines. For the first time in a long time, I was in charge of my own days.
What I didn’t realize was that the pattern I’d followed for years didn’t leave with my old job. It just took a new form.
Even working for myself, I kept jumping in to fix things no one asked me to fix. It was the same pattern, just in different settings. I gave my time, energy, and attention away, mostly for free, but now to community members, friends, and other entrepreneurs.
I told myself the story that it was generosity, just like I used to call those late nights at my old job commitment.
I had swapped one kind of overdoing for another, without knowing what I really needed. I didn’t even know about the idea of Interdependence until last month, when our community covered the topic of Tending.
A Room Full of Independent People
It turns out I wasn’t alone. When we discussed Interdependence in Curated Conversation last week, almost no one saw themselves as too dependent on others. Instead, Independence kept coming up, almost like a suit of armor.
People did everything themselves and found workarounds instead of asking for help. They would hire someone, but take the task back if it wasn’t done just right. Some even used the word control. Independence wasn’t an accident for anyone in that room. We built it on purpose, because at some point, it was the only thing that made us feel steady and safe.
We all came from different backgrounds and experiences, with our own successes and failures. Yet, here we are—each of us extremely independent and super uncomfortable with getting support from others.
The idea of Interdependence wasn’t even a word we knew, let alone a way of living.
The idea that support could flow both ways, that giving and receiving are equally valuable, and that no one’s worth depends on being needed or never needing anything? It sounds almost unbelievable. What is this wild idea?
Now you’re asking me to handle the discomfort of both relying on others and being relied on, without falling into being only dependent or independent?
Honestly, I’m not sure where to start. And, I’m excited to keep unpacking this — together.
This strong habit of needing to feel in control, which comes from a dysregulated nervous system, shows up in our businesses and keeps us stuck. Here are five ways I see this happening in entrepreneurship.
Five Ways Independence Shows up In Entrepreneurship
You become the bottleneck, even when you’re working alone. Every decision goes through you because that’s how it’s always been, so “just check with me first” becomes your default, even if there’s no one else. This habit doesn’t go away when you’re solo—it just gets quieter and harder to notice, since there’s no team to point it out.
You keep doing things your way because you haven’t found another way that you can trust. It’s not always about delegating; sometimes it’s about refusing a better strategy, tool, or structure because your way, even if tiring, feels familiar. Independence can mean controlling the work, but often it’s about controlling the decisions, which is harder to notice on your own. That’s why outside perspectives is a game changer for entrepreneurs—some business pitfalls are invisible to us because we’re too close to them.
You undercharge for your work or don’t set up your business to survive if you delegate. You never factor in your own burnout, your limits, or what happens when you’re too tired to do the things only you can do. If your pricing or systems never allow you to hand things off, independence stops being a choice and becomes the only option you’ve left yourself.
You confuse being needed with being valuable. Whether you have a team or not, your sense of worth can get tied to how much you do alone, instead of how well your business runs or if it could keep going for a week or three without you.
You stay small because growing would require trust you haven’t practiced. Growth means letting go of something—a task, a decision, or an old habit—you can’t fully control. If independence is your only comfort zone, growth feels risky instead of exciting, and “I’ll just keep doing it myself” becomes a limit instead of a strength.
I know, this realization is a lot to take in this week. It’s a lot for me too. As I write this, my brain is saying, “Jamie, this is so RUDE!” IYKYK.
This week, let’s find ways to turn our awareness into small, intentional actions. With this new awareness let’s start to rewire these deep-ingrained neural pathways and move toward Interdependence. These can be applied in life, and in your business.
Three Small Steps Toward Interdependence: The Practice, Not the Fix
Choose one task this week to hand off instead of doing it yourself, and let it be done differently than you would do it. It’s not wrong, it’s just different. Notice how you feel when you don’t step in to fix it.
Next time you say “I’ve got it,” ask yourself what you’re really protecting. Is it your time, the quality of the work, or the feeling of being needed? Just naming it honestly is the exercise. You don’t have to change anything yet.
Let someone help you with something small, and don’t rush to return the favor. Let the exchange stay uneven for a few days or longer if you can tolerate it. Notice what that discomfort tells you about what you think you’re allowed to receive.
Fifty Topics to Interdependence
I haven’t missed the fact that I didn’t reach this clarity by myself. And that’s really the point this month.
It took 50 topics of Curated Conversation. 238 Mondays of other creative, neurodivergent entrepreneurs saying the quiet part out loud, to see my own exit ramp clearly enough to name it.
That’s what this community has become for us. It’s not a place where I just teach what I know. It’s a place where I keep discovering things about myself because someone else shares, and I see myself in their story. We create a sense of belonging every time we do this together.
For ADHD and neurodivergent entrepreneurs especially, that mirroring is impactful. So much of what we carry gets misread as a character flaw when it’s actually a pattern, learned, wired, or even both, that we’ve never had reflected to us clearly until we’re in a room, real or virtual, with people who’ve lived it too.
Independence helped me build a lot of what I have. It got me this far. But it’s not the skill that takes us to the next stage.
That one, we are going to build together.
My questions for you this week:
When was the last time someone offered you support, feedback, or a different perspective on your business, and you found a reason to keep doing it your way? What do you think you were protecting?
If being needed stopped proving your worth tomorrow, what could you build your sense of value on instead?
Reply and share with me!
✨ You Belong Here. I can help.
Want Help Seeing What You Can't See From the Inside?
Some of the pitfalls in your own business are invisible to you specifically because you're the one standing inside them. That's not a failure of self-awareness. It's just how proximity works.
If your beginning to see the bottleneck you didn't realize you built, the "your way" that's actually just the familiar way, the sense that your business couldn't hold steady without you in it, you don't have to untangle that by yourself either. That would rather miss the point of this whole month! I can help.
A MindSweep Mapping Session is a space to bring the tangle of your business, your workload, and the patterns you're finally starting to notice, and leave with a clearer picture of what's actually yours to carry and what's not. chickbookcreative.com/mind-mapping
If you're not sure where to start, a free 30-minute consultation is the easiest first step!
Curated Conversation
This August marks our 50th Curated Conversation topic! 238 weeks of showing up in community, not alone. It felt right that Interdependence is the topic that gets to carry that milestone.
Every Monday at 8am EST, Curated Conversation Evolution is a room full of creative entrepreneurial brains that get it. Bring the thing you've been handling alone.
August is our month on Interdependence. Your first month is free. Come find out what it feels like to be in the room where it's safe to say the thing out loud.
Listen if you want. Speak if you're ready. Stay if it feels like home.
Mondays at 8 a.m. EST. Start with coffee. Belonging included. đź’ś
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What I’m reading
Strong Female Character
by Fern Brady
Performing “normal” and what it costs.
Thank you very much, Instagram algorithm, for bringing Fern Brady’s book into my awareness. Yes, I did go to the link in her bio and purchased her book through the Independent Book Store in Edinburgh, Scotland. And, yes, I also needed the tote bag from The Portobello Bookshop to carry my new book around Massachusetts. (I’m proud of myself for only ordering those two things!)
What's Inspiring Me: unmasking as a business strategy, not just a personal one.
In other news…
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