🧠 Weekly MindSweep No. 247 | What's On My Mind | Masking
October 2026
Week 242 | Curated Conversation | Masking
Week 243 | Mind Your Business | Masking
Week 244 | Curated Conversation II | Masking
Week 245 | Mind Your Business II | Masking
Week 246 | Manage Your Mind | Masking
*Week 247 | What’s On My Mind | Masking
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🧠 Weekly MindSweep No. 247 | What’s On My Mind | Masking
From the Art of Hiding to the Practice of Being Seen
What Masking taught us, and why it’s time for Self-Expression
On the last day of August, I watched a room full of brilliant people get really uncomfortable.
We were barely ten minutes into our first Monday morning conversation about Masking. I had just finished telling the story in Week 242 of the email I drafted six times to move a meeting by thirty minutes, and I felt the energy in the room shift.
Cameras got fidgety. Hands that usually take notes went looking for something else to hold. Pens clicked. Papers got shuffled. Somebody's craft project quietly appeared in their lap.
It took me a minute to understand what I was watching.
We were talking about masking, and the masks were reacting.
That's what a nervous system does when someone names the thing it has worked so hard to keep hidden. It gets busy, and it reaches for something comfortable to hold onto.
And underneath the fidgeting was a sense of grief. The slow realization, for more than a few of us, that masking had shaped not only how we run our businesses, but our whole lives.
By the end of that hour, the question hanging in the air wasn't about pricing or marketing. It was, "If this has all been a mask, who the heck is underneath it?"
Nobody had an answer that morning, and I'm not sure we were supposed to yet.
Now fast forward to our fifth Monday together on Masking. Same room, same coffee cup, same faces on the screen. But the energy was completely different.
Nobody was bracing anymore. They were reporting back. Prices that finally went up, and clients who said yes anyway. Offerings that got let go, and the surprising lightness that followed making that decision. A ‘no’ that turned out to be survivable. One by one, people shared small acts of courage that would have felt impossible in August.
Our room felt braver. You could hear it, and you could feel it.
And, as has become our tradition whenever a reframe lands a little too accurately, a few people lovingly told me exactly where I could go. I think we need stickers of our beloved saying! 😆
Five Mondays. From wondering who's underneath the mask to daring to let it show.
Nobody in that room took off every mask. What changed is something smaller and much more powerful for creative entrepreneurs.
We started to see them. And once you can see a mask, you get to choose it.
What we found when we started looking
When I opened this topic back in August, I thought masking was one thing: the performance we put on so other people will accept us.
By October, our community had shown me it's at least four.
The fit-in mask. Hiding the stim, the tangent, the pace, the parts of how our brains actually work, so we don't stand out. The chameleon skill so many of us perfected early. Reading the room, adjusting in real time, becoming whatever fits. It's an impressive skill. It's also exhausting, and I heard some version of that word more than any other this fall.
The performance mask. Composed, rehearsed, effortlessly on top of it. The one that got some of us promoted, and the one that followed us into entrepreneurship wearing a founder's hoodie in our brand colors.
The survival mask. The one that slams up on its own when we're dysregulated, in a new room, a new country, or a hard season. There is no audience required. I found mine standing in a pub on the other side of the world, feeling nothing.
The comfort masks. The quietest of all, because they don't hurt. The pricing that's "always worked." The process we could do in our sleep. And the one that took over our whole conversation: the work we give away for free, because free buys the warm yes and spares us the scary no.
Four masks. And underneath each one, the same loyal nervous system asks the same survival-grade question: Am I safe, and do I still belong?
That was the turning point for a lot of us. These weren't four character flaws to fix. We found one very old protective system, working overtime, in rooms where the danger it's bracing for may not even be there anymore.
Naming it tames it
If I had to pick the single biggest shift I watched happen over these five Mondays, it was this one.
Week after week, people kept coming back, and simply understanding what was happening in their brains made everything easier to face.
There's a phrase I love for exactly this: name it to tame it.
In a UCLA brain-imaging research study, putting a feeling into words was linked to reduced activity in the amygdala, the brain's threat-detection center.¹ Naming the feeling turned the alarm down.
Which explains what I watched happen, Monday after Monday. The masks didn't loosen because anyone tried harder to be authentic. They loosened because we named them. Out loud. In a room that did not flinch.
Oh, I see you “fit-in” mask. Oh hey “comfort” mask. Oh, I see, that's me planning for the no.
Every time we named one, the alarm got a little quieter. And in that quieter space, something new became possible.
What choosing differently actually looks like
There is something I need you to take from this whole Masking series. Awareness is not the finish line. Awareness is what makes choice possible.
And our community didn't just talk about choosing. Over these five Mondays, I watched people start doing it. Here's what that looked like, in real life and in real business.
Choosing to price the value, not the comfort. Rates went up. Consults that had quietly become unsustainable started carrying a price. And the people who were only ever there for the free version fell away, which turned out to be a relief, not a loss.
Choosing which work stays. The moment a price got attached to an offering, people suddenly saw it clearly. Some realized the work lit them up. Others realized they'd been carrying it out of obligation for years and never loved it at all. The price didn't just measure the value. It revealed the truth.
Choosing your hard. A saying kept coming up in our conversation: choose your hard. Asking is hard. Never asking is hard too. What I heard underneath so much of our undercharging was the fear of doing all the work and then hearing no. So we brace. We plan for the no before anyone has said it. Choosing your hard means deciding which discomfort is worth it: the short sting of a no, or the long ache of never asking.
Choosing your rooms. I kept bringing this back to the table. Some of the masks we wear most aren't about us at all. They're about the rooms we keep choosing to stand in, spinning our wheels with people who were never going to see our value. Sometimes the most powerful unmasking move is simply walking into a different room.
Choosing your nervous system over the hustle. So many of us were raised on hustle. Push through, override the signal, prove you can handle it. This fall, I watched people start letting their own regulation set the pace instead. That isn't giving up. For some of us, it's the first time we've ever listened.
Choosing where the mask comes off. Not everywhere. Not all at once. We said it from the first week: we can't be unmasked all the time, and we don't have to be. The goal was never zero masks. It's knowing when you're wearing one, and deciding on purpose where it's safe to set it down. With a person you trust. In a journal. In your art. In a room like ours.
And for me? I chose too. I broke a six-year newsletter template in front of all of you. I extended a topic past its month because we weren't done. I said a big, scary idea out loud. None of that would have happened if I hadn't been in a room where I could see my own masks reflected back at me.
You’ll notice that's the thread I keep pulling here.
You can't see your own mask from the inside. Every breakthrough in this series happened because someone said the true thing out loud and someone else heard it.
The thread we're carrying forward
In our final masking conversation, the room got quiet in a different way than it had in August.
Not the uneasy quiet of that first week, when the fidgets came out. A settled quiet. People talked about their worth not as something they had to earn, prove, or audition for, but as something they already had. No more song and dance. No more begging for crumbs. Just a growing sense of I know who I am, and I have what I need.
We spent five Mondays learning to see the masks. But every mask was protecting the same tender thing underneath: our sense of whether we're enough as we are. Whether our work is worth paying for. Whether we belong in the room without the audition.
So the question rising to the top of my mind now isn't "How do I stop masking?"
It's: Now that I can see what I've been hiding, what do I actually want to build with it?
That's why November's topic is Self-Expression.
If masking was the art of hiding, self-expression is the practice of letting ourselves be seen. Not the polished, rehearsed version. The creative, curious, brilliant human underneath the performance.
And it's going to take courage. Not the loud, fearless, jump-in-the-deep-end-of-the-pool kind. The quieter kind that shows up while the fear is still sitting right there with us. The kind I watched grow, Monday after Monday, in our room this fall.
And I think this matters for creative, multi-passionate, neurospicy humans right now more than ever.
We're living in a moment when more and more of what we read, see, and scroll past is generated, smoothed, and averaged out. It’s AI garbage in, garbage out. Content that sounds like everyone, because it's built from everyone.
What can't be generated is you. Your weird, wonderful way of seeing. Your lived experiences. Your tangents when something rubs against your values. The connections only your creative, brilliant, beautiful neurodivergent, entrepreneurial brain would make.
As we head towards 2027, sharing all of you is no longer a liability. It's the whole point of this human experience.
So in November, we're setting down the performance and practicing the thing our creative brains were built for: expressing what's actually inside.
It's our time to shine. Out loud, and as ourselves.
Thank you for being a room where it's safe enough to look, and safe enough to be truly seen.
My questions for you this week:
Which mask surprised you most to discover you’d been wearing?
What’s one part of you that you’ve kept hidden in your business that might actually be your greatest gift?
Reply and share with me! I read and reply to every one!
✨ You Belong Here. And You Don’t Have to Do This Alone.
You can’t see your own mask from the inside. That’s been true all fall, and it’s exactly why this work goes deeper with a second set of eyes.
In a MindSweep Mapping Session, we look together at where the performance is still running in your business, in your pricing, your offers, your rooms, and the way you talk about your work. Then we start building a business with room for the creative, curious, brilliant human underneath. Not the polished version. The real one.
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You Read It. Now Come Sit In It.
You Spent Two Months Learning to See the Masks. Now Come Practice Being Seen.
Every Monday in November, we’re turning toward Self-Expression: what it looks like to set down the performance and let the creative, curious, brilliant human underneath show up in our lives and our businesses. We’ll talk about the courage it takes, the quieter kind that shows up while the fear is still sitting right there, and why, in a world full of generated sameness, the parts of you that can’t be copied are exactly what matters right now.
Curated Conversation Evolution is a room full of creative entrepreneurial brains that get it. Bring the version of you that’s been waiting to be seen. We talk about what’s actually true, and then take a few minutes to ground together before we begin a new week of opportunity.
Listen if you want. Speak if you’re ready. Stay if it feels like home.
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Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). "Putting Feelings Into Words: Affect Labeling Disrupts Amygdala Activity in Response to Affective Stimuli." Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17576282/
What I’m reading
My Friends: A Novel
by Fredrik Backman
The mask doesn't check who's in the room. Once you learn your natural way of being is a problem, you hide it from everyone. The critics. The clients. The friends cheering the loudest.
Entrepreneurs do this with our work.
What's Inspiring Me: Who already sees the thing you're still hiding? What would you make if you let them push you?
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