What do you do when the people you most need to work with are the ones you most fundamentally disagree with?

In this episode of The Discomfort Practice, Betsy sits down with renowned facilitator and systems thinker Adam Kahane, whose work has brought together politicians, activists, CEOs, guerrilla fighters and community leaders in some of the most polarized environments in the world.

From South Africa's transition out of apartheid to complex global conflicts today, Adam has spent decades working in the uncomfortable middle: helping people collaborate across profound differences without pretending those differences don't exist.

This conversation explores what it actually takes to move forward together when trust is low, stakes are high, and nobody is getting exactly what they want.

In this episode, Betsy and Adam explore:

• Why collaboration doesn't require agreement

• The difference between controlling systems and participating in them

• How conflict can become a generative force instead of a dead end

• What it means to act when outcomes are uncertain

• Why real change often emerges from experimentation rather than certainty

This is not a conversation about neat solutions. It's about learning how to work inside the mess, with curiosity, humility, and courage.

About Adam Kahane

Adam Kahane is a director of Reos Partners and a leading facilitator of complex change processes around the world. He has worked with leaders from business, government, and civil society to address some of the toughest systemic challenges - from democratic transitions to climate change and economic inequality.

He is the author of several influential books including Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems: The Catalytic Power of Radical Engagement and Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don't Agree with or Like or Trust).

Learn more about Adam's work:

• https://www.reospartners.com

• https://www.adamkahane.com

If this episode landed for you:

• Follow and message Betsy on Instagram @thebetsyreed

• Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a five-star review (it truly helps)

• Join her on Substack at The Betsy Reed for (Voice) Notes from the Edge — some public, some subscriber-only:
  https://substack.com/thebetsyreed

• Work with Betsy: coaching, consulting, speaking, embodied leadership sessions, upcoming community circles, and People Like Us dinners across Europe:
  https://www.betsy-reed.com

"The world doesn't need us to be perfect; it just needs us to be present."

Betsy has been a meditation teacher for 10 years, and in that time, her own practice has changed. Before leading a 'Senses Meditation,' she swears a bit, she quotes singer Billy Bragg and invites you to meditate.

The answer to 'crunchy times' is not to escape them, to seek to 'ascend' and get away from the very real discomfort happening to you. The answer is sometimes to just be human in the midst of it, to realise that a regulated nervous system doesn't necessarily mean you're calm.

So step into your body, set aside 10 minutes or so to do this meditation - whether walking, driving, in the gym or sitting in your bed - and enjoy being with yourself. Whatever that feels like right now.

If you'd like more:

• Betsy records bespoke meditations, so if you'd like to commission some to accompany you through life right now, get in touch.

• Follow and message Betsy on Instagram @thebetsyreed

• Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a five-star review (it truly helps)

• Join her on Substack at The Betsy Reed for (Voice) Notes from the Edge - some public, some subscriber-only: substack.com/thebetsyreed

What happens when you revisit something you once said with conviction… and realise you'd express it differently today?

In this solo episode of The Discomfort Practice, Betsy reflects on the strange experience of discovering that one of her older episodes, The World Is Evolving. Are You?, has quietly become the most downloaded episode in the 5 years this podcast has been produced.

So she went back and listened. And cringed.

This episode is about the discomfort of encountering your past thinking in public, and the quiet, ongoing work of evolving how we speak about the world and our place in it.

In this episode, Betsy explores:

• Revisiting past ideas and noticing what has changed
• The gap between what we believe and how we express it
• How privilege can show up subtly in tone and framing
• The tension between personal agency narratives and structural realities
• What it means to evolve in public rather than in private
• This is an episode for anyone who has ever revisited their own work and realised they might say things differently today.

If this landed for you:

• Follow and message Betsy on Instagram @thebetsyreed
• Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a five-star review (it truly helps)
• Join her on Substack at The Betsy Reed for (Voice) Notes from the Edge — some public, some subscriber-only: substack.com/thebetsyreed
• Work with Betsy: coaching, consulting, speaking, embodied leadership sessions, upcoming community circles, and People Like Us dinners across Europe: www.betsy-reed.com

What if indifference isn't always apathy, but is sometimes rooted in discernment?

In this solo episode of The Discomfort Practice, Betsy explores intentional indifference as a mature, regulated response to a world that constantly pulls for reaction, access, and emotional labour. Not the numb, checked-out kind, but the kind that comes from knowing where your energy actually belongs.

This episode is about withdrawing attention without withdrawing integrity. About choosing not to engage - not because you can't, but because you won't.

• The difference between avoidance and intentional indifference

• Why over-responsiveness is often mistaken for care (and leadership)

• How indifference can be an act of self-respect, not dismissal

• What it means to stop being "available for extraction"

• Indifference as a nervous-system skill - not a mindset trick

• How leaders, creatives, and sensitives burn out by caring too broadly

This is an episode for anyone who has been told they're "too much," "too intense," or "too available" and is ready to practice cleaner, quieter power.

If this episode landed for you:

• Follow and message Betsy on Instagram @thebetsyreed

• Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a five-star review (it truly helps)

• Join her on Substack at The Betsy Reed for (Voice) Notes from the Edge - some public, some subscriber-only: substack.com/thebetsyreed

• Work with Betsy: coaching, consulting, speaking, embodied leadership sessions, upcoming community circles, and People Like Us dinners across Europe: www.betsy-reed.com

In this solo episode of The Discomfort Practice, Betsy speaks directly into the current moment: politically, socially and somatically.

Recorded in February 2026, amid rising authoritarianism, surveillance and collective nervous system overload, this episode is a grounded, unsmoothed reflection on what it means to stay human, regulated and ethically awake when the world feels volatile.

Anchored by a teaching from Thích Nhất Hạnh, Betsy explores the idea of war loops: the internal patterns of fear, urgency, compliance, reactivity and self-betrayal that quietly rehearse the very dynamics we say we want to resist.

This is not a political analysis or a call to action.

It's a nervous-system-level inquiry into freedom, leadership and choice, especially for those embedded in corporate or institutional systems who find themselves asking, "But what can I actually do?"

In this episode, Betsy explores:

• What Thích Nhất Hạnh meant by "uprooting war from ourselves"

• How authoritarian dynamics are rehearsed internally through unregulated nervous systems

• The difference between response and reaction in moments of pressure

• Why smoothing, complying or "keeping things nice" is not neutrality

• How self-regulation becomes a form of ethical and political agency

• What it means to tolerate discomfort without outsourcing your values

• How leadership begins with interrupting internal war loops

Mid-episode nervous system practice:
A short, grounding regulation exercise designed to interrupt fear-based loops and restore choice before analysis or decision-making.

Closing inquiry + practice:
Betsy guides listeners through a reflective somatic inquiry:
Where is the war within me?
Exploring how internalised pressure, urgency, contempt or shutdown show up — and how to contain them without judgment.

This episode is for listeners who are paying attention, feeling the cost of that attention in their bodies, and wanting to stay clear, calm and human without turning away.

A gentle invitation after you listen:
No fixing. No forcing. Just noticing:

• Where you feel pressure to comply

• Where you override your own signals

• Where you rehearse domination, contempt or self-erasure

• Where choice becomes possible again through regulation

If this episode landed for you:

• Follow and message Betsy on Instagram @thebetsyreed

• Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a five-star review (it truly helps)

• Join her on Substack at The Betsy Reed for Voice Notes from the Edge - some public, some subscriber-only: substack.com/thebetsyreed

• Work with Betsy: coaching, consulting, speaking, embodied leadership sessions, upcoming community circles, and People Like Us dinners across Europe: www.betsy-reed.com

In this expansive and clear-eyed conversation, host Betsy Reed is joined by journalist and leading sustainability commentator James Murray, founding Editor-in-Chief of BusinessGreen. Together, they explore what it means to stay awake, human and oriented in the face of accelerating climate risk, AI and systemic uncertainty.

Recorded at a moment when climate tipping points are no longer abstract projections but lived realities, their dialogue flows between science, politics, technology and psychology. Betsy and James examine how climate change has become a kind of "theory of everything", shaping economics, geopolitics, migration and everyday life, and what it takes to remain informed without tipping into paralysis, denial or performative optimism.

With honesty and nuance, they discuss the real risks in the future, the breakthroughs already underway, and the inner work required to hold the tension of either a potentially catastrophic or a potentially bright future. Because, right now, we don't know which we are heading for.

This is a conversation about choosing informed optimism as a practice not a posture, and about learning how to stay in relationship with complexity rather than turning away from it.

• What climate tipping points really are and why they matter now

• Why climate change has become a "theory of everything" for modern life

• The emotional and psychological impact of watching seasons, systems and certainties shift within a single lifetime

• Where real hope lives: clean tech, adoption curves and the pace of innovation

• Carbon removal, regenerative approaches and what comes next

• The tension between democratic processes and the urgency of climate action

• Navigating the information Wild West without losing discernment

• What it means to practise informed optimism in dark and uncertain times
  
  

James Murray is the founding editor-in-chief of BusinessGreen, the UK's leading publication covering the green economy, net-zero transition and sustainable business. He launched BusinessGreen in 2007 and has spent nearly two decades reporting on, analysing and challenging the evolution of climate policy, clean technology and corporate responsibility. In 2020, he was named Digital Editor of the Year at the AOP Awards. His work is widely read by policymakers, business leaders and sustainability practitioners navigating the transition to a low-carbon economy.

• Read James' piece The Climate Theory of Everything

• Check out the Business Green website
  
  

Connect with Betsy

• Instagram: @thebetsyreed

• Like, subscribe and leave a 5-star review wherever you listen to podcasts to help more people discover The Discomfort Practice

• Check out Betsy's new, more personal Substack, (Voice) Notes From the Edge, to get her 'hot takes,' deeper reflections and behind-the-scenes insights

In this intimate solo episode, Betsy records from the threshold: posting unscripted, later than planned and exactly when it needed to be shared.

Recorded in January 2026, after what she calls the personal "meat-grinder" year of 2025, this episode is a love letter to anyone doing something alone: building, healing, choosing integrity, setting boundaries or standing between versions of themselves in a quiet, liminal space.

This is not a pep talk. It's a nervous system-level offering for those moments when life goes quiet and the stories about aloneness get loud.

• Why aloneness is not a failure, but often the felt experience of integrity

• How liminal spaces show up when we stop abandoning ourselves

• The difference between being alone and being unsupported

• Why quiet seasons often arrive right before a new chapter

• How support doesn't always look like people (and what else counts as support)

• Letting go of the macro stories we attach to those moments when we feel alone

Betsy shares a gentle, grounding breath practice she calls "the you don't have to do anything breath", designed to bring you back from spirals of story into the present moment.

You'll be guided to:

• Breathe in for four

• Pause gently

• Breathe out for six

• Repeat 4–6 times

Along with a simple anchoring phrase: "You don't have to do anything right now. You are allowed to pause."

• Focusmate – quiet online coworking sessions with a stranger for gentle accountability and presence - https://app.focusmate.com/

• Audiobooks and podcasts as regulating companions, including books by Brené Brown

• Routine as support: food, movement, breath, tidying, eye contact with yourself

• Co-regulation with animals (especially dogs or cats)

Listeners are invited (no pressure) to notice what support already exists and what could support them:

• One place that calms you

• One voice that steadies you

• One practice that brings you back

• One person (or future version of you) who has survived this before

No forcing. No fixing. Just presence.

Betsy would love to hear what resonated, what didn't, and what you'd like more of.

You can:

• Follow and message her on Instagram @thebetsyreed

• Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a five-star review (it truly helps). Here's Apple and Spotify for easy access.

• Join her on Substack at The Betsy Reed, where she shares Voice Notes from the Edge - some public, some subscriber-only - for those who want a closer seat to her thinking, practices and lived evolution
  thebetsyreed.substack.com

• Work with Betsy
  For coaching, consulting, speaking, embodied leadership sessions, upcoming community circles, and the People Like Us dinners across Europe:
  www.betsy-reed.com

• Check out Embodied Leadership Lab for monthly leadership circles and quarterly planning sessions (starting ahead of Q2 2026):
  www.embodiedleadershiplab.com (it'll take you to Betsy's website)

In this powerful solo episode, Betsy explores what it means to live, lead, and stay human in what philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously called "the time of monsters" - the in-between space where the old world is dying and the new world is still struggling to be born.

Recorded at the close of 2025, this episode is an invitation for anyone standing at a threshold: the end of a year, a relationship, a job, an identity, or an old way of being. Betsy reframes overwhelm, grief, and exhaustion not as personal failure, but as signs of initiation - evidence that you are awake, feeling, and participating in the birth of something new.

This is a reflection, a transmission, and a practice for those navigating collapse with consciousness.

• What "the time of monsters" really means, beyond politics or villains

• Why exhaustion, grief, anger, and sensitivity are appropriate responses right now

• How collapse acts as an initiation into embodied sovereignty

• What embodied leadership actually looks like (and why charisma isn't the point)

• Why boundaries, nervous system regulation, and saying no are revolutionary acts

• How initiations happen in ordinary moments - emails, conversations, rest

• The difference between being "nice" and being kind (especially to yourself)

• Why monsters are often teachers and how they accelerate your path

• How to practice the new world instead of talking about it
  
  

Instead of measuring your life by achievement, try asking:

• Where did I meet monsters (and what did they teach me)?

• What parts of me am I letting die?

• What new world am I quietly embodying through my boundaries, voice, and presence?

• How am I practicing the future I want to live in?

Betsy introduces a version of the "Just Like Me," her favourite compassion practice, a simple but radical way to soften separation, regulate the nervous system and practice leadership through humanity.

Links & Resources

Subscribe to Voice Notes from the Edge on Substack
For deeper access, weekly voice notes, behind-the-scenes sovereignty reflections and a front-row seat to Betsy's inner world:
thebetsyreed.substack.com

Subscribe and follow The Discomfort Practice
Wherever you listen to podcasts. Here's Apple and Spotify for easy access.

Work with Betsy
For coaching, consulting, speaking, embodied leadership sessions, upcoming community circles, and the People Like Us dinners across Europe:
www.betsy-reed.com

Check out the brand spanking new Embodied Leadership Lab for monthly leadership circles and quarterly planning sessions (starting ahead of Q2 2026):
www.embodiedleadershiplab.com (it'll take you to Betsy's website)

• Subscribe, rate, and leave a written review: it genuinely helps

• Share it with someone navigating their own edge

• Join Betsy on Substack for deeper, more intimate exploration