The Discomfort Practice with Betsy Reed

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.

In this episode, Betsy explores:

• 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

A reflection exercise to take with you:

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?

A gentle practice shared in the episode:

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)

If you enjoyed this episode

• 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

This is a good one from the archives - back in January 2023, when memories of the COVID-19 pandemic (and the trauma) was still fresh. Betsy interviewed Pilar Garrido, who was Minister for Economic Development in Costa Rica during the pandemic and went to work every day determined to 'lead from love.' This is posted toward the end of 2025, a year in which many of us have witnessed leadership and counter reactions that come from fear or ego, not love. It's a particularly poignant, beautiful episode to remind us that it IS possible to lead from love, and that each of us can choose to lead - whatever our sphere of influence - from love. -- A recap of the original episode: In this episode of the Discomfort Practice, Betsy talks with political scientist and economist Pilar Garrido. They chat about her experience leading a sustainable economic development policy in Costa Rica for a green and inclusive economy, as well as designing projects to create public benefit. Pilar has long been a key figure, using her previous role as a Government Minister to steer Costa Rica's ambition to be one of the five countries piloting the Sustainable Development Goals. SDG's were launched by the United Nations in 2015. Their aim is to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030, all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

So, buckle yourself in for this episode and be inspired by a politician who governs with both heart and strength. She has served as Chief of Staff, Deputy Minister, Minister of Planning and Policy, Technical Secretary of the Sustainable Development Goals in Costa Rica and as Costa Rica's co-ordinator of the Economic cabinet. Pilar has since moved on to become Director of Development Cooperation for the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), based in Paris; it's a role that allows her to bring her style of leadership-with-heart to her work on a global level.

Key Points Discussed:

• The discomfort Pilar experienced whilst becoming a politician and minister at a young age, especially during the Pandemic, as she describes as being like on the front line (5:20)
• Choosing to work from a place of love (08:20)
• Making difficult choices and creating policies to protect people during the Pandemic (12:20)
• Pilar's journey from political scientist to advisor to politician (14:50)
• Costa Rica's initiatives to put humanity and sustainability first, before economics (23:40)
• How to have a big impact in politics: where your job is not forever (27:00)
• Part of Pilar's legacy: diversifying an economy that has previously heavily relied just on tourism, so that it is healthy and robust (31:00)
• The IDG framework (that Costa Rica are one of the first countries to pilot), which aims towards eradicating hunger, poverty, sustainability and ensuring human rights. The IDG's (Inner Development Goals) consists of five dimensions: Being (relationship to self); Thinking (using your brain); Relating (and caring about others in the world); Collaborating (social skills and society) and Acting (driving change) (36:40)
• How everyone can do something small, that will collectively make a big impact (46:00)
• Pilar's optimism for the future (51:10)

  If you want to get a front-row seat to Betsy's innermost thoughts as she evolves into a more embodied, sovereign human - her messiness, her breakthroughs, and her real-time reflections - subscribe to her Substack, Voice Notes from the Edge.

  It's where she shares the unfiltered pieces of her journey she can't share anywhere else.

  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

  If you enjoyed this episode

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

  • Share it with someone navigating their own edge

  • Join Betsy inside Voice Notes from the Edge on Substack for deeper, more intimate exploration

In this very personal 20-minute solo, Betsy steps into the uncomfortable, liberating terrain of boundaries as a pleasure practice - a theme that emerged from her 2025 words of the year: alignment and precision. This episode is a transmission on sovereignty, somatic truth, and what it means to teach the choreography of your life through your energy, not your explanations.

She reflects on a year of deep pruning of relationships, dynamics, and energetic leaks, and how that pruning has become sensual, sovereign, and delicious. She shares what it has meant to listen to her body's YES and NO, to shed old versions of herself, and to step into a more coherent, embodied expression of leadership.

And, unexpectedly, she reveals how a Mastín-Labrador mix named Casper became her clearest mentor in embodied leadership, clean energetic signaling, and learning that access is a currency.

This episode is for anyone feeling the pull toward deeper clarity, deeper alignment, and deeper sovereignty in how they give (and withhold) access to their life.

In this episode, Betsy explores:

• Why "alignment" and "precision" became her seeds for 2025

• How somatic intelligence (and a feeling of full-body NO) has driven a year of pruning

• Why boundaries aren't protection, punishment, or games, but pleasure, rhythm and choreography

• What her dog Casper has taught her about leadership, energy, and clean signals

• Why access is a currency and why sovereign humans manage access, not people

• The archetypes she released this year, from spiritual narcissists to emotional toddlers

• The ancestral roots of fawning and the embodied roots of sovereignty

• How boundaries create intimacy, not distance

• An invitation to treat your next boundary as a pleasure practice

And this episode comes with an invitation: If you want to get a front-row seat to Betsy's innermost thoughts as she evolves into a more embodied, sovereign human - her messiness, her breakthroughs, and her real-time reflections - subscribe to her Substack, Voice Notes from the Edge.

It's where she shares the unfiltered pieces of her journey she can't share anywhere else.

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

If you enjoyed this episode

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

• Share it with someone navigating their own edge

• Join Betsy inside Voice Notes from the Edge for deeper, more intimate exploration

In this very personal 20-minute solo episode, Betsy steps into her own edge. She announces the launch of a new offering: Voice Notes from the Edge, her Substack home for the people who want deeper access to her world, her thoughts, her voice.

This episode is a transmission - an intimate reflection on sovereignty, devotion, and the kind of people who choose to walk with you not because they "follow" you, but because they recognise themselves in your voice and work.

She shares why she's creating a paid sanctuary, because she's ready to be witnessed more deeply in order to help others feel ready to be witnessed themselves, and what it means to build a community of companions. She invites you, if you feel the pull, to step inside and join her in her living room. In this episode, Betsy explores:

• Why she's launching Voice Notes from the Edge - and why now

• The real purpose of creating a paid sanctuary (and why it's not about money)

• How The Discomfort Practice has evolved into a more intimate ecosystem where she can share her inner world

• What it means to create a gang, a council, a gathering of people committed to their own sovereignty

• Her own edge in being more visible, more vulnerable, and more herself

• An invitation into her sanctuary, as equals choosing dept

Links & Resources:

Subscribe to Voice Notes from the Edge on Substack For bonus episodes of The Discomfort Practice + raw, behind-the-scenes sovereignty reflections thebetsyreed.substack.com

Subscribe and like The Discomfort Practice podcast home wherever you listen to podcasts - here's Apple and Spotify

Work with Betsy for coaching, consulting, speaking, upcoming community circles and People Like Us dinners in various European cities, check out her website www.betsy-reed.com

If you enjoyed this episode:

• Subscribe, rate, and leave a written review

• Share it with someone who is navigating their own edge

• Join Betsy inside Voice Notes from the Edge for deeper, more intimate explorations

In this deeply moving conversation, host Betsy Reed welcomes back longtime friend and activist Isa Noyola, Director of the Border Butterflies Project at the Transgender Law Center, to explore what it means to live, love, and lead on the frontlines of collective liberation. Recorded in October 2025, their conversation travels from shared memories of queer resistance and joy in the American South to the stark realities of immigrant detention and the rising tide of authoritarianism. Through it all, Isa reminds us that trans joy, softness, and connection are radical acts of resistance, and that redefining our relationship with "the monsters" is how we stay human.

Together, Betsy and Isa revisit the beginning of their friendship and activism, after meeting at a conservative Christian university, reflect on the resilience of marginalized communities, and discuss how to sustain hope and energy when the world feels overwhelming. It's a powerful, vulnerable, and timely dialogue about courage, community, and the necessity of beauty and joy in dark times.

In this episode:

• Queer resistance and trans liberation in a shifting political landscape

• The ongoing fight against ICE detention and criminalization of migrants

• How language, history, and cultural memory shape identity

• Pacing activism without martyrdom

• Trans joy and softness as political acts

• Redefining your relationship with "the monsters" — and finding freedom in that

About Isa Noyola Isa Noyola is a first-generation Mexican trans Latina, cultural strategist, and movement visionary focused on collective liberation. She serves as Director of the Border Butterflies Project at the Transgender Law Center, advocating for the release of trans women in ICE detention and the abolition of systems that dehumanize migrant communities. A pioneering activist and national leader in the LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights movements, Issa's work blends fierce care, strategic imagination, and deep compassion to push for systemic change and collective love.

Connect with Betsy

• Instagram: @thebetsyreed
• Subscribe and leave a review to help more people discover The Discomfort Practice
• Keep an eye out for Betsy's new Substack community to get her 'hot takes,' deeper reflections and behind-the-scenes insights (coming soon).

Please do subscribe, share, and leave a 5-star review if this conversation stretched your comfort zone...

In this solo episode of The Discomfort Practice, Betsy reflects on what it means to live and prosper beyond capitalism's conditioning. She's been recently moving through a deep personal detox and life transition and explores how WildFit, a nutritional and emotional reset, has become a catalyst for examining - well, everything. Her relationship with productivity, prosperity, and self-worth as well as with why and what she eats.

Betsy talks about how capitalist systems teach us to see ourselves and others as "human resources," valued only for what we produce, and how unlearning that story requires reclaiming rest, coherence, and trust. She shares how seasonal rhythms where she lives in southern Spain have guided her to align more closely with her own natural cycles rather than external expectations of constant output.

From re-writing internal scripts ("Time is cyclical and you are always in season") to stepping back from work that doesn't value her, Betsy invites listeners into a deeply human conversation about redefining abundance - not as accumulation or achievement, but as reciprocity, alignment, and integrity.

She speaks candidly about shame around financial safety, the myth of "adulthood = stability," and what it means to build true sovereignty as a single woman and creative professional. And she reminds us that the energy of abundance isn't about efforting or proving: it's about coherence, trust, and allowing life to hold you.

This is a raw, tender, and deeply reflective episode about creating post-capitalist abundance in practice: relational, regenerative, and grounded in self-trust. --

If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share it with others who might need a little inspiration! Help us spread the word by leaving a five-star and written review, and use #BeTheChange #TheDiscomfortPractice on social media to share your journey. Follow Betsy on Instagram @thebetsyreed

What does it mean to stay human in the age of AI? In this episode ,BetsyI welcomse back Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic - psychologist, author, and provocateur - to explore how technology is reshaping not just what we do, but who we are becoming as humans. From dating-app algorithms to digital narcissism, Tomas explains how AI mirrors our worst tendencies—bias, impatience, distraction—and why true curiosity always involves discomfort. Together they look at how efficiency can be inhumane, what "realistic optimism" about AI sounds like, and how we can reclaim what makes us unique: connection, creativity, and care. In this episode we explore

• AI as a mirror: Why our algorithms don't invent new flaws so much as magnify our existing ones — bias, impatience, distraction, and the cult of efficiency.

• The erosion of curiosity: How the "microwave for ideas" that is generative AI can dull our hunger for the unknown — and why true curiosity always involves discomfort.

• Efficiency vs empathy: Why speed and optimisation are, by definition, inhumane — and how slowing down may be the ultimate rebellion.

• A realistic optimism: The hopeful case for AI as a co-pilot that de-biases decisions, automates drudgery, and frees us to re-invest in what makes us uniquely human: connection, creativity, and care.

• Our responsibility: The uncomfortable truth that we're still driving the car. AI isn't ethical or unethical — we are. Learning to steer is the task of our time.

Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a Professor of Business Psychology at University College London and Visiting Professor at Columbia University. He's an international authority on psychological profiling and talent management, author of I, Human and Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders (and How to Fix It), and a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review. Connect Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic — tomaschamorro.com | @drtcp Betsy Reed — @thebetsyreed | thebetsyreed.com

Please subscribe, share, and leave a 5-star review if this conversation stretched your comfort zone...

In this episode, Betsy reflects on the question she's been pondering deeply: "The world is changing fast. Are you changing with it? Are you being the change you want to see in the world?"

She explores how we can shift from being stuck in the narratives of fear and decline to consciously creating our own story and living a life that reflects joy, love, and curiosity. Betsy shares her own experiences with metaphysical study and coaching, offering both inspiration and relief for anyone struggling with the idea of "purpose." Instead of worrying about finding your one purpose, she encourages you to follow curiosity and love as your guides to becoming the change.

This episode is an invitation to step back, reframe your perspective, and recognize the everyday power you hold to shape the world around you.

Key Moments:

[00:00:32] – Betsy introduces the guiding question: The world is changing fast — are you changing with it?

[00:02:15] – Exploring the trap of collective narratives about decline and how to step outside of them.

[00:04:40] – Betsy shares her journey with metaphysical study and working with coaches to consciously design a life she loves.

[00:08:12] – Reframing the stress around "finding your purpose" — why curiosity and love may be your truest compass.

[00:11:05] – Betsy reflects on her daily practice of choosing joy and love to shape the kind of world she wants to live in.

[00:13:48] – The closing reminder: your thoughts, feelings, and actions ripple outward — ask yourself, "Am I acting from love or from fear?"

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to The Discomfort Practice on your favorite podcast platform, and don't forget to leave a 5-star rating and a written review. Your support helps Betsy grow this community and reach more people who are ready to embrace the growth that discomfort can prompt. Follow her on Instagram @thebetsyreed. Let's get uncomfortable – together…

In this episode, Betsy dives deep into the transformative power of small, everyday actions. Drawing on personal experiences, she talks about how individual action can actually drive collective impact. What's your role in creating change? From environmental stewardship to social justice, the episode explores the interconnectedness of personal responsibility and bigger collective change. Betsy shares her own experience of leading change, on a personal and on a bigger level.

The episode concludes with a powerful call to action, encouraging you to take a step toward 'being the change you wish to see in the world.' Betsy shares actionable tips for incorporating positive habits into daily life - because consistency is truly key. We hope you're left inspired to take action to co-create a better future. It IS possible.

• [00:00] - Betsy introduces 'be the change' and talks about her own experience
• [03:45] - She explores what 'change' means in our quickly-changing world
• [06:30] - She touches on real-life examples of changemakers
• [09:15] - Betsy offers some practical advice for creating change personally
• [13:30] - Final thoughts and a call to action

If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share it with others who might need a little inspiration! Help us spread the word by leaving a review, and use #BeTheChange #TheDiscomfortPractice on social media to share your journey.

Welcome to Season 5 of The Discomfort Practice! In this first interview of the new season, Betsy Reed is joined by Thea May, a communication coach for 'Edgewalkers and soul-led leaders.' Together, they explore the theme of 'edginess' and dive deep into the discomfort of breaking away from outdated communication norms to create a world where we can all thrive. Thea shares her journey, the power of embodying discomfort, and how to 'scale ourselves to meet the messages that move through us.' This episode is packed with insights that will inspire you to embrace your own edges and communicate more authentically, but we're betting you'll feel like you were sitting at a kitchen table, just listening to friends.

Key Moments:

• [00:01:05] - Betsy reflects on over three years of podcasting and introduces the theme of Season 5: Edginess.

• [00:01:54] - Introduction to Thea May, her work as a communication coach, and her unique approach to soul-led leadership.

• [00:06:06] - Thea shares a pivotal uncomfortable moment that shaped her journey as an Edgewalker.

• [00:13:49] - Thea discusses her name change from Dolly to Thea, representing a significant shift in her identity and work.

• [00:21:04] - Diving into the edges of communication, poetry, and identity as core elements of Thea's life and work.

• [00:30:06] - Thea introduces her three-part communication process: Tuning in, Hooking in, and Opening out.

• [00:32:15] - The power of confident introverts and the shift from power-over to power-with communication.

• [00:45:34] - The importance of scaling yourself to meet the size of your message.

• [00:51:03] - Betsy shares a personal story about receiving (the other) Betsy Reed's hate mail and what it taught her about resilience.

• [00:52:07] - Thea emphasises the importance of building confidence through low-risk discomfort practices.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to The Discomfort Practice on your favorite podcast platform, and don't forget to leave a 5-star rating and a written review. Your support helps us grow our community and reach more people who are ready to embrace the discomfort of growth. Follow us on Instagram @thebetsyreed for more behind-the-scenes content and updates. Let's get uncomfortable together…