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You are a business owner who wants to prioritize people and planet over profits (without sacrificing success). That can feel lonely—but you are not alone! Join host Becky Mollenkamp for in-depth conversations with experts and other founders about how to build a more equitable world through entrepreneurship. It’s time to change the business landscape for good!
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (00:00)
Hello. How are you? Hi, we're talking discomfort again and conflict, discomfort and or conflict because I was going to kick us off. Just I had told you that I'm feeling a lot of discomfort lately because I'm having to talk a lot about myself and my creation, my book that's coming out. And I get really uncomfortable in my skin with that of feeling like.
Faith Clarke (00:01)
Hey, Becky.
Yeah.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (00:24)
It creates what I feel like is conflict, but I think it's all internal conflict. But in my mind, I think I create conflict that isn't there, meaning I feel like if I'm talking about this too much that other people are judging me or they are going to like, you know, unsubscribe or say no or all the things they think might happen, which feels like a conflict with this person that doesn't even know I'm having a conflict with them. my head, that's what it feels like, even though it's really just all discomfort.
And I just think it's sort of that, we talked some about it before, but I think especially maybe for people with more privilege who've had their needs tended to more, that like discomfort feels like conflict when it's actually not conflict at all.
Faith Clarke (01:06)
Yeah, I think there's there's a kind of tendency that we all have to try to get rid of the discomfort. You know, I remember even recently, a friend of mine, you know, sent me a text message. I felt some concern about her based on what was in the message. And I expressed it as an emotion.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (01:13)
Mm-hmm.
Faith Clarke (01:27)
I was like, I feel concerned about this thing and so on. And she said, don't be concerned about me. I don't want you to feel concerned. And I, in that moment, maybe because we'd been talking, just me tracking that instead of listening to the message, what's happening for her is that she feels discomfort when people feel uncomfortable emotions and let her know. And so she is just like, I won't say anything more about this thing because I don't want you to feel.
the concern that you have. And I'm just like, such a misuse of our bodies, why is the signals of emotions. So discomfort is just a signal that something's going on and it's for us to kind of pay attention to it. But when we are hurrying to get rid of it, they will lose the opportunity for the message.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (02:15)
Well, that's exactly it because that's what happens. I am actively this month, especially like this next month is going to be real crunch time for a lot of discomfort because I have to be really, really talking about the book before its launch. And I can feel myself having to sit with that and confront that a lot of my reaction typically to discomfort is exactly that to shut down, to flee of fight, flight, freeze. said before, I often am the one who flees.
Like if I feel discomfort, I'm out of there. It's easier for me. The same thing in other interpersonal relationships. If the other person feels uncomfortable, sometimes I will fawn. Like what do I do to make this go away for you? But there are times where I'm just like, I can't. And so I'm out of here, right? Like I will end a relationship because I don't want to have to deal with that discomfort inside of the relationship or if the discomfort becomes conflict. And internally, I also flee my discomfort because it looks like for something like this, I just don't talk about it.
Or if I do, I do it once and then I kind of run away and I don't do it again. Right. And I have people just this morning. I met with somebody who's helping me some through the book launch and she's like, you were doing really good. I was seeing all these posts on LinkedIn. She's like, and now I just looked and you haven't posted about it in like a week. And what happened? And I'm like, yeah, I had the moment. And then I started to feel all of the discomfort of like, I'm posting about this too much. What are people thinking? And then I just shut it, ran away, didn't look at it again. And so then today here I am again, like, okay.
stay in it. And it's hard. It's really difficult. Like I prefer when possible to just avoid the discomfort. But when I do, what do I miss out on? I'm missing it. And this is an example of it. If like I'm missing out on people learning about this book that I actually think will help them. Right. So it's not just about like missing out on sales that too, but also missing out on an opportunity to help others. And I don't want that. We don't want myself to shut down. So I have to like do all these mental gymnastics to stay in it.
Faith Clarke (03:44)
Yeah.
But I think the other thing that you're missing out on and that I miss out on too is the opportunity to understand what are the stories I'm running that has me in this discomfort in the first place, because even the word discomfort is a diagnosis. What it really is is, I don't know, maybe heart elevation, maybe a little bit of tightening up of a muscle. And if somebody threw a ball at you,
you would have just known, this is just my body preparing to catch a ball. In the moment when you are in the middle of your book launch, that discomfort, you immediately made that feeling in your body. You made it into this discomfort. And it's really about, and then you tell a story. And I think like for me, getting really close to the stories I tell is so essential to my own disruption.
How am I helping people disrupting their organizations? And I can't even be close to the story, right? So it's almost like, can I use this awareness to hear the story that is on repeat and then challenge that story? Who are these days who are...
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (05:05)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
And what and what is it because it's easy for other people to be like, well, who cares if they say no or if they don't buy the book or the whatever the thing is, right? The mysterious days. And that's why I have to be able to understand the story to understand why it matters if they don't. And that's that deeper digging. And for me, it's, you know, so much of my stuff is rooted in abandonment things that are I mean, I for most of us, it's rooted in childhood stuff. And for me, that looks a lot like abandonment issues and not feeling as loved as I would want to feel. And it's like the story then.
It's easy on the outside to look at it and say, well, so if they don't buy, who cares? But where I'm creating story there is that's reinforcing the idea that I'm not lovable, that I'm not worth sticking around for, that I'm not worth investing in. Right. And so if I'm not tending to that story for myself, then, of course, like that feels really, really horrible. Nobody wants to feel that way. Right. And it's easy for someone else to say it's not that.
But if you're still really activated in that story, you can tell me all you want, Faith. Like, who cares? It's no big deal if they don't buy it. doesn't mean anything about you. If I'm still in that story, it's not gonna matter. And my relationship, obviously in this case, it's more just myself, but in relationships with others, that stuff can show up where I start to project some of that stuff onto, going back to the story about my husband, hi, Terry, if you're listening again, about the window being open. I was projecting all sorts of things onto him that were my story.
that weren't probably his story. And so that's where we have to pause to ask ourselves, what is the story I'm activated here, right, that I'm telling myself here?
Faith Clarke (06:40)
Yeah, and similarly, you know, if you looked on your book launch waitlist and you didn't see my name, you could really have a story, See Faith really is rejecting me. And so there's a way that that story that we tell ourselves just shows up as, you know, people confirm the story because that story is there and we just slot their names and their behaviors in. And so when we talk about conflict, a lot of conflict shows up because
of the differences in the stories. I have a story about you, you have a story about me, the stories don't match. And the conflict is in our stories, both of which are, all of which are made up, you know? And so the opportunity to kind of just be friends with our discomfort and be friends with our stories is such a gift.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (07:23)
It makes me think, because you're right, 100%. Because yeah, I can look at the waitlist, I know who's on it. And I can easily start to think this person doesn't, they don't love me. I thought they did, they don't love me, they don't care, whatever, right?
Faith Clarke (07:35)
They
love me and they're supporting me and see this one thing I asked. Right.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (07:39)
Right.
But and that might be my story. And the reality is if I haven't posted about enough, they may not even know. Or maybe they know and they forgot they've gotten busy. have lives. Maybe they know, but they don't really need to be on the waitlist because they're so involved. They're going to buy it no matter what. Right. There's a million different things that it could be. It makes me think of driving just quickly because I can suffer for some from some road rage. I get real frustrated with drivers.
And an exercise I try to do because I'm projecting all sorts of things onto these people. They're doing this intentionally. They want to ruin my day. They're jerks and, you know, they probably voted for Trump, whatever the things are that I'm projecting. And the exercise I try to do is every time I start to feel that rage come up, I try to think, what might be going on in their lives? Right. What if their wife is pregnant in the car?
They're trying to get to the hospital. What if they just found out their mom's dying and they're trying to get to their house to say goodbye? you whatever it might be, if I can just do that, it taps into a different part, a different story. It unlocks me from my story. And that allows me to show up differently in that relationship. I'm not flipping them off, but also for myself, because all I'm doing is spiking my own cortisol. And that's not helping.
Faith Clarke (08:46)
Absolutely.
Like our ability to recognize story versus universal truth or whatever and then tell a different story even in the moment. So I do that the same thing on the road too because I was one of those. I was pregnant in labor and person driving me was all over the place and it was breaking stoplights and all the things. So now when I see people acting strange as much as I might get upset, like, I might even pray.
I pray that your wife or your partner, whoever gets to the hospital on time, like I don't know what the story is, but it helps me and resets me emotionally to say what else could be happening here that I don't know.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (09:25)
Exactly. I mean, it's a gift to myself to do that. I'm training my child whenever we see an ambulance with its lights on or a fire truck with its lights on and he now does it to you unprompted. always say, hope everyone's okay. And it's just, that's a really great settling point for me to remember like, yeah, this might be a minor inconvenience in my day of now I have to, I'm going to miss that light because they went through it or whatever.
there's something real happening there. And that story matters more than this story I have in this moment. And so that's like a really small thing that also teaches some gratitude and some humility and compassion. So I love that my son and I both now do that. But you said that you also had an example of some conflict that kind of was really layered. I mean, obviously even this conflict, internal conflict I'm having is layered.
Faith Clarke (10:09)
Right.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (10:09)
But
I sound like you had a story or an experience with someone where you were like, this is, sort of shows some of those layers, especially in the workplace.
Faith Clarke (10:16)
Yeah, so I mean, I work with teams and organizations a lot and often in any kind of interaction where some leader or person with power is observing their team member, their staff, whoever do something, execute on a task, it's so easy to be caught in the story about what we think should have happened.
And so in this particular case, as a client was talking with me about what another team member did and some feedback, in essence, she was offering me the feedback that she was too uncomfortable to give her teammate. and so I was the first entry point into the discomfort. I was happy that she was willing to kind of process this with me, but as I listened, there's a part of me that was like, wait, this discomfort, although she's uncomfortable.
making her teammates uncomfortable. That's the top level story. So she wasn't giving feedback because she didn't want to make a person feel bad and the whole thing. But inside her discomfort was a deeper discomfort. And as I was listening, was like, wait, wait, the reason you're uncomfortable with what this teammate did is something about you. so, you know, as leaders, we're often in that state of what's professional, what's the
protocol, what aligns with our culture. And if somebody does something that feels like it's not in alignment or whatever, we have this discomfort that we project we need to be supporting them, we need to be correcting them, we need to be changing the situation. But underneath that, for many of us, and in this particular case, there's something to do with, I don't want to look bad. I'm afraid that my organization will lose access to resourcing. I don't want
us to people looking on to think we are insert things. And that discomfort was unfounded. It's not unfounded. mean, there's always possibilities. But when you look at the actual data in her situation, yeah, no, that wasn't likely to happen. But because she hadn't kind of gotten all the way down, we were solving up here, what's the right thing to say to this person and giving them feedback when really it's down here.
Is their feedback even necessary? Because is the problem that's triggering the discomfort actually a real problem? Or is this founded in the story with your grandmother from the time when you were in high school? And often, like if we don't do that story work, we are solving the conflict somewhere where it's not rooted. So it's like a hydro. You clip off the head five more sprouts because it's not really what's going on.
And so tending to the signals of our discomfort and allowing it to go down, then we can ask what's really happening here. And then what, what's my, what's the guidance to me for addressing this? And almost always when we are thinking that addressing it is out there, it's like, yeah, no, we haven't gone far enough down yet. Cause there is something to be addressed with us. And then from that place, we can have a body honest request.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (13:18)
Mm-hmm.
Faith Clarke (13:19)
or interaction with the person about whatever it is that happened. So that was, I was fascinated when that happened,
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (13:24)
Yeah, and you, ⁓
well, and you said you were proud of her for being able to say she was uncomfortable about about making the other person uncomfortable. And it just makes me think about what it takes internally for for us to be able to make these kinds of changes. Right. And within, especially when it's within, it's one thing in our own relationships. And that's important. Then inside of these organizations and inside of a business trying to make this kind of change, because it requires one, it requires
awareness, right? Because how often do we just sort of knee jerk go about our reactions, right? Yeah, we're all kind of just on autopilot until we actually consciously kick off autopilot and bring awareness to this. So it brings awareness and there's a lot of efforting and work inside of just even creating and maintaining the awareness. But I'm also hearing like it creates it takes some humility. It takes humility to be able to say it because it feels good and is easier sometimes to just be like, well, that guy's being a jerk, right? Done.
Faith Clarke (14:19)
Yep, absolutely.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (14:20)
He's a jerk,
fire him, whatever, know, flip him off in the car, whatever. That's easy way. It doesn't require any introspection on my part. It doesn't require anything about me. It's all about them. It's all externalized. It makes it simple. It feels good. It takes a lot more humility to say, I might actually be responding to something that's not actually happening in this moment.
Faith Clarke (14:24)
Yeah.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (14:39)
This might not actually not even be about him. This might actually just be all my stuff. This could be about grandma, like you said, or maybe it's actually about something else entirely. And I'm putting it onto him because that's easier than this more complex thing I have to look at. So like that requires a lot of humility that can be challenging, I think, for a lot of us, because I think inside of capitalism and in this hyper individualistic world we live in, we are really conditioned into, and it's also probably human nature to some degree, but we want to look
Faith Clarke (14:42)
Well, yeah.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (15:08)
the best we can look. We want people to perceive us as being, of having our stuff together, of being really smart, of, you know, being in control, being logical, whatever the things are. And having to step outside of that and have some humility and maybe admit some accountability, take some accountability, admit some faults. Yeah.
Faith Clarke (15:24)
vulnerability, like
trust you to take to be careful with my vulnerable side to be able to do that. And it knows to be clear, the work culture that we have cultivated, generally speaking, doesn't it's about performance. It's not about being able to trust each other with our vulnerability. So it's hard. And yet, you know, I attended a training at the racial equity Institute, I think there was a North Carolina and
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (15:40)
Right.
Faith Clarke (15:51)
They talk about the thinking fast thinking slow guy, system one, system two thinking. And I don't know which one is the faster or the slow, but just recognizing that our biases and systemic thinking and patterning exists in that fast space. So the thing, the flip off that I'm trying to, that happens, that thing is the patterning. And I get to say, if I pay attention to it, I get to say, I want to keep that patterning.
Or is that something I want to challenge? And in our conversations, as we are talking to founders and people are talking about a new approach to creating life and work on this planet, given all the things, like we have to be willing to stop our knee-jerk reactions and look at them and say, what's really going on here? Otherwise we disrupt nothing. We just perpetuate the same things. And so it seems small.
And it seems like it's just about my personal discomfort. But when in the workplace, as in case of my clients, when in the workplace, what we do is avoid our feeling of discomfort, project it onto the person and then be passive aggressive, or just pretend it's not happening and avoid it and keep building and repeating these patterns until something serious blows up, which tends to be when they call me. It's so expensive and so detrimental to the organization and to everybody's self-esteem.
It's better that we figure out how to all just slow down and say, ⁓ I'm feeling some kind of way. what, in one of my situations with a client, I just like, can we all just learn this? Excuse me. I'm feeling some kind of way. I'm feeling some kind of way. then from there, was like, ⁓ what's going on there for you versus this, all the stuffing down that we do.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (17:23)
Yeah.
Well, and two things. One, when I see people do that, when I witness that behavior in places where I might not expect it to show up, because that's happened to me, where I've been in a workspace where someone steps outside of the norms and shows up like that, it always stops me. I notice it. I'm aware of it. And it always it humbles me because it makes me think like I get a little envious. Why don't I show up that way? I want to show up like that. Like I've never seen that in less of someone. I've only ever thought more of them. I've always been impressed by that. So there's that.
But secondly, guess another piece that we didn't talk about is around vulnerability and humility and being able to show up that way. There is some amount of idealism around that in that there has to be safety too. And that safety is there is a top down kind of approach. So we can't ask the people who have the least power in the room to be the ones to show up that way when the people with the most aren't modeling that and making it so that the other people can begin to feel that. And it takes time if you're in a space and
a business environment that has not historically been this way. Or even if you have people you have been, but they're coming in from the outside where they have not historically been able to show up that way. It takes time for people to develop that safety and understanding that they have some degree of safety, which obviously there's varying degrees of that. But that's another piece that's important because you can't, for many people, it is not safe to just show up in that humility and that vulnerability. And so that's definitely not what we're saying to do.
Faith Clarke (18:54)
I definitely don't recommend it. the part of what I say in the workplace is that it's always, and I don't like up and down, but it's always leader down. I think that everybody must have their awareness, their self-awareness work, their separation from story. You have to know what's going on, but we are often all in systems and the more on the intersection, the more marginalized identities you have, the less resourcing, the more risk.
you experience. And so I am definitely not an advocate for people exposing themselves in ways that put themselves at risk. And everybody that has any kind of privilege through the lens of that privilege, they can be vulnerable and experience less risk and less loss than another person. And so I remember being in a conversation with a friend of mine and she was like, I'll be the white woman.
I will go speak, know, so whoever was saying whatever and she's like, I'll go be the white woman. And I think for those of us through the lens of the power that we have know that we can be vulnerable and model that vulnerability and in some ways shoulder some of the risk while teaching our spaces, our cultures to be different by breaking this patterning, you know, in the space.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (20:09)
Yeah. One of the ways I think that you can help to create that culture is by cultivating a culture of consent. And we're going to talk about that in our next episode. So come back for that one, because I mean, there's many elements to this. So it's not like there's a one simple thing you do and everything changes or a 3CX. But that is a component of an environment that starts to cultivate that kind of.
Faith Clarke (20:27)
New format. Yeah.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (20:33)
safety to be able to show up that way. So we'll talk about that next time. Anything else you want to add on this one?
Faith Clarke (20:37)
my friend talks about the shit rainbow. And so I'll just say that when a thing is happening, it's the thing by itself. But the moment we start to have our stories and then our reactions to other people's imagined stories, you talked about the days and then our reaction to our reaction about the days. Yeah. Like we end up with this thing that's massive and very difficult to move and very difficult in our bodies. So as much as we're talking about this as
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (21:00)
Hmm.
Faith Clarke (21:04)
Yeah, let's change the world. Yeah, we need to heal ourselves. And we're all carrying so much load from all of this patterning. It wasn't good for any of us. And so this is part of the, let's heal ourselves.
Becky Mollenkamp (she/they) (21:14)
Yeah. And
if, if promoting this book has taught me anything is that they're the stuff comes up. So you got, yeah, you could either choose to ignore it, which is what I've done in the past and suffer those consequences or start to heal it and then move forward. So, all right, well, next time we'll talk consent. Thanks, Faith.