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Collectively Uncomfortable : How Communities Turn Risk Into Reward

• Scratchwerk Tech

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Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable has become something of a personal development mantra, but what happens when we apply this principle to our communities? 

Many of us believe our communities are "so close" to breakthrough – but can this perspective be keeping us in comfortable patterns that limit real progress. The truth? We might not be as close as we think, and the path forward may require more significant disruption than we're currently willing to embrace.

What might collective discomfort look like? What does it mean to risk it all for progress?  The goal isn't just personal advancement but creating a future where the next generation starts with "billion-dollar problems" instead of struggling with the same challenges we face today.

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Speaker 1:

If you've lived long enough, you've heard of the phrase that you need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. You need to get comfortable being uncomfortable and that usually has an association with growth, transformation, some type of progress that might come with some level of discomfort. This ability to be comfortable constantly being uncomfortable is somewhat of a way to move to the next level and that somehow staying in your comfort zone often means you are staying stagnant in life. But what comfort are we as a community holding on to? That might actually be keeping us from the collective future that we say we want? What comfort are we holding on to as communities that is keeping us from the future? Are we as communities being comfortable with being uncomfortable? I like to be educated but I'm so frustrated. Hello to my loneliness. I guess that endurance is bliss. Take me back to before the noon Rewind. Take it out of cue.

Speaker 1:

So when it comes to personal growth, a lot of times we are thinking about moving to the next station, I guess you can say in life. That can be in our careers, that can be in terms of wealth, that can be relationships. We are thinking about moving up to another level and sometimes that can be done with just brute force. Sometimes that can be done, with us maybe having some type of routine and we feel like if we do it constantly, whatever we desire is going to come our way. I don't know. That might look like working hard at the job right, or saving enough money, or constantly working out, or constantly working out, you know, any type of thing that we think that we can do on a regular basis that might get us to the next level can sometimes be deemed as us still staying in our comfort zone. Maybe that looks like you on the job. You've always worked hard, you've been there 10 years, you're trying to move up the corporate ladder but ultimately it's just not happening. But you truly, truly desire it, and so this phrase of being comfortable, being uncomfortable, might look like going to a new company, branching off on your own, doing something that you normally wouldn't do. That might be a little scary, might be a little intimidating, but ultimately it might be the path to which you can get all the things that you desired for that particular career or whatever it might be in our lives. And we do this as people, and we do this in our personal lives, really to to make the next move for us individually, and that's perfectly OK, we absolutely should. But when we think about collectively, are we collectively being uncomfortable enough so that we can collectively move to the next station together?

Speaker 1:

I mean, as a human, sometimes it is absolutely intimidating to disrupt things that are going on in our lives already. I mean, when you want to get to the next level at that job, in a lot of ways it feels like it's so close, right. I mean you leaving to go to another company or you leaving to start your own business is a scary, scary option because in your mind the only thing you need to change maybe for you to get to this next level is for that one supervisor to take a chance on you, or that one timesheet approver to give you a helping hand, or you just need for this other department to accept your promotion, right. So you feel like it's so close and if you can just get past that one little hump, that one person's approval, then maybe you don't have to disrupt your routine every single day, you don't have to disrupt all the things that you've gotten to be comfortable in your life. Right, you are just that close to having, you know essentially having it all, to having it all right.

Speaker 1:

As communities, we feel the exact same way. We know for a fact that there are things that need to be better, things that need to be improved in our community and in some ways we too feel like we are so close, so close, and our way of expressing that might be the typical things that we do as a community together is marching. It could look like going to the voting booth, it could look like a lot of things that we feel like you know what? We're so close. If we can just get 10,000 more people at the voting booth, man, we can have that community promotion. Man, if we can just march and get that judge or that city official to make a change, we can have everything that we needed to make a change. We can have everything that we needed. We're just that close. We don't want to get too, too uncomfortable.

Speaker 1:

But can I offer maybe two points of consideration? I think one is we're not as close as we probably think we are individually or collectively right, close as we probably think we are individually or collectively right. That promotion in our mind, man, we are so, so close, man. We're so close, maybe to getting that home that we wanted that ideal life that we were looking for and collectively, as a community, we're so, so close. If we can just get that one person elected, if we can just get right there, we're not as close as we actually think we are. A lot of things can happen, even after you get that promotion that might be out of your control. A lot of things can happen or not happen, for that matter If we get that person elected, we might not be as close as we think.

Speaker 1:

We are Number one and number two when it comes to our collective dreams. We have to respect and understand that, in order for us to collectively get to where we are right now, we had a whole lot of collective people being very, very uncomfortable so that we can move this ball forward. And what do I mean by that? That house or these neighborhoods that we live in now, these jobs that we have now, these opportunities that all of us in our community have now, are of a direct result of people collectively being very, very uncomfortable, getting very, very uncomfortable in their communities, in their neighborhoods, so that we could collectively, collectively, get to this position that we are in right now. How many of those that came before you on a community level literally risked it all for you to be this close, for you to be this close to whatever it is that you are trying to do, I mean sacrificed everything they had for that man or woman next to them that they might not have even known at the time. I mean, when I think about Underground Railroads or I think about any of the movements of our past, there was a lot of sacrifice being made collectively, a lot of uncomfortable spaces that people were in collectively to make sure that everybody can get to the next level.

Speaker 1:

I mean, that's how we got here right now, and so if you still are managing to be somewhat, I guess, selfish with our intent, let's just make it even a little bit more personal, right, if we want to go from where we are right now I don't know, maybe we're $100,000 folks and we're trying to become millionaires, millionaires trying to become billionaires, whatever it is right. Maybe we're trying to go from one property that we own to multiple properties. Maybe we're trying to retire at 50, retire at 40, whatever it is that we are individually trying to work on. Those are big jumps and absolutely can be done. They can be done right If we are willing to be comfortable being uncomfortable, and they can be done individually be comfortable being uncomfortable and they can be done individually.

Speaker 1:

But think about how our community has made those jumps, literally some of these financial jumps together collectively being uncomfortable to go from one station to the next. It might have been collectively being uncomfortable to go from slavery to freedom right, that's a big jump. Or collectively being able to go from only renting to owning. Or collectively being able to go from just workers to owners. Collectively, we got these million dollar dreams that we have because collectively we were willing to be uncomfortable for that thousand dollar dream that some of our ancestors had. Right, your billion dollar aspirations are probably much closer than you think once we're ready to be uncomfortable together. And when we say uncomfortable collectively, we know what that kind of seems and feels like as an individual. Right, oh my God, that's me going to a new job or leaving this current situation that I am in and pursuing something brand new. Individually, we know what that is that feels uncomfortable.

Speaker 1:

But what does it feel like for a community to be uncomfortable? You know, one of the things that I hear and we hear all the time these kids, yes, they can have their dreadlocks now, but at some point they're going to have to cut those dreads off before they go into an interview. Or, yes, you have some funds right now, but at some point, if you're trying to do this major project of yours, you're going to have to go in front of some folks that don't look like you to raise money right At some point. At some point we're going to have to go into the voting booth and do this and do that. There seems to be these limits as a community that we constantly come up to because that's the comfortable route to go. But I would offer that being uncomfortable as a community does look like going around the system. It does look like doing things completely different.

Speaker 1:

Being uncomfortable as a community might look like letting young people, letting these teenagers and these 20 year olds lead and represent us as a community. Maybe that's uncomfortable for us, right? Maybe uncomfortable for us is you with your suit and tie on going to that five-star restaurant and yeah, there might be a couple black couple on the other side of that restaurant with dreads and pants hanging off his behind and you not feeling embarrassed. That might be uncomfortable as a community, right? Uncomfortable might be running a program with just your money and not asking anybody else for anything. That might be uncomfortable, that might be the uncomfortable way of doing things as a community. As a community, we can absolutely do that.

Speaker 1:

Again, when I think about the Underground Railroad, everybody didn't even need to know every piece of that puzzle, but you might have been working at a particular location and the only thing you know is that if a black person came up there and they said these words to you, you don't ask questions, you don't ask them where they're from, where they're going. None of that, none of that. You know what to do. You take them, you put them in the back of that buggy and you take them to where you're supposed to take them to and you drop them off and you come back and that's it. And you're risking a whole lot to do that. You don't even know these people, you don't even know them right, but you are risking. You are going to be uncomfortable in that space because, collectively, that's how we collectively get to the point where we have these thousand dollar, million dollar, billion dollar problems. That's how we collectively get to the point where you can try to individually retire at 50, retire at 40, buy multiple properties, do whatever you're trying to do, and so, as we think about us being uncomfortable individually so that we can get to the next station in life. We have to collectively get to a point where we can be comfortable being uncomfortable as a community so that as a community, we can push this ball forward.

Speaker 1:

Our dream should be that this next generation of our community they have billion dollar problems, right, they have billion dollar dreams they are trying to figure out how to get their tens of millions and get to the billion dollar station. That's what they're focused on. They already have a bunch of properties. They already have a bunch of places. Maybe their problem is trying to figure out how to just get the hotel built on their property. That's their major problem. That's the next level they're trying to get at. They already aren't working. They're not trying to figure out how to retire. They're not working to help other people in their community. That's their problem. And if that's going to be their problem, then there has to be some uncomfortable collective action that we need to take.

Speaker 1:

Today as a community, we should absolutely be getting much more comfortable, being uncomfortable and not afraid to be in a space where it's unfamiliar, to be in a position where we don't know what's next, to be in a position where we aren't sure exactly what this is supposed to look like because we haven't done it before as a community. That's what that means as an individual level. You've never not worked for somebody else. Maybe Maybe this has always been the job or the career that you've been in. So you have to go do something else that you've never done before so that you can get the next leg up as communities.

Speaker 1:

What makes us think that we don't have to do the exact same thing? No, we are going to have to do some things that we've never done before collectively. We're going to have to do those things that we've never done before collectively. We're going to have to do those things that we've never imagined or we can't, even right now, figure out how it's going to work. But that is, in a lot of ways, the whole essence of faith. That is what that's about. That is actually taking the steps and saying you know, as a community we don't know how this is going to work, but we're going to try it anyway. We're going to try it anyway, and so I would encourage all of us, collectively again, to get much more comfortable being uncomfortable together. This is the Scratch Work Podcast, where we don't fear the future. We create it. One idea, one thought, one dream at a time. Thank you,