#87 - Unplugging to reconnect with Hannah Brencher

Hannah Brencher  0:00  

I confused accessibility with availability, and the two are very different. I thought if I was just accessible at all times, and I was good for my friends and I was good for my family and I was good for whoever might need me or my social media audience. But over the years, of being on social media and being so tied to connectivity, I was in essence losing myself, and I didn't even realize it. I didn't realize it till I started the rhythm of unplugging that I was like, Oh my gosh. I was missing this, and I was missing this, and it was almost like getting back to the person that existed before all the noise got in when it first started. It was a simple challenge. But now, years later and 1000s of hours later, I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is, like, all of my favorite things have come by way of unplugging.

Joey Odom  0:50  

Welcome back to the Aro podcast. Hey, it's your good friend, Joey Odom, co founder of Aro. And hey, by the way, have you downloaded the Aro app yet? For the first time ever you can get ro for free to try out for seven days. Just go download the Aro app on the App Store or Google Play Store. Sneak peek. You're gonna love it. Go do that real quick, totally free to try out and see what all the fuss is about. Today on the Aro podcast, we have Hannah brencher. Hannah Brencher has just written a book called The unplugged hours. And Hannah is Hannah is a wordsmith. I mean, she every word is deliberate. It's poetic. And the book that she's written is about unplugging the unplugged hours. And really, and we talked about this a little bit off camera, is it's not it's not really even about being away from your phone. It's about the life that happens off your phone. And this is a beautiful, beautiful read, and I say this at the end of the interview, and I'll encourage you right now, please get a copy of this book, but maybe even get it for you and your spouse and read it together and read it slowly. That's what I would encourage, is don't feel like you have to get through and power through this book. Just read it slowly, because there's a life on the other side of your phone that may sound a little bit, little bit ethereal at times like, Oh, is it possible? Oh, this is just for, you know, just for people who are kind of superhuman. And it's not true this, this life exists for all of us. She has a challenge with a 1000 hours unplugged challenge. And she says, You can do that in a year. You can do that in 10 years, just whatever amount of time that takes. So it can happen in these little spurts, these little 517 minute increments. We talk about 17 minutes in the podcast and the conversation we have together. And these little 17 minute increments that can be game changers in our life are available to us every single day, and I love the way that Hannah walks us through this book, and I love the way that she expresses her words around the life that can be on the other side. So I'd love for you to go get a copy of the book. Certainly. I'd love you to get it for you and your spouse read it together. But for now, I'd love for you to just sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Hannah Brencher gang, when our guest was working at the United Nations, she decided to unite the nations through love letters, and she started a global movement. Today, she wants the unplugged hours to be yours. She's gone from the 203 to 500 Salisbury to the Bronx to the ATL to your ears today, she gets her sense of humor from abuela, her dirt beneath her fingernails work ethic from daddy Moto and her dance moves from Gangnam Style. She loves Timmy and Billy, but her favorite brother is a tie between Brother Lawrence and the Hanson brothers. Her words fill countless paper sheets and her love fills just one lane sheets. She loves Boston for the donuts, Jenny for her ice cream, and Taproom for its coffee. She loves pizza Friday, but the goodest of all Fridays was when her novel Lee was born. She's a battleship battle Battler, a TED talker, a Tupac truther and the JonBenet junkie. She She loves true crime, but the truest crime would be not reading her newest book, The unplugged hours gang, if you find this podcast, I want you to be where your feet are and welcome Hannah. Katie brencher, oh,

Hannah Brencher  4:13  

my God, I'm crying. I'm literally how do you know that much about me?

Joey Odom  4:18  

You share a lot

Hannah Brencher  4:22  

Immediately rethinking everything that's on the internet that I was like, when you said 500 Salisbury street, I was like, Oh my gosh, she knows where I went to college.

Joey Odom  4:31  

I was okay. So this is it for any listener they know that I have to do the obligatory debrief this. This is what I literally Hannah, I went to the very first of your Instagram posts, and I and I dug through, and I found 500 Salisbury on a comment that one of your friends made knowing that that was it. And then I saw that it was assumption College, yeah, yeah. It got weird. I'm sorry.

Hannah Brencher  4:53  

No, no, no, it's great. It's like one of those moments you're not expecting in a day where you just feel known you've nailed. It was like, even if you were like, Novi board on a Friday, and I just the goodest

Joey Odom  5:04  

of all fries Good Friday, the goodest of all Fridays, right? The goodest of all good Fridays, you

Hannah Brencher  5:07  

got the Tupac. You got the job and a Yeah, can

Joey Odom  5:11  

we go real quick? You, you're a Tupac truther, can we? Can we? Can you tell the people about about being a Tupac? Tupac truther,

Hannah Brencher  5:18  

yeah. Um, man, I started, I think eighth grade is when I really got into Tupac. He writes or he did. It's if you believe he's alive or not conspiracy. But I got into his poetry. He wrote a lot of good poetry. And there was a book specifically called the Rose that grew from concrete, and that was like his emblematic poem book. And he is songs, they're just so they're deep and they're real and they're rich. And I've always been a big fan of Tupac and rap, you know, rap tells a story. Eminem is a genius, so I Yeah, I'm a sucker for a good story no matter what medium.

Joey Odom  6:00  

And we do believe Tupac alive, right? This is, this is our belief He's

Hannah Brencher  6:04  

probably dead. But you know, who knows? Come on, Machiavelli, he might come back. Who knows? Right, exactly.

Joey Odom  6:13  

Well, listen, Hannah, I am, I showed you before we started recording my dog ears there. There are probably 100 of them in in your book, The unplugged hours. And I just love this book. And I know, I know you are primarily, you speak primarily to females, to a female audience, but I just for whatever, whatever this means to you, this meant a lot to a male. Yeah, love it. Well, it is. It's fantastic. And there's, there's a word that, there's a word that I want to, want you to touch on to begin with. And what I felt in reading this was a word you used, which is permission, I felt, I felt a permission to unplug, and I'm and I, I'm kind of deviating from my, from my line of questions here, but that feels like a good place to start is that it's it feels to me that we're going about with our with our daily lives, especially when it comes to technology, in kind of a, kind of a default mode, and we're not really thinking about it, and every now and then, we need to take a step back and just have permission to live a little bit differently. So will you, I'm not even going to give you a question other than, will you just begin there with that concept of permission and the way that we're living, and that permission we might need to do something a little bit different.

Hannah Brencher  7:30  

That's so good. Yeah, it's funny, because even now, like, you know, a few years into this, like, daily rhythm of unplugging, when I have conversations with people, it still sounds very outlandish, or it sounds like a good idea, but people don't really know how to do it, or if they can do it. There's a lot of excuses, and I am not like. My biggest thing with the book was like, I'm not this. There's no shame in this message. There's no shame for how long you're on the phone. But I know for me personally, like I needed to give myself that permission to step away. I think for a long time I confused accessibility with availability, and the two are very different. And so I thought if I was just accessible at all times and like, okay, then I was good for my friends and I was good for my family and I was good for whoever might need me or my social media audience. But over the years of being on social media and being so tied to connectivity, I was in essence losing myself, and I didn't even realize it. I didn't realize it till I started the rhythm of unplugging that I was like, Oh my gosh. I was missing this, and I was missing this, and it was almost like getting back to the person that existed before all the noise got in. So like when it first started, it was a simple challenge. But now years later and 1000s of hours later, I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is, like, all of my favorite things have come by way of unplugging.

Joey Odom  9:02  

Yeah, you had, you had this wonderful TED talk that you gave. Has it been, was it 2012 is that right? 1012 Yeah, 2012 you gave a TED talk on what you did first, when I talk about you working the United Nations, and then you began to write love letters. And you're starting an organization, a movement all around writing love letters. And it was, I thought, and you talk about this some in the book, but you became almost overnight. You were on, you know, you were on the Jeff probe show, and Oprah. You were with Oprah. I was with Oprah. Is that correct?

Hannah Brencher  9:35  

Yes, on Oprah's blog website, multiple times over. And you're right, overnight, literally overnight.

Joey Odom  9:41  

And so when you say like that, you had to, like, take a second be like, wait, what's happened here? It's almost like you were thrust into this. But I feel like so many of us, even if we haven't been featured by Oprah, is that we kind of get into this default setting, and we don't really know that something's wrong or that shouldn't be but. What were the little things, the little cues to yourself that said something doesn't feel right, or I need to unplug. Like, why did you even begin? Why did you think to begin with that you needed to unplug at all?

Hannah Brencher  10:09  

Yeah, so, you know, unplugging had become, like, a little bit of a rhythm in my life, pre doing the challenge of, like, 1000 hours in one year, I would do it for, like, focusing more in my work. Or every so often I would, like, take a break from, like, social media on the weekends. But I've always been hyper aware of, like, the digital connectivity because, like, from the jump when blogging became the thing, like, that's where I was. And so, like a lot of my career was built online and built via social media. And it's also the place that I get to connect with my readers, which is such a rare, beautiful thing, you know, like, if you were an author 30 years ago, like you didn't have that, like, access point to your readers. And so I view it to be a privilege. But at the same time, if I'm putting all of my energy into these online spaces and portals, and I have nothing left to give to my people at the end of the day, like, that's a problem. And I think that's what I started to feel, was that I was, like, drained a lot of the time, exhausted a lot of the time, like, the thing that I had loved, which was connecting on social media, was like, no longer fun. It was like a rat race that you had to keep up with. And I would say, probably the biggest catalyst for like, something needs to shift and change was my daughter. Like my daughter was a little over a year old when I first started, like, actually tracking the unplugged hours, and we got to this point where, like, she was just starting to, like, reach for the phone and like, why wouldn't she be, you know, like we're on the phone, like we're checking in all throughout the day. But I had to start asking myself the question of, like, okay, like every time I'm picking up the phone, like I'm telling her a story, is this a good story? Is just a story that I want to be telling her. And I think, too, you probably saw it within the book. But like, I was raised by literally, like the most present human that you would ever meet or encounter in your life. And it like ever since I was little. You know, that's where the love letter movement came from. Was my mom would leave me letters to find like all throughout the house. Anytime she comes to visit in Atlanta, she still leaves love letters, like I get choked up thinking about like a world that doesn't have my mom's letters in it, you know. But like, she is somebody who has always made people feel so seen and so known. She is the person that will call on your birthday to play the kazoo no matter what. Like, she just, she's an expert at seeing people. And it's, like, always stuck to me of like, that's who I want to be. You know, growing up, I thought it was embarrassing. But like, now I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like, she gets it, but the core of it is that she's present. You know, she didn't get a cell phone until, like, 15 years after cell phones were like, the necessity. And she would always say, like, people haven't needed to find me for the last, like, 5060, years. Like, why do we have to start now? You know? And so I think it's rooted deep in that of like, Oh, if I want to be that present individual, that individual that makes people feel seen and known. This is probably the place to start, is with the technology you talk about,

Joey Odom  13:26  

this, this, this concept of the growing disconnect. And I love that, that term, and not being able to be fully present in the moment. Will you talk about the maybe I have two questions with that. One of them, I would love for you to unpack that term, the growing disconnect. And then also, I think it may be interesting we talk about being present in the moment. You described your mom, and so you may have answered it in there as well, but we use this term, present in the moment, and in a way, it begins to lose its meaning. Some will you talk about, maybe at the like, what does that term mean? What does it actually look like to be present in the moment? We all say we want to be present in the moment. What does that look like, maybe to be present in the moment. And then, what does it look like when you're not present in the moment? That was a that was like a Jason Bateman smart list question, where he just rambles all over. So, no, I

Hannah Brencher  14:14  

got it. I got it though. I downloaded it real quick. Okay, so starting with the growing disconnect. We'll start there. I think, you know, there's a chapter in the book about and I called it maps because, like, really, that was the only way to really describe what I was feeling about this landscape that I think a lot of us are living in, and the growing disconnect was one of those. It's like, just starting to feel like, slowly disconnected from everyday life. And it was in the little things. It was like, you know, me and my husband would, like, sit down and watch a show together at night and then, like, look over and we're both scrolling on our phones, and yet we're like, calling it a night together, or, like, things that I used to like, care about really deeply, like, I used to be the kind. A person that could, like, cry at the drop of a hat, and I, like, couldn't feel things anymore. Like you doing that introduction made me cry instantly. And I'm like, okay, that's me. That is who I am. But for a while I wanted to care, and I just didn't have the capacity to care. And I think that's because our brains are not designed to take in the amount of information that we are taking in on a daily basis, and so as a means of like, protection, we just have to kind of numb ourselves. And that was having an effect on me in everyday life where, like, you're just going through the motions. And then people would say that the remedy to that is just be present in the moment. But it's interesting because, like, I did this talk at a CrossFit gym, I think it was about last year, yeah, and it was on presence. My friend asked me to come in and talk about presence. And she was like, You are the most present person that I know. And I was like, that is the greatest compliment that I will ever receive, you know, but when I asked people, when we started talking, they needed examples of what presence was. And I remember talking to lane on the way home, and I was like, This is wild that we're living in an age now where like the word presence, like people don't know what it is. And so for me, I think the baseline, at least, like in the context of this conversation, is like, okay, am I willing to step into something undistracted? And I think it's more so about it's not even so much about, like your phone or not your phone, because I I can argue that there are ways that we can be present while using our phones. I think it matters where we're placing our attention that is the most important thing. So like me and my husband, we could sit down to watch a movie and we're there completely present without our phones. And I would call that unplugged, because we're there watching a film together, you know? And so I think it really is about attention. Because I also think there are instances where you can be completely phone free and still not be there, not be there, physically, not be there, mentally, you know, there's, there's a spot, I believe it's, I don't know the exact chapter in Exodus, but when Moses calls God up to the mountain, and he says something along the lines of, come up to the mountain and be with me. And what's interesting is that he's not talking about physical presence, so that is embedded into it. He's saying, Come up to the mountain and be present with me. Be attentive with me. And so even you know, when we are standing in the presence of God, we can still be somewhere else distracted. And I don't think that our phones and our devices are doing us any favors, because you've seen like our attention spans, they're like minute at this point, it's so hard to focus, it's so easy to be over stimulated. And so I don't know that's been half of the battle is okay once I shut off the phone, can I actually still be here? Can I be here with my daughter and have her have my full attention? Or am I just running lists in my mind of what I need to do next or what I need to conquer next? So it's a tall order.

Joey Odom  18:20  

It is a very tall order, and it's and one thing you talk about in the book that I really like is this is a is this being something you learn and it being something you practice? This is not something you have or don't have. It is something that requires some some training and conditioning. I had a friend who used to he would encourage this, and it would be, he would almost make it like a declarative statement when he was going to do something. And it sounds a little bit silly, but if my wife, Kristen, and I were going to watch a movie like the statement would be like, I'm watching I'm watching a movie with Kristen. It's almost like you have to, like, declare your intention for the moment out loud, because otherwise it is easy to just then go get distracted by something else. You referenced a quote by Blaise Pascal in 1654, by the way, this I need to check my calendar, but that believe that predated the iPhone, and he said that all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly, quietly in a room alone. And what jumped out in the point you make there is that it's always been hard, like it's, it's, it's always been difficult to do this, but right now it is almost impossible. I mean, it really, really, truly is, like it is, and so few people do it. But to be able to sit without your phone doesn't mean that you're able to sit in a room alone quietly. It means that now the prerequisites there, but then you actually still have to do the work. Yeah, and, and so my question for that, Hannah, is, is it possible? I mean, you're, you're living it, but are you superhuman? You also started a global movement, and not many of us have like, it's, is it for for somebody who is being. Hold on the the all the pulls of motherhood and being a spouse and being a friend and being a human like, is what you describe here. Is that actually a possible thing with the prevalence of technology in our lives, 1,000%

Hannah Brencher  20:14  

I believe that, and I don't believe that of like, oh, because I am self disciplined, because, honestly, I am not self disciplined. I have had to work really hard, and I think that we teach the things that like are the biggest challenges to us, and so that was partially why I set a pretty big goal for myself of like, okay, 1000 hours in a year. Is it possible? And it was because I didn't want to throw my phone into the woods, I wasn't going to be able to go offline for 90 days. Like, I think a lot of us, we don't have that ability or that luxury to just power down and then not come back for a while, you know. And so for me, it was like, is a balance possible? Because I need a balance, you know, like I'm deteriorating at this point, but that's where I learned the power of a single hour, just an hour, you know, like, there was an instance a few weeks ago where I had gotten some news. It just like, wasn't the best news, and it kind of put me in my head and, like, my, you know, my coping mechanism would be like, Oh, I'm just gonna, like, scroll, you know. Just want to, like, numb out a little bit. And I turned off my phone that that night, and I woke up the next morning and I didn't turn on my phone for the first three hours of the day, just to give myself the ability to reset to just like, be present, as we said, and I felt so much better. Oh my gosh. I felt so much better. And I was like, that was just three hours, but it was me knowing I need this thing. And so I think it comes down to like, you know, make no mistake, it's hard. It's absolutely hard. And I still, like, there are some days where I'm pumped to unplug, but a lot of the days I'm like, I'm just doing this, because I think I actually need this. I think my soul needs this. But you'd be surprised by how just deciding to power off for one hour a day, which is a lot of people that I know that that are unplugging that's their goal, one hour like that could be the thing to recharge your batteries. But I think what's important about it is for you to know. Like, what are you unplugging for? Like you were saying about your friend with the declarative statement of, like, Okay, if you just turn off your phone, and then you're like, Well, I don't know what to do with myself. You're going to turn your phone right back on. But think about the things you've said for such a long time that you wanted to do, whether that was, man, I really want to get in the gym or, man, I buy so many books, but I don't read any of them. Or, you know, like I've wanted to do a puzzle, whatever that is, I would say, Turn off your phone and try that thing. And a lot of times for me, like in pockets of the day, I'll just turn off my phone to do, like, an additional quiet time, or do a quiet time at night, and like, in the moment, it's uncomfortable, but like, the way that it feeds your soul in a way that the phone can't, is crazy, and so I think it's if you can look at it through that currency of a single hour, you would be surprised to see The time that you are reclaiming and what you're reclaiming it for, but I also think to that point, that's why it's important to have something to measure, whether that's a goal that you've set for the month, a goal that you've set for the week, whether it's like unplugging for one hour a day you can't manage what You don't measure. And I don't think that screen time is always the best way to measure it, because I don't know anytime I've pulled into screen time, I feel instant shame, and so I turned it off because I was like, that's not how I want to live my life. I want to believe that I'm taking my time back, which is something that I love, that the Aro box does, is like, you can label where your time is going. And I think that's the most important thing of like, okay, I have the gift of time. Am I using it? Well, yeah,

Joey Odom  24:13  

I love that. And it's so it is funny. As I was reading this, it felt like we, it felt like we were thing with with such a similar brain. Because what you just said is so true. It's, it's not even a reduction in screen time. Might happen on your screen time report, it might, but that's not, but you're right. That's not the correct indicator. The correct indicator is like, how did you fill your minutes? Like, what did you do to fill your minutes? And one thing you say in the book that I really love when you talk to your husband lane, you asked him what one of his favorite things about the unplugged hours are, and he said, is the traditions that have come from it, yeah, which was so cool, because it's not, there's nothing, there's nothing motivational about being away from your phone. And honestly, like, in a vacuum, it's pointless. Like, what does that matter? Our phones are freaking cool. Like, you can do a lot of fun stuff on there, but, like, so it's really about what. Come on the other side of that, and like the life that happens on the other side of being away from your phone, and it is a a very intentional act that almost signals that something more important is coming, like when you power down your phone, or for, you know, for us, put in the Aro box, whatever it is you're, you're, it's almost like your body recognizes that something else is going to happen. Certainly, the people around you know that something is going to happen. So I would, I would love, what about the other side? Tell us about the other side. When Lane says the traditions that have come from the unplugged hours, tell us about the life that has happened on the other side of these unplugged hours. I

Hannah Brencher  25:35  

mean, I could, I literally will cry talking about it. Come on, because I didn't, I didn't know it could be this good, because I honestly don't think I knew it was that bad, you know? And whenever somebody has asked me, like, what? How's unplugging going like the thing that I've said over and over and over again, it's like I'm getting back to the person that existed before all the noise got in. And I had no idea that I had lost her, but slowly, over time, I lost her. And I think that's because, one, there was a lot of noise. And two, when you're on social media, and your career is on social media, it's very easy for it to become performative, and you don't even realize that it's performative, because it's like your life, you know? So you don't realize you're kind of like a dancing monkey sometimes. And man from like the traditions that we've created to like the way that my creativity has surged back, like to the way that I can step onto social media now. And I don't hate it, and I don't dread it, and I actually view it to be like a privilege that was not who I was two years ago. You know, even in that first 1000 hours, I couldn't really sit alone with myself in a quiet room that that, like that first 1000 hours was like the padding to get to that place. And now it's like I have, like an inner life that is so much richer than the outer life, even though the outer life is rich, but it's almost like an extension of that. And we live in an age where everybody is just cultivating an outer world, but then no one wants to be alone with themselves or with them thoughts and, you know? And I think, honestly, the other day, this felt like just like the culmination of so many unplugged hours, is that I was driving to a friend's house, and it was about a 40 minute drive, and I'm just driving along, and it was almost like my mind was like, like playing a movie to me, and it was scenes from a novel that I have wanted to write for years, and for 40 minutes, I was just like, catching the dialog between these characters, like watching it unfold. It was like the most surreal experience that does not happen to me in like, the carpool line, but it happened to me the other day, and I was like, whoa. Like for that whole drive, I was in my imagination. I wasn't in my thoughts. I wasn't in my what I have to do. I wasn't in my means to, like, grow and do. And it was literally my imagination, and it was like, this rich landscape that I'm like, I didn't even realize that that was the trade off for a long time, because, like, when, before I started unplugging, or before I got really plugged in, like I used to write novels, and I wanted to write novels, and I was so creative, and then that desire just kind of got squashed. And I think in my mind, I thought that's just a dream that died, but the dream is actually like coming back to life, but it's just instances like that, where I think the biggest feeling is like, I turn off my phone now, and I get this moment of feeling like it's all right here, it's all right here, and if it's not right here, and if something is wrong, you have the power to change that thing, and you have the time to change that thing. But like, if ever I was listening to the anthem of do more and be more and hustle harder and run harder, like that was all the phone. And now I'm living at a different pace, and it's a more resilient pace and a steadier pace, and maybe a slower pace. But like, Man the fruit feels just it's just so much sweeter. Like, I literally don't care if people pick up the book and they don't read the book. Like, well, the publisher would say I should care. But like, if you pick up the book and it just inspires you to take an hour back, oh my gosh, that's it. You will see for yourself. This is it. This is what I need. You know, like a podcast host that I just had an interview with, he was talking to me, and he was telling me, like, I don't unplug. I don't even know where to start unplugging. And the conversation inspired him to wake up earlier and try to just like, read his Bible without his phone on. And he said he was down reading his bible, and his little boy came down the stairs, and he sat next to his dad, and he started doodling and drawing, and they started connecting. And he said, when he put his son down to bed that night, his son said, Dad, when you wake up in the morning, can you do that again? Can you read your Bible so I can come draw next to you? And he was like, that was one of the best moments of my life, and it was just for my willingness to say, I'm gonna give my attention to this thing and not this phone that honestly is not giving us anything. It's not like I'm coming off of it and I'm like, wow, that was an awesome scroll session. Like, you may see some beautiful things, but like, your life is made up of beautiful things, but it's kind of um, like you have to be able to train your palette to see it, because our we're so used to the dopamine hits that we're getting from our phones that we don't even realize we're missing our lives.

Unknown Speaker  30:55  

Wow, oh,

Hannah Brencher  30:57  

that's a lot there.

Joey Odom  30:59  

There is a lot there. And I almost, almost by design, I just just want to kind of sit in it for a second. I think that we've heard story after story of similar to the story you just said about the podcast host, where we had an aura member who's on, who's on one of our low mini episodes called Voices of Aro, who was sitting downstairs. His son was sitting next to him. Four year old. Son was sitting next to him, and he put his phone away, and he said, The next 17 minutes changed his life. And so I was like, Well, what happened? Like, what were these epic 17 minutes? And he said, My son and I just talked about sharks and how people make inventions, because that was it. He's like, what about that little 17 minute daily deposit every day, every day, every day for the rest of his life. What impact does that have and the modeling that we have? I'm convinced it's almost like when people think about phones, they're thinking about getting their kids off their phones, versus modeling it well, so that like nobody, obviously doesn't have a phone, but like nobody, like she, she is seeing you do this. And so for her, that's going to be very, very normal to be present. So I'm curious. Since you you talked about in the growing discontent that her noticing or her trying to pick up a phone, has she noticed you being off your phone? Does she know what it means for an unplugged hour, she's four. Is that right? Four or five?

Hannah Brencher  32:22  

She's four. Yeah.

Joey Odom  32:23  

So does she know what what it means when mom's phone goes down for an unplugged hour? What has the impact been for her, even at a young age, has she noticed?

Hannah Brencher  32:32  

Yeah, well, she doesn't reach for the phone anymore. I'll tell you that like she doesn't, which is, I think, pretty wild for a four year old. She doesn't try to get the phone, and she has told me since she was two, if she wants me off the phone, she tells me to get off the phone. Because I told her from that age, if I'm not being present with you, if you need me, like, you just tell me to get off the phone. And so she does. And so, you know, it's a little different, of like, we have like her abuela, who is available via screen time, but like, I'll ask her, like, do you feel like FaceTiming? And she'll tell me yes or no, I don't want to be on the phone. I don't want us to be on the phone, um, and she'll even, like, make notions of just like, like, if we're going to do something, and I'm thinking, oh yeah, I could be on my phone or whatever. She'll say, not your phone, your Kindle, you know, and she knows the difference, and so, yeah, like, and I also want to say too, it's not like, I'm still on my phone, and there are still times that I don't get it right. Like, there was a time a few weeks ago that I went through the day and I just really felt like, man, I was not present in the way that I wanted to be present. And I went to her bedroom and I apologized her. I said, Mama, like was not as present as I wanted to be today with you. If there was anything that you could do in the world with Mama tomorrow, what would it be? And she said, I want to do a puzzle. And it's that 17 minutes, right? It is that puzzle. It is that walk around the block like and I started to realize, especially in this age like that is what our kids need and want from us. They don't need the elaborate one year old birthday party that looks like your wedding. They don't need all the toys. They don't need the Pinterest moments they want you. That's what they want you and like, I don't know, like, you can probably feel the same way when you think about your life, and you like think back to the times that you felt seen or you felt believed in. Those are people that made deposits into my life, and it didn't mean I was with them, 24/7, but in the hour that we were sitting on the couch, we were together, and they were present with me. And I think that's like the greatest gift that we can give to our kids, to our spouses, to our friends, like we can give them the gift of presence, which I think is a very rare and hard gift to come by in this day and age.

Joey Odom  34:56  

And what's so cool about it too is that what you just described. Described is available to every single person listening today. That gift that you can give is, it is, it's so rare and it is so difficult, but it is so available, like, and the cool thing is, it's not as if, if I give my kids 17 minutes today, that they're not going to need it again tomorrow, like they're going to want another 17 minutes, or 34 or 68, or whatever you know, however much time that you know that you can give them like they love it and they need it and they crave it. And that is the thing that has to go on a daily basis. A couple years ago, my daughter and I, she's 14 now, but we went on Daddy daughter dance, she's probably six or seven, and there was this little station. They had those craft station, and it said, what it's, what is something that you want to do with your dad, with something you would do with your daughter. So we each filled something out. And I wrote, go to Paris, which is just such a like a great the way you're described, this grand, elaborate gesture. And she said, go ice skating at the roller rink, like half a mile from where we were standing. And it's just we just over. We overestimate how much they need, and they just need a little bit, just a little bit of presence. We

Brent Carrigan  36:07  

actually had some friends over a few months ago, and they were asking about the box, like, Oh, what's that thing on your counter? And we're like, oh, it's our Aro box, you know, it's where we put our phones for tracking. And they're like, Oh, that's pretty cool. Like, that's so good for, like, mental health and just all these different things. And so they were really interested. Courtney sent some information, and they're looking to put it in the newsletter that they send out to their clients, because they're physical therapists. And they send out this monthly newsletter of, like, here's a health highlight. It's more than just, you know, ton of weights. It's a health thing. Like, it's a Yeah, mental, emotional, spiritual, yeah, health thing. And I do,

Courtney Carrigan  36:50  

I think anytime people ask us about it, because they have, especially when they see the box in our home, we are always encouraging people to check it out and learn more about it, because it will absolutely benefit them. We do make that pretty clear, like you're not going to go wrong. It's not a bad decision.

Joey Odom  37:06  

We love hearing stories from the Aro community. The one you just heard actually comes from our voices of Aro episodes where I sit down with ro members and they share about their stories and their lives with Aro. Make sure to check out the voices of ro episodes, and if you remember who would like to share your own story with Aro? Please email us at stories@goaro.com

I I'd love to get practical for a second, and that's when you're describing an unplugged hour. You literally, you literally will turn off your phone, right? Yes,

Hannah Brencher  37:39  

for I might put it in a box, like, you

Joey Odom  37:44  

have your present box, right?

Hannah Brencher  37:46  

I have, like, a little tin. And that's only because, like, I think the biggest excuse I see people say is like, oh, but, like, what if somebody needs me, or I'm a caretaker, or my daughter's in school, and I get that completely so it's like, when my daughter's in school, I'll take the phone and I will put it in a box, or I'll tuck it away, out of sight so I can hear it ring. But I'm also not going to let that be the excuse for not, like, digging in where I am at

Joey Odom  38:11  

and so that for somebody who who maybe, like, maybe doesn't have the muscle built yet, what could that look like for somebody who's saying, Okay, I want to dip my toe. I want to start into this. What practically, how would that? What would you advise for them in getting started on this? Yeah,

Hannah Brencher  38:25  

I would go back to, you know what I was saying earlier, about, like, is there something that you've said you've wanted to do and then make it micro? Like, really micro. I think we're like, really good at overhauling and overhauling lasts for about a day, right? We're all like, we're gonna do a 75 hard, and it's like a 75 two, like, you know, because we're not actually wired for an overhaul. So if you say, like, you know, this is a good exercise. I have not proposed this. This just came up. But I do this in my courses, where, when it comes to disciplines and rhythms and routines, I tell people to make a list of the person they're becoming, and so it's not about the goals you want to hit, it's not about the numbers, it's not about the metrics. It's like, at the end of the day, who is the person that you want to become? Because what I realized through my unplugging was at the person I was striving to be, that's not even who I wanted to be, um, but it was who I think years of connectivity trained me to want to be. So when it comes down to it, it's like, I want to be the person that's present and joyful. I want to be available. I want to be the person that sends cards and letters and doesn't miss birthdays, you know? And so I would make that list, and then I would ask myself, okay, like, is there a small, like, present habit or two that I can begin to cultivate out of this list, like, if you say that you want to become a reader, okay, what would it look like just to read 10 pages put your phone away for as long as it takes you to read 10 pages, it doesn't have to be an hour. It doesn't have to be two hours, but I think, like little by little. You start to see the interest compound. And the other thing that I would say, you know, especially for families, is like, pick the places, pick the zones that you want to be completely present for, and be the models of that, whether that is, you know, we want to sit at the dinner table twice a week and we don't want phones to be present, or I want to have an intentional bedtime with my daughter, and so I'm not going to bring my phone into her bedroom, and we are going to wind down slowly, go through the rhythms, read the books and, like, not rush it. So I might say, like, pick a zone or two where you're saying, Okay, this is going to be a screen free zone for myself. Because I think really what it gets to at the core, you nailed it. We talk a lot about screen time for our kids, but then when it comes to us, we're like, Oh, but I don't know. I don't know how to have that discipline and that rhythm. And I would say, like, stop breaking promises to yourself if this is who you said you wanted to be and you set a meeting on the calendar, and then you get later in the day and you don't feel like it anymore, don't break that meeting. Don't break that promise to yourself, because that does have a psychological ramification. You know, it's like you deserve to check in with yourself, and we have to get to this point of realizing, like, checking in and getting on our phones, like, that's not self care, that's not checking in, that's checking out. And so it's like, really, it comes from like, this compassionate core of, like, take care of yourself. If you are weary, you are burnt out, you are tired, like, get away from the noise and recover your life. And that's Jesus. That's not me, but he said it. He said, Come away with me to a desolate place and recover your life. And we all have that opportunity, and it's definitely the narrower path. But I'm telling you like so much is waiting for you there,

Joey Odom  41:58  

and it is possible, and I believe, and I think you probably would agree here, you'll get used to this a lot quicker than you might think. I mean, this whole idea of you can do it, you build up a muscle slowly start like, I love how you start in a micro way. Just like start slowly, it'll start to become more of the daily part of how you live, daily way of how you live. I'd love to touch real quickly on you have the and we've kind of alluded to it, but, and one thing you're known for, which I love this is your 1000 hours unplugged challenge. So well, you start the book off of this. This is not just the unplugged hours. It's not just the title of a book. There's a challenge associated with this. Will you talk about the 1000 hours unplugged challenge? Yeah.

Hannah Brencher  42:38  

So it's a bit of an ambitious challenge, to unplug for 1000 hours in one year. And it's funny to me, because people always say, like, I come at it, and they're like, I can do that. That's not hard. And then they start and they're like, this is hard, you know? And so here's my thing with that. I think when I started it, because I'm somebody who loves a good challenge. I love, you know, like, my life is made up of like, 30 day challenges, like the goal, hypothetically was to get to 1000 hours in one year. But what I would tell you is, if you want to start this journey like, you don't have to cap it to a year. It doesn't have to happen in a year. Just finish the challenge. However long it takes, if it takes two years, if it takes three years, you know, my husband started doing the 100 hour tracker, and, you know, we were like, two months into it, and he was still just like, trekking along. And I love that, like, it's like, it's not so much about you have to do it in this certain time span, so much as that you become a person that starts things and finishes things. And so I think I had that realization at hour 800 where I was like, Okay, I'm gonna hit the goal. And I was like, but even if I didn't hit the goal, is what I did, how I've unplugged for 800 hours. Like, is that enough for me? Can I just decide to be proud right now. And so for the person that wants to take the challenge, I would tell you, like, be proud of every single hour that you take back. And if you can, you know, flip the tracker to the other side, or scribble in the margins of the book, like, write down what you reclaimed your hours for. Because I think that that's so powerful to be like, Wow. Like that was 700 hours of working on my health or walking or conversating or cooking or whatever it is. And it just adds more meaning to it.

Joey Odom  44:34  

I love that. And you begin to especially because you have, I mean, you can, you have the board where you can you mark in the hours you've spent away. Then you look at it and you say, I'm the type of person who spends time away from their phone. James clear talks about that atomic habits, the identity based habits of saying I'm the type of person who does this, which then feeds even more the behavior when you view yourself a certain way. So good, so good. One last question. This will, this will require you, we just talk practical. It's going to require you to go back to maybe a little bit of a vulnerable spot. And I didn't prep you for this, so my apologies, but you, you, you said a line earlier, and you say it in the book. And I feel like we it's so easy to lose ourselves as we get older, that we get away from who we are. And the line you say, and it gets me a little bit choked up reading it actually just as a backstory that I looked in a like a bin, like a memory bin, a few, a couple years ago, and I had all these letters from, like high school student council camp and like church camp, and letters that people had written to me, and I remember reading those and thinking like they're writing about me, affirming me and I was. And I remember thinking like, Man, I want to be that guy. Like I want to be who that I want to be that person that they described about me 2030, years ago. And you have a line in here. It says, who, who were you before all the noise got in? Who was that person? So I'd love for you to maybe speak to the person who feels like they may have lost themselves, yeah, and doesn't know who that person is, and maybe doesn't even know if it's possible to be that person again. And I know this is maybe a little bit amorphous and asking it, but I feel like people listening might need to hear that of, hey, how do I become that person again?

Hannah Brencher  46:29  

Yeah, well, I think it's interesting, because I think a lot of times, and I know I've done this, like, you get onto the phone because you think you're going to find something there, right? Like, because we think we can Google everything. We don't have to live in a place of wonder or mystery. And I know for me, like in certain things that I've wanted to try or do, I'm like, oh, okay, well, at my fingertips is a bunch of experts that are going to show me how to do it. But at the end of the day, it's your journey, and it's your path, and it's going to require you to show up and start moving forward, and I think that's, that's the only way to get back to the person that existed before the noise got in. You know, you can ask yourself those questions of like, who is that person, or when did I feel my happy happiest, and what was going on in that space, but then it's never going to be waiting for you on the phone. It's not waiting in your camera roll. It's not it's not in your memories, it's not in any of that. It's literally in your everyday walking around life. And I think it's going to feel uncomfortable at first, because we've gotten so used to doing things for the sake of documentation, doing things for the sake of saying we did them. But I promise, if you can get back to that place where like it is just enough to be with yourself. It is enough to do something because you feel proud and you feel like Job well done like that will fill you so much more than anything else. Like, there's a line in the book that says, like, peace is a better currency than applause. And I think like, that's the core of it is, like, the more that I have unplugged to get back to that person that was there before the noise got in, the more peace that I have, and the more that that piece is readily available to me every time I turn off the phone. But I think it goes back to what you said with like Blaise Pascal, it's like learning to sit with yourself and not run and not run from what is inside of you, or what you're scared of, or what you're afraid to face. But like man, like when you learn to sit with yourself and not be afraid of the person that is there, like that is when things are going to start to flourish. They're going to start to bloom, like things are going to start to change.

Joey Odom  48:52  

So good. It's September 17, as you're listening to this September 17, or after the book launches today, September 17, the unplugged hours. And I'd love for people listening, don't just go buy a copy for yourself. Buy a copy for a friend. Maybe even buy a copy for you and your your spouse. Maybe go through this together. Hannah. Hannah writes, I'll speak about you while you're here. Hannah. Hannah writes very beautifully and intentionally, and it's actually I found myself slowing down as I read here and just just kind of absorbing the words. So don't feel like this is a frenetic pace that you need to go through to read it. Just you can read it slowly, even read it out loud, if you're with a with a friend or your spouse or a partner. But I think you can read this slowly, and I encourage you to buy it, certainly for yourself, but maybe for you and your partner and maybe for a friend. You can go get anywhere books are sold, and then they can also check out hannahbrencher.com as well. Correct Hannah for tools and the 1000 hours tracker.

Hannah Brencher  49:52  

Yep. All right, there.

Joey Odom  49:54  

Perfect Hannah. Thank you for this book. Thank you for your time. I've had. A ton of fun and very, very grateful for your work.

Hannah Brencher  50:02  

Thank you so much. It was such a blast to be here.

Joey Odom  50:06  

Hannah said two things in that interview that I wrote down that really stood out to me. She was describing her mom. What a great description. She said her mom is an expert at seeing people. Gosh, I would love to be the type of person that people would describe as someone who's an expert at seeing people. That's something I'm going to focus on. How can I really see people and be fully present in the moment? And then when I asked her about the life on the other side, the life on the other side of the unplugged hours, she got choked up, and she said, I didn't know it could be this good, because I didn't know it was that bad. So wherever you are, will you take a pause just after this, after this little soliloquy ends, will you take a pause and take a quick inventory, and just say, is there something off? Is there something I want to be a little bit different? And then maybe that first step could happen today, and maybe it's five minutes, maybe it's 17 minutes, maybe it's an hour, whatever it is just take a little pause today, maybe check in with yourself first, and then be present and give a little bit of yourself to others after you've taken care of yourself. I bet that you will feel the difference, and I basically guarantee that the person on the other side of the table will feel the difference with your full presence.

‍