Insights from the Couch - Mental Health at Midlife

Ep.24: Maintaining Digital Wellness and Personal Connection with Jen Bisbee

• Colette Fehr, Laura Bowman • Season 2 • Episode 24

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In this episode of Insights from the Couch, we’re thrilled to sit down with the amazing Jen Bisbee, Executive Producer of the upcoming documentary “What Hugh Knew” and owner of the renowned PR firm, Bisbee and Co. Jen shares her journey of discovering the profound importance of human connection, both through her film and personal experiences. We dive into how technology has shifted our relationships, especially for teens, and explore the balance between the digital and real world. Plus, we get an inside look at the inspiration behind her powerful documentary, which has been 40 years in the making and celebrates community, friendship, and living life authentically offline. Trust us, you’ll want to hear Jen’s insights on how to reconnect in today’s tech-obsessed world.

If you’ve ever felt the tug between staying connected online and nurturing real-life relationships, this episode will speak to you. Jen offers thoughtful tips on digital wellness and shares stories that remind us all of the joy that comes from simply being together. Whether you’re raising teens in the social media age or just seeking more balance in your life, this conversation will inspire you to rethink how you connect.

 

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] - Introduction: Welcoming Jen Bisbee and the story behind her journey into filmmaking and PR.
[1:43] - What “What Hugh Knew” is all about: Exploring human connection, friendship, and balance in the digital age.
[5:25] - The lasting power of traditions: Celebrating 40 years of the Hugh Shaw Memorial Surf Classic.
[7:27] - How technology is impacting teens: Jen shares alarming statistics about social media use and mental health in teens.
[11:12] - Finding balance: The importance of digital wellness and setting boundaries with technology.
[17:36] - Practical tips for reconnecting offline: Jen offers suggestions for disconnecting and finding real-life moments of joy.
[25:14] - The impact of polarized media: How technology has shifted the way we consume news and connect with different viewpoints.
[35:19] - The heart of What Hugh Knew: Jen reflects on the film’s central message about community and human connection.

 

Resources:
For more on this topic visit our website insightsfromthecouch.org If you have questions please email us at info@insightsfromthecouch.org we would love to hear from you!

If today's discussion resonated with you or sparked curiosity, please rate, follow, and share "Insights from the Couch" with others. Your support helps us reach more people and continue providing valuable insights. Here’s to finding our purposes and living a life full of meaning and joy. Stay tuned for more!

Colette Fehr:

Laura, all right. Hi everyone. Welcome back to insights from the couch. I'm here this morning with my co host Laura Bowman and the fabulous Jennifer Bisbee, executive producer of the upcoming documentary film what Q new and the owner and operator of the long standing and really noteworthy PR firm, Bisbee and CO, we are honored to have you here this morning. Jen, welcome.

Jen Bisbee:

Thank you so much for having me. I love what you all are doing. It's so important, kind of the overarching topics that you are covering so important, and so honored to be here. So thank you. Oh, we're

Colette Fehr:

so thrilled to have you, and I should say just off the jump before we dive into connection for both adults and teens, a topic that's really a passion of yours and ours and all our listeners too. Of course, I just want to say that Jen and I have known each other for many years and first crossed paths through the PR world back when I was newly divorced and in, I think, my late 20s, maybe 30 years old. So that is far more years ago than I care to admit. What

Jen Bisbee:

we go back that form? Yeah, wow, that's great. Yeah, I

Colette Fehr:

think I first met you in 2006

Jen Bisbee:

time fleets, right? Yes,

Colette Fehr:

it does. It does.

Jen Bisbee:

Oh my, you know, unbelievable how fast things go. We've had a good time together. We've had a good journey together. So

Colette Fehr:

absolutely. So it's an added bonus to have you. So let's dive in, and maybe we could start by tell us a little bit about the project, what Hugh knew and what got you involved in this?

Jen Bisbee:

The short version is, as a PR professional, I've always looked at Human Dynamics and behavior and relationships, how people come together. I was an early adopter in social media because it kind of met me where I was, and began to be a tool I used in my business and personal life. But starting around 2015 I started to see my own social media, use my teen children's, use friends, and started to see some things kind of creeping, if you will, kind of that slow creep where we're spending more time, oh, I'm sorry, more time in front of our our screens, and a little less time with each other. Read a really seminal book called alone together by a foremost expert on this notion of what technology is doing to our relationships. And I was attending an amazing celebration and anniversary celebration of friends that came together every year. And the dichotomy of those two things really hit me like a lightning bolt, and I realized, wow, we are starting to kind of lose our connection with each other. And I kind of saw what was ahead. This was 2015 and that was what began the journey of what he knew.

Colette Fehr:

Can you give us a little idea of the story of the film? Yeah,

Jen Bisbee:

I will absolutely. So the macro on the film and the micro are different. Much like most of the films that we watch, we're watching a story, but the filmmaker wants you to step away with a message or two, and the same thing is true with our film. The micro in the film, it tells a true story of a young man who came of age and a group of friends before technology in 1983 the gentleman Hugh Shaw was a Flagler College student doing his thing, having a great time doing what college kids do with a group of friends who loved to surf that was his biggest passion, along with his friends and family, they had the oyster roasts and they had the reggae parties, but they also just had a passion for surfing. And sadly, two weeks before college graduation, Hugh got struck by a drunk driver and passed away, and the group of friends started a surf contest in his honor, kind of a ragtag bunch on the beach. 40 years later, it has become one of the longest running traditions of Flagler College. It's called the Hugh Shaw Memorial longboard surf classic, and it is a celebration of friendship, gathering four generations on the beach every year I married into the story. So I've been attending the surf contest for more than 30 years, and so in 2015 when I was reading about this kind of disconnection, I was at the beach, and to me, it was like, wow, how can we tell Hugh's story of what Hugh knew? How can we discover what Hugh knew and share it with others so they could feel the same thing I felt on the beach that day, which was this power of human connection. And that's ultimately the message. That's the macro on the film. The micro is what he knew, taking our view on the journey to discover what he knew. But through the storytelling, we want to encourage others to rediscover their relationship with others and their own balance between their on and offline lives. Wow.

Laura Bowman:

I. Love that it's lasted for 40 years. Like nothing's lasted, nothing's lasting for 40 years these days. But like these types 40 minutes these days, I know 40 seconds, yeah, yeah. But like oyster roasts on the beach and like surfing and just families coming together, those things have become so special to witness because they're so rare these days they

Jen Bisbee:

are and you know, as you said right before we jumped on here, the genie in the bottle. We can't put the genie back. And technology's brought really great things to us as well, even this connection today that we're having by technology through the pandemic, the covid pandemic, being able to zoom with our families. So our film is not an indictment of technology. It is a celebration of community. And so we have to figure out, as individuals, our own balance between our on and offline lives, and that, you know, surfing is a great metaphor for that.

Colette Fehr:

The process of creating this film, what did you become aware of in terms of how this balance of technology and personal connection is affecting particularly young people today?

Jen Bisbee:

Absolutely, and I love that question, and it's actually kind of a sad piece of the story. I can talk a little bit more about how we really want to tell our story in a way that's engaging and even injecting it with the humor and silliness that was hue as well. But you know, the statistics are getting really onerous, right? I picked up a statistic that in 2021 the American Journal of health and behavior noted that teens who spend more than two hours on social media reported being more isolated and lonely through the course of the nine years of producing this, sadly, I've seen this arc of things actually getting much worse, a lot of this, especially post pandemic, but even before that, and there's a lot of books that are starting to come out on this topic of loneliness and and how to really start to find ways really practical tips and suggestions, because we are, you know, of digital wellness or finding balance, because we're actually seeing more and more of this Unfortunately manifest in our teens and parents of small children, I talk to them, and they're concerned. They're worried. They don't know what all the answers are, yeah.

Laura Bowman:

And this goes to like Jonathan heights book, the anxious generation, and he's making some pretty drastic, you know, assertions around phone use for teens that we shouldn't even get started with, you know, these iPhones until what 16, or I mean, certainly not until after Middle School, where a lot of the damage occurs. And then social media shouldn't happen until after 16. And this should be like a parent driven thing, and getting phones out of schools, which I think will be a little controversial, but shouldn't be based on what it's really doing to kids mental health. And I see this every day because I work with a lot of young people in their 20s, and they are like the first generation that have been kind of a science experiment with this phone, and especially the girls, it's disproportionately disorienting to them, and how many of them live in these very strange bubbles of presenting themselves and feeling less than and it's, it's, it's huge problem it has been

Jen Bisbee:

that's a fantastic book, by the way. Yeah, I've read several in that lane.

Colette Fehr:

Yeah. I mean, my daughters are in their early 20s, and even though social media is integral to their lives now, they really did not grow up with the influence of social media or cell phones. This all started when they were in middle school to become a mainstream thing, and I think that alone protected them to a pretty great degree, whereas kids now are growing up with social media from the jump, every time I'm in a restaurant, I see little kids in their high chair on an iPad playing some computer game that hijacks their poor, little fragile brain on dopamine. And I don't mean to judge, because I used to put on a Disney movie and like that was my babysitter while I ran around my house. So you know, we're all just trying to get by, but we now have modern technology that, like you said, we cannot put the genie back in the bottle. It's here to stay. It has its positives, but it also can have an extreme deleterious effect on the young, burgeoning brains of our children, and we've got to find some way to balance this that is realistic for modern times, but also protects our children. Absolutely.

Jen Bisbee:

I was listening to Sanjay Gupta on CNN. This was maybe six months ago or so, and he did a whole thing on chasing life where you. Interviewed his own teen daughters. That's an interesting segment. But he also interviewed a licensed mental health counselor who specializes in digital addiction, not even a career that was had, you know, 1015, years ago, right? And he said something that really struck me. He said, We would never give our children a car to drive, without lessons, without a license, without some guardrails. And yet we're going to give children a phone with no guardrails whatsoever. And the technology industry is finally getting there, and there are some control methodologies and mechanisms for parents now, but there never, there wasn't right when this first came out, and so one of the things that's been really encouraging for us as filmmakers is that we know we're not alone in this lane between like books, like you mentioned Laura about Jonathan heights book, there's been many books. There's something called the Digital wellness Institute and other organizations that are cropping up that unify parents, families, organizations, thought leaders around how can we do this better for our kids? And so that's gratifying for for me and for my you know my fellow producers that we know we're in the right lane,

Colette Fehr:

and this is your mission with this film, right your your mission is to get this message out. There

Jen Bisbee:

it is. And the first step is always awareness, right? It's always awareness. Because we're going, going, going, we're in such a hustle bustle moment that this tidal wave has kind of swept all of us. And none of us are immune to this, even myself, you know, I I'm among everyone in this like, wow, I'm going down a rabbit hole. Wait, I need to go get in nature. And that going back to the film, we really kind of land on what he knew, what life was like in the analog days. It's kind of a sweet reminder. We know that we don't, we can't go back to those days. And we know that young people coming of age were never born. They're born in a digital native so they can't go back, but we all can figure out how to figure out this balance. The target audience for our film really are 30 and 40 year olds. My kids are in that age group where they're starting to have kids parents of young children and tweens and teens. They're really the number one target audience for our film because they're the ones who are grappling with this, but it's also anyone who loves documentary or the ocean. Hugh loved the ocean. He was a true Waterman. He spent every day in the water, whether there were waves or not. There's a great anecdote where his parents were he was raised in Jack's speech and his he was raised at the beach, and mom would stand at the porch and call him in off the ocean to come in for dinner. And he got one more minute. One more minute. He loved being in the ocean. And one of the many things that we can do to get off our phones is to get into nature, whether with community or on our

Laura Bowman:

own. I loved what you were saying about Sanjay Gupta's I don't know what his work is about, but I love the term chasing life. That's the name of his podcast. Yeah, yeah, okay. I just love it. I mean, it's like, we all have to chase life. You know, I hear Scott Galloway, who's a big advocate for young men. I love his work. And he says, you know, you need to spend seven hours a day outside your house, like, get out of the house. And so we we have to bring this back somehow for this younger generation of what is the Analog Experience? What is the nature experience? And there's a lot of friction for young people in getting that stuff to happen when they're so used to being in their room or being at their house and connecting on social or just YouTube. Oh my god, that the young men that are on YouTube constantly, it's not it's not real life, it's not real experience. I

Jen Bisbee:

sent you some variety of tips, and you know, we can post them. Hopefully you can post them on your website. Of ways people can get started, in what we hope our film can be is a thought starter, a talk starter, whether it's taken into camps or at schools or, you know, it's not a film that a teen should watch alone. Maybe the parent could watch the film with their teen and then begin a table talk, discussion around it. We're talking to corporations that are in this mental well being space to help us finish our film we're developing as we complete our film, and it's a great vehicle, even in the corporate world, for internal discussion, because companies are grappling with this, with their people too, right? There was a book 25 years ago called Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, the Collapse and Revival of American Community. And it's interesting, he's still out there in his 80s, on the same conversation around we used to go bowling in community. Back in the 60s and 70s, people would leave work and go bowling together. That was the metaphor. More, but how there's this been slow erosion of being together with our communities. Now, I'm not saying that people don't have affinity groups. They do, and this is, you know, it's not just about, you know, we don't have affinity groups. We just don't have as many of them. This isn't an old idea. This isn't a new idea. I should say it's just technology's really accelerated this challenge for all of us.

Colette Fehr:

I mean, the rates of anxiety among teens are up by 60% suicidality is up by 31% and it's the number two cause of death for adolescents, suicide. So to you know, we can't deny that there's a problem and that these things are contributing. And themes in this movie are about getting into nature and having community, having that face to face connection out in the wild that modern society is making more and more challenging. So can you go through some of those tips with us. Jen, often

Jen Bisbee:

it's just starts with, like I said, just awareness. First and foremost, you've got to kind of just know, Hey, am I finding myself feeling kind of lonely? Am I finding myself a little disconnected? Am I finding I'm not talking to my friends and family as often? I'm a big fan of mindfulness, you know, just kind of like accepting that, yeah, I'm here. A lot of these organizations do have these, like, fabulous tips on their website, but things like, ironically, using the phone, which there are apps that you can put on your phone that will alert you when you've been on your phone for a little too long. One of the things I think is so interesting is that the rise and the return of the flip phone, and some of the phones that don't even have apps on them are starting to rise in some people want to get on those phones. I think the New York Times had a reporter talked about how I broke up with my smartphone for a month recently. But yes, things like being mindful of getting yourself into a offline routine, whether it be exercise, whether it be I went on a boating day yesterday with some friends. Do I usually like meal prep and get ready for my week on Sundays? Yes, but instead, I chose to go be with friends. And so I think making time for others, getting in nature, being aware of your use, setting yourself up for success offline, would be some of the initial steps I'd recommend, and we can offer many

Laura Bowman:

more. Yeah, I've heard about gray scaling the phones too, like you can just put them, you know, so they're not as enticing. You can grayscale your whole screen, you know. Just little things make a big difference. I think

Colette Fehr:

many people know this, but perhaps it's worth mentioning explicitly that these phones with their colors and their pings and dings are designed for maximum dopamine release, which is the pleasure neurotransmitter. So it's really not that we're lazy or slackers. These devices are like, you know, free basing, high octane sugar or heroin. And this is why, even though most of us don't want to spend our time pulled into the phone, we can't help it. Even this weekend, I went to visit my daughter in college, and I'm always complaining that they're on their phone too much. And my daughter said, Mom, you're on your phone more than I am. And I thought, my God, you know what? Well, I'm just answering this and I'm just answering that, and I check it compulsively. It's sick. I do the same thing, and I'm aware that it's a problem. Yeah, it's terrible. But

Jen Bisbee:

my kids were tweens. I remember taking them to a show, and they were sitting in the row in front of me, and all the all of them were looking at their phones at the same time they were talking to each other, but they didn't consider it rude like we would, and that is both. It's a problem in a way, because the phone has become really part of their social fabric, or the and humor, as we know, is a big connector, you know, in any age group, but showing each other things on their phones, laughing together, it's very difficult to kind of unwind that piece of it.

Laura Bowman:

It has to be adult led, right? It has to be us, you know, having a little bit of and the arc of how this has all happened because we've, I didn't come up with the phone. I know neither of you did. So we have a little awareness of life before and after. So I do feel like it is up to our generation to kind of make real life exciting again, for our kids. That's

Jen Bisbee:

such a good point, and it's interesting. I heard about a recently, about a new Meetup group called Orlando offline, again, interesting words. Offline. Nine, just this notion of, I read that generation X has really started to reject dating apps, so the pendulum is swinging back to No, we want to meet in person, right? So there's hope, if you will, that people are starting to kind of get this and they we are meant to be together. You know, it's only been in the last 100 years or so, as Robert Putnam recognized, that we're not in these kind of villages and communities and tribes where we support each other, where multi generations live together. This is a modern problem that's coming in in many different ways and forces. And so again, I repeat, we don't this is not an indictment of technology. This is a celebration of how to get back and figure out our balance.

Colette Fehr:

And some of this is normal teenage behavior, like you said, is to laugh and connect. And when I was a teenager, it was being on the home phone with a third party line, and we would conference call our friends, and I would come home and watch General Hospital and Oprah and eat junk food, yeah, and then maybe do five minutes of homework, and then I'd spend the entire night on the phone with various friends talking about what boys we liked, what boys we hated, what boys we were gonna like tomorrow, and then conference calling them and pretending the other person wasn't on and being like, do you like Colette? Just tell me. I won't tell her while I'm listening. Like that was my whole life. I was on the phone from the time Oprah ended at five until like 1130 while reruns of cheers were on. So for those of you who remember those days exactly, even though you know you could, you could argue that this is the equivalent. I think the problem is now we have a technology. I'm not saying that's super healthy either, right? Because Gen X, we kind of raised ourselves. My parents were like, assumed I did my homework, nobody was checking anything, and I was happy to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. No surprise there. But now we have this stuff that's even more damaging to the brain than that was, so we've got to be more careful, and it does require some kind of parental involvement, which I know can be exhausting, to put more on parents than they already have on their plate. Now we've got to monitor not only our own social media, but that of our kids. But I think the cost is too great not to you know, what do you say to that

Jen Bisbee:

such a good point. I have a new grandson, and I babysat him for the first 10 months once a week, and because it was a workday, I found myself checking my phone. And now that he's a little bit older, he looks at the phone. And so I was really mindful of, like, putting the phone away. I want to be here with him. When I felt that I was, like, moving back toward looking at that, it was like, No, I've got to have some self control. So I agree with you. It is about the parents. It's about the parents and the grown ups in the room to really have some discipline and figure this out. But I see it. There's hope. For example, checking people put phones down when they're together at dinner, turning them leaving in their car, in the car. I've been in situations where I feel like I'm looking at my phone and I apologize to someone saying, I don't want to be on my phone. I want to be with you. I think even the most basic thing of just getting back to basics and really improving our listening skills when we're with one another and leaving our phones behind so we're really listening to each other and looking each other in the eyes and not letting the phone distract us off. If we can practice that ourselves, then we're modeling that for our kids too. And kids want to be out in the water. They want to be playing and splashing in the pool. They want to be running around, kicking a ball.

Laura Bowman:

Although what I see, because I work with anxiety a lot, and if you walk on a college campus, you'll see this, which is, you're walking between classes, and everybody is walking looking at their phone. And what that says to me is that there's all these awkward moments in adolescence and young adulthood, you know, where you have to talk or I make eye contact, and you don't need to anymore. You can distract into your phone, or you can pretend you're you know you're doing something. And I think that the younger generation is not getting the reps of feeling awkward the way you need to when you're young, and then learn how to talk to people, yeah,

Colette Fehr:

and it's a highly addictive crutch well and

Jen Bisbee:

our government and policymakers are starting to recognize that, and even the technology big powers are starting to recognize that. Google has set aside $20 million a year on digital wellness initiatives, and you would expect. They want them to but, I mean, that's a wake up call that they're recognizing, not only in their own product and some of the tools they're putting into their products, but in their communities. They're recognizing that they need to do more of this kind of support work.

Laura Bowman:

Thank God, Jen, talk a little bit about the like us, because I think the phones have done a real disservice, or technology in general media. And maybe we're getting too big here with the idea of media, but we're all in our own little silos of information. Even you know folks our age, I'm watching my mother's like friend group get polarized over political opinions and and we're all getting fed our own stuff. So I think that the foundation of connection is getting ripped apart at our level too. What it what do you say to older people who are trying?

Jen Bisbee:

I love this question so much, especially because being a PR professional, running my own PR firm in my day job, I like to say this is something we talk about all of the time. I will dial into and listen to other opinions. On purpose. I will go on other networks than the ones that I'm usually used to listening to, so I can just really hear the other side, tolerance and peace and understanding and all of those kind of important, macro ways of living our lives. I think we've got to get back to tolerance and understanding and listening to the other viewpoints. There was a really interesting article, and I'm trying to remember I posted on my LinkedIn page about how we're starting to get our information in silos. We get it from influencers like Scott Galloway, who I think Professor Galloway is fantastic. We get it from major traditional media outlets like New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. We get it from influencers whose pages we follow, because we might have a proclivity toward what they're talking about, Instagram, the hashtag enabled us to find our our affinity group down to the granular right. And I think the best advice I would give grown ups like us is trying to step out of your own circle and get into kind of, you know, listening is a big deal. Listening, not just talking to other viewpoints, to reach across to others in your get out of your own kind of community and into maybe more general communities, and that's what Robert Putnam talks about to this day, is don't just if you will be in your own silo, but try to be get yourself into groups where you're going to have maybe different political opinions, but you're both together on the ball field, like grown up softball. I'm on a tennis League. We don't necessarily like to talk politics on the tennis court. We just want to have fun playing tennis together. And through those those friendship bonds, all of a sudden it's like, wow, we can maybe agree to disagree politically, but we still really like each other

Colette Fehr:

more. I think there should be more tolerance for different views, and more of an attempt to step over and at least hear somebody else's perspective. You don't have to agree, but making an effort to be curious not just about their view, but how they arrived at their view, can really bring some understanding and connection. I mean, you know, as therapists, most of the people I know are extremely liberal. From where I grew up, most of the people I know are pretty conservative. You know, I consider myself moderate and independent, but that's a subjective term, and I like hearing different opinions. Some make me insane. They feel like nails on a chalkboard, but I'm still willing to listen to them, and I don't see that as a threat to my own beliefs. But you're right. In this social media era, it's become easier and easier to just only get this filtered, very biased news feed in either direction. And I don't know if you all know of Barry Weiss. Are you familiar with her and the free press newsletter?

Unknown:

I am. Yeah, she's

Colette Fehr:

fascinating. And the New York Times just did a big feature on her the other day. And she writes she's a liberal, San Francisco Ivy League educated lesbian. She describes herself as left of Pravda, if you will. But she is really committed to telling the unvarnished, unbiased truth, where things sometimes go too far. You know, she's trying to bring objective journalism back, and she's so well connected her newsletter The Free. Press is brilliant. So I find that I read The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, you'd almost think we live in a different world between those two papers, right? So I think it's important to get different perspectives. And you know, let me just ask both of you, because Jen, you've mentioned a couple what is like the number one thing that you're doing to move in your life, to move into interpersonal, authentic connection, and away from technology, I

Jen Bisbee:

have become much more mindful of time, and part of that just comes from getting a little bit older. You know, I find myself sometimes the senior professional in the room, you know, and it's like, wow. How did I get here? But I become more mindful of how I spend my time, and really wanting to be in real life with the friends and the family, and to make the time to do those things, making a plan to see a dear friend who doesn't live in town, you know, not just saying, I'm going to see you for lunch, but really making that lunch date and not just seeing it, because a month becomes three months becomes a year, and you don't see the people that you really want to spend time with. So it's starting for me being mindful and really making that proactive

Laura Bowman:

effort beautiful, definitely, and I've become, this has become such a central focus of my own life, because I've talked about it a lot on this podcast, but I'm really introvert. I mean, I'm really pretty introverted, and can live inside my house comfortably, a little too comfortably, but it doesn't really avail me of the life I want. And so I am so much more mindful of making that breakfast date, of saying yes to things that's gonna get me in the room with people and connected with people I wouldn't ordinarily talk to. And my friend and I just made a little plan to go to church together. I'm gonna go to her church that I'm not even like a member of but it's like, I am just creating a level of, like, spirituality in my life at this phase, and I want to do Sunday dinners with my kids. I'm like, Hey guys, you want to do Sunday dinners? I just want people to be grounded in a sense of community. It's like, all I care about at this point in my life.

Jen Bisbee:

Yeah, you bring up a really good point. I think post pandemic, it really got a lot easier for us to just stay home, be in our comfy, you know, athleisure and and call my friend and speak to them that way. I love that you're making the effort for Sunday dinner with your kids. Love

Laura Bowman:

that about you. Colette, what's

Colette Fehr:

your thing? Well, because I never have trouble, naturally, wanting to be out connecting with people. I need that as a massive extrovert like I need oxygen. So that's not my challenge. But my challenge is that I become anxious when I'm not checking my phone. I've just gotten habitualized to it. I'm missing something not like FOMO, like something's happened and I didn't see it, or I'm not being responsive enough. I'm a very responsive person, so this is a trap for me of responsiveness, because I'm someone who, if you message me, I want to message you back right away. It's just part of my work ethic and approach to life, but as a result, I can be enslaved to the device around the clock. So what I'm really working on is trying to, you know, put the phone away, really stay focused, not have to check it every five seconds. And what I would like to do in my home, and we're not there yet, but is come home, check the freaking phone, put it in the bedroom, on the charger, and maybe check it once before I go to bed. And that's it. That's my goal. It's not

Jen Bisbee:

an easy thing, because it's a siren song. If you're a pleaser, if you're somebody, you had someone on your show recently listened to the podcast about boundaries, creating healthy boundaries. Sometimes we have to create them with ourselves, right? I My aunt is my guiding light. She's in 85 years young. I remember when I had small children and started as a consultant. I'm like, How do you do this out of your home and not have the work call you and you're constantly going to it. And she said, you literally shut the door at six o'clock and you go be with your kids, and then once they're in bed, you go back and maybe get ready for the next day. And I think we all, as high achieving individuals, don't want to miss an email, we don't want to miss a text, we don't want to miss a mention. We don't want to be behind. But you know, in this always on culture, we're always going to be behind. We're never going to be caught up. There's just a in my business, we used to have deadlines. There's no such thing as a deadline anymore. And the creep around work and having to be responsive and having to be you. Clients or bosses wanting us all the time, no wonder so many of us are really stressed out and exhausted and overwhelmed with technology, and so we just have to create those boundaries. To say I'm off work at 530 I'm not back till tomorrow, setting up the expectations and then holding ourselves accountable too.

Colette Fehr:

I couldn't agree more. This conversation is inspiring me to really stick with what I know I should do. So, you know, as we talk about this, Jen and this movie is so beautiful, I want to ask you two things. One, is there any information for our listeners on when the film will be available? I've seen the trailer, and Laura has two it looks incredible, deeply moving and affecting. So we are

Jen Bisbee:

in Edit or completing our film. It takes a while to make a film, but we are completing our working on completing our film. My goal is to have it completed by the 40th anniversary of the Hugh Shaw Memorial, which is next spring, even if we have a really high level editor's cut. And then the next steps are to complete the film. We're developing our final finishing film. You go to what hunu.com and donate if even no small amount is too small. But we are looking for those larger corporate partnerships as well. We ultimately hope to find a partner that will stream it, whether it be a map, you know, a large streaming company or a small niche film, so that we can take it to the broadest audience. So hopefully, looking for this also sometime middle to next year, fantastic

Colette Fehr:

will keep us posted on excited to see it. Me too. And the other thing I was gonna ask you is, we've talked about a lot about the movie, but just as a final takeaway, what's one thing that you hope people can take away from this conversation, and that will ultimately take away from the film? Someone

Jen Bisbee:

said in the journey of creating our film, what Hugh knew, you know too, and what Hugh knew was the power of human connection, and that fundamentally, we're meant to be together. And so what I hope your listeners can walk away from this is to just touch back to the fact that we're meant to be together in person, in real life. Yes, we can use technology for those tools to stay connected, but we need to touch, we need to hug. We need to be in community. And that's really the ultimate message, is the celebration of community and being together

Laura Bowman:

and agree more. Yes, great preaching to the choir.

Unknown:

Even to

Jen Bisbee:

this day, I still get goosies, that same feeling I felt on the beach that day watching these friends together and saying, How can I share this with others? So I'm so grateful for the opportunity to talk to you today so that we can get this message out and we can complete our film, and we can get this message to the broadest audience possible. So thank you so much, and I love what you're doing. Your mission's so important too. Mental, well, being there just isn't anything more important right now, connection

Colette Fehr:

and mental wellness. So Jen, thank you so much for being here. We are going to have information on what Hugh knew and the books that we mentioned in this episode all at insights from the couch.org and keep checking back for more updated information. And if you liked what you heard today, and we hope you did, please share the episode with your friends. Give us a five star review so we can get these important messages out to everybody. And we hope you enjoyed our insights from the couch you.