Gwen Bell

Today I spoke (and more to the point, listened) at BlogHer.

Below is the first part of the LIVEBLOGGED transcription with a link to the full transcription. May it be of use to those of you who couldn't be in the room with us. Thanks to Becky for capturing everything as it was said - I'm amazed at your talent!

I'm pretty spent energetically from presence practice the past few days. The conference has been a richly rewarding trip to San Diego. I'm always humbled by the amount of work that goes into this conference, and by the deep, even if brief, connections I make.

There are a few edits - I may make to the notes where I didn't speak clearly into the microphone - and I'd also like to add links, but for tonight, this is my best last push. Enjoy!

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>> GWEN BELL: Hi, everyone. We will start today by pulling in as near as we, as you are willing to come. I'm Gwen Bell and we are going to start today by first by powering down. So, as you know, this is Unplug, Unfriend, Unfollow, Unwind. Is that acrylic? And there is someone, Becky, is taking notes. She is recording every word I say, no pressure, and every word you say, no pressure to you either. So anything that's said in this session will be captured in fine, beautiful, fantastic detail, and as a result there is no need for you to take notes unless you are compelled to do so, in which case, well, we could talk about that over the next 90 minutes. So I would just like to start with a seated exercise, seated meditation exercise. So you will find your seat, take your seat, and pull away from the table a bit, give yourself some space. And we are just going to kind of arrive in the room. Just noticing your seat in the chair and the base of your spine, if you can close your eyes and visualize the base of your spine. Place your hands facing down or facing up, it doesn't matter, on your knees or your thighs. Roll your shoulders back down away from your ears. Just elongate your upper body while feeling your feet planted on the earth.

Just take a few seconds to check in with yourself and really arrive in the room. Notice how you are breathing. And you can notice thoughts passing through your mind, but no need to attach them, just like clouds, let them pass. Whenever you are feeling calm and relaxed, notice that sensation and fee if you can transfer that calming, relaxing sensation to other parts of your body.

The eyes soften, the face softens. Really this is about allowing whatever is rising for you, allowing it to arise and allowing it to fall away, and rather than attaching to a thought, simply letting it drift by. It might help to count, so when you inhale, breathing in, counting to yourself, one, as you exhale, counting to yourself, two. Inhale, three. So on to ten. And if a thought comes up, returning to one.

Now you might shift your focus to your breath and just notice how you are breathing right now. Are you breathing into your belly? Are you breathing into your shoulders? And if so, can you shift your breathing just slightly into your belly. So from belly into lungs and then from lungs exhaling out all of the air all the way down to the belly. And then opening the eyes. Welcome. So this summer I unplugged and I went into the forest search willing for fairies and found them. I take a digital sabbatical once a year, and I take a month, unplug, and go out into the world and experience it, no iPhone, no iPad, no computer, and when I come back on line Stephon Sagmeister, he takes one year off every seven years. He closes his design firm completely and unplugs. And he is one of the most famous and most influential designers in the world. So taking time off, the power of time off, I think, is kind of an undeniable fact, but there is a lot of fear around it. And that's what this session is about, the intention that I would love to set is for us to look at that fear and think about together creative ways to engage in a mindful way with our technology. So it's not just about unplugging to get off line or to say no to something, but it's about what are we saying yes to.

So that's the intention for this session. So thank you first of all for coming and for also taking some time for yourself at the conference to put down your devices and really look each other in the eyes. We are going to do some interactive activities and talk with each other, and you are welcome to take analog notes but, please, no texting or Tweeting from the session. If you would like to text and Tweet, please do step outside and honor the integrity we have created here today. So FOMO, fear of missing out. How many have felt that, FOMO? So what are we afraid to miss out on? That's what I want to get some feedback from you on. What are we afraid of missing out on? If we don't check in with Twitter or Facebook or Google circles or email, what are we afraid we are going to miss? You know what, turn to the person sitting next to you. I'm afraid I'm going to miss I'm afraid I will miss out on and tell your partner, one person and then we will take a few seconds doing that and then we will switch, and then the stem of the question is I'm afraid I will miss out on, and you fill in the blank. Stay with the stem, I'm afraid I'll miss out on. I'm afraid I'm going to miss out on be sure to stay with the question or the stem.

I'm afraid I will miss out on something cool. I just heard that. I'm afraid I will miss out on something important. Switch if you haven't already done so. I'm afraid I'm going to miss out on money, on earning, maybe. I'm afraid I'll miss out on all right. Let's hear from you. Let's hear from the group. What are you afraid of missing out on? Shout, Holly.

>> AUDIENCE: I know it's going to be a little bit counterintuitive to what we are doing but because this is audio recorded, I am going to have to scoot around and catch everybody. Afraid I will miss important emails from work.

>> GWEN BELL: Definitely.

>> AUDIENCE: And I said I have purposely not checked my email since I got here and already my co workers are a little disappointed not getting back to me instantly but I gave my computer and walkie talkie away to another co worker so I could come here.

>> GWEN BELL: What are you afraid of missing out on? Let's hear from other folks.

>> AUDIENCE: Social opportunities, I'm a social butterfly and you can't always get everything if you don't find it right now.

>> GWEN BELL: Okay.

>> AUDIENCE: I feel like I'm missing out on really big announcements these days if I don't check Facebook, birth announcements, I was one of those people I announced my pregnancy. And months later some of my friends were like I wasn't on Facebook, I didn't know you were pregnant.

>> AUDIENCE: Well, I was going to say opportunity and that includes social, but moreso just work, whether a work email, a Tweet to go out, anything, any type of opportunity.

>> GWEN BELL: So opportunity, announcements I'm hearing. I heard money when I was walking by, like, earning, okay.

>> AUDIENCE: I actually do social marketing for a living so my big thing for me, I work for make a wish foundation, so we have 270,000 people on Facebook and at nighttime I go to bed and something happens and I miss it. The next morning it is a little crisis to start off and then thousands of people took hold of it by morning it's a mess and I feel like anytime I see the littlest thing I will be like oh, my God, I have to handle this now before someone else sees this Tweet and I have a hundred to deal with.

>> GWEN BELL: So fear of missing out, fear of missing a beat, really.

>> AUDIENCE: The idea that something this big will become that big and I have to be the one that's looking all of the time.

>> GWEN BELL: Thank you.

>> AUDIENCE: Hi, this actually happened to me a couple of months ago, but I lost my iPhone a day before I was traveling to go somewhere and work and then there was no internet connection there so I was completely unplugged, not by choice. And I guess I felt like I was missing out on another life that I had, which was this immediacy and this life that actually was a virtual life because I was already living, like I was already with people living the life that I was supposed to be, where I was supposed to be, but it felt like I had this extended virtual family I wasn't taking care of. It's a weird family.

>> GWEN BELL: Fear of missing out on what the family is doing.

>> AUDIENCE: Not my immediate family, but my other life I have that unfolds on line.

>> GWEN BELL: Do you feel like you are living a dual life most of us in the room, a life of we are either plugged in or unplugged and we are having one life here and the real life here. Is that true for you, give me a nod. Is there someone in the room who teams like they have seamlessly, you have seamlessly, Carrie, can you speck to that?

>> AUDIENCE: So a year ago I had cancer, and I had no immune system so I basically couldn't leave my house, so I basically lived on Twitter. That was my only social engagement for about eight months other than my doctors and nurses and immediate family. And that turned into a new job for me at BlogHer. All of the people I have met on Twitter, they are some of the best friends I have in my life. I will be inviting them to my wedding next year. I sort of let go of my other friends and those are now my best friends.

>> GWEN BELL: That brings up something I would love to cover which is unfollowing or like letting go of friends who maybe don't quite yet what's happening in order to make room for new ones. Thank you for sharing what your fears of missing out on. Scott Belski has a term for when we are constantly checking our devices to find out what's going on, it’s called insecurity work. I remember when I first heard the term, I was really touched, and I was triggered, actually, I was sad because I knew it in myself that I do this kind of insecurity work. I want to know now whether or not someone has mentioned me. I want to know whether or not someone has Googled for certain terms on my site. I want to know whether or not there is an incoming crisis, to your point in the back. So this is a real these are real tender things that we are talking about here. So insecurity work, I think, that's one element of it. And the other is the fear of, fear of missing out. So now what I would like to invite you to do with a person at the table is to talk about the actually in fact I need you to change your chairs so that you are facing someone directly, so this isn't going to be a three person thing.

This is another little exercise that I think it going to challenge us a little bit more. It's, again, a stem, so you are going to be looking someone in the eyes, and you are going to start, you are going to start talking and you are going to tell this person who likely you have never met before we have someone who needs a partner. So what I would like you to do is first of all decide who will go first. I'm going to go first. You go first. Ready. And the person who goes first is going to start telling the person across from them the truth is, and then you fill in the rest. And you just, I just we are speaking from our heart here, so four words or four words to think on as we go into this exercise, they are the four tenants of counsel, so when we are engaging with someone or we are speaking, one is to speak from the heart, two is to listen from the heart, three be spontaneous, and, four, be lean of speech. So you are speaking your truth, and if you are listening you are receiving that truth just as it comes from the person. No need to introduce yourself. No need to say what your blog is, just speaking what it is your truth is today this moment, what's alive in you, so the truth is and go.

This exercise is really funny. The truth is and the other person, the other person listening is just listening. Let's go ahead and switch now. So if you were listening before, now you are speaking, just speaking the truth, what's alive in you. The truth is listening this time if you were speaking before.

All right, everyone, let's turn our chairs back to facing one another. Thank you. So what's alive in you? What sensation without sharing the truth that came out of your interaction, what's alive in you following that interaction? Any feelings or impressions that came?

>> AUDIENCE: Settled down.

>> GWEN BELL: You want to speculate on why you settled down.

>> AUDIENCE: The truth.

>> GWEN BELL: The truth set wills us, I'm sorry. Just impressions to what impressions or feelings arise in you following doing an exercise of that nature. And maybe we don't we don't need to go into comparisons. Would you share what you shared digitally, but just instead, what comes up when you do that kind of work looking into another human beings' eyes?

>> AUDIENCE: It's emotional so I said, okay, don't be surprised if I cry. It's emotional to look in someone's eyes and talk.

>> GWEN BELL: I would like to hear a few more things, before this session, Amy, she is sitting at the front and we met and she shared with me do you remember what you said about people looking at their devices.

>> AUDIENCE: I said, talking around this conference, I'm seeing, you know, people I recognize, but their heads are down in their devices and I feel like, well, they don't want to interact right now. So it's, you know, it's really hard to engage with people and part of me is thinking, well, it's okay if I don't run into them, I will see them on Twitter, so it's fine.

>> GWEN BELL: Wow, that's interesting! Okay.

>> AUDIENCE: I think it makes you vulnerable, and you get going with it and you realize, I didn't even say that to myself. Oh, Wow!

CONTINUE READING Liveblog: Change Yourself | Unplug, Unfriend, Unfollow, Unwind: Is that Sacrilege?