I get lots of sales calls and some of them are from the East Coast so I didn’t answer when I saw someone calling from New York. I checked my voicemail later in the day. I had received a phone call from CNN Business asking to interview Unhustle™.
Emotions starting running through me. I was excited and nervous at the same time. CNN? When you live in an airstream by the beach, a phone call from CNN is pretty out of place.
The message said they hand’t heard back from me on their email response. WHAT? I didn’t see an email from CNN? How could I have missed that?
I paused. I listened to the phone message again. I couldn’t understand the last name very well. But I wanted to return the phone call ASAP. Not a very mindful moment for me. I mustered all my entrepreneurial courage and called the number in the voicemail.
“Can I speak with Jeanne, please” – I asked sheepishly.
“Jeanne who? What department?” – a real deep, soothing man’s voice asked me.
“Department? Um. I’m not sure to be honest.” – I felt smaller and smaller as time went by and the silence got longer. The man on the other side searched through his contacts.
“Well, Ma’m. I don’t know who to connect you with. We have thousands of people working here. When you find out the last name or the department call us back.”
I thanked him for his patience. I blamed my own stupidity thinking it will be so easy to find someone in CNN by their first name only. I listened to that voicemail one more time. I wrote down the last name and digged through my emails. With 4 email accounts and hundreds of emails coming in daily, it’s challenging to stay on top of them. I also practice what I preach to establish technology boundaries. No, I don’t have Inbox Zero. I never have and I never will. And I’m OK with that. But right now, I wanted to find that CNN email. Thankfully, the search function in Google works pretty well.
I called back a lot more confident this time. I had a full name and a department.
“CNN Business, please. I’d like to speak with Jeanne Sahadi.” – I clearly stated in the phone with the most professional voice I can muster.
The same deep, soothing voice replied: “One moment, Mam” and connected me to the journalist.
“I’m working on a “digital detox” story and how it affects entrepreneurs and business leaders”, said Jeanne.
Perfect, I thought. I have a lot to say about that. We chatted for what it seemed was a really long time. Our conversation included my personal story. A 10 day unplugged vacation in Baja which turned my own life around and was the beginning of the Unhustle movement. Then, we went into discussing what technology does to our brain.
Did you know that on average people touch their phones 80 times a day? Some even go as high as 2,600 touches a day. Dealing with constant technology distractions and information overload did impact my own performance. I have improved a lot since then but it continues to be work in progress.
Business leaders who practice unplugging and mindfulness perform at a higher level. Being present, in the moment, engaging in powerful listening creates powerful leaders. When we are present, we create inner freedom to allow for positivity and infinite possibilities.
We discussed my observation of people coming to Baja and engaging in unplugging. With all the activities here to do, they have little time to be always connected. Plus, the slow Internet definitely helps people stay tech free for their time here. Once they become present and aware, they finally start to enjoy life. They live life in the moment. And they become a lot happier.
Read the entire CNN interview
2 Comments
Love this Milena ??
Thank you very much Tia!