In this video Shaun Whynacht recounts a recent vacation to the Dominican Republic where he and his group took a catamaran to Saona Island, explored a natural pool, and spent several hours on a pristine beach without any cellular or Wi‑Fi connectivity. The forced disconnection made him notice a dramatic increase in his sensory awareness—visual details, sounds, smells, and the overall experience felt richer because he wasn’t constantly checking his phone. He reflects on how modern notifications create a sense of urgency that hijacks attention, and he shares the personal habit he’s cultivated: keeping his phone on silent with no vibration and allowing only key contacts to ring. Shaun then proposes a practical experiment for viewers: set the phone to airplane or silent mode for a full day (or longer), inform important contacts in advance, and resist the urge to check social media or email. He argues that intentional disconnection revitalizes perception, reduces stress, and can be integrated into daily life in small, manageable steps.
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Hey everyone, I know it's been a while since I've been on here. I took a trip, took a trip last week, went on vacation down to Dominican, and I have a story for you today. While I was there, we decided to go on an excursion. And if you've never gone south to stay at a resort, that basically means you, you're leaving the resort to go do something, and there's many different excursions that you can do. Of them are ATVing, some are swimming with dolphins and that stuff. We decided to take a catamaran to an island called Saona Island, or Saona, it's hard to say. Saona Island, um, beautiful island known for actually being a filming location for Pirates of the Caribbean, for one, or a couple of the scenes there, as well as the 19— I think '80s or '90s movie Blue Lagoon. And I think a Cottinelle commercial. But regardless, it was a beautiful island. We took this catamaran, we stopped in what's called a natural pool, which if you don't know what that is, I didn't know what it was, but phenomenal. It's in the middle of the ocean and it's about waist-deep crystal clear water. The water was like teal, waist-deep. We got off the boat for about half an hour, floating bar, all that kind of stuff. Truly, truly amazing. White sand on the bottom. So anyway, got to the island and got off the boat, had to walk through the water to get to the shore, hiked probably about 10 minutes in. They had a buffet there. We had about 3 hours on the beach with hundreds of other people, and then at the end of the day came back on the boat, back to the shore, another hour boat ride back, and then bus back to our resort. Great adventure. Now here's the thing, the thing that stood out. It wasn't until we got back that we realized something. We were truly disconnected from the world that entire day, from the moment leaving the resort. And the reason for that was when we traveled there, our cell phones don't work there on a cellular network, so we were relying on Wi-Fi, which was only on the resort. The moment we left, we had no Wi-Fi, we didn't have internet access or anything. Now, we had our phones to take pictures, Here's the observation about the difference, was that we noticed so much more. Everything visual, every sound, every smell, every experience, because we weren't checking these things all the time. So, why do we let these things distract us? You know, I had a call today with some colleagues, and we talked about this. And the idea that we should be putting more of our lives on airplane mode because the ability to disconnect, truly disconnect, the inability for outside influence to reach you is Breathtaking. It's revitalizing. It's amazing. So I would challenge you to think about that. How much are you letting technology distract you? I know personally myself, I put my phone on vibrate— sorry, not vibrate, on silent with no vibration, none of the haptic stuff or buzzes or anything like that, mainly because just the sound of it going ding, whether it's an email or a notification or whatever, has this sense of urgency, this sense of I need to find out what it is. When it doesn't happen, completely stop. Now you can in your phone set your key contacts that if they call you, it will ring, uh, so you don't have to worry about missing that. But that is something that I had done for a long, long time, and it's helped a lot with that because then it's up to you to check it when you need to, um, and when you want to. But when you don't have the ability to check it, you forget about it. Right? You are heightening your other senses. You know, it's the same thing as if you were to sit in a room in complete darkness and have a conversation. You would be forced to rely on what you can hear more so than what you can hear and see. Same thing if you lost your hearing. Your sense of vision would get heightened. You would see things. You would be looking for things that are completely different. So what can you take away from your, your current day-to-day? Doesn't mean every single day you have to not have a phone, but I would challenge you to try this in the next month is let people know, let the key people know, so if they don't reach out to you and they can't get you, nothing's wrong. But say, you know what, I'm gonna go cell phone free today. You're gonna wake up in the morning and you're going to turn it off. You're going to turn it off and you're going to go through your entire day. And if you can, maybe you can make it through the entire night and then turn it on the next day. But if you can't, it's okay if you turn it on, you know, just before you go to bed if you want to check and make sure nothing was urgent. Um, but that doesn't mean you find other ways. You don't go on your computer and check your Facebook and do all that kind of stuff. You truly want to disconnect. And I guarantee you, you will notice things that you haven't noticed before. So, I ask you this: are you truly ready to enter your airplane mode?
