.JPG)
On the morning of April 6, 2007, Arianna Huffington found herself lying on the floor of her home office in a pool of blood.On her way down, her head had hit the corner of her desk, cutting her eye and breaking her cheekbone. She had collapsed from exhaustion and lack of sleep. In the wake of her collapse, she found herself going from doctor to doctor, from brain MRI to CAT scan to echocardiogram, to find out if there was any underlying medical problem beyond exhaustion. There wasn’t, but doctors’ waiting rooms, it turns out, proved to be good places for ask a lot of questions about the kind of life she was living. Earlier this year, I caught up with Arianna Huffington at a conference in Switzerland.
Greg: What was the genesis for the book Thrive?
Arianna: We founded The Huffington Post in 2005, and two years in we were growing at an incredible pace. I was on the cover of magazines and had been chosen by Time as one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People. But after my fall, I had to ask myself, "Was this what success looked like? Was this the life I wanted?" I was working eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, trying to build a business, expand our coverage, and bring in investors. But my life, I realized, was out of control. In terms of the traditional measures of success, which focus on money and power, I was very successful. But I was not living a successful life by any sane definition of success. I knew something had to radically change. I could not go on that way. And that is how Thrive came to be.
Greg: How did we get here? As a society I mean: what are the greater forces at play?
Arianna: Over time our society’s notion of success has been reduced to money and power. In fact, at this point, success, money, and power have practically become synonymous in the minds of many. This idea of success can work— or at least appear to work— in the short term. But over the long term, money and power by themselves are like a two-legged stool— you can balance on them for a while, but eventually you’re going to topple over. And more and more people— very successful people— are toppling over.
In the world of business, one of the primary obstacles keeping many companies from adopting more sane and sustainable metrics of success is the stubborn — and dangerously wrongheaded— myth that there is a trade- off between high performance at work and taking care of ourselves. This couldn’t be less true. And soon, the companies that still believe this will be in the minority. Right now, about 35 percent of large and midsize U.S. employers offer some sort of stress-reduction program, including Target, Apple, Nike, and Procter & Gamble. And those that do are starting to be recognized for their efforts, especially by employees. Glassdoor.com, the social jobs and careers community, releases an annual list of the top twenty- five companies for work- life balance: “Companies that make sincere efforts to recognize employees’ lives outside of the office,” said Glassdoor’s Rusty Rueff, “will often see the payoff when it comes to recruiting and retaining top talent.”
Greg: What is the most interesting research you came across in writing this book? Something which made you say, "Wow!"
Arianna: One point that really struck me had to do with gazelles. They run and flee when there is a danger— a leopard or a lion approaching— but as soon as the danger passes, they stop and go back to grazing peacefully without a care in the world. But human beings cannot distinguish between real dangers and imagined ones. As Mark Williams, a psychology professor at Oxford, explains, “The brain’s alarm signals start to be triggered not only by the current scare, but by past threats and future worries…So when we humans bring to mind other threats and losses, as well as the current scenario, our bodies’ fight-or-flight systems do not switch off when the danger is past. Unlike the gazelles, we don’t stop running.” Now my screensaver is a picture of gazelles – they are my role models! But Thrive explores many of the ways modern science is validating ancient wisdom, so there were a lot of “wow” moments!
Greg: What are 3 things people can do (or deliberately not do) to make the shift to thriving?
Arianna: Thrive is designed as a bridge,to help us move from knowing what to do to actually doing it. Here are three simple steps each of us can take that can have dramatic effects on our well-being:
1. Unless you are one of the wise few who already gets all the rest you need, you have an opportunity to immediately improve your health, creativity, productivity, and sense of well- being. Start by getting just thirty minutes more sleep than you are getting now. The easiest way is to go to bed earlier, but you could also take a short nap during the day— or a combination of both.
2. Introduce five minutes of meditation into your day. Eventually, you can build up to fifteen or twenty minutes a day (or more), but even just a few minutes will open the door to creating a new habit— and all the many proven benefits it brings.
3. At the end of each day, let go of something that you no longer need— something that is draining your energy without benefiting you or anyone you love. It could be resentments, negative self-talk, or a project you know you are not really going to complete.
Greg: Big question here and a bit of a shift, what do you want your eulogy to say?
Arianna: What I know for sure is that our eulogies have nothing to do with our resumes. Even for those who die with amazing Wikipedia entries, whose lives were synonymous with accomplishment and achievement, their eulogies focus mostly on what they did when they weren’t achieving and succeeding. They aren’t bound by our current, broken definition of success. Have you ever heard anyone eulogized by saying, "George was amazing. He increased market share by one-third!"?
Arianna Huffington is the chair, president, and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of fourteen books. In May 2005, she launched The Huffington Post, a news and blog site that quickly became one of the most widely-read, linked to, and frequently-cited media brands on the Internet. In 2012, the site won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. In 2013, she was named to the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. In 2006 and 2011 she was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people. Originally from Greece, she moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge University with an M.A. in economics. At 21, she became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union. Thrive is her 14th book.
Greg: What was the genesis for the book Thrive?
Arianna: We founded The Huffington Post in 2005, and two years in we were growing at an incredible pace. I was on the cover of magazines and had been chosen by Time as one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People. But after my fall, I had to ask myself, "Was this what success looked like? Was this the life I wanted?" I was working eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, trying to build a business, expand our coverage, and bring in investors. But my life, I realized, was out of control. In terms of the traditional measures of success, which focus on money and power, I was very successful. But I was not living a successful life by any sane definition of success. I knew something had to radically change. I could not go on that way. And that is how Thrive came to be.
Greg: How did we get here? As a society I mean: what are the greater forces at play?
Arianna: Over time our society’s notion of success has been reduced to money and power. In fact, at this point, success, money, and power have practically become synonymous in the minds of many. This idea of success can work— or at least appear to work— in the short term. But over the long term, money and power by themselves are like a two-legged stool— you can balance on them for a while, but eventually you’re going to topple over. And more and more people— very successful people— are toppling over.
In the world of business, one of the primary obstacles keeping many companies from adopting more sane and sustainable metrics of success is the stubborn — and dangerously wrongheaded— myth that there is a trade- off between high performance at work and taking care of ourselves. This couldn’t be less true. And soon, the companies that still believe this will be in the minority. Right now, about 35 percent of large and midsize U.S. employers offer some sort of stress-reduction program, including Target, Apple, Nike, and Procter & Gamble. And those that do are starting to be recognized for their efforts, especially by employees. Glassdoor.com, the social jobs and careers community, releases an annual list of the top twenty- five companies for work- life balance: “Companies that make sincere efforts to recognize employees’ lives outside of the office,” said Glassdoor’s Rusty Rueff, “will often see the payoff when it comes to recruiting and retaining top talent.”
Greg: What is the most interesting research you came across in writing this book? Something which made you say, "Wow!"
Arianna: One point that really struck me had to do with gazelles. They run and flee when there is a danger— a leopard or a lion approaching— but as soon as the danger passes, they stop and go back to grazing peacefully without a care in the world. But human beings cannot distinguish between real dangers and imagined ones. As Mark Williams, a psychology professor at Oxford, explains, “The brain’s alarm signals start to be triggered not only by the current scare, but by past threats and future worries…So when we humans bring to mind other threats and losses, as well as the current scenario, our bodies’ fight-or-flight systems do not switch off when the danger is past. Unlike the gazelles, we don’t stop running.” Now my screensaver is a picture of gazelles – they are my role models! But Thrive explores many of the ways modern science is validating ancient wisdom, so there were a lot of “wow” moments!
Greg: What are 3 things people can do (or deliberately not do) to make the shift to thriving?
Arianna: Thrive is designed as a bridge,to help us move from knowing what to do to actually doing it. Here are three simple steps each of us can take that can have dramatic effects on our well-being:
1. Unless you are one of the wise few who already gets all the rest you need, you have an opportunity to immediately improve your health, creativity, productivity, and sense of well- being. Start by getting just thirty minutes more sleep than you are getting now. The easiest way is to go to bed earlier, but you could also take a short nap during the day— or a combination of both.
2. Introduce five minutes of meditation into your day. Eventually, you can build up to fifteen or twenty minutes a day (or more), but even just a few minutes will open the door to creating a new habit— and all the many proven benefits it brings.
3. At the end of each day, let go of something that you no longer need— something that is draining your energy without benefiting you or anyone you love. It could be resentments, negative self-talk, or a project you know you are not really going to complete.
Greg: Big question here and a bit of a shift, what do you want your eulogy to say?
Arianna: What I know for sure is that our eulogies have nothing to do with our resumes. Even for those who die with amazing Wikipedia entries, whose lives were synonymous with accomplishment and achievement, their eulogies focus mostly on what they did when they weren’t achieving and succeeding. They aren’t bound by our current, broken definition of success. Have you ever heard anyone eulogized by saying, "George was amazing. He increased market share by one-third!"?
Arianna Huffington is the chair, president, and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of fourteen books. In May 2005, she launched The Huffington Post, a news and blog site that quickly became one of the most widely-read, linked to, and frequently-cited media brands on the Internet. In 2012, the site won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. In 2013, she was named to the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. In 2006 and 2011 she was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people. Originally from Greece, she moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge University with an M.A. in economics. At 21, she became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union. Thrive is her 14th book.
