Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business
and life you love.
And I have a question for you, does trying to be a success ever feel exhausting?
I mean, we’re all connected to technology 24/7, and most of us feel a pressure to make
more money and gain more power and more recognition.
Well, if you’re anything like me, what you're really craving is a life that’s more sustainable
and more meaningful.
And if that sounds like you, you are in for a treat today because my guest is not only
someone I deeply admire, but she’s also on a mission to help us redefine success on
our own terms and create a life that’s filled with well being and wisdom and wonder.
Arianna Huffington is the chair, president, and editor in chief of the Huffington Post
Media Group, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of 13 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 Forbes most powerful women list.
In 2006 and again in 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 MA in economics.
At 21, she became president of the famed debating society: The Cambridge Union.
She serves on several boards including El Pais, Prisa, The Center for Public Integrity,
and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Her 14th book, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of
Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder, will be published by Crown in March of 2014.
Ariana, thank you so much for being here.
This is an incredible honor to have you here on MarieTV and in the midst of this incredible
new book, which, by the way for everyone, Thrive.
I’ve read it cover to cover.
I honestly believe with all of my heart this is a book that every human being on the planet
needs to read.
Thank you for being on MarieTV.
Thank you so much.
It’s such a lovely set and I love what you’ve done, so thank you for having me.
Let’s start with…
I mean, the fact that you are such an incredible woman.
I mean, your career has taken you around the world.
Most of your adult life you’ve been on the public stage and one of the stories you start
the book off with was in 2007 you found yourself in your home office on the floor in a pool
of blood.
What happened?
So I start the book like that because it really was the beginning of the journey that led
to Thrive.
It was April 2007, April 6, and it was 2 years after I had launched The Huffington Post and
you know how it is when you have a startup.
A lot of work getting the baby to grow and getting investors and getting the work done.
And at the same time I have 2 daughters and one of them was about to go to college.
So we had been on a college tour and our agreement was that I would not be looking at my Blackberry
while we were together during the day.
So at night she would go to sleep and I would start working.
So I came back home completely sleep deprived and exhausted and collapsed and fell on my
desk.
I mean, my head hit my desk, broke my chin bone, 4 stitches in my right eye.
But also it started me going from doctor to doctor trying to figure out if there was anything
more seriously wrong with me.
It turned out there wasn’t anything medically wrong but there was a lot wrong with the way
I was leading my life.
And so that started me on trying to define what success is because by external definitions
of success, I was successful.
But by any sane definition of success, I was not because I had undermined my health and
as I realized as I started studying the implications of sleep deprivation, I had also undermined
my ability to make good decisions.
Which brings me, actually, to one of your, what I feel, it was such a great piece of
advice and it was so fun when we get into the well being aspect of Thrive, which was
for everyone, of course, but especially for women.
Your recommendation for all of us to sleep our way to the top.
Which not only gave me a chuckle, but I wanted to thank you because I’ve been doing a lot
more of that lately.
Oh, so glad.
That makes me feel really good because I really profoundly believe that if you get enough
sleep and enough sleep depends on each human being.
Most scientific findings show that you need between 7 and 8 hours.
Some people need more, some people need less.
We know it’s when we wake up without an alarm.
So I went from getting 4 to 5 hours to getting 7 to 8 hours.
I became a sleep evangelist.
I talk everywhere about that, so much so that the Harvard School of Medicine’s sleep division
invited me to join their counsel and now I get even more information about the importance
of sleep.
And there’s so much science around it now, the connection between sleep and high blood
pressure and stress and diabetes and obesity.
It’s just amazing.
So at the end of the well being section where I give small steps that we can take to make
our life fuller, richer, and less stressful, the first one is start by at least getting
30 minutes more sleep than you are getting right now.
Whatever it is that you’re getting, unless you're one of the few wise people who get
enough sleep, you’ll see the difference.
And then that in itself will reinforce you into developing better sleep habits.
And I have a lot of tapes, as you know, about how you can ensure that you get a good night’s
sleep.
I always have a hot bath before I go to sleep because it just puts the day away and you
can really go to sleep leaving everything behind you and wake up recharged.
And key, key very important, not to charge your devices next to your bed.
Yes.
That is essential.
I have a device free zone around my bedroom.
You know, nothing is going to happen that cannot wait until the morning.
It’s so, so important, and I have to tell you how much I appreciate the message that
you’re sharing, especially around sleep, because as a woman who loves to study success,
I’m very driven myself, very ambitious, so much of my life I feel like I’ve been
given an opposite message, which is sleep less and you only need 4 to 5 hours.
And I have to tell you, it really…
it opened my heart and it really made a difference to me to have you share this message.
And Josh, my fiance, was thrilled because he’s like, you know, he’s paying attention
to what I’m reading.
He’s like, “What does Arianna say?”
And I was like, “I need to go to bed right now.”
So it's been awesome, so thank you for that.
That is, you know, I’m so happy when young women like you who have your whole life ahead
of you can actually begin these healthy practices because then everything is going to be affected
and you can enjoy your success instead of actually allowing it to undermine your health
and your joy because that’s the other thing.
When we’re exhausted, we drag ourselves through the day instead of enjoying the day.
Yes.
And on that same theme, we were talking in the book and I felt like I was having a conversation
with you, was about this idea of time famine and that really struck me, that phrase.
And something that I appreciated was how open you were about your own struggles with time,
your relationship with time.
And I’ve experienced that myself.
I love what I do so much and there’s times where I say, “I know what down time can
do for me, but I wish I had 48 hours in a day to get all of these ideas out into the
world.”
So what is time famine and how can we transform it?
Well, time famine is something that so many of us suffer from, and especially the fact
that we’re always breathlessly feeling that we are running out of time or we don't have
enough time.
And people value having enough time more than they value anything, including their careers
and their children.
It’s just amazing the difference it makes to our sense of well being.
So the key here is to prioritize what really matters.
Brian Andres has this great quote that I love, I’ve actually put on napkins.
It says, “Everything changed in her life the day she realized that she had enough time
for all the important things.”
And if we realize that, then some things will just not get done, and that’s just fine.
And a key thing here is our relationship with our email and sometimes we feel like we’re
the slaves of email.
Yes.
You have to finish everything, you have to respond to everything because we’re such
perfect, young women, in your case, and in my case much older.
But the point is that as women we have this idea of having to do everything perfectly
and that includes answering every email.
So, first of all, making sure we stop answering emails at least an hour before we go to sleep.
That is key.
Because then it’s like down time.
And I’d rather read real books, actually.
I love reading real books and underlining them.
I do too.
When I got my iPad I was happy about my iPad for the idea of traveling because I love to
read so much and I didn't have to have a whole other piece of luggage for my books.
But I will tell you, I read much more traditional books and I don't think I’ll ever give them
up.
There's something about holding it or being on the beach or being on an airplane and the
smell of a real book that’s just… it’s amazing.
And I think you have a genius tip, which I’m excited for you to share, about completing
things on your to do list that maybe have been lingering around for a while.
And when I read this in Thrive, I literally, I gave you a fist pump, I was like, “Yes,
this is awesome.”
Well, what I did is on my 40th birthday I did a kind of life audit and realized that
there were a lot of incomplete projects.
Things that I had said to myself I was going to do.
Like I really wanted to learn German because I have so many favorite German authors, it’ll
be great to be able to read them in the original.
I really wanted to become a good skier because I’m a terrible one.
I really wanted to learn to cook.
And then I suddenly had to acknowledge to myself that I was never going to actually
do these things.
So I came up with this phrase that you can complete a project by dropping it.
And so I that day completed German and cooking and skiing and now when my daughters, who
love to ski, want to go skiing I kind of sit by the fire and read a book and have some
hot chocolate.
And it feels great, I acknowledge this is it.
I was never going to be good at it.
Isn’t that such a freeing thing?
It’s kind of liberating.
It’s really liberating.
We do this a lot.
We have a big priorities list in our company with all the different projects we wanna do
and often times every 3 months or so we’ll revisit it.
And I can’t tell you the sigh of relief and the cheers that come when we look at something
that we previously thought we wanted to do and we say, “You know what?
Not true anymore.
We don't need to do that,” and the whole line goes through it and everyone’s like,
“Woo!”
It’s that idea.
And I love that you pointed that out that that’s just giving yourself permission to
let these things go.
And I think you touched on something so important before and it's so important for me, this
perfectionism.
And I know it’s something that I’ve struggled with my whole life, I have very high standards
for myself and my creativity, but it does come at a cost.
And, again, this book has been so important for me because I look up to you and I consider
you a role model and to hear the lessons that you’re imparting to us now, it’s just…
it’s such a gift.
So I wanna thank you for that.
Well, Marie, I find I’m much more creative when I’ve actually taken care of myself.
Because creativity comes from the depths and so when we allow ourselves to tap into that
wisdom, that intuition, we come up with our best ideas.
Yeah.
You know, as I started to complete the book, you talk about wonder.
And a topic that many of us don't talk about openly, and I realized I haven’t spent quite
enough time for myself talking about it with people I love, which is death.
And I was so touched by the story that you shared of your mom’s passing and her mantra,
“Don’t miss the moment.”
And I will tell you that just today before coming here to the studio to do this interview,
Josh, my fiance, he…
I went in to interrupt him, we work from home, and he’s…
I was about to run out because I was like, “Oh, I have a couple of more things to do,”
and he said, “No, no.
Sit with me for a minute.”
And I remembered that don’t miss the moment and I sat there and it was so wonderful because
it’s something I try and live by but it’s just a great reminder.
How did the experience with your mom and really tapping into wonder, how has that continued
to help you thrive?
Well, I actually dedicated the book to my mother because she lived what we call a third
metric life, meaning a life that goes beyond the first two metrics of money and power.
All her life.
And now that I’m coming to some realizations that she actually embodied her life, I feel
that the book is like a homecoming because I’m kind of rediscovering all her teachings,
many of which she actually passed on to my sister and me without words, just by the way
she lived.
And don’t miss the moment was one of them.
Another one was change the channel, darling.
And I you think I have a strong accent, you should have heard my mother.
Whenever we would get really worried or anxious or obsessing about something, she would say,
“Change the channel.”
And also my mother had no sense of hierarchy, she treated human beings all the same.
I remember when I was living in London I was dating a British member of Parliament and
one night he brought the prime minister to dinner and my mother had the plumber in the
kitchen dealing with a problem and asked the plumber what he thought of the Prime Minister.
The plumber said, “Not much.
Hasn’t been good for working people.”
So my mother said, “Oh, let me bring him here and you can tell him directly,” and
that was my mom.
That’s awesome.
And that’s why in the giving section of the book, I… one of the tips, one of the
steps, that I ask people to consider taking is to just acknowledge every human being they
come into contact with during the day because so often, like, the barista a the coffee shop.
If we’re in a hotel, the cleaning crew that we pass by as we go to the elevator.
We often don't acknowledge them.
And I think if we can just take a moment to make eye contact, to say hello, it just reconnects
us with ourselves and with that moment that we have.
Yeah.
So beautiful.
Arianna, I wanna thank you so much for writing this book, Thrive, and for taking the time
to be with all of us today because this has made a difference for me in just the short
time that I’ve read it and I am just honored for you to be here and to share this message
with everyone.
Thank you so much, Marie.
Thank you for having me.
Now Arianna and I have a challenge for you.
Which of the tips that we talked about today is gonna help you thrive the most?
What really impacted you and what can you take action on starting right now?
As always, the best discussions happen after the episode over at MarieForleo.com, so go
there and leave a comment now.
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