The Art of Manliness - #68： Thrive With Arianna Huffington

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00:01:06.520 And now, to the show.

00:01:24.400 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Now, the way we

00:01:30.780 define success in America, especially, is power and money, right? The more power, the more money you

00:01:36.500 have, the more successful you are. The thing is, though, oftentimes when people pursue these things,

00:01:42.980 they realize that those power and money, it's a lot more, the feeling of success is a lot more hollow

00:01:48.540 than they thought it would be. And in fact, people find that their lives are actually the worst for

00:01:53.860 just striving for just those things. They're stressed out, their relations with their family

00:01:59.620 have eroded, they're burnt out, and they just don't feel complete or whole. Well, our guest today

00:02:06.920 has just written a book about redefining success beyond power and money. It's Ariana Huffington.

00:02:13.860 It might come to a surprise to some of you all. But she wrote a great book called Thrive,

00:02:19.340 the third metric to redefining success and creating a life of well-being, wisdom, and wonder.

00:02:24.440 In it, she makes the case that we need to, yeah, think about success in terms of beyond power and

00:02:30.260 money, but also think about just our general well-being, our capacity to give and have a full

00:02:36.120 relationship with our family and friends. So we have a great discussion. I think you're going to enjoy

00:02:39.900 it. So stay tuned. Ariana Huffington, welcome to the show.

00:02:44.300 Thank you so much. It's great to be with you.

00:02:46.960 Okay, so your new book is Thrive. And it's all about this idea that you've been writing about

00:02:52.380 on the Huffington Post and having these conferences about the third metric, which is redefining success.

00:03:01.220 Can you explain to our listeners what the third metric is?

00:03:04.620 Yes. So the first two metrics of success that our culture has basically shrunk in success

00:03:15.300 down to are money and power. And what I'm saying is, right, is that in order to really thrive

00:03:23.680 and flourish and not just succeed, we need to include that third definition, that third metric,

00:03:32.200 which includes four pillars, our well-being, our wisdom, our capacity to wander at life, and

00:03:42.360 our capacity to give. And for me, these four things really, together with the first two metrics,

00:03:51.020 create a full life of real fulfillment and purpose and meaning and joy. I want to bring joy back into

00:03:59.920 our daily life.

00:04:00.880 Mm-hmm. So, I mean, you're a woman of great success. What inspired you to think about or start

00:04:09.540 thinking about this idea of the third metric? Was there a Genesis story?

00:04:12.900 Yes, there was a Genesis story. And in fact, I opened the book with a Genesis story because it was pretty dramatic.

00:04:21.700 I collapsed from burnout, exhaustion, and sleep deprivation on April 6, 2007, two years after we found that the Huffington Post.

00:04:32.320 And I broke my cheekbone and got four stitches on my right eye. And as I was kind of, as I came to, in a pool of blood on the floor of my office,

00:04:43.900 I started asking myself that question, you know, is that what success is? Because by any same definition of success,

00:04:53.260 if you're lying in a pool of blood, you're not successful, whatever society may say, in terms of the first two metrics.

00:04:59.480 Yeah. And then I looked around me and I saw that, in fact, it wasn't just me, that it was our culture generally that was suffering from burnout

00:05:13.460 and from what, you know, Mary Slaughter has called time marches, you know, this equation of being harried and overworked with machismo and manliness. 1.00

00:05:24.480 Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so, I mean, you go into great detail about some of the problems

00:05:29.220 that we're facing as individuals and as a society because we're so driven for power and money.

00:05:35.460 Can you, you know, just discuss a few of those issues that we're seeing as a society besides burnout?

00:05:43.620 Yeah. So, we will start with our health.

00:05:47.420 We see now that three quarters of our health care costs come from stress-related diseases, chronic, preventable, stress-related diseases.

00:05:59.840 And we see in our own individual lives, you know, we see the number of very successful men,

00:06:08.040 especially with heart attacks in the face, with high blood pressure, diabetes.

00:06:13.900 And we really need to ask ourselves, is this some kind of collective delusion that we're living under?

00:06:21.440 But the only way to achieve our dreams and accomplish what we want is by paying that heavy price in terms of our health.

00:06:33.580 And my answer is categorically no.

00:06:37.900 In fact, one of my favorite sections in the book is the one that has scientific study after scientific study

00:06:46.060 that shows that sleep, meditation, taking some time to renew ourselves, are actually performance enhancement, too.

00:06:56.880 And that athletes are using them more and more.

00:07:01.520 They're kind of ahead of the rest of us and ahead of business people in incorporating them because it makes them better on the court.

00:07:11.620 Yeah. And besides the health issues, you also discussed sort of the societal issues we're having, right?

00:07:18.200 Like a sense, like a lack of community, you know, some of the things, the things you hear people gripe about or complain about on talk shows and the like.

00:07:28.300 Yeah, exactly.

00:07:29.200 Yeah. How is that affecting our sense of community in our country?

00:07:33.460 Well, we see it all around us.

00:07:35.220 We see the lack of community.

00:07:36.720 We see smart leaders in politics, in business, in media making terrible decisions.

00:07:44.640 Not because they're not intelligent, but because they're not wise.

00:07:50.560 And we see the connection between touching deeper parts of ourselves and being able to make wiser decisions.

00:07:59.680 And we also see all the collective problems we are facing, like climate change, like growing inequalities, like the failed war on drugs.

00:08:09.460 And we all know that we need to do something different.

00:08:12.960 And we don't even know what to do, but we are not doing it.

00:08:17.080 Yeah.

00:08:17.600 Because we're too busy just focusing on the wrong things, I guess.

00:08:23.440 Exactly.

00:08:23.980 That's a very good lesson in it.

00:08:25.880 Okay.

00:08:26.580 As I was reading your book, the thing that kept on coming up in my mind was like, you know, it seems like, you know, social critics and philosophers and prophets, you know, since time immemorial, they've been admonishing us, right?

00:08:37.600 To avoid worshiping the false idols of money and power.

00:08:41.600 But the message never sticks.

00:08:44.220 You know, it's like 2,000 years later after Jesus said, you know, don't worship mammon, here we are.

00:08:48.560 We're still doing it.

00:08:49.780 Why is it so hard for us to, you know, not focus on money and power, even when we know it's not good for us?

00:08:56.600 Yes, and you know, neither you nor I are saying that there's anything wrong with money or power.

00:09:04.720 It's just that when there are the exclusive objectives of our lives, that we kind of basically shrink ourselves down to those two metrics and miss out the enormous possibilities we encompass.

00:09:19.040 But you're absolutely right.

00:09:20.940 It's not just that we forget philosophers and social critics from time immemorial.

00:09:28.060 It's also that we forget our own wake-up calls.

00:09:31.940 I mean, on my book, too, I've had so many people come up to me and say, you know, I was diagnosed with breast cancer or I was diagnosed with heart disease.

00:09:40.500 And immediately after that, I re-looked at my life, I re-prioritized what mattered, et cetera.

00:09:47.780 But now it's two years later and I'm fine and I'm back to my old ways.

00:09:55.320 And, you know, I honestly think that I might have done the same thing, but somehow something in me made me write this book and now I talk about it every day.

00:10:09.120 So I'm kind of...

00:10:12.300 There's a pressure to live up to what you're talking about.

00:10:15.680 Exactly.

00:10:16.140 But it's also harder to relax when I'm constantly kind of reminding myself of these messages.

00:10:24.640 That's why I say in the book that the world constantly sends us messages about making more money, climbing the career ladder, being more recognized or more powerful.

00:10:38.460 And we need to create our own daily ritual and a little tribe, a little support group to support us to also include the third metric in our lives.

00:10:49.740 And that's why we're at us so many small, microscopic steps that we can take to make this real.

00:10:59.300 You know, at the end of each of the sections, there are three little steps and they're very practical and they're very manageable and we can all do them starting today.

00:11:08.640 And then what happens, because that's what happened to me, is that you begin to feel the reward, you know, the reward of actually waking up in the morning and feeling really recharged and ready to face the day and ready to deal with all the obstacles and challenges that every day brings.

00:11:29.640 Yeah.

00:11:30.640 As opposed to driving yourself through the day like a zombie going from one thing to the other because you're too exhausted.

00:11:40.720 Yeah.

00:11:41.540 You know, I've had the same experience you have where like I'll get on, I'll start doing the things I'm supposed to, I know what to do, like getting more sleep and meditating and volunteering.

00:11:51.200 But then I always backslide. And I think part of the problem that I have is that, you know, like money and power, it's like you there's a concrete metric, right?

00:12:00.740 You can look at your bank account and say, hey, I'm doing pretty well because I have X amount of dollars.

00:12:05.420 Or you can look at your title at your in your job and say, oh, I'm advancing up the career ladder.

00:12:11.680 It's a little fuzzier with, you know, well-being like and, you know, general domestic happiness or gross domestic happiness or whatever.

00:12:18.560 I mean, you can say, I'm feeling happy, but then you kind of forget about it because you can't, I don't know, it's hard to like make it make it concrete and real.

00:12:27.360 I mean, do you have any suggestions on making that like make, I guess, measuring those metrics of happiness and well-being where it's like actually concrete?

00:12:36.620 So it's similar to like, you know, your bank account, right? You can see it and like, I'm doing well.

00:12:40.380 So that's a great point. And, and I know that what makes it more concrete is becoming more aware of our own state of being.

00:12:52.240 Let me give you an example. Look at how we treat our smartphone.

00:12:56.980 We are very aware of how much battery is remaining because you get these alerts, right?

00:13:02.540 Let's just say, if you have an iPhone, 20% of battery remaining or 17% of battery remaining.

00:13:10.160 And by about 13%, I personally begin to get worried.

00:13:14.080 I look around for a recharging shrine where I can plug my phone and they're everywhere, like in our homes, our offices, the airport.

00:13:24.060 And what if we could treat ourselves as well as we treat our smartphones?

00:13:30.320 What we would need to do is to, you know, increase our awareness of how we're feeling.

00:13:35.700 Because that's really what you are saying. At the moment, we are very fuzzy about it.

00:13:39.960 And, I mean, I clearly was so completely fuzzy that I didn't even know that I was, I was running on below zero battery when I collapsed, right?

00:13:51.620 Yeah.

00:13:51.900 And I think if we can increase our awareness, and if we can also have a group around it.

00:13:58.420 So when I say group, it can be one person, two people, a colleague, a friend, a relative, who can actually act as our own alert system.

00:14:07.460 Who can say, you know what? You look exhausted.

00:14:11.700 Or you're sounding like you're reacting to everything that happens to you.

00:14:15.300 You know, you're getting angry at the slightest thing.

00:14:18.080 I mean, we can make a list.

00:14:19.680 In my life, I have a list of barometers.

00:14:23.280 One of them is how upset do I get by things going wrong?

00:14:28.040 Because things go wrong every day, even in the most blessed of lives, right?

00:14:34.220 Yeah.

00:14:34.400 So if I can, when I'm centered and recharged, it's almost as though I'm bigger than all the things that can go wrong.

00:14:42.880 I can sort of expand to include them and maintain that center that Marcus Aurelius, who after all was the emperor of Rome, as well as being a stoic philosopher, he called it the inner citadel.

00:14:56.460 And he said, you can be in your inner citadel no matter what happens.

00:15:02.480 It can't reach you there.

00:15:03.640 You can deal with it, but you don't let it affect your own peace.

00:15:09.280 You are kind of, you know, in the eye of the hurricane, if you want.

00:15:13.900 Yeah.

00:15:14.380 And that, for me, is a very tangible measure of when I am leaving from the third metric and when I'm not.

00:15:23.120 So, yeah, just your general resilience to the daily problems of life.

00:15:29.600 Exactly.

00:15:31.440 The daily ups and downs.

00:15:32.840 Yeah.

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00:18:05.840 And now, back to the show.

00:18:07.220 So, in your book, you mentioned a few of these suggestions on how to overcome burnout, and you've talked a few about a few of them in the podcast, like sleeping and meditation.

00:18:20.280 What are some—I mean, there's too many we can talk about, but what do you think are the most, I guess, the suggestions you think if people started using today, they would notice an immediate change in their life?

00:18:32.000 Okay, well, the first step that I recommend at the end of the well-being section is that unless you are one of the few wise people who get all the sleep they want, meaning all the sleep they need, because you cannot oversleep.

00:18:45.000 You can overeat, but you can't oversleep.

00:18:48.140 Start by getting 30 minutes more than you are getting now.

00:18:51.540 And I have 55 pages of scientific endnotes, because I want to convince the most stubborn skeptics about these things, that sleep is, for example, like a wonder drug.

00:19:05.400 It affects our health, our creativity, our mental clarity, how fast we age, everything.

00:19:11.680 And so that's why we need to deal with this sort of macho belief that sleep is for losers, you sleep when you're dead, you know, all these things that we say to each other.

00:19:25.940 And the assumption that somehow sleep deprivation is some kind of a really good symbol.

00:19:31.540 I actually have been in the diary with a little blouse that he had only gotten four hours sleep the night before, and I wanted to say, but I didn't say it.

00:19:39.660 You know what, if you had gotten five, you'd seen it would have been more interesting.

00:19:44.140 Well, you're right.

00:19:44.780 We glorify that, right, the lack of sleep.

00:19:47.600 We glorify, yeah.

00:19:47.820 You see blog posts, like on Forbes or Business Insider, saying, these CEOs only get by in four hours of sleep, and that's supposed to be a good thing.

00:19:56.240 Yeah, and I was actually, I was speaking at Tufts University, and I was with a very successful CEO who, after saying that she only got five hours sleep, she admits that she does not remember the last time she was not tired.

00:20:14.320 And I hear that a lot, and it's so sad, because the difference between going through life tired and going through life recharge is huge.

00:20:26.400 Yeah.

00:20:26.700 And not just in our enjoyment of life, but also in the decisions she makes.

00:20:33.120 I quote Bill Clinton in my book, who said, all the important mistakes I made in my life, I made when I was tired.

00:20:41.180 We did not specify what mistakes, but we can all identify.

00:20:45.840 I certainly can.

00:20:46.960 And another thing that I know we can't go through all the steps, but there are 12 specific steps, three at the end of each section, but another one which I think may probably be very relevant for your listeners is learning to disconnect from our technology, all our technology, all our devices at the end of the day.

00:21:09.500 So for me, what I say is, at the end of the day, turn off your devices and gently escort them out of your bedroom.

00:21:20.540 Charging your smartphone by your bed is not a smart idea, because if you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom for whatever reason, you are going to be tempted to look at your data.

00:21:30.960 Yeah.

00:21:31.160 And if you look at your data, your sleep will not be as recharging as it needs to be, and as it wouldn't be otherwise, and it's just not worth it.

00:21:40.780 And I have a lot of substitutes for an alarm clock.

00:21:43.860 You can buy one from Pottery Barn, a beautiful vintage-looking one for $32.

00:21:49.440 If you need to be reached, because let's say you're a news editor or your children may need to reach you, you can, I have, that's what I do.

00:21:57.020 I have an old-fashioned phone with no data, but if there's an emergency, people can bring it, or you can have a landline.

00:22:07.580 Can you imagine that? Maybe you can bring the landlines back.

00:22:10.340 Yeah, I actually installed an app on my phone that blocks the rest of my apps except for the phone capability for certain time periods.

00:22:20.960 Like when I'm with my kids in the morning and at night, I can't look at my phone to check email or anything like that, but I can get phone calls.

00:22:28.920 That's helped me a lot.

00:22:29.580 Oh, that's so great. I'd love to know. I don't know about that app, but it would be great if you can put it on the site, and then I can share it with our readers, too.

00:22:37.500 Yeah, it's been great. It's totally kicked the habit that I had of just constantly checking.

00:22:42.820 And you also, in your book, at the end, in the appendix, you give a lot of, speaking of using technology to help us wean ourselves off technology,

00:22:50.560 you provide all these apps and services that can help us, I guess, manage our technology use a bit better.

00:22:58.580 Exactly, because technology is addictive.

00:23:03.600 I have picked my favorite 12 apps that can help us avoid destruction, and my 12 favorite apps that can teach us to meditate,

00:23:13.540 as well as my 12 favorite apps that can help us learn where we want to give our time, resources,

00:23:22.080 you know, just kind of explore all the possibilities that we can match ourselves and what we want to do with the greatest needs.

00:23:36.020 Yeah, actually, I learned about a few new ones that I'm already using now, so thank you for doing that.

00:23:41.980 Great. Thank you.

00:23:43.480 So, one of the sections that called out to me, because we've written about this, we've talked about it a few times on our site,

00:23:48.820 was in your section on Wonder, you wrote about Memento Mori.

00:23:53.780 I think for our listeners who aren't familiar with it, it's this idea of meditating upon death.

00:23:58.100 But you talk about how, as a society, we really don't think about death anymore, and that's to our detriment.

00:24:06.220 And by meditating on death or thinking about it, we can actually become happier in some small way.

00:24:12.600 Can you talk about how Memento Mori can help us lead a more flourishing life?

00:24:18.340 Yes, absolutely.

00:24:19.300 And, in fact, Socrates, you know, the Greek philosopher, said, practice death daily.

00:24:26.740 And he didn't mean it in a morbid way, but precisely in the way that Romans used Memento Mori, remember death.

00:24:34.680 And actually, they carved M.M. on statues and trees to remind people.

00:24:40.880 And I think the way I use it, and I use it every day, is basically not to sweat the small stuff.

00:24:50.920 Yeah.

00:24:51.900 Because when I'm getting upset about something, I just literally, now it's become like a real habit.

00:25:01.640 I can remind myself, you know what?

00:25:04.340 This life is so short, and we don't know how it ends, either for us or for the people we love.

00:25:09.720 But really, is this worth it?

00:25:12.480 Yeah.

00:25:12.960 Is it worth being upset about that?

00:25:14.980 And I would say a hundred times out of a hundred, it's not worth it.

00:25:19.940 And I say that even for big things.

00:25:22.100 Like, I mean, I had a big crisis in my life, and I write about it two years ago.

00:25:26.660 And my oldest daughter was a senior in college two months away from graduating that involved in drugs.

00:25:33.880 And I got to call every parent, you know, mommy, I can't breathe.

00:25:37.540 And even then, as a big travel to emergency room, as she was wet on her recovery, I kept feeling so grateful that she was alive.

00:25:49.920 Yeah.

00:25:50.520 So again, that just made it possible for me to put what we were going through in perspective.

00:25:58.420 Yeah, that's a, you know, that's a Stoic idea as well.

00:26:02.600 The Stoics counseled us to think about our child being dead, because it makes you enjoy having them with you at that moment.

00:26:12.320 You never know when they're going to go.

00:26:14.560 So it makes you appreciate it.

00:26:15.280 Right, and it even makes you, yeah, and it even makes you enjoy them even when they're misbehaving or doing things you wish they hadn't done.

00:26:24.240 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I really love that idea of momentomori.

00:26:28.820 And I think, you know, I thought it was interesting you just talked about how, as a society, we're just so uncomfortable with death.

00:26:33.460 Like, we just hide it away, you know, don't even want to think about it.

00:26:38.400 But it's such a natural part of life, and I think we're missing out on something by not making it a part of our life.

00:26:45.220 So Thrive seems to be directed towards women. 0.97

00:26:49.500 You talk a lot about how, you know, women have gotten to the workforce, but as a consequence of sort of following this kind of masculine drive for power and money, they've run into some problems that didn't imagine they were going to have.

00:27:03.880 But the advice you give and the suggestions you give are for both men and women.

00:27:07.680 I'm curious to get your insight on this.

00:27:09.460 How has our culture's constant work and drive for power and money affected women and men differently, or has it even done that? 0.92

00:27:20.720 And if so, oh, go ahead.

00:27:23.940 Yeah, first of all, I would say that the message is equally applicable to women and to men.

00:27:32.240 The reason why I think that women have, in certain areas, to lead the way is because the way the world has been designed now, focusing on the first two metrics of money and power, has been primarily designed by men. 0.83

00:27:52.620 So now I think a lot of good men are helping redesign it.

00:27:56.860 And there is a plethora of men to use as role models.

00:28:01.260 And I quote a lot of them in the book, you know, Mark Bertolini, the CEO of Etna, who discovered the benefits of meditation, yoga, and acupuncture.

00:28:11.960 So she's there, because she's making a scheme, actually, and then made them available to these 49,000 Etna employees, and then brought Duke University to actually put a number on the improvements, exactly back to what you were saying, actually making this metric less fuzzy.

00:28:31.300 And Duke University said that there was a 7% reduction in healthcare cost, a 69-minute improvement in productivity every day.

00:28:43.020 So that's what helps.

00:28:44.600 And men are really good at making the metrics less fuzzy.

00:28:48.740 And I quote a lot of other men who are integrating these practices in their lives to kind of integrate the third metric in their lives and their businesses.

00:29:01.980 And so I feel that, like with every shift, this global shift we're going through, we have these early adopters, and there will be men and women, because also sometimes women feel they have to outmatch a man in order to succeed.

00:29:20.920 And you have women who have to succeed, women executives, congratulate each other for working 24-7, et cetera. 1.00

00:29:32.420 So I think it's not so much a matter of gender, but how comfortable you are with yourself in order to begin to be part of this cultural revolution, really, that's going on.

00:29:47.600 Yeah.

00:29:48.320 I think, yeah, you're right.

00:29:49.880 It's for everyone.

00:29:50.480 But I feel like men are going to have a harder time, I guess, embracing a thrive mentality, because we're so socialized and ingrained to be like, you need, you know, get money, get power.

00:30:01.520 That's the only thing that matters.

00:30:03.360 Do you have any ideas on how men can kind of overcome that obstacle in embracing the third metric?

00:30:12.000 I think they should go straight to the sports section in the book.

00:30:15.820 And they can find it easily by looking in the index for names like Bobby Bryant, LeBron James, Andy Murray.

00:30:27.660 Yeah.

00:30:27.920 You know, they can look for some of their beloved stars and find them there, and they can see what they're doing in their life.

00:30:39.540 Because after all, for athletes, it's all about winning, right?

00:30:43.820 It's not about anything else.

00:30:45.100 Yeah.

00:30:45.640 Yeah.

00:30:45.940 And they and their coaches have clearly recognized that when they integrate these practices, these new attitudes into their daily lives and into their coaching, they are much better on the court.

00:31:07.640 They are more likely to win.

00:31:09.020 And there is a great way that this was summed up by Andy Murray in an interview with Charlie Rose.

00:31:14.360 But I think a lot of your listeners who are now, business owners and managers, may be able to respond to it.

00:31:25.340 And he said that when he's recharged and really rested and he's on the court, the ball comes at him in slow motion.

00:31:34.400 And I love that as a metaphor for our life, because when we are juggling everything, you know, when we are managing multiple things and managing crises, et cetera, sometimes we feel overwhelmed.

00:31:50.500 And he says that everything is coming at us all at once.

00:31:53.780 And if we can change that perception, it's kind of amazing how much it magnifies our leadership potential.

00:32:01.560 Very good.

00:32:02.040 So, Ariana, time has come to an end.

00:32:06.240 Where can people find out more about your book, Thrive?

00:32:09.860 So, if you go to HuffingtonPost.com slash Thrive, there's a lot of information, interviews, the whole introduction that people can read.

00:32:20.580 And I would love to invite your listeners to tell us their stories, put them on your site, cross-post them with us.

00:32:29.300 And this is just about opening up the conversation.

00:32:33.440 And we started the hashtag, How I Thrive.

00:32:36.440 And we asked people to share their stories, because it's like sharing recipes.

00:32:42.420 It's kind of, I learned from little tips, little practices that others are using, little rituals.

00:32:49.280 And I often incorporate them in my life and vice versa, I hope.

00:32:53.680 Well, very good.

00:32:55.320 Well, Ariana Huffington, thank you so much.

00:32:56.940 It's been a pleasure.

00:32:59.380 Thank you so much.

00:33:00.480 Thank you.

00:33:01.020 Our guest today was Ariana Huffington.

00:33:04.000 She's the founder of the Huffington Post and also the author of the latest book, Thrive, the third metric to redefining success and creating a life of well-being, wisdom, and wonder.

00:33:12.760 And you can find that on Amazon.com or bookstores everywhere.

00:33:18.600 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:33:22.200 For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com.

00:33:27.540 And until next time, stay manly.

00:33:30.200 We'll see you next time.

The Art of Manliness - May 17, 2014

#68： Thrive With Arianna Huffington

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