3. Arianna Huffington on What Is Essential Now?

SPEAKERS

Arianna Huffington, Greg McKeown

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Transcript

Arianna Huffington

Okay, we’ve made it work.

Greg McKeown  

It’s amazing, isn’t it? All the steps we need to go through!

Arianna Huffington  

The conversation will be the easy part.

Greg McKeown

Yeah, exactly. I feel like any learning that any of us have make us experts, because we’re all so new at some of these technologies we’re using now.

Arianna Huffington 

But we kind of love it right? I mean, I never want to go to anything else.

Greg McKeown

You’re enjoying the changes?

Arianna Huffington

Yes.

Greg McKeown  

You seem, I know you’re literally at home, but you seem at home at home to me?

Arianna Huffington  

Yes, I am. I’m at home at home. Let me first of all, though, start by saying how much I love you and your work, and how completely and urgently important more than ever your message is now. And we can discuss that in more depth in our conversation. And yes, I feel that all my life, I have really worked and, sometimes more successfully and sometimes less so, to be connected with something deeper in myself. And at a time like this, we all have to- it’s like it’s very hard to get through these times, navigate the time of unbelievable uncertainty. And without being connected to a deeper place, centering ourselves, which is a place of strength and peace and wisdom and trust. And nobody that I know lives there all the time, but we all have access to it.

Greg McKeown  

You’re saying that really these times call forth that kind of reaction within us?

Arianna Huffington  

Absolutely. And we need it, it’s always important. It’s always for me, and at the heart of a good life, you know, of a life that actually focuses on the essentials. But right now, without that the levels of anxiety and stress become really hard to bear.

Greg McKeown  

It’s like we’re all involuntary essentialists now.

Arianna Huffington 

Yes, exactly. Those of us who have chosen it are more at home than those on whom this is thrust.

Greg McKeown 

Yeah, that that’s right. You know, in a crisis, everyone’s an essentialist. But those that chose to be essentialist earlier, still have the advantage of being more familiar with this. And there’s less disruption in a time of discombobulating disruption.

Arianna Huffington  

Exactly, because for so many of us, for most of us, actually, and to some extent for all of us, you know, being busy and living in the shallows and relentlessly and breathlessly going through our to do lists was the way we lived. And it’s now very hard to live that way and we will pay a much, much heavier price if we do.

Greg McKeown 

I agree with everything that you’re saying here. There’s something you said earlier about “all through my life,” you said and then “the good life.” And it puts me in mind to a question I wanted to ask, because we could go through the bio right best selling author of Thrive and 14 other books and the founder of Huffington Post and founder CEO now Thrive Global. I could do all of that, but somehow that misses the more important bio; the story. And if you’re willing, I’d like to do it in an unusual way. I’d like to do a sort of intergenerational bio. It doesn’t have to take that long, but I’d like you just to start me off right at the beginning. And I mean, by the beginning, actually, just tell me about your grandparents.

Arianna Huffington  

So, my grandparents were all Greeks and on my mother’s side Greeks, from Georgia, in Russia. My mother was born in Greece, and met my father when she was recovering from TB. And he was recovering from having spent the Second World War in a concentration camp in Germany because he was a journalist, and he had been writing against the German occupation. So they came together in this very raw circumstances, and my mother definitely has been the foundation of my existence in every respect. She definitely was an essentialist, Greg, she would have loved you. And she had a real sense of what mattered in life and at a time when I was totally swallowed by everything I was doing, she kept reminding me of her favorite expression, which was “don’t miss the moment,” and she kept reminding me of what mattered. So that was kind of the way I was brought up. Also, she was the one who always encouraged me to go for my dreams, but always made me feel that if I didn’t succeed, it didn’t matter. Life is about more than success in material terms. In fact, we have a podcast called Meditative Story and mine is about this pivotal moment when, with her help, I applied to go to Cambridge.

Greg McKeown  

Yes. Tell me about that.

Arianna Huffington  

Well, it was one of those kind of magical moments when I saw a picture of Cambridge University in a magazine and I told my mother I wanted to go there. And everybody else I said that to said “Don’t be ridiculous, you can’t go there. You don’t speak English. You don’t have any money. Even English girls have a hard time getting into Cambridge.” But my mother said “Let’s find out how you can learn English and how we can get a scholarship.” It was an adventure, you know, it was never like we must make that happen. It was like- let’s try that and then if it doesn’t happen, we’ll go on another adventure.

Greg McKeown

But she was a believer with you. When this little moment- this sort of revelatory moment, comes to you, this possibility that seemed against all odds was born in you, she supported you.

Arianna Huffington 

Yeah the whole point was go for it, and go for it 100%; but with that peace of mind that if you don’t get into Cambridge, it’s not the end of the world.

Greg McKeown  

I’m really touched by that story, surprisingly emotional about it because I had an experience when I was a little older than you were at that time, a couple of years older, and I was with my wife. We’d actually gone to church and somebody there mentioned that they were at Stanford Law School. And that was like, it was like an absolutely crescendo moment for me. I never spoke to them or anything else, but just what if that’s where I should go. And that was so unrealistic for me at the time. My GPA did not support that sort of thinking. But it was a material moment, a game changer, yes. It sounds like Cambridge was an early game changer for you.

Arianna Huffington  

Yes, exactly. A complete game changer because suddenly I started thinking and writing in English, which, obviously if you want to have a message that resonates with a lot of people, it’s hard to do it in Greek.

Greg McKeown  

Yeah, that’s really true. And also, but I’m now extrapolating here, but also just the sense of possibility. If you can go from Athens to Cambridge, against all odds, then why not the next dream that’s put in you? Why not something else that’s marvelous? Has it been like that for you?

Arianna Huffington  

Yes, absolutely. And also, and just as important, I think, it’s not being afraid to take risks, which is what often stops us from going after big dreams. And in a way, you know, when I left the Huffington Post to go back to launching another startup. I mean…

Greg McKeown  

Right.

Arianna Huffington  

It would have been very easy to say, as a lot of my friends urged me, “Why are you doing that?” You know, “Why do you need to take such a big risk? What if it doesn’t work?”  But I think that’s what following your heart and seeing an unmet need, which is what so often drives me, means. Yeah, I’ll take the risk and so what if I fail? And that takes us back to what is a good life. And that was really the point of Thrive, you know, the book I wrote. In terms of just money and startups, then yes, you are much more reluctant to take risks. But, if you define it in terms of having an impact and constantly evolving and gathering more wisdom, then why not?

Greg McKeown  

I love that. I don’t think I’d ever made that connection before in the working Tribe. Fill those in, that aren’t familiar, with the story that sparked the Thrive book, and then of course, from there, the Thrive movement. Tell us about the story that you begin Thrive with.

Arianna Huffington  

So I begin this story with collapsing, two years into building the Huffington Post. A divorced mother of two daughters, I hit my head on my desk and broke my cheekbone. And that was like one of those moments in life that nothing is ever the same again. I’m a bit of a research nerd, so I started researching burnout after I got my own diagnosis; after multiple echocardiograms, and MRIs to see what was wrong with my brain, or my heart, and got the diagnosis- burnout.

Greg McKeown  

It’s good news and bad news.

Arianna Huffington 

Good news and bad news. Actually, I had a great doctor who collected it all. And he said to me: “The good news, it’s burnout. The bad news is, it’s burnout. You have to change your life.” And that really was just a more revelatory moment because I saw that burnout was a disease of civilization, and that hundreds of millions of people around the world are suffering from it, many with infinitely worse consequences. So many of the chronic, pre-existing conditions that we are now focused on because of their impact on the severity of the corona virus infection, like diabetes, hypertension, obesity, stress, of course, are all so connected to burnout. If you include mental health, we have the data now that shows 90% of chronic diseases and mental health conditions are based on our behaviors. A lot of these behaviors are based on the way we lead our lives in this breathless, stress-induced way where we don’t value the basic things, like sleep, like movement, like cultivating mental habits that are focused more on gratitude rather than on anxiety.

Greg McKeown 

It’s almost like we’ve been put in timeout right now. The sort of gentle way it’s like a mother or father saying to the teenager “Look, you just go to your room and you think about that for a while.”

Arianna Huffington  

Oh I love that. We’ve been put on timeout for bad behavior.

Greg McKeown  

And there’s an opportunity, and maybe it’s even more than an opportunity in the sense that it’s only if we pick it, it’s like, we are going to be changed by this.

Arianna Huffington  

Yes.

Greg McKeown  

I’m not sure exactly how but the status quo has been attacked, and whatever we do next is going to be different based upon this.

Arianna Huffington 

Absolutely. And it’s also the Chinese ideogram of crisis and opportunity. I’m taking this breakdown and turning it into a breakthrough. And, you know, what makes me so optimistic, Greg, is that big changes like the one we’re going through now never happened with everybody coming along. We only need a critical mass of people and that’s how change has always happened. So as long as you have a critical mass of people recognizing that we need to live and work differently, we are going to come out of that in a new normal that is so much more powerful and exactly what humanity needed.

Greg McKeown

What does somebody do right now, in your view, to thrive?

Arianna Huffington  

Well, right now, what is very important, and I wrote a piece on that, actually, that took your word, about the Coronavirus that is forcing us to ask what is truly essential to our life.

Greg McKeown 

Mm hmm.

Arianna Huffington  

So we need to ask that question. And also, we need to take what at Thrive we call “micro steps.” Nobody’s going to be able to change overnight, but small steps that affect our mental health, that affect our physical resilience, and immunity are absolutely key. And let me just give you some of my favorites: establishing a cutoff point when we stop consuming news around the Coronavirus. I read one of the things you wrote about how, instead of consuming constant news and junk, you’re reading big books.

Greg McKeown  

Yes.

Arianna Huffington  

I mean, that’s the time to do that. It’s like, what are we doing with our time? And also, how can we strengthen our own resilience and immunity? How can we make sure we get the sleep we need, which is harder and harder for people. We are launching, I’m not quite sure when this will air- so we are, on Tuesday, in the middle of April, we are launching a partnership with Audible, for example. And because, right now, sleep, which is foundational to our immunity, is harder and harder to come by for people because of the growing stress and anxiety, we are releasing, for example, a sleep meditation by Diddy, you know, Sean Combs.

Greg McKeown  

Right.

Arianna Huffington  

And it’s kind of amazing. It put me to sleep last night.

Greg McKeown  

Really?

Arianna Huffington 

Because he has this amazing voice, and it’s in his language. And the reason we did it with him is because there are so many people, especially so many African American men, and men generally who think sleeping, you know, it’s not for strong men.

Greg McKeown  

Right.

Arianna Huffington  

And as we see this disproportionate impact of the Coronavirus on the African American community; we wanted to reach people to help them understand that this is actually foundational to their health. And I love the counterintuitive idea of having Diddy do this meditation. And we have Nick Jonas do a meditation. So we want to actually use people who have a lot of influence to use that influence to convince people of what they need to do at all times, but absolutely imperative at this time to strengthen their health.

Greg McKeown  

I love what you’re doing. Is that, I was going to ask you, is that what is truly essential to your life right now? Turning that question that you posed in that excellent article that’s just blown up online, what is truly essential to your life right now?

Arianna Huffington  

Well, to me, what is truly essential on the personal level is that I show up every day at my best, and that means getting enough sleep and that means starting my day, you said with 20 minutes journaling. I start my day with my meditation before I go to my phone.

Greg McKeown 

Yes.

Arianna Huffington  

Making sure I have enough movement, and I can’t believe you and I have both given up on sugar.

Greg McKeown  

Well, you certainly feel good. Well, how are you feeling? You’re giving up, you’re giving up sugar. How are you feeling?

Arianna Huffington  

Oh, amazing. Absolutely amazing. And I don’t miss it because there’s so many great substitutes, like Greek pistachios.

Greg McKeown  

The Greeks need to employ you as the best ambassador for Greece in a long, long time.

Arianna Huffington  

But I love that. I feel, like you, that it’s easier for me to end something 100%, than to say I’m going to have sugar once a week.

Greg McKeown  

Yes, I do think that having a single decision- I once decided that for just for one year, I would just drink water and I wouldn’t drink anything else. It was easier to do that once than to have to decide and re-decide every time there’s an alternative put before me. Let me ask you this. This is a trickier question, but what is something essential in your life right now that, if you’re honest, you’re under investing in? Don’t overthink this, just first thought that comes to your mind.

Arianna Huffington  

Probably reading, philosophy, and the big books, Shakespeare, that I love going back to because there’s so much wisdom, and every time I go back to them, I’m in a different place and find different things in. Right now my life is very regimented in a good way. I do the things I said to make sure I show up at my best and most creative and most empathetic. I am very blessed to be here with my two daughters, and my oldest daughter’s fiance, and my sister, and Horacio who is a great Thrive Global colleague, who is helping me do everything I need to do on the work front, and Thrive has never been busier. So why Thrive was created, which is to help people and companies adopt healthier behaviors in order to be healthier, happier, and more productive, is now kind of essential.

Greg McKeown  

Mm hmm. Yes.

Arianna Huffington  

People before might see it as “nice to have,” but now they see it as a “must-have.” The demand for what we’re doing for a behavior-change product, for our services, has escalated to the point where we can’t hire fast enough to be able to deliver it. So that means that there are a lot of demands on my time, which I love. I’m not in any way complaining.

Greg McKeown  

You’re not complaining, you’re very grateful, but it’s still causing its own challenge when it comes to deep breathing in the way you just mentioned.

Arianna Huffington  

Exactly, because I find that getting all that done, and then having time with my daughters, going on our long walks, and having dinner all together, going to sleep in time to be able to get up…

Greg McKeown

Yeah.

Arianna Huffington  

And that’s fine, but that’s the answer to your question.

Greg McKeown  

Why does that deep breathing matter so much to you? I mean, you’re describing it as essential, which means it’s very important, why does that matter so much?

Arianna Huffington 

Because it always helps me put everything in perspective.

Greg McKeown  

Mmm.

Arianna Huffington 

And life is really like, it’s almost like, life consists of these two streams. One stream takes us out in the world, getting things done. Another stream takes us back into ourselves, to nurture ourselves, to put things in perspective, to remember what really matters. And deep breathing has always helped me do that.

Greg McKeown

Mm hmm. It centers you.

Arianna Huffington 

Yes, exactly. Like what you said about the inspiration you found in John Adams- different things inspire us in different ways.

Greg McKeown  

In the article that you were just talking about you, you quote Jacqueline Hidalgo, Chair of Religion at Williams College, saying “It’s not just about the end of the world, it helps us see something that was hidden before.” And then you add, “Indeed, apocalypse derives from the Greek ‘apocalypsis’ meaning unveiling, or revelation.” I love this and I’m wondering for you personally, have you felt an unveiling or revelation recently? And if so, what has it been for you?

Arianna Huffington 

I have felt it more as a deepening of a revelation. Because I’ve been a spiritual seeker all my life, you know. When I was 17, I went to India and studied comparative religion at Visva-Bharati University outside Kolkata. I’ve been meditating ever since I was 13. I am so profoundly aware of the fact that the essence of every spiritual tradition and every philosophy is the same- that we all have, by virtue of our birthright, that place of peace, wisdom and strength in us. Tapping into it and connecting to it in a deeper and deeper way is life’s ultimate purpose. So, I’ve always been conscious of that, but at a time like this, that consciousness is deepened.

Greg McKeown  

Do you feel guided by that process when you’re making decisions, when you go back to this moment that you were describing before when you could just go and maybe take the retirement path, so to speak you did this other thing. Did you feel guided to do that? Or was it just a logical thing for you?

Arianna Huffington 

No, I feel guided; I don’t know if guided sounds too grand. I feel connected with what I want to do in my heart rather than what may be the more rational thing to do, and I can’t ever imagine retiring. I love my work. I don’t see any division between my work and the rest of my life. I get so much joy from speaking to you now, or doing webinars for Salesforce, or Accenture, or any of our big clients, or building teams. So that’s- God, what would I do instead? Lie on a beach in the south of France? I would be bored to death.

Greg McKeown 

I remember Stephen Covey once said to me, he said that he believed that retirement, the idea of retirement, was like a sick concept. He said he had no interest. It was very similar to what you just said, that life is a mission more than a career. It’s not a career. It’s a mission. And if you happen to have a career as part of a mission, fine. So therefore, the mission never ends. You’re going to keep pursuing that mission. I remember that he told me that he interviewed Viktor Frankl, the author of “Man’s Search For Meaning,” right before Victor passed away, and he talked to him on the phone. And he told me that Viktor said, I mean, he’s literally on his deathbed, but he says, “I have a couple of really meaningful projects that I’m working on right now and I’m hoping to get them.” And that sense, of course, Viktor Frankl calls it logotherapy. But that sense of meaning and mission, I sense that in you. It’s not really really about Huffpost or even Thrive Global. It’s a mission and you’re living it in that way. Is that too strong of a way of putting it?

Arianna Huffington  

No, not at all. And I feel that having any kind of impact as we are changing the way we work and live, as we’re seeing the casualties of the old way of living proliferating is so key at the moment, and so needed. And that’s why I love that feeling of recognition when I read what you are writing, or essays right now. Like Arundhati Roy, the Indian novelist, I don’t know if you read her piece.

Greg McKeown 

I haven’t, tell me.

Arianna Huffington

She wrote such a beautiful piece in the Financial Times about how important it is for us to see this time as a portal- not as something that you need to get through to get back to where we were, but as a portal, as a rupture through the old times and the broken way of living. And now she said, “Let’s get through without all the baggage of the past, ready to imagine a new future and fight for it.” These were her last words.

Greg McKeown  

This is so beautiful. I thought, myself, recently that we have the Great Depression, we had the Great Recession. What I hope for this, is that we can have the Great Reset.

Arianna Huffington  

The Great Reset, exactly, that’s the key. It’s so interesting because in our behavior change-up, we have a feature that has become the most popular feature, called ‘reset,’ which was launched before the Coronavirus. It’s a 60 second reset on the grounds that science tells us that it takes 60 seconds to course-correct from stress. You know, that’s how long it takes for the cortisol hormone to course through your body. The rest of the stress happens in our heads. So, ‘reset’ asks the user to put together things that are joy triggers for them, that help them focus on what they love in their lives. Like in your case, or mine, it could be pictures of our children, our pets, a landscape, a great quote we love, music we love. Then we put it together for them, and anytime they’re stressed, they can play it.

Greg McKeown  

Oh, that is so brilliant. These are just perspective restorers.

Arianna Huffington  

Perspective restorers, and joy restorers. And so reset, you know, that we have the power to reset during the day. These moments of stress will come- they’re inevitable. But we don’t have to allow them to be cumulative.

Greg McKeown 

In the article that I loved so much, you quote Pope Francis in a blessing that he delivered while praying for an end to the Coronavirus. Here’s his quote- he says, “It is a time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not.” My question without trying to compare anyone to the Pope or anything like that, is just this: what would your prayer for the world be right now?

Arianna Huffington 

So my prayer for the world would be to remember what is a good life, to remember it now, not just on our deathbeds. So that we can live our lives in a way that is most meaningful, most essential, and also that gives us the most joy. I think joy is a barometer for me, a barometer of how I’m living my life. It’s no longer enough for me to be efficient and productive and get stuff done. I want to find the joy in what I’m doing because that, for me, is an indication that I’m on the right path.

Greg McKeown  

There’s an Indian philosopher who just recently said- it’s a very beautiful way, the way he puts it. He just said, “Before, people were complaining when they had to go to work; now they’re complaining that they need to be at home.” He says, “Please, have joy in the work, have joy when you’re at home. Otherwise, you’re going to miss the whole thing, no matter what the circumstances.”

Arianna Huffington  

I love that.

Greg McKeown 

Arianna, what a lovely opportunity to talk with you. I’m glad that you’re well. I’m glad that you’re safe. I’m glad, very very glad, that you are on this mission that you’re on to help us all to thrive. Thank you for your time today.

Arianna Huffington  

Thank you, and thank you for being on a very similar mission. I hope we can break bread together on the other side.

Greg McKeown 

Amen to that. Thank you again. Bye bye.