Super Soul Special: Arianna Huffington: What Will Be Your Spiritual Wake-up Call?
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My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.

My friend's still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be.

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I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time. Taking time to be more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.

Whether she's tweeting, writing a best-selling book, or speaking to sold-out crowds around the world, media mogul Ariana Huffington has always had a way with words. Born in 1950, Ariana grew up in Athens in a humble one-bedroom apartment.

From the time she can remember, Ariana says she felt drawn to the spiritual. She started praying as a toddler. By the time she was 13, she learned meditation from her mother. These practices would be the foundation of a lifelong spiritual journey.

In 1980, Ariana moved to New York and over the next three decades made a name for herself as a best-selling author and a sought-after political commentator. In 2003, she ran for governor of California as an independent. She ended up dropping out of that race, but it was during her campaign that Ariana first tapped into the potential and power of the digital world. It sparked an idea to create a progressive news blog and thus launched in 2005 the Huffington Post.

While Ariana became a fixture on political talk shows and 24/7 news channels, her life was 24/7 as well. And it was that struggle, trying to balance the competing demands of career, family, and personal well-being, that served as the inspiration for her latest book, Thrive. So good to see you. And you know why? Because finally someone has said out loud what so many of us have been thinking. We are killing ourselves.

We are running ourselves into the ground. We are in pursuit of wealth and power and fame in a way that we've never experienced in the world before. And it's really hurting us.

It's really hurting us. I think we're all sort of caught up in it. And the fact that you've written a new book called Thrive, love it, love it, love it, but that you wrote it after you nearly killed your own self. Yes. Really? Yes, it was after my own wake-up call. Yeah, your own wake-up call. And because I'm this obsessive type A personality, I had to really...

get a bad wake-up call. I mean, thank God, not bad enough to be life-threatening, but I actually collapsed from exhaustion on April 6, 2007, two years after I had founded the Huffington Post. I hit my head on my desk, broke my cheekbone,

I got four stitches on my right eye. I was very lucky I didn't lose my eye. - Didn't you sort of, you went unconscious and then woke up and you were in your own pool of blood? - I was in a pool of blood, yes. And then, in a way, what was worse is that I had to go from doctor to doctor, from MRI to echocardiogram,

to find out what was wrong with me. You know, did I have a brain tumor? They didn't know what was wrong. And they discovered there was nothing medically wrong with me, but just about everything wrong with the way I was leading my life and what I was prioritizing. And, you know, doctors' waiting rooms are great places to ask life's big questions. Well, you get some time there. To ask super Sunday questions. Yes, the big questions, yeah. And so, you know, I was asking myself, is this success?

You know, by conventional definitions of success, I was successful. By any sane definition of success, if you are lying in your own pool of blood on your office floor, you're not successful. Because you are so exhausted. Because you are so exhausted that you collapse. Unbelievable. Because you feel that happening. And you know, one of the things I was thinking as I was reading the book Thrive and sharing it with other friends--

who are not as successful as you or as I. And they were saying, well, easy for you and Ariana to talk about not pushing yourself so hard after you've already pushed yourself so hard and gotten to be successful. But what we're going to talk about is that there are really simpler,

things that you can do to slow it down, just to slow it down. And actually the most important thing I want people to get is that there is no trade-off. Yeah.

Like, I have looked back at my life. The biggest mistakes I made were when I was exhausted, when I was overreactive, when I missed an opportunity, or when I missed a red flag. There's a wonderful quote on page 118 that really exemplifies, I think, what I've said many times on this show, that no experience really goes wasted. From Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius.

That true understanding is to see the events of life in this way. I love this so much. You are here for my benefit, though rumor paints you otherwise. And everything is turned to one's advantage when he greets a situation like this. You are the very thing I was looking for.

Truly, whatever arises in life is the right material to bring about your growth and the growth of those around you. Everything contains some special purpose and a hidden blessing

What then could be strange or arduous when all of life is here to greet you like an old and faithful friend? That is so beautiful. I love that. And Marcus Aurelius was the emperor of Rome. Yes. And you see a man who also recognized that life is shaped from the inside out. And that was what he tried to communicate.

And you had to literally get knocked on the head to get that. To get it, yes. I was not as smart as Marcus Aurelius. But you were carrying this quote around before, were you not? Yes, well, that's the other thing. Yeah. That intellectually... Yeah, me too. I had

acknowledged and accepted a lot of things before I had really implemented them in my life. That's why I wanted the book to be full of practical little steps because I don't want people to say, "I agree with you." I want people to take these tiny little steps, really, really easy, and live it. - And start to live it. - Yes. - In her best-selling book, "Thrive," Arianna Huffington says, "We must redefine success beyond the two factors of money and power and include something she calls the third metric."

Arianna says the people who are truly thriving in their lives are the ones who make room for what she calls the four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving.

Now it's interesting in Thrive you talk about when you were setting up Huffington Post you were working 18 hour days seven days a week. Now you just shared with us that if you had thought more about yourself and not allowed yourself to be as stressful that you could have accomplished the same thing. How could you have done it differently do you think? Oh absolutely. I first of all

If I had gotten enough sleep, I mean, I like to get it down to really practical steps. For me, what they call the keystone habit, you know, the big habit that I changed that made everything else easier to change was sleep. Was sleep. I went from four to five hours sleep to seven to eight hours sleep. Now, how did you do that? I just prioritized it. You know, when you collapse and line your own pool of blood, it really...

grabs your attention. And I said, this is my priority. So that changed everything. You know, I would wake up recharged. I would wake up, you know, ready to

face whatever life brought me. But the other thing that people do, which I stopped doing after my fall, was to sleep with a smartphone next to their bed. I know. You told me that you not only don't sleep with it next to your bed, you, Arianna Huffington, have a time where you shut off all the devices. Yes. And you remove it from your bedroom. Pick a time when you shut off all your devices and gently escort them out of your bedroom.

My bedroom is a device-free sanctuary. I only read real books in bed and underline them, which I love. - Mm-hmm, me too. - And then if I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, whatever, I'm not going to be tempted to look at my data. - Oh, that is what I do.

I'm going to stop it. Yes, please. But that is what I do. And also, I found if you really want to wake up, it's so stimulating that you're awake. Yes. So disconnecting from our technology, to reconnect with ourselves is absolutely essential for wisdom. Yeah. And I really love this idea so much, Ariana. Have a certain time where you shut off.

Literally shut it off where you're not looking at it anymore. Because I read the average person is looking at their devices 150 times a day. And you have people now who go on vacation and they come back more exhausted than before. And then I'm also a big believer in napping.

I know you have-- Two nap rooms at the Huffington Post. I know. And this is-- when I read that, I thought, but who wants to be caught in the nap room? That's how it used to be. We've now had them for over three years. Yes. Now they are perpetually full.

And I think we'll have to start a third one. You know, there's that thing that hits you at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Have you been in meetings where you can tell it must be 4 o'clock? Because I think I'm going to. And so instead of taking, giving yourself more chai or caffeine. Or cinnamon buns. Or cinnamon bun. Or whatever it is at the moment.

Take a nap, because that's what your body really wants. You can nap 20 minutes. Well, most people cannot take a nap in the middle of the day. Well, I think that's where we need to take workplace culture. Yeah. Because people need to realize we are paying people for their judgment, not their stamina. Yeah. And sometimes 10 minutes would be all it would really take. But at least give your mind a break.

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My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friend's still laughing me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn.com slash results.

LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. So going back to Ariana's pillars, the second is wisdom. And Ariana finds wisdom and inspiration all around her, including something she heard poet and philosopher Mark Nepo say right here on Super Soul Sunday. The original definition of sacrifice moves more inwardly. It means to give up what no longer works in order to stay close to what is sacred.

to give up what no longer works in order to stay close to what is sacred. I was on my treadmill when I heard that. I stopped to write it down. Martin Ippo is one of my favorites here, too. That was like, that's so important. So what do we sacrifice today in that positive sense of sacrifice? Is it a grudge?

Graduates do us no good at all. Is it a project that we think we may engage in but we're not really? I mean, I did a life audit when I was 40. I'm now 63. And I just looked through all the projects that I thought I was going to do, including becoming a good skier, learning to cook, learning German, which I wanted to do, and realized, you know, I'm never going to do that. I'm never going to become a good skier.

So I actually gave them up and I realized how liberating it is to complete a project by dropping it and then be able to focus on the things that I'm really going to put my energy into. What really matters to you. What really matters to me. And, you know, so many people...

have seen themselves in that whirlwind of living your life based on what other people wanted in the first place, you know? And then you realize, but is that really what I want? Why am I striving, striving, striving for that when what I really feel or what I really want

It's like we're talking about being open to what your heart desires and not being defined by what everybody else wants. Yes. The clarity of that. Are we living our dream or are we living somebody else's dream? Or what society considers valuable? Or what we watched in a movie? You know, people just have so many ideas about what success is that are not their ideas. Absolutely. I was sharing with you that we began this season's Super Soul Sundays with Shirley MacLaine.

And I was reminded that Shirley and I first started to have these conversations in 1986 where people thought she was literally out on a limb and thought I was too. But you were saying, and I'm so happy that I have lived to see that the culture and the zeitgeist is changing.

So that a conversation like this, as you, Arianna Huffington, who created the Huffington Post, is talking about what you do to stay centered. People don't think, wow, she's a little nutty. It sounds like, wow, that actually makes sense. And we were just saying, just this past year, several CEOs. Yes. 2013 was a tipping point.

We had multiple CEOs coming out, not as being gay, but as being long-time meditators. I know. You know, Mark Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce. He just came out saying, I've been meditating for 25 years. Hey, why didn't you tell us the previous 24 years? Yeah. Mark Bertolini, the CEO of the third largest health insurance company in America, Aetna. Again, wake-up call. He broke his neck in a skiing accident.

And he discovered in the process of trying to heal himself, yoga, meditation, acupuncture, it had such a profound effect on him that he made these benefits available to his 49,000 employees. And then he brought Duke University to study their impact.

- Wow. - And they found out that he had a 7% reduction in healthcare costs. - Wow. - And a 69 minute increase every day in productivity.

So these things... Yes, that's what you talk about. We think that the harder we work, the more productive we're going to be. But studies are showing that after a point, and we all know this, when you've worked 14-hour days, that 15th and 16th hour, you're really just kind of going through the motion. And especially now when really we are never disconnected from work because we carry it with us. We carry it with us at home, on vacation, anywhere.

And that's why at HuffPost we've instituted policies so that people know that unless they're on a night shift or on a weekend shift, they're not expected to answer emails related to work. If there's an emergency, we'll find them. What's interesting is that you created the Huffington Post, which is 24/7 news information for us. And now,

you realize that nobody can do anything 24-7 and that there needs to be time where if you don't call it meditation, at least there is a stepping away from

the work. Yes, and thank you for saying that because you don't have to call it meditation. It can be prayer. Yeah. It can be contemplation. I call it just being still. Can you give yourself five minutes of stillness? And it's also sort of reconnecting with that place inside us that is...

And for me, for many years, it was like a deserted garden that I started weeding and tending to. And when we reconnect to that place of wisdom and strength and understanding, everything becomes easier. And it's there. It's like as close as our next breath. Ariana Huffington credits one woman as her biggest influence and greatest spiritual teacher, her mother, Ellie.

During Ariana's childhood in Greece, the family often struggled financially, and it was Ellie who sacrificed her own needs to provide an enriched upbringing for her two daughters. After Ariana's parents' divorce in 1967, Ellie borrowed money and even sold her belongings to relocate her girls to England in pursuit of a better life.

Ariana says her mother was the ultimate example of how to live the third metric. She was a magical improviser whose life was filled with wonder. So your mother was her own, you know, spiritual teacher carrying the message through her life and her art, really. Yeah, she was my ultimate spiritual teacher. My mother used to constantly say to me, "Don't miss the moment." You know, my mother lived a third metric life.

before I knew there was such a thing. You know, she had the rhythm of a child. You know, she never rushed. I mean, going to a farmer's market with her was an incredibly frustrating experience at the time for me because she would wonder at the world how beautiful the rosemary looked next to the lavender. She could not have an impersonal relationship. So she would immediately strike a conversation

with a farmer and find out about their life. And everybody would tell her anything. So she lived life on her own terms and also died on her own terms. Did not want to be taken to the hospital. No. She had had heart problems and we had brought her home from the hospital.

And the day she died, we didn't know that it was going to be the day, she asked us to go to the Santa Monica International Market, where she... For her, it was like Disneyland. She bought everything, you know, Greek feta cheese and Viennese chocolates and wine and fruit, and came home and spread it all on the kitchen table and invited everybody to have a feast. And then she suddenly fell, but very gracefully. And she...

When I went there to help her get up, she said, "No, let's just all sit on the floor." She asked us to bring a bottle of red wine. Really? And we literally sat on the floor, and my sister Agape and I were looking at each other, saying, "We have to call the ambulance." And my mother looked at me and said to me, "Do not call the ambulance." But she said it with such authority that I knew I could not. And after an hour,

Her hair just dropped and she died. And later, Deborah, our housekeeper who had been with us for 13 years, told me that my mother knew this was her moment and she had told Deborah not to tell us because that's how she wanted to die. Oh, my goodness. And I feel that we don't really talk about death. Yes. And I feel we can integrate it in our lives, not in a morbid way.

but because it gives meaning to everything else. I so believe this, Arianna. I believe that all death is to remind us

of our own lives and how we're living it. And something that you talk about in Thrive about what does success mean, that climb, climbing the ladder, and what will it mean when you get to what you think is the top? What's going to really matter? But that all death, that's what it's always constantly trying to do, is to force you to look at it, look at it, look at it. And I had this realization recently at a friend's memorial

when I was listening to the eulogy. And it suddenly struck me, and I write about that in Thrive, that a eulogy has nothing to do with our resume. Nothing. You know, you've never heard, you know, George was amazing. He increased market share by one-third. Or Mary made SVP, senior vice president, at 45. A eulogy is always about the things that really matter, you know, how we made people feel. Right. What makes us laugh, you know, small kindnesses, lifelong passion. So...

Wouldn't it be great if we can spend more of our lives kind of giving some things for our eulogizers to work off? Yes, which is interesting. You know, we were talking about Maya Angelou during the break, and, you know, one of Maya's wonderful quotes is about people may not remember what you did or what you said, but they always remember how you made them feel. Yeah.

My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.

My friend's still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com slash results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. You talk about the gifts that your mother gave you. What are the gifts you most want to give your daughters as we sit here on Mother's Day?

So I must want to give them what my mother gave me, which was a combination of unconditional loving and the knowing that they can go for their dreams and that they shouldn't worry if they fail. That failure is part of the journey to success. My mother used to say failure is not the opposite of success. It's a stepping stone to success. That's so good to remember.

And you know, when I was going through the quote, struggle of own, I remembered that I'd given a speech at Wellesley when Stedman's daughter was graduating in 1997. I went out, I went back and pulled out that speech to remind myself of what I'd said. 'Cause I'd said, you know, there's no such thing as failure. And it's one thing to write about it and to intellectualize about it. But when you're in the throes of what everybody else perceives as failure,

There's no such thing as failure, I say. It's just God trying to move you in a new direction. I love that. And it is. Is it not? Absolutely. But it also, knowing that allows us to take decisions which otherwise we wouldn't take. Yes. So what is the best advice you've given your daughters and what is the greatest lesson they've taught you? The greatest lesson they taught me was to be fully present.

That was a hard one for me because I remember times when I would be with them. I never missed an important milestone or school production or whatever. But so often my mind wasn't there. My mind would be processing my to-do list, worrying about all the things I wasn't getting done. My mother, the last time she got angry with me before she died, it was when she saw me multitasking. She saw me opening my mail.

and talking to my children at the same time. And she looked at me, and if you think I have a strong accent, you should have heard her. And she said, "I abhor multitasking." -And now modern-- -She says, "To you." -Yes. -Ariana Huffington. "I abhor multitasking." She said, "Anything that matters requires your full attention." 100% there. And now modern science has backed her up. Absolutely. Multitasking does not exist.

It's called task switching, and it's the most stressful thing you can do. You know, that was one of the transformational things I did in my life. I realized that I have never really put my makeup on or taken my makeup off or packed or done anything without being on the phone talking to my office. And suddenly, I stopped doing that. So your daughters taught you to be present? Yes, absolutely. Because really, they did not allow me not to be present. They would call me on it.

And my mother would call me on it. So I was getting it from both sides. So having your new definition of success, this third metric that you speak so eloquently about and thrive eloquently and also down to earth, I think it's a book that everybody should read.

have because it's so accessible. It's so accessible. So thank you for doing that. But do you think you now have achieved it or is it a constant with you? Oh, it's a work in progress. I don't think I or people a lot more enlightened than I am can ever say this is it. You know, I'm there because when we say that we're gone. Oh boy, yeah. You get hit with a lesson you don't want to have to learn. I think it's all a work in progress. I mean,

We all have that place that we talked about of wisdom, peace, and strength, and we're all going to veer away from it again and again and again. I think ultimately life is about how quickly do we course correct. Yes, absolutely. And my absolute all-time favorite quote is about trust, which is Rumi's quote, live life as though everything is rigged in your favor.

So often we go through life, you said that your commencement speech at Harvard, you said so often we go through life feeling that life has screwed us up. Yeah. And, you know, we're feeling victimized. And if we just turn that around and realize that everything is rigged in our favor, the biggest, like, heartbreak. Even as you say that, I just think, wow, that's a wonderful realization for so many people listening to us. Because I think...

I've often said that you become what you believe, and the most fundamental belief that is necessary to be successful--and by successful, I mean happy, fulfilled, not just money--is to believe and know that the universe, all that is God, whether you call it God or not, all the energy that defines what the world is, is God.

in your favor, that it's for you and not against you. Yes. Yes. Because if you believe it's against you, then you see everything as being against you. So I love Rumi, as a matter of fact. I love Rumi's love poems to God. And the idea... I don't remember that quote, but that's going to be one that I keep. Believe that everything... Is rigged in your favor. Rigged. Rigged in your favor. Rigged in your favor. Wow. That puts you so ahead of the game. I know. Boy, that's a super soul moment.

Thank you. That's fantastic. Let's go to the big questions. Yes. What is the soul? The soul is who I am. The soul is who you are. And it is one breath away. The body is what allows us to have all these experiences. That means that we can evolve through our lives. But who we really are is the soul. And that's why we need to remember to bring it with us, whatever we are doing, bring it with us to work.

bring it with us on vacation, because that's what ultimately will be left. What is your definition of God? You know, I can't improve on John the Beloved, which is that God is love, and those who live in love will live in God, and God will live in them. So how do you define spirituality versus religion? So spirituality is not about dogma, and it's not about believing. It's about knowing and feeling.

A lot of religion is also about all these things. So it depends on whether religion is reduced to dogma or not. And spirituality for me has to be very practical. It has to be something that we bring into everything we are doing. And, you know, I was thinking the other day that

We're all talking a lot about outer space and, you know, are we going to go to Mars or Venus? And these are very exciting projects, but I'm more excited about the inner space project. Exploring inner space is, to me, the most exciting adventure. I feel that too. Well, you're doing it. You're the ultimate inner space explorer. Well, thank you. That's a good introduction for me. Thank you. I appreciate that.

What then do you think is the purpose of us being here as humans? What's the purpose of human experience? Why are we here? I think to evolve into being fully who we truly are through everything that happens, the painful experiences and the joyful experiences, to keep getting closer to our essence and in the process realize that part of our essence is giving.

that really we're not complete human beings if we don't see ourselves as being about something larger than ourselves. Absolutely. What do you think happens when we die? We don't die. It's a little bit like...

Dropping off our rental car at the airport and flying. I've never heard that before. I've never heard it. The only thing is, you know, normally, you know, when you drop your rental car, they say it has to be full of gas, right, the tank? Yeah. When we drop it off, it's empty. Nothing in the gas tank. But that's it. We fly. I've never heard that one before. Okay. It's a little like dropping off your rental car and it's empty.

What's the lesson that has taken you the longest to learn? The lesson that has taken me longest to learn is that I don't make everything happen. It's hard for a type A personality to remember that. One of the things that I taught myself is that life is a dance between making it happen and letting it happen. I have one of the sayings that I have on my desk is,

I do my 10%. I really think that what we do is 10%. But I do my 10% 100%. And the rest I leave to God and I go free. It's like we can't be attached to the result because it's not entirely up to us. No, it isn't. Whatever it is. Yeah, I call that surrender. That's surrender. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you. That was great, Ariana. Thank you so much. That was really great. Really. Thank you. Thanks for joining us.

I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation. Thank you for listening.