Photo credit: B. Vartan Boyajian-Jefferson Hotel
“It was in 1996 when I got into bed with him,” said Arianna Huffington at a book launch for Thrive at The Jefferson Hotel hosted by Constance Milstein, Gail MacKinnon and Rachel Pearson.
She was, of course, referring to now Senator Al Franken and her skits on Politically Incorrect during the election cycle. “It was a comedy piece called Strange Bedfellows,” she explained. “We did it in Chicago and in San Diego and in New York throughout the election. I must be the only woman in this room who got a tax deduction for lingerie.” Confirming that, we’ve tried!
Senator Al Franken (Dem. Minnesota) with Arianna Huffington
“I learned a lot and stayed friends through all that time and in fact, during his 25th anniversary party, his wonderful wife Franni asked me to give him the toast as the only other woman who’d been to bed with Al. Senator Al Franken, great to have you here.”
“This book begins very dramatically with Arianna lying in a pool of her own blood. It’s that moment that she realizes her life was out of control because this was the tenth time in the last month that she had woken up in her own blood. Okay, that’s not true,” said Franken who couldn’t resist comedic interjection. “It was just the first time. She had passed out from exhaustion because she was just killing herself. Arianna basically discovers or realized that her life was out of control….. that she was essentially exhausted.” This leads us to Thrive, her latest tome amongst many: Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being. Wisdom. and Wonder – to be exact.
Hollywood on the Potomac sat down with Arianna to talk about the impetus for the book, the affect it had on both herself and her personal relationships, as well as how others might follow the same path to ‘redemption’ even if they have not yet reached the pinnacle of their success.
“There is far more to living a truly successful life than just earning a bigger salary,” she told us. “Our relentless pursuit of money and power has led to burnout and an erosion in the quality of our relationships. We are losing our balance. We need a new way forward.” That new way forward means not being connected 24/7 and that, of course, is a tough one because we are for all intents and purposes connected 24/7.
She called the state of exhaustion like being drunk – loss of control, loss of good judgment and the loss of the ability to perform well. Under the assumption that no one wants you to show up drunk at work, she suggests we step back, take a deep breath and reevaluate our priorities and learn how to Thrive which she describes as the use of metrics and likened our drive for money and power to two legs of a three-legged stool. “They may hold us up temporarily, but sooner or later we’re going to topple over. We need a third leg — a third metric for defining success — to truly thrive. That third metric includes our well-being.”
We would have been remiss not to ask her the obvious – ‘it’s easy for you to say’ since she has already reached a pinnacle of success, is financially secure, and thus has the opportunity to decompress. But what about the rest of us? Always the comedian, Al Franken put it this way when he introduced her to an attentive audience: “Only someone as successful as Arianna could decide, ‘I’m going to slow down, I’m going to get my life under control. I know I’ll get a book contract.'”
Joking aside, her response was logical. She reminds us that the third metric does not have an age stamp. Getting your life under control can start at 30 or 40 or at any other time frame and perhaps the sooner the better so you don’t spend decades being ‘drunk’ exhausted.
“You can start by taking baby steps,” she said. “the first of which is sleep.” No argument there because we don’t know anyone who is not exhausted and we’re so exhausted we plan on going to sleep as soon as we finish this article. She suggests changing our sleep patterns incrementally until we reach at least seven hours as the best way to start. “The results have been transformational,” she told us regarding her own experience. “When we get enough sleep everything is better, especially the improvement in our mental capacity and joy at finding the ability to live life without reacting to every bad thing that happens.” She also reminds us that it is scientifically proven that when we get enough sleep, everything is better: our health; our mental capacity and clarity; our joy at life.
“It’s not working for anyone,” she said at a recent commencement speech at Smith. “It’s not working for women, it’s not working for men, it’s not working for polar bears, it’s not working for the cicadas that are apparently about to emerge and swarm us. It’s only truly working for those who make pharmaceuticals for stress, diabetes, heart disease, sleeplessness and high blood pressure.”
“It’s true the motivation for writing the book was my own background; but then, then looking around and seeing how many millions are burned out we start asking the questions that we stop asking after college – like what is a good life, what is success?
In our nation’s capital, it’s actually really interesting because you see how ‘burnt out’ is celebrated in this town. People actually talk about ‘she works 24/7,’ ‘ is never off the phone’ but now I have 55 pages of scientific evidence that makes it super clear that it’s saying he comes to work drunk because the connection between never renewing yourself leads to bad decisions, bad ethical judgments and it’s so absolutely conclusive. What is interesting is that sports people are ahead of business people and politicians in getting that right. That’s the culture that we need to change.”
AOL General Counsel Julie Jacobs’ three children: Benjamin, Ethan and Zachary getting their ‘thrive’ on early in life
“In many instances here when we ignore all the multiple crises we are facing, whether it’s climate change or growing inequalities or even with gun control, it’s a problem. We have four democratic senators voting against background checks because they were worried about their re-elections. I feel that when the principles of thriving are incorporated in our lives, it’s not just we who are going to thrive but it’s going to be much better for the country.
In fact, I see here some of our brave reporters. We are starting a series that we are calling Washington when we’re going to be asking politicians and others in our nation’s capital how do they reduce stress in their lives? How do they strive? In fact, we have a one-page little survey. If you can fill it up, it’ll help us to do a real series where we ask these questions because it’s an important conversation to have.” Yup, we filled it out and expect the stress police to arrive any minute now.
Guests received a ‘gratis’ book about which Al Franken said: “I’m getting the book myself. Not here, not like you freeloaders.”
“Let me just end by saying I’m hoping that the book will be a breach between knowing how to do and actually doing it,” said Huffington. “That’s why I have twelve simple microscopic steps that anybody can take. I use twelve steps deliberately because we are addicted. You can start with any step you want. I started with sleep, and as I told the graduating class at Smith, sleep your way to the top. But start with any one of them – sleep, meditation, gratitude. It’s just a way to begin to introduce these elements in our lives.”
