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Language: en
the following is a conversation with
Arianna Huffington she's the founder of
The Huffington Post in 2005 and the
founder and CEO of thrive global in 2016
she's the author of 15 books most recent
to being thrive and sleep revolution
both international bestsellers these
books explore how to both work hard and
keep a lifestyle that seeks well-being
wisdom and wonder we've got a chance to
sit down for this quick chat after a
conference we both spoke at and got
right into the big topics of mortality
obsession meaning happiness and love
this conversation is part of the take it
on easy podcast if you enjoy it
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connect with me on twitter Alex Friedman
spelled Fri D
and now here's my conversation with
Arianna Huffington you tell a story of
getting recognition for your first book
the female woman when you were 23 and
sitting in a hotel and wondering is this
all there is the old question of you
know meaning and purpose so now just a
couple a few years later
let me ask from your perspective now
what is the purpose what is the meaning
of life well if you believe as every
major philosophy and every major
spiritual tradition argues that life
does not end with death but there is
another dimension of consciousness then
clearly a full life a meaningful life
includes exploring that dimension and
for me and that exploration has been
part of my life from my teenage years I
went to Shantiniketan University in
India and when I was 17 to study
comparative religion and I always wanted
to understand what life was about
because I never believed that all this
whole experiment ends with each
individual death
and so that's for me at the heart of my
life I mean I've always been very active
and with books with the having and post
now we thrive global but that's been an
underlying dimension that I think gives
real meaning to life
so mortality is a really interesting
question at the core of all of these
philosophies so you mentioned also
memento mori
the latin remember death the idea that
you know reflecting on one's own
mortality puts things into perspective
do you in a tough question perhaps
perhaps not do you often think about
your own mortality and what perspective
does that help you gain yes I think
about it a lot and and it does give me
perspective and it does help me focus on
the things that matter to me in terms of
my children my close friends the impact
I want to have through what we're doing
a thrive I have zero interest in what is
known as legacy because since I don't
think life ends with death I'm just much
more interested in what happens to my
soul and then what happens to my legacy
on earth do you have a sense of what
happens after you die of soul of the
other is it more of a feeling do a more
concrete sense spiritually how do you
see the world what happens to your soul
to whoever the heck you were while you
were here on earth what does that become
in in in time so my sense is that who we
are our personality the body them the
mind is like a car that we rented and we
and we return at the airport and get on
a plane and go to another city and rent
another car no oh and rent another car
if you believe in reincarnation
depending on where you are in your state
of ever
but definitely that what survives is the
soul and that's why how we live our
lives and the choices to make and how we
treat others is so central to what
happens after our death
all of those elements you believe kind
of feed the soul yes
so you've also mentioned that under on
the harsh challenging part of life that
failure is an essential part of life so
what may be a major failure that stands
out to you for your for yourself one of
the toughest ones for you
psychologically to have bounced back
from if you ever did bounce back from
yes well first of all I don't think
there is any I don't think there is a
single successful person who has not
failed along the way I mean I I
challenge you to find one if you do let
me know
but in my experience everybody has
failed along the way and I think it
would be great if successful people talk
more about their failures and the
difference is resilience and how quickly
do you get discouraged in my case
actually probably the hardest failure
was when I was 28 and and my second book
you mentioned my first book which did
very well my second book which was on
the crisis ins in political leadership
in the West was rejected by 27
publishers you know one after the other
after the other and and by that time I
had run out of money and I had been
living off the proceeds of my first book
and and I remember walking kind of
depressed down st. James's Street in
London where I live and thinking well
maybe my first book was just a fluke and
I'm not really a writer and I have to go
get a real job and then I saw Barclays
Bank in the corner and I walked in and
asked to see the manager and
asked the manager for what the brits
call an overdraft she's alone and I had
nothing I had no assets and for some
reason the manager whose name is Ian
Bell gave it to me and that kind of
changed my life because it made it
possible for me to keep things together
for another 13 rejections and at that
point I got an acceptance and I sent Ian
Bell a holiday card every year and he's
a little bit like you know in fairy
tales when the hero or the heroine gets
lost in a dark forest and and suddenly a
helpful animal comes out and guides them
out of the forest well sometimes helpful
animals in our lives are in the form of
a bank manager
they take funny these guises a modern
fairy tale so I spoke with Elon Musk
recently on the podcast and you've had a
friendly exchange with him on Twitter
last year about work hours and sleep so
I myself as an engineer I'm obsessed
with the work I do I keep a schedule
closer to one that Elon does I would say
plus I'm Russian so I believe suffering
is good for the soul so how do how do
you square how does a singular obsession
in the sort of the turmoil of innovation
fit into a lifestyle you discuss and
thrive one focused on well-being wisdom
and Wonder so how do you score that with
like singular obsession oh I think
singular obsessions are wonderful all my
favorite favorite people are addictive
and obsessive personalities but if you
are obsessed about whatever it is you
are looking to achieve whether it's in
researcher electric cars or going to the
moon or anything you need to look at the
science and the data that shows that
you're going to be more creative and
more productive and more likely to
achieve the results of your obsession if
you actually um take some time to
recharge that's really what we're
talking about
so your your senses so science and data
these things you talk about are things
of rational people so you think you
think the impossible can be achieved by
rational people or does madness play a
role my madness plays a role but also
looking at the results needs to play a
role like endless and I have huge
admiration for Elon Musk and I wrote the
open letter to him with that in mind
kind of lovingly and admiringly and
helping him I hope look at the laws of
human energy because if you violate the
laws of human energy it's like violating
the laws of gravity there are
consequences and he's facing the
consequences he's being distracted from
his amazing obsession and you think
there's a way to do better absolutely I
mean I think he should look at what
happened the results of tweeting in the
middle of the night because he's you
know his cognitive impairment makes him
do things which he knows he should not
be doing and and the ending up having to
step down as chairman pedro aunt amélie
on having to go to court to deal with
the sec who needs that when you are
building something amazing for Humanity
you think of more balanced sleep sighs
i'm not really about balance so i hate
that term because i agree with you that
there is no balance when you are trying
to achieve something big i mean there
are times when i've pulled all-nighters
there are times when people are thrive
have have pulled all-nighters to ship a
product in fact we make that very clear
when we hire people were not a
nine-to-five operation where you just
balance things but you need to after
that take time to recharge and the
faster you do it the more effective you
are going to be we call it thrive time
so let's say you pulled an all-nighter
take some time the next day to recharge
before
your exhaustion becomes queue
right that you do stupid things or you
fall sick all the things that we are
seeing around us catches up to you
on another topic you have evolved
throughout the years your political
views from maybe you can correct me but
from right of Center to left of center
can you take me through your journey of
political thought and how you see the
evolution of the greater political
landscape along with your evolution
throughout the last several decades
so my evolution was from being a kind of
Republican that's practically extinct
now kind of pro-choice pro-gay rights
program control Republican to someone
who realized that my understanding of
their role of government was limited you
know I really was a Republican because I
thought that the private sector would
step up and address inequalities and
they need to take care of people at the
lower has socioeconomically ranks and I
saw firsthand this wasn't going to
happen and that you needed their raw
power of government appropriations to be
able to achieve that so he does my shift
in my understanding of the role of
government that led to my shift in
political views I think what's happening
right now we're at this moment when the
chickens are coming home to roost like a
lot of a lot of problems that we've seen
coming that we've been discussing at the
endless conferences I don't know how
many conference have been at with titles
like inclusive capitalism the dangers of
growing inequalities we talked about
them but didn't really do anything about
them and so there is an some different
forms of right-wing or left-wing
populism and it's a very serious moment
but nothing is going to be solved by
living in a perpetual state of outrage
so you've also launched this incredible
platform in 2005 of Huffington Post
HuffPost is it's not called what impact
do you think it had over the past 14
years on the nature of public discourse
if you look at what that discourse is
today the divisiveness but what impact
does the digitization of our
conversation to the online of Twitter
and then of more journalistic type of
content like Huffington Post contains
what what do you think it has done for
this course was there been a positive
thing was it been a catalyst for the
divisiveness or did it simply reveal the
divisiveness that was late in there
already what do you think well the
Huffington Post
helped democratize the conversation it
helped elevate what blogging was you
know when we launched the having at
first in 2005 blogging was dismissed as
something that people who couldn't get a
job were doing in their parents
basements and because we brought in
people who could have written for The
New York Times like Walter Cronkite and
Nora Ephron and Larry David we elevated
the opportunity afforded to all of us to
express ourselves but we had very very
careful guidelines so for example
everything was curated we did not allow
ad hominem comments at some point before
I left the habit and post I even and
that anonymous comments altogether
because it was becoming too hard to
police them so from the beginning I
wanted to democratize the conversation
side by side with investigative
journalism and all the things that I
loved and honored but at the same time I
saw the dangers of the toxicity that can
infiltrate these conversations if they
are not monitored and if there is no
real curation so one of the core things
that emerged from The Huffington Post is
I mean there
a little bit of a viewpoint underlying
it is left
oh I don't call it left there's
definitely a viewpoint in fact we called
our journalism beyond right and left I
think the right left divisions the way
of looking at the world in terms of
right and left is incredibly obsolete
[Music]
being concerned about growing
inequalities it's not a left-wing
position if you are somebody who cares
about law and order you should care
about that unless you want the country
to be turned into a banana republic with
rich people living behind gates with
security guards you know if you care
about climate change does that mean
you're on the left or does it mean that
you want to preserve the planet so I
think by looking at the world in right
or left
we're simply polarizing the conversation
but so that's a beautiful ideal and I
share it but nevertheless that seems
that there's a strong gravitational
field that pulls people into left and
right and no matter what they will place
different venues into those Poehler's so
it seems that something in the public
perception huffington post kind of gets
into the left and there's these opposing
forces
Breitbart and so on that to get this
placed somehow into the right and then
there's the right team and the blue team
I guess my question is do you see do you
notice this and do you see a path
forward in the coming decade in the era
of our current president of maybe
bringing us back together and having a
healthy disagreement on the issues as
opposed to having teams and tribes of
red and blue I absolutely do I think
there are two things that are essential
in order to achieve that one is a
reverence for facts you and I have the
right to our own opinions but we don't
have the right to our own set of facts
yes so that's number one and number two
is to to end the view of journalism that
Jay Rosen has described as
the view from Noah like I think climate
change is not a matter of opinion so a
lot of journalists feel that their
position is to have one person who
thinks climate change is real and
another person who thinks it's not and
their job is to stay in the middle and
Glaber and Pontius Pilate to me that's
like not at all great journalists men
having a post definitely had a viewpoint
as you said but it was a viewpoint based
on facts and I actually recommend that
people listen to your podcast with a
specially conversation with Neil
deGrasse Tyson that kind of emphasizes
it talks about science and the
importance of that people have in terms
of the seriousness amongst our leaders
towards science as the thing that you
shouldn't politicize well last question
how do you balance love and ambition
thinking about your work with thrive
this obsession towards weather is
building like your car is going to Mars
building Huffington Post obsession with
your work life and a genuine deep
obsession with your family or people in
your life that you love how do you
balance that time and energy well let me
give you an example right now you know
thrive global is an obsession ending the
stress and burnout epidemic is our
mission and I I've seen as having a huge
impact on our health and our mental
health an aura and on our performance
but at the same time I have two
daughters that I adore and everybody in
my office knows that when I get a call
from one of my daughters at any point I
will take it and and that they are a
priority that doesn't mean that I can't
also be obsessed about what we're doing
and our growth I think these are sort of
false dichotomies because I think when
when we nurture the part of us that is
about love that is about connection
we also nurture the deeper parts of our
humanity and it's from those parts that
wisdom and creativity come the more love
will strengthen all parts your life and
improve improve productivity in all
aspects exactly and you know
interestingly enough Jack Ma
hardly a wilting violet in the obsession
department and said in Davos last year
that we are what's going to win the
future is not just IQ or even EQ
emotional intelligence but lq the love
quotient and which are something
surprising coming from Jack Ma but I
think it's part of the shift that's
happening where we recognize that while
AI and machine learning are going to
take over huge parts of our life and
destroy many jobs the things that AI is
not going to be able to do are the
distinctly human things and loving is
one of them and so I think it's a
beautiful place to end on is love
Arianna thank you so much for talking
today
thank you so much
you