#274: Arianna Huffington, Media Maven

Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff https://twitter.com/ariannahuff) is the founder and CEO of Thrive Global https://www.thriveglobal.com/ and founder of The Huffington Post https://www.huffingtonpost.com/. She has been named to Time magazine's list of the world's 100 Most Influential People http://time.com/collection/2017-time-100/ and Forbes' Most Powerful Women https://www.forbes.com/power-women/ list. Originally from Greece, Arianna moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge with an M. A. in economics. In late 2005, she launched The Huffington Post https://www.huffingtonpost.com/, a news and blog site that quickly became one of the most widely read, linked to, and frequently cited media brands on the Internet. In 2012, she won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting. In August of 2016, she launched Thrive Global https://www.thriveglobal.com/ with a mission of ending the stress and burnout epidemic by offering companies and individuals sustainable, science-based solutions to well-being. Arianna serves on a lot of boards — including Uber https://www.uber.com/ and The Center for Public Integrity https://www.publicintegrity.org/— and she is the author of 15 books, including Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0804140863/offsitoftimfe-20 and The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/110190402X/offsitoftimfe-20. This is a wide-ranging conversation, and we get into plenty of tactics. Arianna is an expert storyteller and very funny — enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by FreshBooks https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email. FreshBooks is the #1 cloud bookkeeping software, which is used by a ton of the start-ups I advise and many of the contractors I work with. It is the easiest way to send invoices, get paid, track your time, and track your clients. FreshBooks https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=emailtells you when your clients have viewed your invoices, helps you customize your invoices, track your hours, automatically organize your receipts, have late payment reminders sent automatically and much more. Right now you can get a free month of complete and unrestricted use. https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email You do not need a credit card for the trial. To claim your free month and see how the brand new Freshbooks can change your business, go to FreshBooks.com/Tim https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email and enter "Tim Ferriss https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email" in the "how did you hear about us" section. This podcast is also brought to you by MeUndies http://meundies.com/tim. I've spent the last few years wearing underwear from these guys http://meundies.com/tim 24/7, and they are the most comfortable and colorful underwear I've ever owned. MeUndies are designed in L. A. and made from sustainably sourced MicroModal — a fabric three times softer than cotton. And now, they are also offering socks made from some of the most comfortable, premium materials. If you don't love your first pair of MeUndies, they'll hook you up with a new pair or a refund. Check out MeUndies.com/Tim http://meundies.com/tim to see my current faves (some are awesomely ridiculous, like the camo) and get 20 percent off your first pair. That's MeUndies.com/Tim http://meundies.com/tim.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:08Speaker 01

  No, it is an inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A G one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, where each episode it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers from all different spheres of life, arenas of competition. This time around, it is entrepreneurship, business, and just general awesomeness. We have Arianna Huffington. You can find her on Twitter at Arianna Huff and elsewhere, of course, on the socials. She has been named to Time Magazine's List of the World's 100 Most Influential People and Forbes' Most Powerful Women list. Originally from Greece, she moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge with an MA in economics. In May 2005, she launched

• 2:06Tim Ferriss?

  The Huffington Post, a news and blog site that quickly became one of the most widely read, linked to, and frequently cited media brands on the internet. And in 2012, won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. In August 2016, she launched Thrive Global with the mission of ending the stress and burnout epidemic by offering companies and individuals sustainable, science-based solutions to well-being. Arianna serves on a lot of boards, including Uber and the Center for Public Integrity, and she's the author of 15, what, 15 books, including her most recent, Thrive, subtitle, "The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom

• 2:47Tim Ferriss?

  and Wonder," and The Sleep Revolution, subtitle, "Transforming Your Life One Night at a Time." This is a very wide-ranging conversation. We get into plenty of tactics. She is an expert storyteller and very, very funny to boot. So I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Arianna Huffington. Ariana, welcome to the show.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Thank you, Tim. I love your podcast and I'm really happy to be part of it.

• 3:20Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I have had so much fun interacting with you over the years and also observing you in environments where you get to ask a lot of questions. So I'm happy to have the chance to turn the tables and actually dig into your story because you're always highlighting people around you. And now it's my chance to turn it around and dig into a lot of the background that I haven't heard. But I wanted to start with a question about breakfast because we did it as a sound check. And I think people will enjoy it. So what did you have for breakfast this morning?

• 3:53Speaker 03

  So every morning, I have coffee, bulletproof coffee for breakfast, which is basically, as you know, coffee with organic butter. And then, I don't really like breakfast in terms of food. I was brought up in Greece and people don't have breakfast. They have coffee. And so like a good Greek peasant girl, I don't really eat until lunchtime. And if you want to know what's my favorite food at lunchtime, it's breakfast.

• 4:32Tim Ferriss?

  So what do you have at lunch? What is your go-to lunch right now?

• 4:36Speaker 03

  My go-to lunch is poached eggs, or scrambled eggs, or boiled eggs, or any kind of breakfast food.

• 4:46Tim Ferriss?

  So you have, we're gonna come back to all of your experimentation, because you seem to have tried just about everything. But I want to give people just a taste, perhaps. I mean, you've tried firewalking, list-making, journal-keeping, infrared saunas. You're very game to experiment. And I'm curious to know if there are any particular practices, like those, that have stuck with you, that you've found continually valuable for you. And it could be part of your daily routine, or it could be some type of object, could be anything.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  So the part of my daily routine that actually started when I was 13, which is 3,000 years ago, and I can't say I've done it consistently every day since, but I have, in the last few years, done it consistently, is meditating. So I try to do it right after I wake up, before I engage in my day. And it's been absolutely amazing in terms of how much peace and strength and joy it's brought me as I go through my day,

• 6:07Speaker 03

  no matter what the challenges and problems. And I've tried other things, which I do intermittently, but not every day, like writing down my dreams. There are periods in my life when I wrote down my dreams every day. And I have like massive notebooks with my dreams. And now I do it...

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Sporadically, but I still keep a pen by my bed. That's one of those pens that light in the night. So you don't have to turn on the light because as you know, the less intrusion of outside life you have, the more details of your dream you remember.

• 6:58Tim Ferriss?

  So you have a pen that has a light on the front of it?

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 7:01Tim Ferriss?

  I've never, I'm amazed that I've never seen such a thing.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  Okay, I'm sending you one.

• 7:06Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, I will, I'll definitely try that. And I want to dig into the details of the meditation practice for a second. What type of meditation do you practice? Or what does a session look like for you?

• 7:19Speaker 03

  So I have tried every kind of meditation. As you, as you kind of already announced, you know, I love experimenting. So at first, when I was 13, I was, believe it or not,

• 7:36Speaker 03

  initiated into transcendental meditation by Maharishi himself, who happened to be in Athens, Greece.

• 7:42Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  And I was this 13-year-old girl with this very eccentric mother, who was doing yoga and meditating and had convinced my sister and me that if we meditated, we would be better at school. And since I was determined to get great grades, I thought this would help me.

• 8:04Tim Ferriss?

  That is incredible. I had no idea. So you, you've called your mother a hero before. I've heard this. And how, we're going to dig into some of the lessons that you learned from her. I'd like to hear about that. But how, how did you end up getting in front of Maharishi and being inducted in that way? How did that come together?

• 8:27Speaker 03

  She, she was kind of amazing. She, she could make anything happen. And I don't know how she found out where he would be and how she got her daughters there. But that's what happened. And at the time, I didn't frankly think it was a big deal. I, I have since also, together with my two daughters, who are now 26 and 28, been reintroduced to transcendental meditation by Bob Roth, who is a fabulous teacher here in New York. But also in the meantime, I have practiced many other kinds of meditation,

• 9:11Speaker 03

  you know, Buddhist meditation, compassion meditation, and also meditation taught by John Roger, you know, who started the movement for spiritual inner awareness. So I basically meditate with a tone, but focusing very much on my breath. You know, the inhalation and exhalation is just a big part of my meditation. And on an everyday basis, I do half an hour. But over the weekend or wherever I can, I may do one hour, I may do two hours. And the other thing that is great, Tim, is that if I wake up in the middle of the night,

• 9:54Speaker 03

  for whatever reason, and I have trouble going back to sleep, let's say I'm particularly stressed, overthinking something, I'm on a plane, I'm jet lagged, whatever, I just never worry about it anymore. I just say, this is amazing. I have unlimited time to meditate.

• 10:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right, you were gifted the plane delay, or whatever it might be.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  Yes, and normally, you know, when it happens, it's like three in the morning, or which is, according to the Dalai Lama, the optimal time to meditate. So I think, hey, the Dalai Lama and I are meditating now. And it's very clear, you know, all the new science on sleep shows that it's something which, an experiment, which they call paradoxical intention, that if you take two groups of people and you tell one group to try and go back to sleep and another group to stay awake, the group that you, to whom you said stay awake, falls asleep faster.

• 10:59Tim Ferriss?

  That's funny, right. It's, I guess, it's one of those things where the key is to try less, not to try harder.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Exactly, especially around sleep, because sleep is about surrender. And trying to surrender is really hard.

• 11:14Tim Ferriss?

  It is hard. I think it's especially hard for type A personalities. But you mentioned that your mother could make anything happen. And you also mentioned that you were, seemed at least, driven to get very good grades. Where did that, where did that desire to get good grades come from?

• 11:34Speaker 03

  I don't really know where that came from, but I was a very sort of awkward kid. I was ridiculously tall for a Greek girl. I was literally five feet ten when I was thirteen years old. And that, most of my classmates were five feet nothing. So I was literally towering all over them. I was in a girl's school. And just to give you an idea of how bad that was, I was excluded from the school parade.

• 12:10Tim Ferriss?

  Jeez.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Where they had, you know, the tallest girls because I was too tall and I would stick out too much. So I also had very frizzy hair and wore glasses. And so I just really spent a lot of time just reading and studying, rather than having a lot of friends and being social.

• 12:40Tim Ferriss?

  Which is, okay, well, we're gonna bounce around on the timeline a bit, so that's just how my mind works. I'm surprised to hear that because you are one of the most, if not the most socially adept person I've ever seen live. I mean, it's really like watching, you know, Tom Brady playing football or something, to watch you navigate and manage a room. I'm not kidding, it's really impressive. I mean, when I've been at, say, dinners with you, just observing how you weave everyone together is as enjoyable to me as the conversations that I have. So how did you learn to be social?

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Well, Tim, it's kind of interesting because I know it's hard to believe, but I'm, I am an introvert. And the reason I know that is that I have experienced every emotion in my life, including rage and fear and disappointment and everything you can imagine, but I have never experienced loneliness.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  I need time alone and I long for time alone and I've never said, this is too much time alone. So I think that's a pretty good indication that I'm fundamentally an introvert who loves people and provided I have enough time to refuel by myself. And if I do, then I love, I love bringing people together. I think that's one of the things I most love is kind of introducing my friends to each other and making sure they are connecting and setting people up.

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Numerous ways to really make sure that people I care about are connected to each other.

• 14:33Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so I want to, putting the pieces together slowly, kind of like the movie Memento, if anybody listening gets that, but what took you, I know that we're, we're jumping around, but I'm sort of following the scent as we go. What led you to move to the UK?

• 14:52Speaker 03

  So again, that's another mother's story because I saw in a magazine a picture of Cambridge University and I absolutely fell in love with it. I have no idea why. And I said to my mother with absolute conviction, I want to go there. And everybody else I said that to, my dad, my friends, said, don't be ridiculous. You can't go there.

• 15:25Tim Ferriss?

  How, how old were you at the time?

• 15:27Speaker 03

  I was 14.

• 15:30Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, got it.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  And they all said, you have no, you don't speak English and we have no money and it's hard even for English girls to get into Cambridge. So forget about that. And my mother said, okay, let's find out how you can get to Cambridge. I'm sure we can make that happen.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  And so she found out that I could take my, what they call GCSEs, General Certificates of Education, which you needed to get, I don't know if you still do, to get into English universities from the British Council. But then I would have to take a special Cambridge exam, that I could apply for a scholarship. And of course, I immediately started learning English. And up until then, I had learned French, because in, in Greece, French was the official language at the time, the official foreign language. So I had learned French at school, immediately started learning English, and to cut a long story short,

• 16:41Speaker 03

  I got a scholarship into Cambridge. And definitely, that would never have happened without my mother saying, "Let's make that happen." She even said to me one day, "You know, I got us these really cheap tickets and we can go and see Cambridge. Not see anybody at Cambridge, just go see it." It was like an early form of visualization. So she and I, she and I literally flew to London, took a train to Cambridge, and just walked around and made it real for me. And, and that was her. That was how she was, and...

• 17:20Tim Ferriss?

  So, so let me just make sure I understand this. She took you to Cambridge so you could walk around Cambridge feeling like you were already part of it? Is that...

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly.

• 17:30Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 17:32Tim Ferriss?

  I did, do you find that helpful for you?

• 17:34Speaker 03

  I did. It just made it very real. It took it from a magazine picture to a real place, where we walked around for hours and, and saw the different colleges and had coffee in the coffee shop and saw the river. And, and of course, by the end of it, I wanted to go to Cambridge more than ever.

• 18:00Tim Ferriss?

  Is, are there any particular...

• 18:04Tim Ferriss?

  Parenting approaches or sayings that you use with your daughters that your mother used with you? Has her parenting style influenced how you parent?

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Completely. My parenting style is identical, except I'm perpetually guilty because I'm definitely not as good as she was. You know, in any case, I think most mothers are guilty about something, especially working mothers. They say, "You take the baby out and they put the guilt in." But for me, I think the heart of it is unconditional loving. That was really her biggest gift, to love you unconditionally while at the same time making you believe that you could do anything you wanted to try, but that if you failed, not a problem.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  Because as she used to say, that is one of her favorite sayings, "Failure is not the opposite of success, it's a stepping stone to success." So she made my sister and me feel very comfortable with failing. It was not a big deal. Taking risks was part of life and failing was part of life. And then she was very funny and she used to say, "Angels fly because they take themselves seriously." And whatever happened, bad things happening, she just, little bad things or bad, bad

• 19:38Speaker 03

  things, bad, bad things like my father being a philanderer and her ending up separating from him, they never actually got divorced. How she turned that around and still managed to create an amazingly warm, loving home for us. Or little things like... Our favorite thing for our birthdays was to go with her to two movies and a play.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  And so we're ready to leave our apartment with my sister and we locked our keys in. So every other mother would have just kind of dropped the program and tried to get the keys, etc. My mother said, "Okay, no problem. Let's just go to the movies and go to the play. Let's keep to our schedule and we'll figure it out."

• 20:35Speaker 03

  And of course, by the time, we were opposite the fire station. So when we got back, she went to the fire station and asked if they could help us. And because she was always such a giver, she would always bring everybody food and help them with anything they wanted. The firefighters put a ladder up and let us in through the window.

• 21:00Tim Ferriss?

  So it seems like, I mean, just by watching your mother and experiencing that, that over time you would feel like you could figure out just about anything. I mean, seeing someone being that adaptable, I would think, would really impact you. I mean, the question that I've been wanting to ask also about a few of these things you mentioned, the failure as a stepping stone and so on. You talked about not speaking English when you saw this picture of Cambridge in a magazine. But I read that you became really determined to excel in the debate society at Cambridge.

• 21:43Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know if that's accurate or not, but if it is, can you walk us through your decision to do that? And what you were thinking at the time? Because I would imagine that would be very intimidating.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Yes, so actually, what happened is that I was absolutely fascinated by debates at Cambridge. I loved them more than anything at Cambridge. And I was determined to learn to speak, you know, to learn to speak publicly. And so I would literally stay at every debate until the bitter end. And I would wait my turn to be called on to speak. Because they would have the main speakers and then anybody could speak. But I was terrible and I had a very heavy accent, even heavier than now. And so I was normally picked last, like kind of midnight.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  But it didn't matter, I just sat there, I made notes, I learned. And, but I hadn't really thought of competing to be elected to an office at the union. That seemed like not something I could ever achieve. So what happened is that one weekend, when I was in London, a friend of mine put me down for the election to the Standing Committee, which was like the first step before you became a secretary and a vice president and a president. And I was deeply embarrassed when I found out. I thought I would be humiliated.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  And I tried to get my name off it, but it was too late, the ballots had been printed. And then, to my immense surprise, I, I, I was elected to the top of the Standing Committee, which was a complete surprise. I would really never, ever, ever have guessed that this would happen. But that's how I ended up, you know, then being elected secretary and vice, and vice president, and then president.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  So the the decision to learn to speak was very, very deliberate. The the fact that I ended up becoming president of the union, which actually was a defining moment in terms of my career, was completely accidental and dependent on on this friend of mine, who took matters in her own hands.

• 24:18Tim Ferriss?

  Why was it a defining moment for you? Why do you?

• 24:22Speaker 03

  It was a defining moment because it's hard to to understand how much at the time it meant to be elected president of the union. There was this kind of mythical place that the Oxford and Cambridge unions have in in the history of England, you know.

• 24:41Tim Ferriss?

  That's a big deal. I visited campus once and walked through the hallways. It's a very, very big deal. And you were the, I guess, the first foreign and only the third female, is that right?

• 24:51Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. And and so what happened is that when I was elected, it was it was like front front page news. It's hard to it's hard to believe it. But like The Times, The Guardian, they had front page pictures of me on the there's this throne that the president sits on. And and I was invited to do every show you can imagine. And and that's when, in the course of one of the debates that I was speaking at as president, and which was televised, because a lot of the debates were televised. And a publisher

• 25:35Speaker 03

  saw the debate and asked me to write a book based on the views I expressed in the debate. So it truly was defining because I had no intention of being a writer. Sounds like everything that happened to me was not intended. But so I I got this letter from Reg Davis Pointe, who had just actually published Jermaine Greer's book, The Female Eunuch. And he asked me if I would write a book expressing the views that I had expressed in the in the debate. And I wrote back and I said, I can't write. And he said, can you have lunch? And

• 26:19Speaker 03

  And he took me to lunch and offered me a modest advance. And he said, if you, if it turns out you can't write, I'll have lost, I think it was six thousand pounds for a year. So, and if, and otherwise, he said, I will publish the book. And that was my first book. It changed the trajectory of my career because I had just gotten into the Kennedy School of Government to do a postgraduate degree there, which I, I dropped in order to, to write the book.

• 26:55Tim Ferriss?

  What was, what was that first book? What was the title?

• 26:59Speaker 03

  The title was The Female Woman. And the message of the book was really, very matter of fact now, because it was the fact, my belief that women should be given equal respect for whatever they choose to do in their lives. If they choose to have a career, everything should be open to them. If they choose to be mothers and they can afford to do so and not have a career, they should be given equal respect for that. Now, that now seems like no big deal. At the time, it was very controversial, because it was at the, it was published in 1973. I was 23 years old. And at the time, it was at the

• 27:43Speaker 03

  moment, at the height of what was known as the women's liberation movement, when only career women were respected. You know, if you chose, and you're able to financially, not to have a career, you are kind of dismissed as having succumbed to social conditioning or the patriarchy. And, and I interviewed a lot of women who made a lot of difficult choices, like they decide, I mean, I remember a woman saying, I haven't had a new coat for three years, but I want to bring up my children myself, and then I can get back

• 28:28Speaker 03

  into the workplace. So I wasn't saying that one choice was better than another, but that part of equality was equal respect for whatever choices women made.

• 28:40Tim Ferriss?

  Now, you've had so many opportunities to interact with so many people who you could potentially guide or mentor. And just given that we're somewhat on the subject, I mean, if you were looking at one piece of that equation, so you're looking at the professional choice going into the business world, is the advice you would give a young man or a young woman the same? Or is there different advice that you would give to young women who are considering really focusing on charging headfirst into the business world?

• 29:20Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely, the same advice. The only thing that's different for women, if they want to have children, is to be aware of that. I mean, now, of course, women can freeze their eggs, so it gives them a longer timeline for becoming mothers, or they can choose to adopt. So that's great, because it gives women more flexibility. But I think the most important thing is to really be honest with yourself. I mean, I would not have been happy if I had not had my work.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  I knew that was very important to me, and I actually have never not worked. And I also would not have been happy if I had not had children. But I have many friends of mine who don't want children, and they're perfectly happy. So that's why I'm saying this is very individual, and all that matters is to be ruthlessly honest with ourselves, and basically making sure that the life we're following is the life we are choosing for ourselves, rather than the life that has been chosen for us by society, our parents, our friends.

• 30:51Tim Ferriss?

  Now, you have told us about one defining moment, which was this appointment, I guess, on the throne and everything that came out of that. If we then look forward after that, what would you consider the next defining moment or defining decision in your life? Or the next that comes to mind for you?

• 31:18Speaker 03

  Oh, I could say the next defining decision was deciding to leave this man that I was very much in love with because he didn't want to have children. And by then, I was 30. I had been with him since I was 23 for seven years. He was twice my age and half my size.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  He was an amazing writer. His name is Bernard Levin, and he was a great columnist for The London Times and also very much a writing mentor to me. But he kept saying, "I don't want to have kids. I only want to have cats." And he was perfectly happy to be with me for the rest of his life, but without children. And I was very clear that I wanted to have children. So I made the decision to leave him. And because I didn't trust myself not to go back to him if I had stayed in London, I left London and moved to New York.

• 32:38Speaker 03

  So everything that happened to me after that.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  My, the rest of my work, launching The Huffington Post, having my two daughters, all of it team happened because a man wouldn't marry me and have children with me. So it's good to remember that.

• 32:59Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's kind of like if you have insomnia at three in the morning, right? Maybe, maybe it's sort of a hard, a hard moment, an opportunity or a gift disguised as a very hard moment. And for those people who don't know, how did The Huffington Post come to be? So you land in New York. How, how did The Huffington Post come to be?

• 33:22Speaker 03

  Oh, that's, The Huffington Post is many, many years after I landed in New York. So I was born in 1950, so I'm 67. I left London in 1980, when I was 30, and moved to New York. And then continued writing, you know, written 15 books. And after the book that we discussed, The Female Woman, I wrote a book on political leadership called After Reason, which nobody wanted to buy, but that's another story. Then I wrote biographies of Maria Callas and later Pablo Picasso. So when I came to New York,

• 34:05Speaker 03

  I had just published my biography of Maria Callas, who is an opera singer, best known among people who don't love opera as the woman who was very much in love with Aristotle Onassis, but Onassis left her to marry Jackie Kennedy. Just to put her in context. And so when I came to New York, my book on Maria Callas had just been published. And so I was, which made it easier to move to New York because I was a I was here publicizing my book.

• 34:49Speaker 03

  The book turned out to be a big bestseller. And it led to my doing journalism and writing more books while by now moving and leaving in New York.

• 35:06Tim Ferriss?

  Fifteen books is a lot of books. What is your writing process or what helps you to be so prolific? I'm always impressed and have been impressed when I've considered how many books you've written. What helps you to achieve that type of volume?

• 35:26Speaker 03

  So my writing process changed dramatically. At the beginning, my writing process was painstaking and incredibly slow. Because I had this sort of inner censor. So I would write a sentence and then the inner censor would step in and say, that's not the right word. And I would spend a long time arguing with myself about what the right word was. And gradually, I realized that I was able to speak without notes for an hour or longer.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  And that I should use that skill to create first drafts. So I started dictating my first draft. Ideally, to somebody I work with. Because I like having that kind of response from someone. If you're in the same room and you're speaking and they're typing. But you kind of, they smile or they guffaw or they show whether they liked or didn't like something. And that has dramatically accelerated my writing process.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  Because it's so much easier, as you know, Tim, to edit a first draft and edit it extensively and go through multiple editing processes than it is to write a first draft.

• 37:01Tim Ferriss?

  And is the is the person you're speaking to, interacting with you or asking you questions? Or are they just listening and transcribing?

• 37:09Speaker 03

  They're just listening. I mean, you know, they're perfectly free to interrupt and say anything. But largely it's just listening, but just kind of, you know how people listen, but they they show you if they get, if they agree, or if they like something, or if they didn't get it. It's like, it's very subtle, but obvious.

• 37:29Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, for sure. I mean, you can see, that's, that's one thing I always pay attention to when I have proofreaders reading my material. I like to be there when they read it, because if they laugh, I always say, okay, what was that? And they'll say, oh, no, it was nothing. And I'm like, no, no, no. What was it? What made you laugh? I always want to know what provokes the response.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly.

• 37:51Tim Ferriss?

  No, I asked about the, the interaction, because I remember with the Four Hour Workweek in particular, I hit a point where I was really stuck, and I was stuck not for a day, but for about two weeks. I didn't know how to tackle this chapter. So I decided to, I had the intention of having someone interview me, so they could ghostwrite a first draft that I could then use as a jumping off point. But I, I learned, as they interviewed me over the course of about 90 minutes, that they had actually helped me figure out how to fix the chapter just by interviewing me. Because I was too close to the material. So I'm really fascinated by using those types

• 38:34Tim Ferriss?

  of tools to jumpstart, or, like you said, to get a first draft out, because that is so difficult at times.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  That's great. I'm glad to hear that you, you have a kind of similar process.

• 38:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the interviewing, I find, is a great way to, to take a step back from the material. I never give, if I need someone to interview me to, to figure out a given chapter or aspect of a book, I, I never give them any background, because I want them to come in fresh, like a reader who just picked it up off the shelf, without any type of, any type of context. So the, you're writing and working on all these books, when was the decision made to turn The Huffington Post into a company, or to create that company?

• 39:23Speaker 03

  So by 2000, I started seeing that a lot of very rich conversation was moving online. And that a lot of the people I loved and admired were not going to be part of it because they were never going to start a blog. And because at the time bloggers were seen as people who couldn't get a job and were blogging. Remember the cliche, from their parents' basement, right?

• 39:55Speaker 00

  Right.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  And so I started writing in my column. I had a column, a syndicated column at the time, about bloggers. And I just really loved this, what blogging was, which was being more conversational, being more intimate, responding to your readers, their response back, the whole interactive nature. So I decided, together with my co-founder Kenny Lehrer, to launch The Huffington Post in 2005 as two things.

• 40:41Speaker 03

  One was a collection of bloggers commenting on anything, from the events of the day to food, to movies, anything at all. I mean, one of our saying was, if you have something to say, say it on The Huffington Post. And also a journalistic enterprise, where we practiced conventional journalism, investigative journalism. At the beginning, the blogging part was the dominant part, until we started raising and making money to be able to hire journalists. And the first day we launched...

• 41:26Speaker 03

  It was kind of a new day for blogging because suddenly we had on our front page people like Nora Ephron and Walter Cronkite and John Cusack and Larry David and people who had never blogged before. And it began the process of elevating blogging to something that of course now we all do. There is no journalist who isn't blogging at the same time. And gradually we started adding journalists. We ended up winning a Pulitzer for investigative journalism. From the beginning, I saw HuffPost as a combination of the best of the old and the best of the new.

• 42:12Tim Ferriss?

  How did you get all those known names to participate during the launch? What did you say to them? Or how did you convince them to do that?

• 42:25Speaker 03

  So these are kind of people I had met and I wrote to them. And basically my pitch was, you wake up in the morning and you have something to say, I know you do, about the events of the day, about a movie you saw last night, about anything. But you're busy. You have a book to write. You have a company to run. And sure, you could write it for the New York Times, but you have to deal with editors and processors. And you don't really bother. Just send it to us. And put it in an email and send it to me. And we'll publish it exactly as you sent it to us.

• 43:07Speaker 03

  And you will have entered the cultural bloodstream. You'll have entered the conversation. And you don't have to do anything else. Then people can comment, react, take it to the next level. And it was amazing. That's exactly what happened. I remember...

• 43:25Speaker 03

  I remember when the day that it was revealed who Deep Throat was, I don't know if you remember that team, or if you were still in kindergarten.

• 43:35Tim Ferriss?

  No, I should say I'm aware of it, but I don't want to say I remember it, because maybe I was in kindergarten, but I'm not sure.

• 43:43Speaker 03

  It was actually in 2005.

• 43:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there we go. Then I was a few years after kindergarten.

• 43:51Speaker 03

  So Nora Ephron called me and said, "Listen, everybody wants me to comment on that. The New York Times asked me to write about it. CNN wants me to go speak about it, because she was at the time married to Carl Bernstein. And so everybody wanted to know, did she know, what did she think, etc.? But she said, "You know what? I'm instead going to write it for the Huffington Post." And she did. It was a big moment for us.

• 44:19Tim Ferriss?

  Why did she choose to do that?

• 44:22Speaker 03

  She and I were friends. She believed in what I was doing. And she was Nora Ephron, and she wanted to try new things. And as she said, "I don't want to put makeup on and go to CNN.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  And I'm writing another book, and I don't want to spend time arguing with New York Times editors about a sentence. I want to spend 20 minutes, write this down, and you publish it."

• 44:53Speaker 03

  But what was amazing, Tim, was what happened afterwards. Because Nora Ephron's piece was everywhere. It was in the New York Times, and it was on CNN. And suddenly, people began to realize that it no longer mattered where you wrote something. If it was interesting, or newsworthy, or important in some way or another, it would be everywhere.

• 45:21Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to, I'm gonna pick that up in a second, but you see, as you were recalling the rough pitch that you gave to these people, and you mentioned entering the cultural bloodstream. So I've seen you in action, talking to people, brainstorming ideas, suggesting ideas, and you're very, very good at pitching and persuading. Where did you pick that up? Is that from debate, or is it from something else? Are there other ways that you develop that skill? Because you're very good at it.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  I think for me, persuasion is about seeing what does the other person want?

• 46:07Speaker 03

  I mean, remember, you and I were at a dinner a month ago, and there was a famous designer there, we will not mention his name. And as you know, I believe that it's great if people wear dedicated sleepwear when they go to sleep, unless they like to sleep naked, because it kind of rekindles their romance with sleep, and it makes it clear to their brains that they're going to sleep. So I thought it would be great to get a big designer designing not just clothes, but sleepwear. But he had already told me that he liked breaking rules and doing things differently.

• 46:51Speaker 03

  And so for me, when I pitched the idea of designing sleepwear, I knew what the opening was, that he liked to break conventions and do things differently, and that he was asking his team to do the same. So it turned out to be a really fun conversation, and we are talking about him designing sleepwear. But for me, the key is to find out what is the common point of what I'd like to see happen, and what the other person would like to see happen.

• 47:24Tim Ferriss?

  So if you, if you, I mean, you have a very good portfolio of skills for many of the things that you've ended up building. And if you were, for instance, teaching a, what, you can choose the year, let's just call it either freshman year in college or senior year in college, you're teaching a seminar, and it's a small group of students, let's call it 20 students, and you're trying to get them ready for professional life or business life, what would you focus on teaching them in this seminar? Let's just say it's once per week, you have two to three hours with them for a, for a single semester. What would you, what would you teach? What would you focus on?

• 48:07Speaker 03

  Oh, right now, I would absolutely focus on them prioritizing their own human capital. A lot of people think that success is about what we get from the outside, but the truth is that success is so based on what we can create from what we have inside us and how we can access that place of creativity and resilience and peace inside us. I'm so convinced of that now. And, and it's getting harder and harder because the distractions, the

• 48:51Speaker 03

  invasiveness of technology are so overwhelming. So I don't think there's anything more important. It helps you come up with the best ideas. It helps you not burn out, which makes you more resilient in terms of facing no's and failure. So that would definitely be my seminar.

• 49:12Tim Ferriss?

  And what, what tools or suggestions or practices would you try to impart to these students? Because let's just say, if we're talking about Cambridge, they've, they've almost pre-qualified already as type A personalities, probably, right? I mean, these are very ambitious kids. So what would you, are there any particular tools or philosophies or books or anything that you would recommend to them to arm them in a way for defending against burnout later?

• 49:50Speaker 03

  Yes, I would recommend that they read the latest science around the importance of sleep and pauses in the course of our day. Because we claim to be data-driven, but in fact, we are living our lives ignoring the data. The prevailing culture still believes that being always on is the way to succeed. That cutting down on sleep means we are more productive because we have more time available. So I would show them the latest science and then I would bring together new role models,

• 50:34Speaker 03

  people in the arena that they admire. If they admire business people, people like Jeff Bezos, who wrote on Thrive Global, why he gets eight hours of sleep a night. As he put it, "It's good for Amazon shareholders." And he broke it down. He said, "When I get six hours, my decision-making is 5% to 20% less good than when I've had eight hours. And my value is entirely dependent on the quality of my decisions." Now, that's entirely based on science and on his personal observation of how he makes decisions.

• 51:19Speaker 03

  Or if people are more likely to be swayed by cultural icons, I would quote Selena Gomez, who wrote for us, why she does a regular digital detox. Because, as she put it, when she does a digital detox, she reconnects with herself and is much more present in everything she's doing in her life.

• 51:47Tim Ferriss?

  What does a digital detox look like for her or for anyone else who might want to try it?

• 51:52Speaker 03

  Well, people can pick the wrong way of doing it, but it's basically taking, it could be anything, from a day, a weekend, an hour away from their phones. Thich Nhat Hanh said, "It's never easier to run away from ourselves."

• 52:12Speaker 03

  The human attention span is now shorter than the attention span of the goldfish. It's down to eight seconds.

• 52:24Speaker 03

  So, anything we can do that helps us disconnect from the distractions, reconnect with ourselves, whatever form it takes. I'm a big believer in micro steps. Like, if the idea of a one-day digital detox is overwhelming, just try an hour, try half an hour, whatever. Whatever your entry point is, just take it.

• 52:50Tim Ferriss?

  So, I'll mention a few, maybe, micro steps that I've found helpful for myself, and I'd love to hear some of yours, because I've noticed, for myself at least, that I always put my phone on airplane mode typically after dinner, and it stays in airplane mode until I've meditated the next morning.

• 53:15Tim Ferriss?

  That is one practice.

• 53:16Speaker 03

  That's fantastic. That's really great.

• 53:18Tim Ferriss?

  And I've been doing that for probably two years now, because I've noticed that if I do not have it on airplane mode, number one, there will be lights and so on in my bedroom, which is not ideal, and I know that you have quite a bit to say on that. And I also find that if I am barraged by any type of inputs in the morning before doing my meditation, the meditation is of a very, very low quality. And the second thing that I do on a weekly basis is I try to take what I do call "screen-free Saturdays," and it doesn't mean that I'm totally avoiding electronics,

• 53:57Tim Ferriss?

  because I don't own a car currently, and I'll use my phone for, say, Uber, Google Maps, and so on. But otherwise, I'm not using a laptop, and I'm not using social media of any type. So, on Saturdays, that is a weekly Sabbath away from a lot of the distractions. Are there any other micro steps that you might recommend to people, or that you've found personally helpful?

• 54:21Speaker 03

  That's fantastic, and I know how many people have been influenced by you doing that.

• 54:29Speaker 03

  For me, another little micro step is not charging our phone by our bed.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  And the reason for that is that we are all slightly addicted to our phones. And even with the best intentions, if we wake up in the middle of the night and we can't easily go back to sleep and our phone is right by our bed, we are going to be tempted to pick up the phone and

• 54:58Speaker 03

  and look at our texts or look at Instagram. And that will dramatically interfere with our ability to go back to sleep and truly recharge. So that's one little micro step. And another micro step for me, which is similar to yours, is never rushing to my phone

• 55:24Speaker 03

  at the beginning of the morning, the first thing I do. But have my own ritual, which includes meditation and which includes setting my intention for the day before I get on my phone. And when I get on, I love doing my stationary bike in the morning. I'm perfectly fine being on my phone and answering emails while on the bike.

• 55:50Tim Ferriss?

  What does, well, actually, I'm going to ask you about your morning routine and then I'm going to come back to why all of this became so important to you. But what does your morning look like? Do you have any particular routines? Could you walk us through the first, say, ninety minutes of your day? When you wake up and then what happens after that?

• 56:13Speaker 03

  So first of all, I just want to say that I I don't believe in having the same time to go to sleep at night and the same time to wake up in the morning. Kind of my life doesn't work like that. And I don't like setting up rules which I'm going to break every day.

• 56:35Speaker 03

  So my goal now is to wake up eight hours after I went to sleep. Because I have found out that eight hours is what I need to operate on optimally. And also, it happens to be

• 56:55Speaker 03

  Quite a lot of people need, you know, the scientists have told us that unless you have a genetic mutation, in which case you can do great on three or four hours, and about one and a half percent of the population has that, the rest of us need seven to nine hours to have a fully restorative sleep. So that's kind of my ground rule to myself, and ninety-five percent of the time, I do it. I don't do anything perfectly, and I'm a work in progress, but I think ninety-five percent is pretty good.

• 57:31Tim Ferriss?

  So you wake up eight hours, let's say, after you've gone to bed, and then what happens after that?

• 57:39Speaker 03

  And then I, the first thing I do is sort of meditate, and then after my meditation, I set my intention for the day, like what do I want out of that day, in terms of my work, or my being, or my family. And the reason why I think it's so important is because I used to just go straight to my phone or my laptop, and that's what the world wants of us, right? It's every email and every text, and I feel it's very important for us to be clear about

• 58:21Speaker 03

  what we want, because you can't really run your life from your inbox.

• 58:26Tim Ferriss?

  No. Well, as a friend of mine put it, who, he put this to me, and he learned it from someone else, who's a billionaire, who said to him, you know, that your inbox is everyone else's agenda for your time.

• 58:42Speaker 03

  Yes, I love that, I love that.

• 58:45Tim Ferriss?

  And that's a very good way to think about it, because it's extremely reactive. And you seem to have very proactive programming, in a way, and you do seem to have certain routines or rituals. I'd love to talk about

• 59:09Tim Ferriss?

  And this will tie into a lot of what we're talking about. Walking, because I've read in doing research for our conversation that one of your favorite phrases, and I'm gonna mess this up because this looks like Latin, is solvitur ambulando, which means it is solved by walking. Could you please talk about walking and what role it has in your life?

• 59:35Speaker 03

  So, you know, I lived in Los Angeles for many years. My two daughters went to school there. And I lived in Brentwood. And it's kind of amazing that there are hikes everywhere, literally five minutes in the car from my home. They're the most beautiful hikes, the Mandeville Canyon hike and the Canter hike. And so I got into the habit of having all my meetings, quote unquote lunches, etc. with friends during hikes. So instead of going for a lunch or a meeting with friends, we would go on a hike.

• 1:00:19Speaker 03

  And the one who was in better shape would talk on the way up and the one who was in worse shape would talk on the way down. And some of the best things happened on these hikes.

• 1:00:35Speaker 03

  I remember telling all my girlfriends about my idea of launching The Huffington Post. And Laurie David, who at the time was married to Larry David, immediately said, "I'll invest." In fact, Laurie and Larry invested together. And then when they got divorced, they split the investment.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  And Kimberly Brooks became my first art editor. And it was just like a great way to just talk about everything, whether it was work or personal life.

• 1:01:12Speaker 03

  There was something about being in nature that made us all more willing to be authentic and vulnerable. And still now, when I get to LA, I...

• 1:01:24Speaker 03

  I see my friends on hikes or walks around the block or whatever we have time for. But I love it. And of course, now being in New York, it's fantastic because I can walk everywhere.

• 1:01:39Tim Ferriss?

  It's a great walking city. New York is really a fantastic walking city. And I've I've noticed a number of my, what I would consider most productive friends, which is saying a lot, because I have a lot of productive friends. But for instance, Naval Ravikant, who's really a very soulful and intelligent person who's been on this podcast before, does walk and talk meetings. So he'll have someone come and meet him. This is in San Francisco. And it might just be a walk around several blocks and doing a few laps of that route. But he will do walk and talk in that way.

• 1:02:20Tim Ferriss?

  And I've also noticed that a few of my friends who I would also put in that top performing category, they'll do walk and talks, but they'll do it with video FaceTime so that they can look at the other person as they're walking, which I thought was quite clever.

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  Well, actually, walking meetings is another great thing to do. And we do a lot of it here at Thrive, especially if it's one-on-one. It gets harder navigating the streets of New York. If it's more than two people, you can do it up to three, and then it gets really hard.

• 1:02:59Tim Ferriss?

  What, if you don't mind, and this will perhaps lead us into Thrive, but what were, could you talk about one of the harder or darker periods during the Huffington Post years? And what helped you to get out of it? And just walk us through maybe a story of one of those times? Because I think that it's very easy for people listening to this podcast to put the people being interviewed on a pedestal and assume they've always had everything figured out. And they just step up to the plate and always hit home runs. But is there any particular tough period or time at Huffington Post that you could tell us about? And what helped you to?

• 1:03:43Tim Ferriss?

  Get through it or get out of it?

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely. And I'm so glad you are focusing on that because the worst thing we can do is give people the delusion that everything has been plain sailing. For me, the hardest time was two years into building Halfpost when I was literally working around the clock. I also had two daughters who at the time were teenagers. And that's probably the hardest time for a mother and her teenage daughters. And I was divorced, so I was bringing them up on my own. And my oldest daughter was

• 1:04:31Speaker 03

  at the time when we did the college tours to decide what college she was going to go. And basically, what would happen, she had made that rule, which was very legitimate, no BlackBerries, it was BlackBerry time. And when we were together, so she and I would be together going from college to college during the day. And then at night, we would check into a hotel, she would go to sleep and I would start working. So I got back to Los Angeles and I was completely exhausted. Without even realizing I was completely exhausted and running on empty until I got up from my desk that first morning back because I was feeling cold to get a sweater.

• 1:05:16Speaker 03

  And I collapsed and hit my head on my desk, broke my cheekbone, got four stitches on my right eye. And that was the the beginning of the journey that led to The Thrive Book and The Sleep Revolution Book and The Thrive Company. At the time, it was a very dark time.

• 1:05:38Speaker 03

  Because first of all, when something like that happens.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  Nobody knows what's wrong with you. Do you have a brain tumor? Do you have a heart problem? So it was literally two weeks of going from doctor to doctor, from MRI to electrocardiogram, to check what was wrong with me. And at the end of these two weeks, I feel if this was a movie, I would have had all the doctors in one room, in their white coats, basically give me the diagnosis, which is, Ariana, you are suffering from civilization's disease, burnout. And there's nothing we can do for you. You have to change your life. And

• 1:06:28Speaker 03

  and it really took that painful wake-up call for me to realize that I had to change my life. And that's why now I'm I feel such an evangelist about this topic because I feel people can make incremental changes in their lives before they hit the proverbial wall. And what is funny, Tim, is that if you had asked me that morning, Ariana, how are you? I would have said, fine. Because I had forgotten what being fine really was.

• 1:07:05Tim Ferriss?

  Right, yeah, I get it, yeah.

• 1:07:07Speaker 03

  You get it? You know, being like perpetually tired had become the new normal. And and I had literally forgotten it, so much so that I wasn't even aware of the fact that I was running on empty.

• 1:07:26Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm really glad we're talking about this. And I just want to reflect on one thing you said, which is how you would have said you were fine because you'd forgotten what normal actually was.

• 1:07:41Tim Ferriss?

  I remember a few years ago, I

• 1:07:45Tim Ferriss?

  Hit a point of burnout, complete burnout, right after, during and then right after The Four Hour Chef, for many reasons, but I won't bore everybody with them right now. And what I ended up doing after that, as part of my attempt to recover, was agreeing to do my first meditation retreat of, it was only two or three days. And there were a number of rules. Rule number one was, you can't use an alarm clock. And if you need to sleep, and that's all you do this weekend, then that's what you do. And I felt like that was gonna be a huge waste, because I knew I was tired. But that was part one.

• 1:08:25Tim Ferriss?

  And part two was, they recommended that everyone cut back on caffeine intake, which is my, I suppose, one of my compounds of choice. Fortunately, I'm not drawn to opiates, but stimulants are, unfortunately, something that has often been right at my side. And my body just seems to crave and respond to that with a certain degree of addiction. So I had been in my normal routine for months prior to that, going to a Thai restaurant that would let me sit down and work on my book, and they would give me the unending cup or glass of iced tea. So I'd end up drinking two or three gallons, probably, of iced tea.

• 1:09:10Tim Ferriss?

  And that was my normal, right? So that's just what I assumed baseline felt like. And then, for the first time in probably six months, I went completely off of caffeine in preparation for this retreat, proceeded to sleep almost the entire weekend, and felt rejuvenated, no gadgets or devices. Then I went back to, in this case, San Francisco, where I used to live, and...

• 1:09:36Tim Ferriss?

  What did I do? I went back into my routine and I went to the Thai restaurant. And then I remember after maybe two or three glasses of iced tea. And keeping in mind, before that, I was drinking 20, 30, not feeling anything. That was just status quo. And I had maybe three glasses and I felt so agitated and so unpleasant that I realized, oh my God, like this times 10 was what I assumed was normal just a week or two ago. And it was just mind boggling. I mean, it was such a wake up call for me. But I feel like I'm giving a confessional. I just wanted to share that.

• 1:10:16Tim Ferriss?

  But what were some of the first things that you did after you hit your head, saw these doctors, they say, you need to change your life? In the, say, week that followed, what did you do?

• 1:10:30Speaker 03

  Well, first of all, I love your story because it's the same message that we both want to impart, which is how often we're not even aware of what we are doing to ourselves. And that's why by listening to each other's stories, we can increase our own awareness. So for me, that, first of all, these first two weeks were spent going to doctors and asking questions. And you know, I've always been drawn to philosophy.

• 1:11:07Speaker 03

  I've always loved reading the Greeks and the Romans and everyone in between. And the one question that really every philosopher asks is what is a good life? And I feel that what we've done is we've reduced the answer to that question to what is, what is success? And we've reduced the good life to a successful life and we've reduced success down to money and power slash status. So we've kind of shrunken the definition of a good life.

• 1:11:46Speaker 03

  And, and I found that during that time, I went back to books I loved and had read before. So it's not as if this was like a new journey for me. I'd always been drawn.

• 1:12:01Speaker 03

  To that quest, but this was something that had a new urgency and a new determination to actually live differently and not just read great books.

• 1:12:17Tim Ferriss?

  And were there any particular changes you were there any particular books you remember

• 1:12:24Tim Ferriss?

  having a renewed impact on you and then were there any particular steps that you took after that?

• 1:12:30Speaker 03

  Yes, actually, a book that I read that I had not read before,

• 1:12:37Speaker 03

  which was recommended by a friend was incredibly

• 1:12:42Speaker 03

  powerful for me because it was written by a man who was in the arena and yet lived life the way I wanted to live my life. And that was Marcus Aurelius.

• 1:12:54Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, yes, Meditations?

• 1:12:57Speaker 03

  Meditations, exactly. So he was the emperor of Rome. That was a pretty big job.

• 1:13:07Speaker 03

  He had faced invasions and plagues and betrayals and an unfaithful wife. And yet, he was able to be imperturbable. That was my favorite word at the time. And be very connected to that centered place in himself from which he wrote this amazing book called Meditations. And I love that because, you know, it's easy to read books by Buddhist monks and Christian mystics.

• 1:13:45Speaker 03

  And you want, I wanted to hear from somebody who was in the arena.

• 1:13:49Tim Ferriss?

  Right, someone who was on the front lines actually having to deal with the difficulties and messiness of the real world.

• 1:13:55Speaker 03

  Yes, and I don't, I'm not suggesting that my life was anything like Marcus Aurelius's life. But nevertheless, I was in the arena. I

• 1:14:08Speaker 03

  I had to deal with the daily challenges of life and work and. And there was one quote, in fact, which I have laminated and carry with me that I love so much in the book, and it goes as follows: "People look for retreats for themselves in the country, by the coast, or in the hills. There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind." So constantly give yourself this retreat and renew yourself.

• 1:14:42Tim Ferriss?

  That is a great quote. That is a really, really, really great quote. Yeah, I don't think, I'm amazed we haven't talked about this. That we're only talking about Marcus Aurelius, and I'm not going to go off on a crazy Stoic trip.

• 1:14:57Speaker 03

  Oh, please do. I would love you to go off on a crazy Stoic trip. I'll come right with you.

• 1:15:04Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, so I also have a quote from Meditations, and I tend to be a Seneca guy, which is controversial, but he's a beautiful writer, and people very often, when they are, if they get bitten by the bug of Stoic philosophy, tend to go, say, to Marcus Aurelius or Seneca. Often like both. And then there's, I'd say, maybe 10% who love Epictetus for any number of reasons. But there's this quote from, and I don't recall it exactly because it's actually on my refrigerator, and I'm not near my refrigerator, but in effect it says, "When you are taken away from the harmony,

• 1:15:47Tim Ferriss?

  do what you can to return to it as easily as possible, or as effortlessly as possible." And it is, I suppose, a reminder to me that it's not so much the goal to never be off balance, it's to regain your balance.

• 1:16:03Speaker 03

  Oh, I love that. I couldn't agree more. In fact, it is impossible to always be in that centered place. There is no human being on earth that I have ever met, maybe there's some enlightened saint somewhere, who can be in that centered place all the time. So you're absolutely right. It's all about how quickly can we course correct.

• 1:16:28Tim Ferriss?

  Now, you mentioned the arena and you have certainly been in the arena in many different ways in your lifetime so far and no doubt you will continue to be in the arena because I think you enjoy the full contact sport of it. I wanted to ask you a question about hiring at Thrive and this, what I'm about to read comes from a piece in Ink Magazine and I'd just love to hear you either fact check it and just correct it or elaborate on it because of course quotes are not always accurate on the internet, but sometimes they are. So what it says is now during interviews, there's a speech I give to everybody and

• 1:17:08Tim Ferriss?

  this is quoting you and the speech is something like this, "For potential new hires, I give you full permission to walk into my office and scream at me, but I want you to consider this as my last warning. If you complain about any of your colleagues behind their backs, you'd be let go." It does make, and then you go on to comment on how it makes a difference when you tell people this. I had never known this, but can you, can you tell us more about whether this is accurate and then what the speech is and why you give it?

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  So, I really believe that we are moving away from what is seen as traditional HR practice, which is you go and complain to HR about a colleague, HR goes to the colleague and says somebody, not naming who, complained about them and it becomes this like, kind of game shrouded in secrecy that creates a very toxic environment. And I believe where HR is moving to now, and certainly this is what we both practice

• 1:18:23Speaker 03

  and teach in the work we are doing with corporations, is authentic transparency. And I believe that people who trust themselves

• 1:18:39Speaker 03

  And trust each other are willing to have difficult conversations. You know, relationships are not easy, whether they are work relationships or personal relationships. We may upset each other. We may say something the other person takes the wrong way. We may do something that upsets someone. I give everybody complete permission, starting with me, to come and tell me directly that I did something they didn't like, I said something they didn't like. And when I say scream, I want to make the point that say it in as raw a way as you want. You don't have to figure it out how to say it. You don't have to, you can say it while you are angry. You don't have to wait to calm down, whatever.

• 1:19:24Speaker 03

  But if you're incapable of doing that, if you're only capable of passive aggressive behavior, which is always being nice to your managers or to your colleagues while badmouthing them behind their backs, consider this your last warning. I mean, if we say that as clearly as we have said it, and not just I, but everybody here, but you can't do it, then this is not the right place for you.

• 1:19:54Tim Ferriss?

  I love that. I wish more people did this because I feel like, and I don't want to, I'm trying to hold myself back, I've had too much caffeine maybe, but the, I feel like the handling of everyone with kid gloves and sort of infantilizing of the workplace is, in the short term, the avoidance of pain, but guaranteed to create much larger problems and much greater pain in the long term. So this approach, I think, is just so refreshing. And my question is, how do you, when you are hiring people, and many of those hires, I would imagine, are younger, perhaps they've been, they've only known the environment where you would go to HR and report.

• 1:20:39Tim Ferriss?

  They're not, they're not accustomed to having uncomfortable conversations with coworkers where they try to address things directly. Do you, do you try to in any way coach them or provide them with guidelines for how to have those conversations?

• 1:20:54Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, absolutely. In fact, actually, Tim, it's interesting. We hire a lot of people straight out of college, and that's great. It's so easy to tell them that, and they get it, and they practice it. It's people who come to us from other companies that need more coaching. And I think we are able to do it by often having difficult conversations at our leadership meetings, repeating that in our team meetings, repeating that again and again, you know, that we encourage people to have difficult conversations. We encourage people to communicate when they are not happy with something.

• 1:21:38Speaker 03

  I always prioritize that. People know if anybody texts me or emails me and says, "I have a problem, something has happened, I want to talk to you," I drop everything to address it. So people know there is always a forum, including with me, where they can address problems. And so I think we've really created that atmosphere and that space here. And we also make it part of hiring, which helps hire people who are more comfortable having difficult conversations.

• 1:22:16Tim Ferriss?

  Now, your sister, who I love, I believe, has said that you are like Athena, I believe. But on the flip side, I've also read that your favorite Greek god is... Now, I don't know if you would pronounce it Hermes or Hermes.

• 1:22:37Speaker 03

  Hermes, unless you want to refer to the scarves.

• 1:22:40Tim Ferriss?

  The scarves, right, which confuses me as a Long Island boy with no culture. So, all right, Hermes. So why does she think that you're like Athena, and why is your favorite Greek god Hermes?

• 1:22:50Speaker 03

  Well, first of all, you know, I wrote a book on Greek gods and goddesses and where I approached them as archetypes. And I believe that we all carry all the gods and goddesses in us. And so the question is, who is the most dominant god? So Athena is the goddess of wisdom. And I'm very flattered that my sister thinks that's my dominant goddess. But I aspire to Hermes being my dominant god because he's like my favorite god of Greek mythology. Because he's so multifaceted. He's both childlike and playful and wise.

• 1:23:34Speaker 03

  He's mystical and comfortable in the marketplace. And he represents everything I love about our humanity in his very godlike way. So he's my favorite.

• 1:23:58Tim Ferriss?

  And I mean, you really have struck me in all of our interactions. And as I've observed you as someone who's really made a conscious effort, as you said, to be honest with yourself and to see reality as it is. But there's one anecdote, which I think falls into this category. It's kind of related, I think, that I've never heard from you. So again, I read a lot on the internet and I have to be careful sometimes with that. But did you have a conversation with Henry Kissinger about your accent at one point?

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  I did.

• 1:24:33Tim Ferriss?

  And if so, can you please tell the story?

• 1:24:37Speaker 03

  So, you know, I have been very conscious of my accent for a long time. And I did try to change it. In fact, my ex-husband gave me as a birthday gift, which you may consider a very passive-aggressive birthday gift, a dialect coach for two weeks to follow me around and give me notes. And it wasn't just any dialect coach. It was Jessica Drake, who is a very famous Hollywood dialect coach who coached Forrest Gump.

• 1:25:20Speaker 03

  Coach Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. And anyway, so she literally followed me around. At the time, my children were young. She would put diphthong symbols on Dr. Seuss books. So when I was reading to my children, I could practice. And she would put lifesavers on my tongue. So I could pronounce my long e's like long e's and my short e's like short e's. And by the end of it, I was paralyzed. I knew exactly what I was doing wrong, but I could not really be an authentic functioning human being and speak proper English.

• 1:26:03Speaker 03

  So I gave up reluctantly the hope of having, speaking the Queen's English. And soon after, I gave up my husband, though the two things were not related.

• 1:26:20Speaker 03

  And then around that time, I was talking to Henrik Kishinge. And I told him, you know, you're so comfortable with your accent and I've been so uncomfortable with it. And he said, oh, Ariana, give it up. In American public life, you can never overestimate the advantages of complete and total incomprehensibility.

• 1:26:44Tim Ferriss?

  So you learned to embrace it. Was it easy? I mean, after that conversation, was it easy? Or what was the problem?

• 1:26:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it was the combination of seeing how I could never speak like Jessica Drake wanted me to speak unless I just kind of measured every word and lost all spontaneity. And also the fact that Henrik Kishinge seemed so completely comfortable with his heavy German accent. And now, honestly, I don't think about it. But for a long time, it really weighed on me.

• 1:27:18Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you know, I wanted to hear you tell that story, which I really only knew a tiny piece of it. So I'm glad you told the full story. And because I think you are very, you live life very proactively. And it's been inspiring to watch in our interactions and also as I see you converse and interact and help other people. So I really encourage people, obviously, to check out Thrive Global. And I'll mention in a second where they can find you on various social platforms. But first and foremost, I just wanted to thank you for taking the time because this has been so fun.

• 1:28:03Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm sure we only found the very tip of the iceberg in terms of the stories that you could tell. So maybe we'll do a round two sometime. But I really appreciate you making the time to have the conversation.

• 1:28:19Speaker 03

  Oh, Tim, I absolutely loved it, loved it. And I would love to invite your listeners to tell their own stories. You know, their stories of burnout, their wake up calls, their life hacks. And we can post them on your site and on Thrive Global and social them. I really believe that our stories can help others in a way that goes beyond science and data. So I love collecting the stories and I love inviting people to participate.

• 1:28:57Tim Ferriss?

  Well, let's point them to thriveglobal.com. People should check it out, absolutely check it out.

• 1:29:03Speaker 03

  Actually, I'm going to make it even easier. I'm going to give you my email address and they can email me directly. That's how the Huffington Post started, remember?

• 1:29:11Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so before you do that, Derek Sivers once did that because he said, "No one's listening after two and a half hours." And he had his inbox explode to the point that it became very difficult to manage. Is there a... So I will leave it up to you.

• 1:29:26Speaker 03

  I am ready to take the risk.

• 1:29:28Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, all right.

• 1:29:30Speaker 03

  It's an A H? [email protected].

• 1:29:36Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 1:29:39Tim Ferriss?

  All right, well, you seem to be a masterful surfer of technology. So I will, I will leave you to contend with what comes out of it. But everybody heard it, [email protected]. So you can send your stories to Arianna and you can say hello to her on LinkedIn, Arianna Huffington, Facebook, also Arianna Huffington, and then Twitter and Instagram, Arianna Huff, H U F F. Is there anything else, Arianna, in terms of asks or suggestions or parting comments that you'd like to make before we finish up?

• 1:30:11Speaker 03

  No, that's my ask. Let's share our stories and change the culture so we can reduce all the unnecessary suffering people are experiencing. Thank you, team, so much for all you are doing to make that possible.

• 1:30:26Tim Ferriss?

  Well, thank you for sharing so much and doing what you do. And I'm absolutely thrilled to have you on. And for everyone listening, you can find links to everything we've talked about in the show notes, as usual, at tim.blog/podcast. Arianna, thank you so much. And to everyone listening, be safe, get your sleep, pay attention to your body and how you feel. And as always, thank you for listening. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend?

• 1:31:11Tim Ferriss?

  And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.