Fueling Human Potential

Jon Clifton:
[0:09] Arianna, welcome to Gallup's at Work Summit in the great state of Nebraska.

Arianna Huffington:
[0:13] Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. All these amazing people who've gathered to talk about strengths and thriving.

Jon Clifton:
[0:24] Now, Arianna, we have your top five prominently featured behind you. Can you tell us about what strength it is that you feel that you identify with most and also use throughout your leadership the most?

Arianna Huffington:
[0:38] So, I really do believe that Connectedness is the strength I rely on the most, and one that has fueled a lot of my life. When I say Connectedness, it's both Connectedness with people. I love people. I love learning from them, learning about them. But I also am an introvert. Does that sound paradoxical? I need time by myself to refuel and recharge in order to be able to give a hundred percent when I'm with people. But as well as Connectedness with people, which has been really great in terms of building teams and making sure that relationships are not just transactional. Which was something my mother taught me from very early on. I think she was my first strengths coach. She could not have a transactional relationship with anyone. If a FedEx man was delivering a packet, my mother would say, "Come in. I just baked something, sit down, have something to eat." Going shopping with her, you had to have an enormous amount of patience. Before she engaged with the shop assistant about what she was buying, she would connect with her as a human being. So I learned from her how to have relationships that are more emotional, deeper, rather than just purely transactional. But beyond that, it's also a connectedness to something larger than ourselves.

It's my absolute belief, ever since I was a little girl living in a one-bedroom apartment in Athens, Greece, that there is something more to the universe. That we are living in a benevolent universe, and that I'm connected to that. But I was actually at a conference and Julia Roberts was being interviewed. And they asked her, what was her strength? And she said, "My strength is that I feel that I'm being held by the universe," which is feeling that whatever happens, even if you can't fully understand the reason, as often in life, trusting that there is a reason. So my favorite Connectedness quote is by Rumi, the Persian poet, who said, "Live life as though everything is rigged in your favor." And it's amazing. When I look back at my life, a lot of the most painful things make sense in retrospect. I don't know if any of you have had really painful relationships, things that at the time were really hard, but then when you look back, they led to other things that are central to your life.

Jon Clifton:
[4:05] Arianna, as you mentioned, people with Connectedness are oftentimes connected to a higher purpose. How do you feel you manifest that particular purpose? Is it through the fact that you've started a number of companies? Is it through how you write books or is it some other way?

Arianna Huffington:
[4:24] Well, part of it is that the minute I learn something, I need to shout it from the rooftops. That's how I wrote Thrive. I collapsed from exhaustion, sleep deprivation, burnout, having bought into the collective delusion that in order to be a successful businesswoman and a good mom, you have to be on all the time. You don't have time to take care of yourself. And so two years into building the Huffington Post, I was the divorced mother of two little girls. I collapsed. I hit my head on my desk, broke my cheekbone, was diagnosed with burnout. And again, one of my other strengths we'll probably talk about is being a learner. I studied the phenomenon and realized this wasn't just my personal problem, it was a global epidemic. So I decided to write a book about it called Thrive, about how we can redefine the place of work in our lives and redefine success. So we don't define success just in terms of money and status, which is really not enough. So the theme of the book is that this is trying to sit on a two-legged stool. You need the third leg of the stool, which is our health and wellbeing, our capacity to find wonder in life and not miss the moment, our ability to give.

And also to find wisdom and insights. So anyway, I wrote that book. I covered these issues exhaustively on the Huffington Post. And by 2016, I didn't want just to help raise awareness. I wanted to help people change behaviors. So I left to start a behavior change technology company. So you see how that works. It's like I learned something. I had to make sure everybody knew that because lives would be happier, healthier, with much less unnecessary suffering.

Jon Clifton:
[6:45] People with Intellection, which you have in your top five, are oftentimes asking some of the world's most difficult questions, sometimes questions that are impossible to ask. And in Thrive, you had a really fascinating question at the very beginning. I think you were 23. You had just written a bestselling book. You were traveling the world. You were in a hotel room, and you said you sat on the edge of your bed because they put you in an amazing hotel room. There was flowers in the room, there was champagne, but you sat there and you wondered to yourself, is this it? Can you talk more about that? That is a huge question. And what's the answer?

Arianna Huffington:
[7:27] Well, it was, I had a midlife crisis at 23. Having, as I said, been brought up, in a very modest way. And suddenly I wrote a big bestseller at 23 about the changing role of women. And I was traveling around the world, promoting it. And I felt really empty. And I thought, "Hey, I'm 23, what's next?" How often do you think, "Oh my God, I'm going to make money and be successful." And you could say, "Well, I want to make more money. I want to be more successful." But I knew that wasn't it. So it's actually, there's a Peggy Lee song. You're too young to remember it or know it. Which is, is that all there is? And I knew that the answer is categorically no. There is more to life. There is connecting with something deeper. And I'm very comfortable with the word spiritual. If you're not, something that has a more universal aspect to it. And so that was really also part of being a learner, realizing I didn't want just to keep writing about women. And everybody wanted me to keep writing about women, but I'm a learner. So I felt, okay, I got that. I got women.

I'm 23. I've written everything I know about it. So I literally locked myself up and wrote a book about something I wanted to learn about. I've written 15 books and they're all so different because every book was a journey of learning for me. And once I finished it, I was done. So I locked myself up and wrote a book about the crisis in political leadership in the West. Absolutely nothing to do with women, and absolutely nothing any publisher wanted to publish. I had 37 rejections.

Jon Clifton:
[9:55] From publishers?

Arianna Huffington:
[9:56] Yes. During which time I had run out of money, and I began to think, "Hey, maybe the first book was a fluke. I need to go get a real job." And I remember walking down, I lived in London at the time, walking down St. James Street and seeing Barclays Bank. And something made me walk into the bank. I think that's Connectedness, that's trust in the universe. I asked to see the manager armed with nothing but a lot of Greek chutzpah. I didn't have a single asset and asked him for a loan. And for some reason, he gave it to me.

Jon Clifton:
[10:40] How much?

Arianna Huffington:
[10:42] Not a lot. Maybe a thousand dollars. Whatever. Just to keep me going. But the point was not the amount. The point was that somebody trusted and gave me some money. I could pay my rent. I could eat. I could keep going. I could try a few more publishers. I tried a couple more publishers and the second one said yes.

Jon Clifton:
[11:04] That's amazing.

Arianna Huffington:
[11:05] So my point is that part of Connectedness for me, and I'm returning to that strength, is perseverance. It's endurance, which I think is so key because so often we give up before we get what it is that we want.

Jon Clifton:
[11:28] Now you have Achiever in your top five, and much of what you've written about in Thrive has to do with working too hard to the point of burnout. For those that have Achiever, a lot of times it is just go, go, go, go, go. You can't, it's really hard to turn off. What other advice would you have for those with Achiever or those that are coaching or managing someone with Achiever to make sure that they aren't in the basement of Achiever and burning out?

Arianna Huffington:
[11:57] Well, the most important thing for Achievers is to study the science of achieving and realize that, in fact, if you want to be really creative and innovative, you need to be able to refuel yourself. Because we can all keep achieving and getting stuff done, running on empty. But they're more basic and transactional things. When we want to be creative, come up with big new ideas, big new projects, we need to keep refueling. And yet, we're still in the middle of a huge cultural transformation about that. Because for centuries, we believed that to achieve, you had to be always on. You had to work and work and work and work. And hard work is table stakes. There's nobody who achieves without hard work. This is stupid hard work. When you work with diminishing returns. I studied economics at Cambridge. And the thing that I learned more than anything is the concept of diminishing returns. You can keep putting hours in, but you get less out.

And so, when you remember that, you realize that recharging, which is basically what we teach at Thrive, taking time to recharge. If you're a manager or a leader, we say, put your own oxygen mask on first. When you do that, you're going to be a better leader, a better manager, a better employee, better parent, better at everything, and also healthier and happier. But a lot of people don't yet believe that. Look at Elon Musk. He's demonstrating what it is like to still believe that delusion that if you sleep in the office, if you expect everybody around you to be quote-unquote hardcore, you're going to achieve more. But look at the results. The stock is down. The advertisers have gone, the place keeps breaking down. Not exactly a great demonstration of being always on as a way to hyper-achieve. And what is so sad is this is coming from a man who's clearly a genius, who totally gets automotive energy, but he doesn't get human energy. We are not machines. We are not software for the human operating system. Downtime is a feature, not a bug. I also love the way modern science validates ancient wisdom. In every culture, you have a myth of creation, how the world was created. And in every culture, you have the same process in the myth, which is God creates heaven and earth in six days, and then she takes the seventh day off.

Clearly, that was a message to us. If God is omniscient, omnipresent, omni-everything, doesn't need to take a day off, but we do. And that was the message that is now validated by modern science.

Jon Clifton:
[15:48] As someone with Achiever, how do you use Achiever? Do you see it as something that you're powering through the day, accomplishing tasks throughout the day? Or do you see it where you have these really big goals that you're aiming at, and you feel a sense of accomplishment, or is it both?

Arianna Huffington:
[16:05] I like getting stuff done during the day. But I also see how they fit into big goals, how daily achievements, daily completions, I love completing things, fit into whatever are the big goals, the big achievements I'm looking for. The other thing that's interesting about achieving is that we all talk about relentlessly prioritizing. The more stuff you have to do, the more difficult it is to get it all done by the end of the day, right? So we all talk about you have to relentlessly prioritize, make sure you do the most important things. But what we say at Thrive, in order to really be able to do that, you have to also be able to be comfortable with incompletions. Because nobody who has an interesting job can get everything done by the end of the day. Is there anybody here who can get to the end of their working day and say, "Hey, I've done absolutely everything I could have done today. I don't have a single other thing to do." Is there anybody?

If there was anybody here who could say that, I would highly recommend you change jobs, because it means your job isn't interesting enough. So for me, in order to be able to achieve while also taking care of yourself and refueling yourself, you need to declare an end to your working day. There is no real end to a working day. So we need to declare it. And at Thrive, we believe in micro steps, small daily incremental steps that lead to healthier behaviors. Around with five main daily behaviors, sleep, food, movement, stress management, and connection. And those five daily behaviors lead to a healthy life, but you make the changes in a small microscopic almost way every day that cumulatively becomes healthier habits. So the micro step around declaring an end to your day is actually out of our hundreds of micro steps, my absolute favorite. Which is, you declare an end to your day, your working day, by turning off your phone and charging it outside your bedroom. You see, I can hear the anxiety.

Jon Clifton:
[19:11] It gave me anxiety.

Arianna Huffington:
[19:14] Jon and I have had this conversation. He's very anxious about it. But here's the thing. Micro steps. Can you do it one night a week? Don't do it seven nights a week, maybe pick a weekend night, whatever. Pick a night, begin the process.

The important thing about separating yourself from your phone in order to be able to have a truly deep recharging sleep is not just because of the light. People say, but I put it on do not disturb, or I don't look at it if I wake up in the middle of the night. Of course, if you ask a couple more questions, do you never look at it if you wake up in the middle of the night? Because the truth is that no matter how much willpower you have, if you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom for whatever reason, and you can't go back to sleep, you're bored. And this thing is so entertaining. There are texts you can exchange, there's social media, there is news. So most people are going to be tempted to go back to their phone, and that's the end of a good night's sleep. And who doesn't want to wake up fully recharged? I wrote a whole book on sleep because out of these five habits, I believe sleep is foundational. It's really at the heart of our immune system, at the heart of our cognitive performance, everything.

So that micro step is terribly important. Start in any way you want. We even have produced a single physical object, Thrive produces, is a little phone bed that is a charging station that looks a little bed. It has a little blanket.

It's supposed to live outside everybody's bedrooms. And parents and children, it has room for 10 phones, are supposed to put the phone under the blanket, tuck it in, say good night, see you in the morning. The phone will be fully charged and we will be fully recharged. And we even, it comes in mahogany and light wood. And, we sell it at cost. It's not a profit maker. It's really a ritual that helps us add this good practice in our lives. And also, we have so much information about how bad it is for teenagers to sleep with their phones. So you can teach your children phone hygiene right away when you give them the phone. And if they see their parents also put their phones there. It's not a punishment. It's a good, healthy practice.

Jon Clifton:
[22:20] Now, people with Intellection, as I mentioned, are often asking some of the biggest questions. What are some of the biggest questions you're asking yourself now?

Arianna Huffington:
[22:31] Well, now, I'm obsessed with how can we use AI for good. I just wrote a piece about it. You can read it on LinkedIn or Thrive or wherever you get your news. Basically, there are so many aspects of AI, the loss of jobs, the misinformation dangers. But AI is here to stay and grow. And we can regulate it at the margin, but there isn't really going to be a blue ribbon commission in Brussels regulating global AI. They couldn't even regulate Facebook. So if we look at it as a tool, it all depends on how we use it. And what I am spending a lot of time analyzing is how can we use it to make human beings better? I really believe that human beings are meant to keep evolving. We are all a work in progress. I don't know anybody who's perfected, right? Except Jon.

So, how can we help humans become better? So, the thing that we do at Thrive, for example, we personalize the micro steps and the content, we feed the users work with so that they are more likely to practice these healthier habits. But with AI and ChatGPT, you can personalize to such an extent in such a way that it will be universes away from where we are now. And therefore, if I know exactly what's going to motivate you, if I know a poem that's going to inspire you, or a practice that's going to nudge you to do something good for you and for others. And I know exactly when to feed them to you. That, to me, is something that is very exciting. And it's something which can really help us make human beings better, you know, tap into the better angels of our nature. We all have both. And anything we can do to tap into the better angels of our nature is going to be absolutely critical in the next few years and decades. And just one more related thing here. It can help us get away from the parts of our culture now where we tend to judge people by the worst thing they've done in their lives and not be willing to forgive. And I think that's something that has to change too, because we've all made mistakes. And how can we encourage people to learn from them, acknowledge them, apologize, and become better?

Jon Clifton:
[26:08] When you ask yourself these massive questions that are facing humanity and you start going into the process of learning, how is it that you learn? Do you use AI? Do you read about it? Do you read academic papers? What's the process?

Arianna Huffington:
[26:24] All of the above, but also I love talking to people about it. I was at a small conference on AI in Tuscany, actually, which was not bad. In Tuscany. And I organized this conversation with Reid Hoffman, who was one of the early founders of OpenAI, and Kevin Scott, who is the CTO at Microsoft. And I brought also Krista Tippett. I don't know if anybody listens to her podcast. It's called On Being. And it's an amazing podcast where she brings together poets, philosophers, people to talk about wisdom practices, to talk about how to deepen our lives. So it is a combination of technologists and philosophers. And bringing it all together, it was absolutely fascinating. And I said at the beginning of the conversation, we're only going to talk about one aspect of AI. There are a thousand aspects, right? And this is how to make human beings better. Reid Hoffman loves light bulb jokes. So he also wanted to show how AI is amazing at light bulb jokes. So he asked ChatGPT, "How many Arianna Huffingtons does it take to change a light bulb?"

Jon Clifton:
[28:02] What's the answer?

Arianna Huffington:
[28:03] And ChatGPT said, "One, but she would have made sure to have gotten a very good night's sleep." I think this is a really good joke. Right?

Jon Clifton:
[28:21] Arianna, you've talked a lot about building thriving workplaces. That is the topic that we have for this conference today. How do you do it at your workplace?

Arianna Huffington:
[28:31] Well, we do it at our place the same way we do it with our partners, our clients. The first thing is to have this platform, the product that is Thrive, available, not just in an app, not just on the web, but in the middle of the workflow. So if you are a company that uses Microsoft Teams, we'll bring everything to you. All the micro steps around sleep and food and movement and stress and connection to you directly. If you are using Slack, we'll bring it to you on Slack. And what we found is that the difference in engagement is incredible. We work with CVS, for example. They have 300,000 colleagues, as they call their employees.

The engagement on the Thrive app at CVS is about 16%. The engagement on Thrive on Teams is 75%. So that's what I mean about how to make changes easy for people, how to eliminate the friction. And also we never just bring the platform to people whether it's at Thrive, the company, or with our partners. We always introduce it with a cultural activation. A fireside chat with the CEO and me so that people have cultural permission. They know they can engage in these new habits, that taking care of their wellbeing and mental health is going to make them more productive, that the leaders in the company believe in that. Because when you're in the middle of a cultural transformation, it's not enough to just give people a product. You need to actually explain why this matters, why it's going to make you more effective and more productive.

Jon Clifton:
[30:47] Can you talk more about how you bring out the strengths of others, especially when it's in your own workplace?

Arianna Huffington:
[30:55] Yes, I love that. I think one of the best things about strengths and why I love it is how, if you know what your team's strengths are, and also how these strengths can become problematic, as we were discussing. Like, if you're an Achiever and you think hyper-achieving means being always on, you may end up like me or worse, burning out. When we flew here and our wonderful head of comms, Libby Duke, all our team that flew here has taken the strengths training, which is fantastic. And her top strength is being a Maximizer. So whatever she does, she wants to do 100%. Like, nothing is good enough. So sometimes, something is good enough.

Jon Clifton:
[31:53] Spoken like a true Achiever.

Arianna Huffington:
[32:00] So, it's great. Now that I know that about Libby, I can work even more effectively with her because I can say, "Libby, that's fine what you've done here. You've given people four options. You don't have to give them 12," or whatever the case may be. So, you can help team members and they can help you when they know your strengths and how to be as effective as possible in utilizing your strengths.

Jon Clifton:
[32:31] Now, there's one strength we haven't talked about yet, which is your Strategic. How do you use your Strategic? And if someone were to have Strategic in their top five, what advice would you have for them?

Arianna Huffington:
[32:42] I would say that, first of all, the way I use Strategic is to look around the corner and see where I think the world is going. And just let me give you an example. When I launched the Huffington Post, blogging and having conversations online was seen as something that people who couldn't get a job were doing in their parents' basement. In fact, if the New York Times and other prominent papers had realized that the conversations were moving online, they would have done it and there would have been no room for the Huffington Post. I mean, look, the New York Times now is doing a phenomenal job digitally. At the time, they dismissed it. So there was room for the Huffington Post. And I wanted to fill that vacuum. Let me tell you, when I, on the first day of the Huffington Post, the reviews were terrible. I remember one of them by heart, can I tell you?

Jon Clifton:
[33:57] Yeah.

Arianna Huffington:
[33:59] It said, the Huffington Post is an unsurvivable failure. It is the movie equivalent of Gigli, Heaven's Gate, and Ishtar all rolled into one. Now, for those of you who are not movie buffs, these were all enormous flops. So that's when I think Connectedness helps, because you need to not be, not allow the naysayers to undermine you and undermine what you're doing. And interestingly enough, a year later, the woman who wrote this review emailed me and said I was wrong. The Huffington Post has become an indispensable part of the internet and can I work for you?

Jon Clifton:
[34:53] Did you hire her?

Arianna Huffington:
[34:54] And I said, yes. First of all, this is another thing that I've learned in life. She was really good. As you can see, that was a good line, right? I learned that the worst thing you can do in life is hold on to resentments. Resentments are, as someone said, the poison you drink thinking somebody else is going to die. It's poison. So I'm part of my work on myself. Remember I said I'm a work in progress. Is making sure I'm always current with people. That there is nobody I resent, there is nobody I'm angry at. I'm not saying that happens automatically, but I'm working at it. So that I'm like, I'm current, I'm here. And that gives you so much more energy. And there's nothing more depleting than carrying resentments and anger with you.

Jon Clifton:
[35:57] What strength would you say that that is that makes you feel that way about not holding on to that resentment?

Arianna Huffington:
[36:05] A thousand percent Connectedness. Because Connectedness for me is realizing that at some level we are all connected. And that the more we can move away all these things that separate us and connect at a deeper level, the more we really tap into that sense of oneness. And the easier it is to forgive, both ourselves and others, because one of the hardest things is forgiving ourselves. And when we don't forgive ourselves, it's much harder to forgive others.

Jon Clifton:
[36:53] Now, Arianna, if I remember correctly, in Thrive, one of the things that you had said about the first third is that when it comes to workplaces, is that you feel like men have played a pretty significant role in ruining the workplace. Can you talk more about the role of women in leadership and also how women can help accelerate this strengths movement?

Arianna Huffington:
[37:19] Absolutely. Well, first of all, let me say that women can help accelerate the strengths movement because they are so much better at connection and collaboration. And when you know what the strengths of your team are, it's so much easier to connect and collaborate and support each other. Now, when we talk about men do this and women do that, but we know that there are so many exceptions and some men who are amazing at that and maybe better than individual women. So we're just talking in very broad strokes. But also, I think there was definitely a macho thing around, I don't need to sleep. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Jon Clifton:
[38:15] Are you quoting me right now?

Arianna Huffington:
[38:21] Have you ever said that?

Jon Clifton:
[38:22] Yes.

Arianna Huffington:
[38:23] Oh my. Jon, that's incredible. You have to become my project. We have to deal with that. When I bought my... I live in Soho, in New York. When I bought my apartment, one of the people living in that building was John Bon Jovi, who wrote, I'll sleep when I'm dead. So ever since I started, I've been trying to convince him to rewrite the lyrics. Don't you think it would be fantastic to rewrite the lyrics and say, I'll sleep when I'm tired. As you can see, I have not succeeded.

Jon Clifton:
[39:15] Arianna, I have one last question for you, because as you know, you and I have talked about this extensively, that one of the things that we see in Gallup's data is a concerning rise of unhappiness, stress, anger, sadness in the world. What are you most hopeful about right now when you see those concerning trends?

Arianna Huffington:
[39:35] First of all, it is a terrifying trend, and we cannot underestimate it, especially when you look at the data around suicides and deaths of despair, and the lifespan in the U.S. going down because of all that. The one thing that makes me optimistic is that when we tap into that connectedness, when we tap into the place of strength, resilience, peace that we all have in us, then we can begin to turn that around. Loneliness is not just about not having close friends. Loneliness is also being disconnected from your own essence.

Because if you are disconnected from your own essence, it's so much harder to connect with other people. And that's why part of being a learner, I love reading about different cultures, and every culture, every culture, every philosophical and spiritual tradition says the same thing, that we all have a place of strength, wisdom, and peace in us. And we just need to tap into it. And probably my favorite feature on the Thrive platform is what we call Thrive Reset, which is based on the neuroscience, which is based on ancient wisdom, or at least validates ancient wisdom, that within 60 or 90 seconds, you can move from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system. You can course correct from stress. You can release a lot of the cortisol stress hormone out of your body within 60 or 90 seconds.

So, we have brought hundreds of pre-loaded resets onto the platform that are 60 seconds. That can remind you to focus on your breathing consciously or remember what you are grateful for because gratitude and stress and anxiety cannot coexist. Or simply get up and stretch. Just anything that is a pause, a 60-second pause to reconnect with yourself. It's working amazingly. We even brought it to call centers. Call center agents are so stressed out. And the impact it has is incredible. The only reason it's working is because this place already exists. We just have to tap into it. If it didn't exist, you couldn't do it in 60 seconds, but it exists. And my favorite manifestation of this feature is you can create your own personal reset. I'll send you mine. And that's like, you bring together the things that give you joy.

Your wife, your kids, your pets, favorite quotes, whatever it is, a favorite piece of music. And in 60 seconds, when you're feeling stressed and maybe unhappy about your life, you're reminded about what you love about your life. What I also love about that is that you can tell people, oh, take five minutes to meditate and they'll tell you, I don't have five minutes. I have never heard anybody say I don't have 60 seconds. So, just start small and see how that connection grows.

Jon Clifton:
[43:19] Arianna, thank you for everything that you're doing for the strengths movement, and thank you for helping the world create thriving workplaces. Ladies and gentlemen, Arianna Huffington.

Transcript autogenerated using AI.