The School of Greatness - 181 Arianna Huffington on Building An Empire and Her Key to Success

Episode Date: May 27, 2015

"A good day starts the night before by getting enough sleep." - Arianna Huffington If you enjoyed this episode, check out video, show notes, and more at lewishowes.com/181.

This is episode number 181 with New York Times best-selling author Ariana Huffington Welcome to the school of greatness My name is Lewis Howes a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur in each week We bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone to today's episode with the one, the only, Arianna Huffington. For those who have not heard of her, then you've probably never been online because she runs the incredibly successful

and popular Huffington Post. And in 2012, the Huffington Post became the first commercially run US digital media enterprise to win a Pulitzer Prize. And as of 2014, she is listed as the 52nd most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. She is also a TV personality and New York Times bestselling author for her newest book called Thrive, the third metric to redefining success and creating a life of well-being, wisdom, and wonder. Very excited to dive into this interview with Ariana today. She's an incredible woman. I had an amazing time connecting with her and doing this in person at her studios in

New York City. Make sure to check out the full episode back at lewishouse.com slash 181 and to see the full video interview as well over at lewishouse.com slash 181. Without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into this episode with the one, the only Ariana Huffington. All right, welcome everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got Ariana Huffington. How are you doing?

So good to see you. Great to be with you. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day and connecting with me and all my listeners. Thank you. Very excited. You've got a book out called Thrive. It's been out for a while. We're going to talk about this in a second.

But I want to start off with a question because I love to talk about gratitude all the time in my daily life. So I'm curious, what are you most grateful for in your life right now? So I am constantly feeling grateful, first of all. I want it to be like a big part of each day and to be grateful for big things like our health, you know, my two daughters, my sister, our amazing team here at the Huffington Post and around the world. But also, I want to be grateful for little things, like the flowers that somebody sent me this morning in my office. The fact that spring is here. Yeah. The fact that we can now walk and have walking meetings, which I love much better than meetings in my office.

Sure. So for me, when I remember to be grateful for little things as well as the big things, then the stresses of everyday life are counterbalanced. Yeah. I like that. Even though it's still a little bit cold today in New York City. Yes, but you can walk. Yes, you can walk. Yes. You haven't been here in the winter. It was, but you can walk. Yes, you can walk, yes.

You haven't been here in the winter. It was miserable. I was here in January. Miserable, yeah. So we're very close to your 10-year anniversary for Huffington Post, right? It's incredible. Congratulations on that. Thank you so much. I'm curious, what was your original vision when you decided to launch Huffington Post? What was the vision? Did you exceed your vision as well in 10 years? My original vision when we launched on May 9th, 2005, was to offer a platform

to anybody who had anything interesting to say, whether they were well-known or completely unknown, whether they were presidents of a country or a homeless student with something interesting to say, to say it on the Huffington Post. And at the same time, to build a very robust journalistic enterprise, as we have done. So from the beginning, my dream was to create a hybrid, both great journalism and a great platform. And I would say we've exceeded the dream in many ways. Let me just mention a couple.

One is that we are now all over the world. You're opening up in the countries every week, it seems like, right? Well, we're in 13 countries now, including all over Europe and Japan, Korea, India. We're launching in australia next month then in the arab world then mexico china so that's a dream come true and the other um thing that i'm really really excited about is that we started as a primarily news and politics side but now our content around thriving around around reducing stress, and helping our readers and our viewers, because we do more and more video, lead more fulfilling lives, has seen

a phenomenal growth. We have over 20 sections on these themes, ranging from sleep, meditation, parenting. And so I love the fact that as well as informing people, we can inspire them, empower them, and help them lead the lives they want and not just the lives they settle for. Right. I like that. And what would you say is the thing you're most proud of that you've done, what the Huffington Post has done over the last 10 years? So I'm very proud of the fact that we are working to reimagine journalism.

So it doesn't just focus on all the things that are dysfunctional, corrupt, all the crises, the rapes, the beheadings, which of course we will continue to cover relentlessly and robustly, but that we also put the spotlight on all the good things happening. We have a dedicated section called Good News. We have a section called Impact, about the impact often ordinary people make on the lives of others. And we've just launched a new global editorial initiative called What's Working,

where we focus on solutions. Okay. Because right now, the way we journalists cover the news leaves out a lot of news. Sure. It's not the full picture. Right. And as a result, our coverage leads to a lot of copycat crimes and not a lot of copycat solutions. But there are amazing things happening in the world.

Yeah. And if we cover them with the same kind of journalistic integrity and drama and color, we're going to get a lot of people trying to replicate them and we'll have them scale our solutions. Gotcha. Okay. Now, over the last 10 years, I've grown a lot. I'm basically a completely new person, right? When I was 22 to now 32, I'm a different human being. So I'm curious, what was the biggest lesson you learned about yourself in the last decade during this process? Well, that's really the whole theme of Thrive, this book that I wrote, because eight years ago, two years into launching the Huffington Post,

I collapsed from exhaustion, burnout, and sleep deprivation. And that started me on this journey of recognizing that it wasn't just me, that our whole world is suffering from what a Belgian philosopher has called civilization's disease, burnout. And that we are all living under the collective delusion that burnout is the only way to succeed. And I'm really excited now that modern science is proving this wrong.

And that's why at the end of Thrive, I have 55 pages of scientific endnotes to prove that, in fact, contrary to what we have believed for decades, sleep, meditation, pauses to renew ourselves are performance enhancement tools. And I'm actually thrilled to be talking to you because you come from the world of sport originally. And athletes... We need our sleep. You know, you're ahead of business people. You're ahead of the rest of the world in recognizing that there is no trade-off between taking care of yourself and winning.

Yes. Because our muscles won't recover unless we sleep. Exactly. I mean, as an Olympic marathon runner said, he said, I can run really hard. The problem is recovery. Yeah. And that's why I'm just launching this Thrive e-course with Oprah,

which launches on May 3rd. And every week, it's a six-week course, every week we work on two steps and have a different guest teacher. So my first guest teacher is Kobe Bryant. Okay. Because I wanted to have somebody unexpected to talk about sleep and meditation. He's probably one of the best. And Kavi talks to everyone on the course, well, we will talk when we start on May 3rd, about how important sleep and meditation has been on his performance and also on his ability to be a good dad and a good husband.

But even if somebody only cares about their performance at work, which I hope is not the case, we have done it wrong. We've been congratulating people for working 24-7. And not taking care of themselves. For not taking care of themselves, not taking a vacation. And all these things make people actually less productive and less creative and less healthy. Yeah.

In Germany, for example, a lot of companies are taking measures to reduce stress in the workplace because they're seeing the impact of burnout on the bottom line. Like Volkswagen gives employees smartphones that are automatically turned off at 6 p.m. and turned on at 7 a.m. Wow, that is interesting. So they can't work at night. So they can actually take time to be with their children, their loved ones, themselves. Because, again, the science shows that people need predictable time off. If your boss expects you to be on all the time in case they send you an email, you can never really unwind and truly recharge. And therefore, you're not going to be

as effective in the morning right right so what are the practices that when you started to learn that what did you implement here at hubbington post so we implemented first of all two nap rooms at first there was a lot of eye rolling because you know here we are in the middle of new york city the city that never sleeps. People sort of said, I mean, is anybody going to be seen walking into a nap room? Well, of course, they're always full now. And people have appreciated the fact that they can go have a nap for 20 minutes and instead of having a third cinnamon bun or a fifth cup of coffee when they have an afternoon drop of energy.

Yeah, okay. They also have yoga, meditation, and breathing classes, healthy, free snacks everywhere, and an email policy that makes it clear that people are not expected to be on email after work. High five for that. Now, I'm curious, you talk about in the book how you, the importance of seven to eight hours of sleep every night, right? Eight. Eight hours.

The vast majority of people. Eight hours every night. I'm talking about over 90%. Okay. Do best with eight hours of sleep. Now, with all of the success you have, with all of the things that you're launching in new countries, the traveling you do, you're constantly working still, are you still able to maintain that eight hours of sleep?

Absolutely. For me, a good day starts the night before by getting enough sleep. Like all of us, I'm a work in progress. I don't do it perfectly. But I would say 95% of the time I get eight hours sleep. Okay. And I make it a priority. And it often means not doing things I would like to do.

Like when I was on a book tour, you know, sometimes I would go into cities where I have good friends. They would say, let's go to dinner. But let's say I had to be on a 6 a.m. morning show. I would forgo the dinner. And the reason is because I don't like me when I'm sleep deprived. I don't like that feeling of walking through my day like a zombie, not being able to enjoy what I'm doing, not being able to be really creative and productive or becoming overreactive.

You know how when you're tired, you overreact to everything? If somebody looks at you the wrong way, you... You look at them back the wrong way. I like that. I like that you're committed to that. What is your morning ritual like then, every morning? Do you meditate? Do you read a book? What's your morning practice? Well, first of all, the most important thing is what I don't do.

I don't immediately go to my phone, which is what most of us do. That's a struggle for a lot of people. The key is not to charge your phone by your bed, which is also important because if you charge your phone by your bed and you wake up in the middle of the night for whatever reason, go to the bathroom, whatever, you are going to be tempted to look at your messages. Of course.

And that makes it much harder to fall asleep and go into a deep sleep. So the first thing is not looking at my phone, taking a minute to set my intention for the day and remind myself of the things I'm grateful for. So even if you have one minute, just do that. myself of the things I'm grateful for. So even if you have one minute, just do that. I like to invite people to take very small steps to change things, you know, not to try and do something overwhelming and huge, because then a lot of people will be reluctant or unable to do it right away. But if we take small steps, like do five minutes of meditation. I meditate for about 20 minutes.

Do you have a guided meditation, or what type of meditation is it? I meditate by focusing on my breath. Okay. But also, at the end of Thrive, we have an appendix with 12 meditation apps. Okay. So you can just take any of these meditation apps and check them out, like Headspace, for example. Okay, sure, sure. And see which one appeals to you.

Okay. So with all the success you've had, how do you stay so grounded? What advice would you give to someone who is starting to achieve a lot of success, getting acknowledgments? How do they stay grounded as well? success, getting acknowledgments, how do they stay grounded as well? Well, I would say the most important advice I got from my mother was what she used to tell my sister and me, which was, angels fly because they take themselves lightly. So not to take ourselves too seriously. To value ourselves way beyond what the world values us for.

Because if you think of it, our resumes are very different than our eulogies. Sure. And as the Onion headline put it, death rate holds steady at 100%. So if you actually have been to a friend's memorial recently, you see that nobody ever eulogizes someone by saying, you know, George was amazing. He increased market share by one third. There are different things that we really value when we sum up somebody's life. while we're living our lives and not get to the end of life and regret what we missed or how we were not present for our children, for our loved ones.

We became disconnected from ourselves because we were constantly busy and checking our devices and getting into that breathlessness that so many live our lives with. Sure. I want to wrap it up with a couple of quick questions. One, you've written, I think, 13 or 14 books, right? Fourteen. Fourteen books, many articles, and it's the last day for you. Let's say 100 years from now is the last day, right?

All your books have been erased. Everything you've ever written has been gone. And you're on your bed having your last night and you've got a pen and a piece of paper in front of you and you get to write down three truths, the three truths that you know to be true about what you've learned in your experience on this world. And that's the only thing that people are going to see, your family, your friends, the world, because all your books have been erased for some weird reason. What would you write down in those three truths? So the first one is that no matter how magnificent our job is, who we are as human beings is

much greater than our job, that there is something in us which is incredibly sacred and important and more important than anything we're doing right here, right now. And the second thing is that we are a soul having a human experience rather than a human being having an occasional spiritual experience. an occasional spiritual experience. And the third thing is that giving is actually a shortcut to happiness. That the more we see our lives as becoming go-givers and not just go-getters,

the happier we are. Yeah, I like that. Well, I want to ask you one final question. Before I do, I want to take a moment to acknowledge you, Ariana, Well, I want to ask you one final question. Before I do, I want to take a moment to acknowledge you, Ariana, for how much strength you have and how you inspire so many people in the world, you know, so many young female leaders, male leaders like myself, so many people that have been influenced by Huffington Post and all of your writings and your speaking and just the way you show up in the world. It's so inspiring, so I want to acknowledge you for that.

Thank you, and thank you for what you are doing to help inspire so many people. I appreciate it. Thank you. So final question. I want to make sure everyone goes and gets a copy of your book. And make sure to check out everything else that you're up to. The final question is, what's your definition of greatness is the recognition that we all have in us a place of wisdom, strength, and peace. And when we tap into that place, that center, we are the greatest we can be.

So that greatness in the outside world is connected to tapping into that greatness inside of us. outside world is connected to tapping into that greatness inside of us. And that's why, you know, we always say upward and onward. I like to say upward, onward, and inward. Because the more we go inward, the more we can tap into this greatness and manifest it out in the world. Arianna Huffington, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you for coming here to our newsroom and come back. I will. And there you have it, guys. Thanks again to Ariana for all of her wisdom and her grace and for all that she shared today on this episode. Again, make sure to head back to the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 181. You'll see the full video interview of me and Ariana as well and a lot of other goodies where you can get her book called Thrive, which you're going to want to make sure to check out. It's a great book on the third metric

to redefining and success. Again, big thanks to Ariana. Please share this, guys, online. If you enjoyed this episode and this interview, share it on Facebook, on Twitter, Google Plus, everywhere. Make sure to tag me and Ariana. Ariana is pretty active over on Facebook, on Twitter, Google Plus everywhere, make sure to tag me and Ariana, Ariana is pretty active over on Instagram, so tag us

both where you're listening to this episode, and leave a comment on the blog, I appreciate this community so much, and all that you guys do to support me you know, I get emails and messages from you constantly and texts over on Facebook

and Instagram of people listening to it. And it just brings so much joy to me. And that's why I continue to find people like Ariana to open up and share her wisdom and other people that I'm going to be bringing on the future. It's because so many of you are listening to it. And that's why we are able to bring on guests like Ariana, because of how large this community is. So please continue to share this with your friends. If you have a friend today that you think might enjoy this specific episode, again, email them. The link is lewishouse.com slash 181.

So thank you guys again so much for today, for being here, for being engaged. I love you guys. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.