Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder

by Arianna Huffington

There is a reason the subject of death has been central to every religion and philosophy throughout history. “The one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner,” Socrates says in Plato’s Phaedo, “is to practice for dying and death.” Since our body “fills us with wants, desires, fears, all sorts of illusions and much nonsense,” we can only achieve true wisdom when our soul is liberated from our bodies by death. And this is why philosophy, he says, is about “training for dying.”

In Judaism, mourning is divided into four stages: three days of profound mourning; seven days of shiva, in which guests come to be with the mourner; thirty days of shloshim, in which the bereaved gradually reconnects with the community; and then a year of shneim asar chodesh, in which certain rituals continue as a remembrance.

In Buddhism, there is no separate self distinct from the rest of existence, so death is simply a rebirth to another manifestation of life and energy in the universe.

“I was afraid I might get what the dying person had. When I recognized, however, that I already have what dying people have—mortality—I stopped being afraid of catching it. Recognizing this very interconnectedness is the beginning of compassion.”

“We aren’t separate from everything else; when we suffer, others suffer. Our well-being is the well-being of others. So make time to connect with your heart, for as the Zen saying goes, ‘If you take care of your mind, you take care of the world.’ ”

Asked about his spiritual beliefs, he replied: “I don’t believe in an afterlife. I don’t believe in a single or multiple godhead. I respect people who do, but I don’t believe it myself.… So no god, no organized religion, but a developing sense that there’s something bigger than the world we live in, including after we die, and that we have responsibilities in that world.”

“In journalism, when we want to get a story over the jumps, we refer to it as a universal experience, but it almost never is,” Simon said later. “There is one universal experience, that’s death. That is something we are all going to experience at some distance in the lives of loved ones, strangers and friends, people around us and certainly our own. I think it should be something we are comfortable talking about. Insofar as we can talk about it comfortably, we can reset the clocks in our own lives.”

Psychology professor Todd Kashdan has found that avoiding the reality of death leads us to adhere to customs and beliefs that give us a feeling of stability, including identification with groups based on race or gender. “Clinging to our ‘culture worldview’ gives us a sense of symbolic immortality,” he writes. “I know this sounds weird, but by defending the groups that we identify with, we have a second strategy to manage the fear of death.”

“If mindful people are more willing to explore whatever happens in the present, even if it’s uncomfortable, will they show less defensiveness when their sense of self is threatened by a confrontation with their own mortality?”

Kashdan concludes: “Mindfulness alters the power that death holds over us. Pretty cool.”

This is what is meant when a person says they lost the fear of death or transcended death.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. —RABINDRANATH TAGORE

WELL-BEING, WISDOM, wonder: All are critical to redefining success and thriving, but they are incomplete without the fourth element of the Third Metric: giving. Giving, loving, caring, empathy and compassion, going beyond ourselves and stepping out of our comfort zones to help serve others—this is the only viable answer to the multitude of problems the world is facing.

To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses—that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being and unites all living things.” And that’s really what we are engaged in when we are engaged in service and volunteering—widening the boundaries of our being.

Building our home upon a rock is about much more than protecting us from devastating storms; it’s about building and maintaining our spiritual infrastructure and resilience every day. And to keep our inner world strong it’s essential that we reach out to our outer world through compassion and giving.

On the question of his own enlightenment the Master always remained reticent, even though the disciples tried every means to get him to talk. All the information they had on this subject was what the Master once said to his youngest son, who wanted to know what his father felt when he became enlightened. The answer was, “A fool.” When the boy asked why, the Master had replied, “Well, son, it was like going to great pains to break into a house by climbing a ladder and smashing a window—and realizing later that the door of the house was open.” —ANTHONY DE MELLO

😀 there are so many ways to share this timeless advice. Most notably, what we go looking for far away is actually inside us.

And every place is full of openings to make a real difference in the life of another human being.

The Bhagavad Gita draws attention to three different kinds of life: a life of inertia and dullness with no goals and achievement; a life full of action, busyness, and desire; and a life of goodness, which is not just about ourselves but about others. “ ‘Through selfless service, you will always be fruitful and find the fulfillment of your desires’: this is the promise of the Creator,” according to the Gita. The second life—which is how we have been defining success—is obviously a big improvement on the first, but by itself it becomes driven by a hunger for “more” that’s never satisfied, and we become disconnected from who we truly are, and the riches inside us.

Given the amount of suffering we’re so frequently exposed to, it would be too draining to live in a constant state of emotional empathy. “This can make emotional empathy seem futile,” writes Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence. But there’s a third type, “compassionate empathy,” in which we know how a person is feeling, we can feel their feelings along with them, and we’re moved to act. Compassionate empathy is a skill we can nurture, and one that leads to action.

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. —THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS

“Altruism is not a form of martyrdom, but operates for many as part of a healthy psychological reward system.” It is a reward system that should be incorporated into how we think about health care. “If you want to live a longer, happier, and healthier life, take all the usual precautions that your doctor recommends,” says Sara Konrath of the University of Michigan, “and then … get out there and share your time with those who need it. That’s the caring cure.”

It’s not enough to tell our children about empathy; we have to show them—which means, of course, that we have to demonstrate it ourselves. Parents teach empathy the same way they help their children learn to talk.

Of course, not everybody is blessed with parents who model empathy. But, fortunately, the effects of growing up in a family that is not rich in empathy can be reversed. It’s never too late to transcend our childhoods.

We tend to identify creativity with artists and inventors, but, in fact, creativity is in each and every one of us, as David Kelley, the founder of the world-famous design firm Ideo and the d.school at Stanford University, writes in Creative Confidence, a book he coauthored with his brother Tom. We simply need to claim it back and share it. We are too quick to censor or judge our natural creative impulses as not being good enough. But we need to give ourselves permission to follow what makes us feel most alive. And when we are most alive we are most compassionate and vice versa. If you love to sing, sing—you don’t have to sing in a choir or become a soloist. If you love to write poems or short stories, write them—you don’t have to become a published author. If you love to paint, paint. Don’t squash your creative instincts because you’re not “good enough” to turn what you love to do into a career.

Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there. —HENRY MILLER

Your gift may simply be making a beautiful meal for someone down the street who is sick or has suffered a loss. The phrase “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived” crystalizes giving.

What if that desire to connect and give back could be scaled up and institutionalized? That’s the goal of the Franklin Project: to establish national service as a “common expectation and common opportunity for all Americans to strengthen our social fabric and solve our most pressing national challenges.”

When Thomas Jefferson expressed our right to the pursuit of happiness, he was not simply referring to the right to pursue personal, momentary pleasure fueled by a culture of material goods. The happiness he was referring to was the right to build our life within a strong and vibrant community.

“Goodness like evil often begins in small steps. Heroes evolve; they aren’t born. Very often the rescuers made only a small commitment at the start, to hide someone for a day or two. But once they had taken that step they began to see themselves differently, as someone who helps. What starts as mere willingness becomes intense involvement.”

As a result, something as vast and epic as the destiny of humanity depends on something as intimate and personal as the shape of our individual lives—the way each one of us chooses to live, think, act, and give.

Self-actualization and shaping our own reality of how the world works.

“Onward, upward, and inward” is how I ended my commencement speech at Smith. And in many ways, this book is bearing witness, both through my own experience and through the latest science, to the truth that we cannot thrive and lead the lives we want (as opposed to the lives we’ve settled for) without learning to go inward.

But remember that while the world provides plenty of insistent, flashing, high-volume signals directing us to make more money and climb higher up the ladder, there are almost no worldly signals reminding us to stay connected to the essence of who we are, to take care of ourselves along the way, to reach out to others, to pause to wonder, and to connect to that place from which everything is possible. To quote my Greek compatriot Archimedes again: “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world.” So find your place to stand—your place of wisdom and peace and strength. And from that place, remake the world in your own image, according to your own definition of success, so that all of us—women and men—can thrive and live our lives with more grace, more joy, more compassion, more gratitude, and yes, more love. Onward, upward, and inward!

Find meaning for yourself, then through your experiences and learnings, create meaning for others.