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

by Arianna Huffington

To fully experience the world around us, we first have to be able to free ourselves from the distractions that are constantly begging for our attention. Even the supremely focused Thoreau struggled to stay in the moment: “I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would … forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is—I am out of my senses.… What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?” “Shake off the village”—what a perfect way of conveying a vitally important and universal human need. Since Thoreau’s time, the village has grown exponentially bigger and become more intrusive and seemingly more intimate—giving us the semblance of human connection without any of the real benefits of that connection. Technology has enabled the village to become exceptionally good at not allowing us to shake it off.