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

by Arianna Huffington

that capacity to go deep—to be alone with ourselves—is so essential to our creativity, it’s become a much more valuable skill, worth far more than a productivity app, a cleared-out in-box, or a rigidly efficient schedule.

success is not always about doing more, but also about doing better—and we do better when we’re connected to our inner wisdom, strength, and intuition.

The space, the gaps, the pauses, the silence—those things that allow us to regenerate and recharge—had all but disappeared in my own life and in the lives of so many I knew.

We need to do everything we can to protect and nurture our human capital.

you are your most important capital. There are only so many withdrawals you can make from your health bank account, but you just keep on withdrawing. You could go bankrupt if you don’t

make some deposits soon.”

“Darling, just change the channel. You are in control of the clicker. Don’t replay the bad, scary movie.”

being connected in a shallow way to the entire world can prevent us from being deeply connected to those closest to us—including ourselves. And that is where wisdom is found.

all, the function of leadership is to be able to see the iceberg before it hits the Titanic.

what is foremost in the minds of the people you care about most are the memories you built in their lives.

Difference Works: Improving Retention, Productivity, and Profitability Through Inclusion, was

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage by considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them; every day begin the task anew. —FRANCIS DE SALES

simply bring your awareness to the palms of your hands or the soles of your feet, or both. Let it stay there for a minute, and feel all tension leaving your body, drifting away from you through your hands and feet.

The most effective way to operate at work is like a sprinter, working with single-minded focus for periods of no longer than 90 minutes, and then taking a break. That way when you’re working, you’re really working, and when you’re recovering, you’re truly refueling the tank.”

Animals help us be better humans. Quite often, they show us how to be our best selves. Always in the moment, sticking their noses into

everything (literally), they see a world that we take for granted, one we’re usually just hurriedly passing through on our way to lives we never quite reach.

The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.… Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Women don’t need to leave behind the deeper parts of themselves in order to thrive in a male-dominated world.

When we reexamine what we really want, we realize that everything that happens in our lives—every misfortune, every slight, every loss, and also every joy, every surprise, every happy accident—is a teacher, and life is a giant classroom.

“all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Moving from struggle to grace sums up, as well, the experience of childbirth—going from a body racked with pain to the miracle of birth all in a few hours (if you’re lucky). For all our medical advances, that miracle has never been diminished over the millennia. The staggering reality that we mortals can actually accomplish the act of human creation leaves us changed forever. It’s a miracle that we honor with a yearly celebration until we die.

In our daily lives, moving from struggle to grace requires practice and commitment. But it’s in our hands. I’ve come to believe that living in a state of gratitude is the gateway to grace. Gratitude has always been for me one of the most powerful emotions. Grace and gratitude have the same Latin root, gratus. Whenever we find ourselves in a stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off mindset, we can remember that there is another way and open ourselves to grace. And it often starts with taking a moment to be grateful for this day, for being alive, for anything.

And screen media exposure of any kind is discouraged for children under two years old. The key to these recommendations is having parents model healthy, nonaddictive behavior.

We are constantly made to feel that we should be prettier, thinner, sexier, more successful, make more money, be better moms, better wives, better lovers, et cetera. Though often wrapped in a “You go, girl!” message, the subtext is clear: We should feel bad because we have fallen short in so many ways from some imagined ideal—we have tummies, not abs; we are undesirable because we don’t always feel like sex kittens (or because we do); we are incompetent because we don’t have a color-coded filing system for our recipes or papers; we are not trying hard enough because we are not a senior vice president or on a corporate board or in a corner office. Even the very existence of the phrase “having it all,” no matter how it’s debated, is, in effect, implying that we’re somehow not measuring up.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

unhappiness, negative emotions, and what we would today call “stress” are not inflicted on us by external circumstances and events, but are, rather, the result of the judgments we make about what matters and what we value.

Does the technology deepen the experience, or does it diminish it?