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

Kindle Highlights

When we include our own well-being in our definition of success, another thing that changes is our relationship with time.

And when we’re living a life of perpetual time famine, we rob ourselves of our ability to experience another key element of the Third Metric: wonder, our sense of delight in the mysteries of the universe, as well as the everyday occurrences and small miracles that fill our lives.

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.

Have you noticed that when we die, our eulogies celebrate our lives very differently from the way society defines success? Our eulogies are always about the other stuff: what we gave, how we connected, how much we meant to our family and friends, small kindnesses, lifelong passions, and the things that made us laugh.

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

You wander from room to room Hunting for the diamond necklace That is already around your neck — RUMI

“You go to a secluded place, not to avoid the world, but to avoid distractions until you build your strength and you can deal with anything. You don’t box Muhammad Ali on day one.”

“Pleasure depends very much on circumstances … and also it’s something that basically doesn’t radiate to others.… Happiness is a way of being that gives you the resources to deal with the ups and downs of life, that pervades all the emotional states including sadness.”

People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills … There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind.… So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.

Steve Jobs, a lifelong practitioner of meditation, affirmed the connection between meditation and creativity: “If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things — that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before.”

The list of public figures “outing” themselves as meditators is growing longer every day. It includes Ford chairman Bill Ford, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Twitter cofounder Evan Williams, ABC host George Stephanopoulos, New York Times columnist and CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jerry Seinfeld, Kenneth Branagh, Oprah Winfrey, whose twenty-one-day Meditation Experience program with Deepak Chopra has had nearly two million participants in more than two hundred countries, and Rupert Murdoch, who, in April 2013, tweeted: “Trying to learn transcendental meditation. Everyone recommends, not that easy to get started, but said to improve everything!” As Bob Roth, the executive director of the David Lynch Foundation, who has taught meditation to many corporate leaders, recently told me, “I’ve been doing this for forty years and in the past year there has been a dramatic change in the perception of meditation.”

Padmasree Warrior, the chief technology officer of Cisco, calls meditation “a reboot for your brain and your soul.” She meditates every night and spends her Saturdays doing a digital detox. Warrior drew on her meditation practice to manage twenty-two thousand employees in her previous role as Cisco’s head of engineering.

Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, who has been meditating for more than thirty-five years and considers it “the single most important reason” for his success, pays for half of his employees’ meditation classes and picks up the entire bill if they commit to it for more than six months.

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner coined the term “managing compassionately.” He wrote that the objective to “expand the world’s collective wisdom and compassion … has influenced every aspect of my work.… Compassion can and should be taught, not only throughout a child’s K–12 curriculum, but in higher education and corporate learning and development programs as well.” Managing compassionately includes practicing and expecting transparent communications, and practicing walking in someone else’s shoes.

A 2012 McKinsey Global Institute study found that the average knowledge economy employee spends 28 percent of his or her time dealing with email — more than eleven hours a week. According to SaneBox, which makes email-filtering software, it takes us sixty-seven seconds to recover from each email that lands in our in-boxes.

Leslie Perlow, professor at Harvard Business School, introduced something called predictable time off (PTO), in which you take a planned night off — no email, no work, no smartphone. At one company that tried it, the Boston Consulting Group, productivity went up, and it’s now a company-wide program.

Meditation, yoga, mindfulness, napping, and deep breathing once upon a time might have been thought of as New Agey, alternative, and part of a counterculture. But in the past few years we’ve reached a tipping point as more and more people realize that stress-reduction and mindfulness aren’t only about harmonic convergence and universal love — they’re also about increased well-being and better performance.

When Michael Jordan was the star of the Chicago Bulls, the team worked with meditation teacher George Mumford. “When we are in the moment and absorbed with the activity, we play our best,” Mumford explained. “That happens once in a while, but it happens more often if we learn how to be more mindful.” And a video of four-time NBA MVP LeBron James meditating during a timeout became a hit on YouTube. “Meditation is a lot like doing reps at a gym,” Levy said. “It strengthens your attention muscle.”

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? — T. S. ELIOT

True understanding is to see the events of life in this way: “You are here for my benefit, though rumor paints you otherwise.” And everything is turned to one’s advantage when he greets a situation like this: You are the very thing I was looking for. Truly whatever arises in life is the right material to bring about your growth and the growth of those around you. This, in a word, is art — and this art called “life” is a practice suitable to both men and gods. Everything contains some special purpose and a hidden blessing; what then could be strange or arduous when all of life is here to greet you like an old and faithful friend?

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

“Giving up drugs is easy compared to dealing with the emotions drugs protected you from.”

The harder we press on a violin string, the less we can feel it. The louder we play, the less we hear.… If I “try” to play, I fail; if I race, I trip. The only road to strength is vulnerability. — STEPHEN NACHMANOVITCH

“My heart is at ease knowing that what was meant for me will never miss me, and that what misses me was never meant for me.”

Her heart sat silent through the noise and concourse of the street. There was no hurry in her hands, no hurry in her feet. — CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

“We are in great haste,” wrote Thoreau in 1854, “to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”

If you walk in with fear and anger, you’ll find fear and anger. Go into situations with what you want to find there.… When you worry, you’re holding pictures in your mind that you want less of.… What you focus upon, you become. What you focus on comes to you. So hold in your mind what you want more of. — JOHN-ROGER

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.” — CHEROKEE LEGEND

Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say “so what.” That’s one of my favorite things to say. — ANDY WARHOL

“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life. — WU MEN

Einstein defined wonder as a precondition for life. He wrote that whoever lacks the capacity to wonder, “whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life.”

“The seventy-five years and twenty million dollars expended on the Grant Study points, at least to me, to a straightforward five-word conclusion: ‘Happiness is love. Full stop.’ ”

“The only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”

Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains, and the maker of canyons and pine mountains! All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.

The fact that our time is limited is what makes it so precious. We can spend our lives feverishly accumulating money and power as some sort of irrational, subconscious hedge against the inevitable. But that money and power will be no more permanent than we are. Yes, you can pass on an inheritance to your children, but you can also pass down the shared experience of a fully lived life, rich in wisdom and wonder. To truly redefine success we need to redefine our relationship with death.

Know this sounds weird, but by defending the groups that we identify with, we have a second strategy to manage the fear of death.”

Giving 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

“I have found that the only thing that does bring you happiness is doing something good for somebody who is incapable of doing it for themselves.”

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.

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

WE HAVE, if we’re lucky, about thirty thousand days to play the game of life. How we play it will be determined by what we value. Or, as David Foster Wallace put it, “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritualtype thing to worship — be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.”