Years ago, while touring a college with her eldest daughter, Arianna Huffington vowed to be “very present” and “not on her Blackberry,” she says with a laugh, adding: “That’s how long ago it was!” She worked through the night to catch up, and then headed to CNN early the next morning. Later that day, she collapsed, hitting her head on her desk and breaking her cheekbone. She awoke in a pool of blood.
Huffington’s doctors ordered a litany of tests: echocardiograms, MRIs, tests to determine whether she had a brain tumor or cardiac issue. In the end, she was diagnosed with burnout. “If you had asked me that morning, ‘Arianna, how are you?’ I would’ve said ‘Fine,’ “ she says now, calling from California, where she is visiting that same daughter, who recently gave birth to a baby boy. “I had stopped knowing what fine was. We’re much more aware now, but in 2007, if you were driven and wanted to achieve a lot, being perpetually depleted was just the way it was.” Such a wake-up call might inspire most to take a step back and actually get some rest, but Huffington was determined to get to the root of the problem, and, if possible, solve it.
She began studying exhaustion and even started a “sleep” section on her news website, The Huffington Post. “I remember my board complaining about that,” she says. “It seemed so frivolous and unimportant. But we kept covering it, and I wrote two books on the subject, Thrive and The Sleep Revolution.” By 2016, she decided that she wanted to do more than just raise awareness. “I wanted to change behaviors,” she says. “Leaving Huff Post was a hard decision. I always thought it was going to be my last act.” But in August of that year, she launched Thrive, a technology platform that helps individuals, companies, and communities improve their well-being, and, in turn, their performance.
“I’m really excited about the inflection point we’re all going through as a culture,” she says, of the growing pushback against our more hustle-prone past. “It’s something I'm devoting the rest of my life to—to helping people see that burnout is not the price you have to pay for success. And that, in fact, work, ambition, and, well, everything is going to be better if we take time to renew and refuel ourselves. There’s a lot of science and data around that. That’s my passion and my mission now.”
Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder
Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder
On the first woman of impact who made an impression on her
“Unquestionably, the foundation of my life was my mother. She had a saying: ‘Failure is not the opposite of success. It’s a stepping stone to success.’ She brought me up not being afraid of failing. I really feel that was key to my life, because I tried a lot of things, and a lot of them failed [laughs]. Others succeeded, but I think, particularly for women, there is a greater tendency to be risk-averse because we have a greater sense of perfectionism. We don’t want to take risks that may not work. And the truth is that anything big you want to do, in my case launching the Huffington Post or leaving the Huffington Post to launch Thrive, there are no guarantees in any of these things. The only thing that can make you take these risks is not being afraid of failure. If always succeeding is the most important thing, you’re not going to take risks. You’re going to play it safe.
“My mother combined that advice with unconditional love. For example, the first thing I tried that didn’t have a lot of chance of succeeding was applying to Cambridge University from Greece. I’d just learned how to speak English, we didn’t have any money, I had to get a scholarship, etc. But my mother said, ‘Yeah, let’s go for it! And if you don't get in, no big deal. There will be another adventure.’’ It’s kind of an amazing combination for parenting and for anything in life, which is yes, you give it a hundred percent, and if it doesn’t work, there are so many other adventures.”
On her biggest career goal growing up—and now
“I really wanted to be a journalist. I was in love with words. I was involved with the Cambridge Union, which was all about debating. So when I was asked to write a book based on a debate I did, it was as if the universe was reinforcing the career I wanted to have. After I collapsed, I really wanted to create a company to help people change behaviors, so they can achieve what they want with less damage to their health and relationships.”
How she stays grounded
“First and foremost, there’s my family—my sister Agapi, and my two daughters Christina and Isabella. And, I’m thrilled to say, my brand new grandson, Alexander. Then there’s Reset. It’s one of our most popular features on the Thrive platform, and allows you to lower your stress in just 60 seconds. So throughout the day, if I need to recharge or just gather myself before a meeting, I play my personalized Reset, which in 60 seconds reminds me of all that I’m grateful for—my family, my favorite quotes, a piece of music I love.”
Her life motto
“Life is a dance between making it happen and letting it happen. Very often we think that we make everything happen. But if you look back at your life, there are a lot of amazing things—and bad things—that happened that you didn’t bring about. I became a writer because a publisher saw me debate and asked me to write a book. I was able to support myself after my second book was rejected by 37 publishers because a bank manager decided to give me a loan. I could give you so many stories of things that happened that I didn’t make happen, and yet were transformational in my life.
“Another motto that we’ve emblazoned on sweaters at Thrive is ‘Onward Upward Inward.’ About a decade ago, I gave a commencement speech at Smith College, and I ended the speech like that. We’ve been using it as a motto because our lives and our culture is all about onward upward, onward upward, and commencement speeches are all about ‘go there and conquer the world.’ My point was, of course, onward upward, but also inward, because when you go inward and refuel, your onward-upward journey is going to be both more successful and more joyful. I think joy is such an important ingredient in life. Every culture, every spiritual tradition, every philosophical tradition has its own rituals about that. I love the idea of the Sabbath. I’m not Jewish, but I think it’s such an incredible tradition of taking a day away from work and the world and connecting with yourself and your loved ones. In Japan they have the concept of ma, or pause. At Thrive, we launched the 60-Second Reset, where you can focus on your breathing and gratitude and put your problems in perspective.”
On her most challenging moments in career and life
“There have been quite a few challenging moments. I already mentioned when my second book on political leadership was rejected by 37 publishers. On a personal level, I would say that definitely my hardest moment was losing my first baby, stillborn, at six months. That was incredibly hard because I was 36, and there was a fear I might not be able to have a child. Even women who miscarry a lot earlier will tell you it’s incredibly hard because you carry the baby not just in your body, but in your thoughts, in your heart. It was a little boy, and we were going to call him Alexander, like my new grandson.”
On what she hopes her biggest impact will be
“Doing anything I can to help people live and work with less stress, and more resilience, connection, purpose, and joy. That’s what we’re trying to do with Thrive and I’m thrilled when I see the impact we’re having. One specific area where we’re having an impact is in accelerating the shift toward a culture where bragging about burnout is finally seen as a red flag—not a badge of honor. In 2022 the tide truly turned, thanks to Elon Musk’s master class in how not to lead and make decisions as CEO of Twitter. On the one hand, Musk’s burnout-fueled decision-making was a regression—a step, or many steps, backwards, given what we know about the connection between human energy and peak performance. But on the other hand, he showed us, in vivid colors, the results of that backward-looking model: total chaos. The Elon Twitter reign has been both a cautionary tale and a teachable moment we can all apply in our own work and life. And the lesson is clear: We only have so much cognitive energy—and what we choose to spend it on, and how we renew it, really matters.”
The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time
The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time
The advice she’d give to the next generation of women in publishing and technology
“I would give them the advice they give us on airplanes: put on your own oxygen mask first. When we prioritize our well-being, not only are we better at our jobs but we have more impact and find more joy in everything that we do. Next, I would say that as you progress in your career, in addition to looking forward to the next step, look around where you are right now and see what you can do to change the definition of success to empower and enable the women coming after you, so they won’t feel like they have to choose between burnout and not advancing.”
A version of this story appears in the April 2023 issue of ELLE.
Melissa Giannini is the features director of ELLE.
