Speaker 1: Hi, This is Milan Vervier and this is Kim Azareli.
Speaker 1: We are co authors of the book Fast Forward, How
Speaker 1: Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose. And you're listening to
Speaker 1: Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose, brought to you
Speaker 1: by the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: This week we hear from the amazing Arianna Huffington's. She
Speaker 1: tells us how the always on work environment isn't working
Speaker 1: for anyone, how we are all under a collective delusion
Speaker 1: that is causing us to burn out, and the micro
Speaker 1: steps you can take to protect yourself. Now, enjoy this
Speaker 1: conversation with Milan and Ariana from the Seneca Women Forum
Speaker 1: at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and following stick around
Speaker 1: for what we got out of the conversation and a
Speaker 1: few key takeaways you can use in your own life.
Speaker 1: We'll be back after this break. Speaking about amazing game
Speaker 1: changing women. Arianna Huffington's surely qualifies and I really thrilled
Speaker 1: that you're here. Arianna. Um, you are a true visionary.
Speaker 1: Uh and um, look at what you've done. You've up
Speaker 1: up ended the media landscape. You're now the CEO of
Speaker 1: Thrive Global. First, it was Huffington's post. Now it's thrive Gobel.
Speaker 1: I wonder what is even next in the next chapter. Um,
Speaker 1: but this is an an amazing undertaking and one that
Speaker 1: clearly we all need to hear a lot about. But
Speaker 1: I want to start because we've had so much focus
Speaker 1: today with good reason on women entrepreneurs. Um, what it takes,
Speaker 1: what the challenges are, and look what you've done. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are people along the way who said to you,
Speaker 1: are you crazy? But you, as a visionary, you really
Speaker 1: wanted to stake out in the way that you did,
Speaker 1: and obviously you have enjoyed great success. So how do
Speaker 1: you see women's entrepreneurship. What are perhaps lessons from your
Speaker 1: own efforts over the years that you can impart to
Speaker 1: so many who are here in the audience. Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, I want to say what a heroine you
Speaker 1: are for me and for not many women, and it is,
Speaker 1: and how much I love the opportunity to speak directly
Speaker 1: with you. And when it comes to women entrepreneurs, I
Speaker 1: be eave that whatever our particular companies, whatever our particular
Speaker 1: startup is, we also have very responsibility to change the
Speaker 1: way we work because the current system in which entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: and frankly all women and men. Function was created by men, yes,
Speaker 1: and it's not working, not for us now, it's not
Speaker 1: working for anybody, I mean, and when we women change
Speaker 1: it with the help of many good men. I don't
Speaker 1: want to eliminate that very real possibility, but women need
Speaker 1: to to lead the way into saying we don't want
Speaker 1: us to build amazing companies. We don't want us to
Speaker 1: be at the top of existing corporate structures. We also
Speaker 1: want to change this world because if you look at
Speaker 1: the casualties which are proliferating every day, it is not sustainable.
Speaker 1: We have m skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety, suicides, and
Speaker 1: chronic diseases. I mean, you've worked around the world and
Speaker 1: we have this incredible paradox that while communicable diseases are
Speaker 1: going down, chronic diseases are proliferating and their lifestyle diseases,
Speaker 1: their diseases based on the stress we accumulate. And you know,
Speaker 1: for me, this has become kind of the mission of
Speaker 1: the rest of my life, and that's why I wanted
Speaker 1: to leave the Havington Post to launch this company to
Speaker 1: work exclusively on ending this stress and burnout epidemic. So
Speaker 1: you have realized that, just as you've said, with the
Speaker 1: way that we're living our lives, we can't keep the
Speaker 1: space that we're paying a price ergo thrive global. Now
Speaker 1: what was it that precipitated your engagement on this issue.
Speaker 1: I mean, frankly, the first time told me about it,
Speaker 1: I really didn't know where you were headed with it.
Speaker 1: But it is brilliant in terms of recognizing that we
Speaker 1: have a societal problem and we have to do something
Speaker 1: about it. Well, actually, just a month ago, the World
Speaker 1: Health Organization recognized burnout as a real syndrome, affecting health,
Speaker 1: affecting productivity, effecting companies bottom line. But my own realization
Speaker 1: came the hard way. In two thousand seven, two years
Speaker 1: into building the Huffington Post, was the divorced mother of
Speaker 1: two teenage daughters. Anybody here has teenage daughters? That kind
Speaker 1: of my favorite dress? It gets better? And and I
Speaker 1: literally had bought into the collective delusion that the only
Speaker 1: way to succeed as an entrepreneur as a mother was
Speaker 1: to be always on to power through fatigue and exhaustion.
Speaker 1: And so one morning I got up from my desk
Speaker 1: because I was feeling called to get a sweater and
Speaker 1: I collapsed. I hit my head on my desk, I
Speaker 1: broke my chickbone and that was kind of the beginning
Speaker 1: of my wake up call. And being a bit of
Speaker 1: a nerd, I started talking to scientists and studying the
Speaker 1: problem and realized that it is a global epidemic and
Speaker 1: it's been compounded by a growing addiction to our phones
Speaker 1: because now basically there is no end to our working day.
Speaker 1: And so what we try to do a Thrive is
Speaker 1: to help people bring and changes in their way they
Speaker 1: live and work, but very, very microscopic changes. We have
Speaker 1: discovered exactly so we have discovered that the way to
Speaker 1: change behavior is not through New year resolutions, which are
Speaker 1: abandoned by the third week in January, but through what
Speaker 1: we call microsteps. We have seven hundred microsteps that affect
Speaker 1: every part of our journey sleep, um, exercise or movement, nutrition, gratitude,
Speaker 1: mental health, everything, meditation, meditation, every aspect of wellness, kind
Speaker 1: of the whole being wellness, not at one point solution.
Speaker 1: And would you like to know my favorite microstep, absolutely
Speaker 1: out of the seven hundred microsteps, if you want to
Speaker 1: start with one tonight, it is when you go home
Speaker 1: peak a time that you declare the end of your
Speaker 1: working day. It's a personal declaration because I can guarantee
Speaker 1: you that there's nobody here who can say at the
Speaker 1: end of the day that I've done everything I could
Speaker 1: possibly have done. I have absolutely nothing left to do.
Speaker 1: And if there is anybody here can say that, I
Speaker 1: recommend you change jobs, because it means your job isn't
Speaker 1: interesting enough. But I'm sure that's not the case for anybody.
Speaker 1: So you have to declare that arbitrary ending. And because
Speaker 1: we are creatures of rituals, I recommend that you declare
Speaker 1: it then market by turning off your phone and gently
Speaker 1: escorting it out of your bedroom. And that is hard
Speaker 1: to do. It is very hard to do. But what
Speaker 1: I recommend is, if you can't do it every every night,
Speaker 1: don't judge us. If remember we're talking backstage about you
Speaker 1: judging yourself. No judgments. I told her that I always
Speaker 1: feel guilty because she's telling us how to thrive having
Speaker 1: gone through these microstops, most of which I don't do,
Speaker 1: and so one feels guilty. And every Sunday when I
Speaker 1: wake up and look at my iPhone, there's Arianna. She's
Speaker 1: coming in with her Sunday newsletter and it's about how
Speaker 1: you can thrive. And I'm thinking, damn it, there she
Speaker 1: goes again, and she told me not to feel guilty.
Speaker 1: No guilt. No guilty is the worst. No gilt and
Speaker 1: especially for working mothers, if there are any here, you know,
Speaker 1: I think they take the baby out and they put
Speaker 1: the guilty in. So so no guilt and no self judgments.
Speaker 1: We are all works in progress. This is a journey.
Speaker 1: But all the science, all our microsteps are science based.
Speaker 1: There now in the behavior change up so that people
Speaker 1: can get nags and microsteps throughout the day. But the
Speaker 1: key is to make them small enough. Like if doing
Speaker 1: this every day seems overwhelming, say once a week, I
Speaker 1: will put my phone outside the bedroom, or every morning
Speaker 1: when I wake up, I will take sixty seconds before
Speaker 1: I go to my phone to deal with texts and email.
Speaker 1: Sixty seconds. Can we get one minute in the morning
Speaker 1: to actually remember what we're grateful for, set our intention
Speaker 1: for the day, anything except rushing to the phone, Because
Speaker 1: if you think of it, what's incoming is the world's
Speaker 1: agenda for you. We need to start the day. What
Speaker 1: do we want from the day? So that's for me,
Speaker 1: So what kind of reaction have you gotten. I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember being at the World Economic Form, which is
Speaker 1: usually brutally cold weather. We're all sleep deprived. First thing
Speaker 1: Arianna gave me was a tea bag of some t
Speaker 1: you were recommending, this will do you good. And then
Speaker 1: the book Thrive. I have a copy that was an
Speaker 1: unbound copy before it became a case. Clearly you saw
Speaker 1: that I had a need and you were looking after me. No, no,
Speaker 1: that is not the case. It's just that if I
Speaker 1: can convince you, you will convince millions. I mean, look
Speaker 1: at her. I have no doubt she is thriving. And
Speaker 1: she's absolutely right because, as you've said, this is an
Speaker 1: evident space case today, the documentation is all there. We
Speaker 1: need to be into holistic health. And also I think
Speaker 1: what companies are realizing what we are likely to have
Speaker 1: great partnerships with many companies represented here today, like sap
Speaker 1: Accentia Bank of American Sherry Brownston is following us. She's
Speaker 1: been an amazing partner brooking bringing both our workshops and
Speaker 1: our digital programs into the bank. And then she personally
Speaker 1: wrote a great piece about her microstep, the micro step
Speaker 1: she picked, and then she should talk about it when
Speaker 1: she comes out was not to send emails to her
Speaker 1: direct reports on Sunday night. Oh and you know, and
Speaker 1: she also wrote how one Sunday night should she broke
Speaker 1: her ground rule? And that's all okay too. We need
Speaker 1: to accept that we're not going to do this journey flawlessly,
Speaker 1: but just beginning with these microsteps has a huge cumulative impact.
Speaker 1: So what kind of response have you got? And I'm
Speaker 1: sure that you get individuals telling you you change their lives,
Speaker 1: or you may have people saying, I'm so frustrated, I
Speaker 1: cannot do this. What what is the typical If there's
Speaker 1: a typical reaction, I think the typical reaction is incredible
Speaker 1: relief when people begin to take these microsteps and they
Speaker 1: recognize that, in fact, they become more productive. That is
Speaker 1: what is really and the absolute truth from looking around us.
Speaker 1: Look at athletes. You know, athletes considered recovery part of training,
Speaker 1: like they would never show up for a game without
Speaker 1: being sufficiently recharged. So the same applies to all of us.
Speaker 1: So we need to integrate recharging recovery time into our
Speaker 1: work time and it may mean sixty seconds. We have
Speaker 1: a feature in our digital product that we call Reset,
Speaker 1: which is sixty seconds during the day. Um, anytime you're
Speaker 1: feeling stressed, because we're not going to eliminate stress. The
Speaker 1: problem is not that the problem is stress becoming cumulative.
Speaker 1: We also launched the podcast for people who don't like
Speaker 1: to meditate, because we want to reach people wherever they are,
Speaker 1: and there are people who find meditation don't think they
Speaker 1: find it not for them, So we launched the podcast
Speaker 1: called Meditative Story, and we basically have some great people
Speaker 1: and last night it was Danny Meyer who tell a
Speaker 1: story of people that are starting their lives that change
Speaker 1: their lives, and then we give you mindful prompt meditation prompts.
Speaker 1: So basically storytelling becomes the trojan horse through which we
Speaker 1: introduce meditation. So interesting. UM, I do think when you
Speaker 1: talk about the problems in our society, a big one
Speaker 1: is the addiction to emails and to texting. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't go anywhere today, you know. I spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time on a university campus that the students
Speaker 1: just walk like this because they're all on their iPhones.
Speaker 1: You you see families sitting down at dinner each once
Speaker 1: on an iPhone. It is an addiction. It is become
Speaker 1: all consuming. So you take small steps to work at
Speaker 1: your addiction right, absolutely small steps, starting with separating yourself
Speaker 1: at night from your phone so you can have very
Speaker 1: charging night's sleep. We've even created a product you can
Speaker 1: buy from Amazon. It's a little I'll send it to you.
Speaker 1: It's a little it's a little charging station that looks
Speaker 1: like a phone bed. It can charge ten phones and
Speaker 1: iPads and you It has a little blanking, so you
Speaker 1: put your phone under the blanket, Oh my god, and
Speaker 1: they phone charges through the night. You charge in your
Speaker 1: bed and then you reconnect in the morning. That's adorable.
Speaker 1: Highly higher recommended for families with teenagers because then it
Speaker 1: becomes a family ritual rather than a punishment. When my
Speaker 1: friends with teenagers try to take the phone away from
Speaker 1: them and it seems like an existential threat. Also, it
Speaker 1: comes in Mahogany in in Lighthood, so you would think
Speaker 1: at UM companies clearly want their employees to be at
Speaker 1: the top of their game. They want them to be thriving,
Speaker 1: they want them to be healthy. But at the same
Speaker 1: time they have a lot of expectations. Uh, feel free
Speaker 1: to work around the clock, or you know, answer my email.
Speaker 1: I'm emailing you at eleven o'clock at night or whatever. There.
Speaker 1: So there's this combination of demand because of the needs
Speaker 1: of the enterprise or the expectations. But then there's also
Speaker 1: the recognition that I need by employees to be um
Speaker 1: really in good shape. So I think what's very important
Speaker 1: for us to realize is that there is no trade off.
Speaker 1: Let me give you one example. I Thrive we are
Speaker 1: we are a very fast growing company. You know, we
Speaker 1: do have high expectations. In fact, when we hire people,
Speaker 1: we do say, listen, if you want to come here
Speaker 1: and chee lander a mango tree, that's not their right
Speaker 1: job or not. And this is not a nine to
Speaker 1: five job. By there, there will be days when we're
Speaker 1: shipping a product and an engineer may have to pull
Speaker 1: an all nighter. There will be a time when you
Speaker 1: have to work over there. We can that's not a problem.
Speaker 1: The problem is that people then need to take what
Speaker 1: we call thrive time to recharge. So for us, if
Speaker 1: you've worked through the weekend, take Monday off just like that. No,
Speaker 1: but it's not it's not in the interest of the enterprise.
Speaker 1: Why would you want somebody to come to work Monday
Speaker 1: exhausted sleep deprived, making mistakes or sitting at their desk
Speaker 1: playing Fortnite falling asleep presentsm It's a huge problem at
Speaker 1: companies or trying to power through and getting sick. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you look at the data, people get sick after
Speaker 1: they have over exerted themselves and they have not taken
Speaker 1: time to recover. So it's in the interest of everybody
Speaker 1: to give people what we call thrive time. They have
Speaker 1: to take it in imediately after over exertion. They can't
Speaker 1: bank it for a holiday. It really about recalibrating and
Speaker 1: being ready to show up fully recharged again. And if
Speaker 1: you look at the data, burned out employees have a
Speaker 1: thirty greater chance of leaving the company. So attrition goes up,
Speaker 1: and attrition is a terrible cost for companies. Productivity goes down,
Speaker 1: creativity goes down, resilience goes down. Right now, companies are
Speaker 1: dealing with all these mental health problems, and these are
Speaker 1: so much a function of slip the professional exhaustion. We're
Speaker 1: not talking about real mental illness like bipolar, speci of
Speaker 1: any We're talking about garden variety of what we're bring
Speaker 1: on ourselves. And that's where we in partnership with Stanford,
Speaker 1: we launched a Thriving Mind to our digital program based
Speaker 1: on all the latest brain research to help prevent this
Speaker 1: from happening. Because ultimately seven five percent of healthcare costs
Speaker 1: and healthcare problems if you include mental health, are because
Speaker 1: of lifestyle and stress related problems. And that's up to
Speaker 1: us to change through micro steps. We're gonna all have
Speaker 1: to read Pride because you know, singlehandedly, you you may
Speaker 1: You've already made enormous contributions with Huffington's post and all
Speaker 1: we've been able to get from that that resource, but
Speaker 1: with this you may singlehandedly truly bring very important change
Speaker 1: to our society. And so thank you Arianna Huffington. You're
Speaker 1: a visionary and you are a caring person things and
Speaker 1: and in a very non judgmental way, you are changing
Speaker 1: our lives for the better. Thank you so much. And
Speaker 1: I would love to invite all of you to share
Speaker 1: your stories and thrive. Think of Thrive global and media
Speaker 1: platform as they haven't done passed without politics, what do
Speaker 1: we leave? So just contribute to our stress exact definitely does.
Speaker 1: But if you know, I'm sure everybody here is a
Speaker 1: story of burnout or a story of your own microsteps,
Speaker 1: share them with everyone, because we have found that reading
Speaker 1: other people's stories and what they're doing, either right or wrong,
Speaker 1: is really helping change the way we live and work.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Thank you very much. Stay tuned
Speaker 1: for our takeaways after this break. Well, that was a
Speaker 1: great conversation with Arianna. Make sure to check out her
Speaker 1: work at Thrive Global. Now here's what I got out
Speaker 1: of the conversation. First, there's really no trade off between
Speaker 1: performance at work and take and care of yourself. In fact,
Speaker 1: athletes intentionally build in recovery time for optimal performance. Second,
Speaker 1: pick a set time to end your work day and
Speaker 1: separate from your phone at night. It'll be there for
Speaker 1: you in the morning, and when you wake up, be
Speaker 1: sure to take a few minutes for yourself before reconnecting.
Speaker 1: That way, you can set your own agenda for the day,
Speaker 1: rather than letting the world set the agenda for you. Third,
Speaker 1: and perhaps most importantly, we all have the power to
Speaker 1: change our own lives through micro steps. I, for one,
Speaker 1: am going to start by turning my phone off at night.
Speaker 1: I wish be luck with that. You're listening to Seneca
Speaker 1: Women Conversations on Power and Purpose brought to you by
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