Arianna Huffington always wanted to be a good skier. But while the founder and CEO of the Huffington Post has clearly excelled in a number of fields, she eventually accepted that gracefully coming down a snowcapped mountain was not for her.
And so she gave up on the idea.
“I’m never going to invest the time and energy to become a good skier so it was liberating to complete that project by dropping it,” she said at a Business Chicks event in Sydney this morning.
Huffington shared her failed skiing idea as an example of one of the many projects – particular desires and ambitions we might have for ourselves in life – that we should give up on in order to create space for the things that really matter.
“Drop the things that no longer serve you,” she said. “Whatever it is in your life you thought one day you were going to do but you’re really not … just drop these projects one at a time. It’s really liberating.”
‘Dropping a few projects’ is one of 12 steps Huffington writes about in her recently published book, Thrive. She offered a number of other tidbits at the event this morning for redefining success to see it addressing your own wellbeing and wisdom – instead of relying on conventional ideas of success which revolve around power and money alone.
A strong advocate on the need for sleep after famously collapsing in her own office due to sheer exhaustion back in 2007, Huffington urged the audience to aim for 30 minutes extra sleep a night. And if you’re tempted to watch the latest episode of House of Cards instead, find somebody who can be a personal ‘sleep sponsor’ and ask them to talk you through it.
Huffington added we should turn off technology devices at night, to even ceremonially “escort them out of the room”. She noted the fact she’s been particularly inspired by Padmasree Warrior, the chief technology officer at Cisco, who commits to a self-imposed digital detox every Saturday. “If the CTO of Cisco can do that, so can I.”
And upon waking in the morning, Huffington suggested taking one minute to be present, grateful, and to consider you intentions for the world. “Set your own agenda before the world demands for you what it wants,” she said.
Meanwhile, there’s no greatness in continually declaring your own ‘busyness’ and we should start to watch the language we use. “We need to remember that ‘no’ is a full sentence. It doesn’t have to be a ‘no … because I’m drowning’. When we use these expression it makes us feel even more overwhelmed than we actually are.”
Huffington urged the audience to consider the fact that “if we’re lucky we’ll have 30,000 days to play the game of life” and that our eulogies are unlikely to take in the details we share on our resumes.
However, one thing Huffington may not want you to drop is a desire to share your own stories with her publication – even going so far as to spell out her email address with the 500-strong audience. Asked by journalist Tracey Spicer about not paying contributors on the site, Huffington compared blogging to watching television and said that, “People are recognising that self expression is a new form of entertainment”.
Finally, Huffington sees a new opportunity for women — particularly on refocusing the debate around success on wellbeing and wisdom, and dragging employers, companies and institutions into a new era. “The third feminism revolution is women saying, ‘we don’t just want to be at the top of the world, we want to change the world’,” she said.
As for the saying “onwards and upwards”, Huffington suggested we add a new word to the phrase in order to highlight the need for internal strength and wisdom — making it “onwards, upwards and inwards.”
“When we take care of ourselves, we are only going to be better at everything.”