Personal Empowerment: How to Live a Successful Life with Arianna Huffington | Salesforce

In May of 2005, she launched the Huffington Post, which quickly became the most widely read, linked to and frequently cited media brand on the Internet. In August of 2016, she launched Thrive Global. Let me try that again. Thrive Global, which is a consumer and a corporate company that really focuses on well being and trying to dispel this myth that you have to have burnout and in order to be successful. She has been named to Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people and she is on Forbes most powerful Women's list. She has authored 15 books, but there is one in particular. There's a piece of prose from one that just I have such a fond place in my heart for. And I thought we'd share a little excerpt about that with you today. Who in the room has read just by show of hands, who has read the book Goodnight Moon to a child before bed? Okay. Ariana has her own version of this, which is Goodnight, smartphone. And I thought before we brought her out, we would read a little excerpt here to set the stage. All right, so good night, dark room. Good night, moon, which I can't see because of my blackout curtains, but I know it's there. Good night, sleep killing blue light from my electronic devices, which I have gently escorted out of the bedroom. And good night, red balloon. Good night, bears. Good night, cares. Good night, kittens. Good night, emails, unwritten. Good night, clocks. Good night, inbox. Good night, house. Good night, problems with spouse. Good night, laptop, which as the repository of all my daily worries, anxieties and fears has been closed for the night, releasing me from thinking that I need to turn them over in my head all night. Good night, worrying about weight loss. Good night, demanding boss. Goodnight, caffeine, which I stopped drinking no later than 2:15. Good night, Comb. Goodnight, perpetual rush. Good night, everybody on Facebook. And good night, mush. Good night, test for which I need to cram. Good night, Instagram. Good night, sheets. Good night, tweets. Good night, phone calls I've missed. Good night, to do list. Good night, sleep deprivation bragger. Good night, sleep macho swagger. Good night, lack of common sense. Good night, low job performance. Good night, critics. Good night, Netflix. Good night, burnout. And good night, roadblocks to ideas that I need sleep to work out. Ladies and gentlemen, Arianna Huffington.

Thank you. What a great voice. Don't you think she has a new career as an actor. That's funny.

That's more funny than you know. Wow, those are some awesome shoes.

So I sprained my ankle two days ago and I used this as an opportunity to get some cool shoes. What do you think? Do you like them?

I'm digging them. Yeah, those are fantastic. So we just had Deepak out here, and he was talking about unleashing the infinite potential within. And I think we can all probably recognize that you need to be happy and healthy and well to do that. And here you sit, almost well, but happy, healthy, thriving. But it wasn't always that way for you. And you've always been so candid in sharing your story, and I thought maybe that would be a good way to start this morning that you could tell people about your journey and how you came to be sitting here with us.

Well, first of all, it's so great to be sitting here with you. I just love you. I think you're amazing. And I love Deepak, too, and he and I have been friends for so many years. So what a great introduction this morning. And for me, my story kind of unfolds in the traditional way. All our stories kind of tend to unfold. You know, Taipei driven, Greece, England, Massachusetts, in economics, writing books, moving to New York, having children, juggling. Getting divorced, juggling. And then in 2007, it all came to a crashing halt when I collapsed from exhaustion, sleep deprivation, and burnout. Hit my head on my desk, broke my ch. Almost lost my right eye. And as I went from doctor to doctor, trying to find out what was really wrong. Did I have a brain tumor? Did I have a heart problem? I had this amazing doctor who said to me, arianna, there's kind of nothing wrong with you medically and everything wrong with you in terms of the life you lead. He said, you have civilization's disease burnout, and there is nothing the medical profession can do for you. You have to change the way you live. So that was 11 years ago, and it led me on this journey of studying the latest science, looking at our culture and the way this burnout epidemic was based, as you said in your introduction, Jodi, on the delusion that in order to succeed, you have to burn out. Completely and utterly false. And I think any changes we make in the culture have to start with ending that delusion, ending that belief, which is no longer clearly based on science.

Okay, but if there's so much science out there that's saying that, like, none of this is good for us, then why do we all keep subscribing to it? Why is it just like part of the deal to be successful is you gotta burn yourself out?

This is such a good question. And if you look throughout history, believe it or not, there have been many times when entire cultures believed the wrong thing. Like for a very long time we believed that the earth was flat, which led to a lot of shipwrecks. Right. Because the whole rules of navigation were false based on a completely fundamental false premise. You can go back to cigarette commercials from the 60s when you had doctors in white coats advertising cigarettes. I remember one which is truly stunning, where the doctor says, I smoke mentals because they refresh my throat. I thought, yeah, they also give you lung cancer. But we believe that smoking was glamorous. I mean, how many Hollywood movies do you see where they all light up? I mean, for many, many years we all believed that Brad and Angelina would be together fore. So, you know, entire cultures believe the wrong thing and then one day they wake up and they realize this was incredibly false. And I believe in what we are doing on our media platform at Thrive is to try to get moments in the culture that become teachable moments in order to change that false belief. And right now we're living through the most amazing teachable moment, which is called Elon Musk. Just think of it. He lives and breathes the delusion that in order for Tesla to be successful, he has to sacrifice himself, his sleep, his children, everything. He talked about that in detail to the New York Times. I wrote an open letter to him immediately after because I saw this as a great teachable moment. Because in front of our very eyes, he's destroying Tesla. You know, yesterday he was actually sued by the sec, and now we are told the company is going to be sued because of this late night tweet he did saying that he had the funding ready to take the company private, which was not true. And there are so many examples of how because of his exhaustion, because he's running on empty, he keeps making serious mistakes that are undermining the very thing he's putting at the front burner of everything he does. You know, remember he had an earnings call and he berated the analysts, called them boneheaded and boring. And then at the next earnings call he had to apologize and he blamed sleep deprivation, of course. But when I did the open letter to him, he tweeted at me saying that what I'm suggesting, which is actually to take some time during the day or night to recharge and also to build a management team. You know what? You can't scale alone. Anybody here who built a company yet trying to do it all on your own just doesn't work. And if you are basing your business on energy and how do we Produce renewable energy for our cars? How about how we manage our human energy? But, you know, in the grip of this delusion, he's saying it's not an option. I love Elon. I think he's a visionary. He's brilliant. What he's doing is fantastic. But right now, he's also acting as a case study of what is not working.

I think I'm going to be a little controversial here.

Yeah, go.

Okay.

All right.

I think some people might think that it's pretty easy for you to sit here and say, take care of yourself, work less. Right. You have launched one of the world's most powerful media brands. And my question is, I mean, do you really think that the Huffington Post could be what it is today if you didn't have those first few years of sleepless nights?

So I think that's a very important question because a lot of people think of that. So first of all, let me just say. I'm not saying work less. I'm not saying don't work hard, and I'm not saying slow down. I'm saying work smart. I'm saying that when we put our own oxygen mask on first, we are going to be better at everything we're doing. We are going to make better decisions. We are going to be more creative. We are not going to miss red flags if anybody follows me on social media. You know that I do work hard. I love my work. I was in Toronto yesterday, here, now in New York tomorrow. So the point is. But I did get eight hours sleep last night. So you see what I'm saying? It's the choices you make. Like, I could have gotten into my hotel in San Francisco and chosen to have dinner with my great friends in San Francisco, which I would have loved to do, but I sacrificed that in order to be able to get a good night's sleep and be here and be fully present. But I love being here and be fully present, as opposed to all the years in my life when I showed up like a zombie. Crossed something off my to do list. But I wasn't really bringing my full self to it, and I wasn't enjoying it. And for me, increasingly, joy is just an incredible barometer of how we're living our lives. Are we just getting stuff done, or are we also experiencing the joy and gratitude of being able to do something we're passionate about? And as for the Huffington Post, actually, it was two years into building HuffPost when I collapsed, and the best decisions I made to take HuffPost Global to move beyond politics into lifestyle all these things were what made HuffPost ultimately successful. And so I can show you decision after decision that was made after I had changed the way I lived my life.

Well, thank you for doing that. That's great. So it seems like a pretty logical case. You know, you've shown how you can be successful, you've shown how you can run these businesses. What do you hear? What are the most common objections that you hear? Right when you go and you work with a company or you work with an individual, what do they say? Why? No, no, no. This whole Thrive thing, it won't work for me.

Why? Well, here's what is so interesting. We rarely hear that anymore. I think the companies we work with, and we work with big multinational companies like Accenture, JP Morgan, the Hilton Hotels, Goldman, et cetera, are realizing that taking care of their human capital has a real impact on the bottom line. It's no longer seen as a nice to have as an HR benefit given to employees by benevolent employers. It is being seen as directly affecting recruitment, attrition, productivity, engagement. So the problem a lot of companies have is now is learning how to move from knowing what to do to actually doing it. And that's where we come in. Sure there are companies that are still caught in the dark ages and they are not up on the new science. But I think the majority of companies that we are working with, that you are interacting with theoretically, understand there have to be changes. So it's a question of how do we implement these changes. And in our workshops, we both do a lot of workshops, we've just done over 150 workshops for Accenture, for example, around the world. But we also have digital products that are science based behavior change micro steps. So the way we see the change is moving from first of all changing beliefs. You have to show people all the science so that they can actually recognize that getting enough sleep is not a luxury. It means they're going to show up at their best at work. That disconnecting from technology in order to recharge is not a luxury, that multitasking is a myth. Like if anybody here, I mean, I'm very impressed to see you're not on your phones. That's rare. The truth is that you can either listen to us or do your emails. You can make a choice, but don't fool yourself into thinking you can do both at once. So that's the reason, for example, that I've made all my meetings at Thrive device free meetings. You know, people say but you know, I need my laptop or my phone to take notes, we give you a beautiful leather bound notebook. And if you have something more important to do, don't come to the meeting. And that way the meetings are shorter, people are present, we make decisions quickly, people bring their whole selves to the meeting. We also find, and that's what we bring to our both to our users on the media platform. Because Thrive is really two things. It's the media platform which think of it as like the Huffington Post, except no politics, with a few exceptions, like Dr. Ford yesterday, because it was an exception. Demonstrating courage and standing up for yourself, which is a big thriving value. But also both on the media platform and the second part of the company, which is the B2B, working directly with corporations and changing their cultures. We try to do it through two things. One is bringing the latest science and then the second is bringing new role models because people learn through role models. So we have people in the arena who talk and write about how they're doing it. So when Jeff Bezos, for example, wrote on Thrive a piece, the headline he chose was, yes, why am I sleeping? Eight hours a night is good for Amazon shareholders. It went crazy viral, had a big impact on people because he analyzed his decision making and he said the value I bring to Amazon is the quality of my decisions. And If I get six hours, if I get less than my optimal eight hours, he has analyzed that his decisions are 5 to 20% less good. And we have. I mean, that's my favorite thing to do, is collect. Jody, you have to write something about that. All of you, I want to invite you to tell us your stories from. Because everybody here is in the arena.

Yes.

You are not chilling under a mango tree. You are here because you want to learn how to be your most effective, most self empowered self. So if you tell us your stories and how you do it, it will influence others.

So I read it really leading off of that role model idea, I read a really interesting article by a pretty well established CEO a couple of weeks ago. And he was quoted saying it was about digital detox. And he was quoted saying, if you truly blindly love what you do, you don't have to worry about burnout. And so I just kind of kept thinking about that and you know, can we be. Can your passion for your work blind you from burnout? And if so, then like, we're all kind of in this happy delusional state. How do you even know you need to be woken up?

Amazing question. The truth of the matter is that unfortunately our passion for our work does not give us Immunity, in fact, on the contrary, it blinds us to the fact that we are burning out. It's a slow process. It's like putting the lobster in the water, you know, and if you do it slowly, the lobster doesn't know it's about to die. So, you know, burnout works until it doesn't. And the story that I gave you of my collapse is not the most extreme story. I mean, we all have friends who ended up with strokes, with heart attacks of one kind or another. The connection between stress, burnout, and disease is so clearly established. Three quarters of our healthcare costs and our healthcare problems are stress related and lifestyle related. A quarter, you can do everything perfectly and something happens. An act of God, but we can affect three quarters. And we call this going upstream. So all our interventions are going upstream and identifying stress triggers before they become symptoms, because it's so much harder. And now, you know, we have this explosion of mental health problems, depression, anxiety, especially among teenage girls. 33% increase in the last few years. Now, that is clearly connected to stress and our growing addiction to technology. So we have an entire module to help us disconnect from our phones and reconnect with ourselves. In fact, it's actually great because Apple launched screen time last week, which helps you manage your relationship with your phone. We have an app for those who are on Android and are not on iOS. You can download it. It's called the Thrive app. It helps you put your phone in Thrive mode. So, Jodi, let's say you're having dinner with Glenn. Hi, Glenn. Hi, baby.

That's my husband.

Yes. My God, she really loves you. You know, we're backstage watching you meditating with your eyes closed. She was melting, like, saying, that's Glenn. That's my hubby. Can you stand up so we can applaud you? So let's say you're having a date night with Glenn.

Yes.

And you don't want to be disturbed. Okay.

Okay.

You put your phone in Thrive mode, and it's bidirectional. So if I text you, I get a text back that says, I'm in Thrive mode until X and X time, until such and such a time.

That's awesome.

So it's kind of perfect. So that one of the things I love about that is that it teaches the world that, you know, you don't have to respond to texts immediately. You know, right now, the culture has such expectations that if I don't respond to a text immediately, my friends practically call 911. We need to change that. You know, when did that become the conventional wisdom. And the other thing that the Thrive app does is it gives you every day a dashboard of your use of apps, games, you know, how much time you spent on Instagram, on Candy Crush, on whatever, you know, whatever is your. On Netflix, whatever is your particular addiction. And, you know, you'd be amazed. My addiction is Instagram, so I was amazed when I started looking at how much time I spent on it. I mean, I couldn't possibly have spent that amount of time, but I did. And then you can set limits. And let's say you spent two hours on Instagram and you want to spend an hour and a half, you set the limit, and an hour and a half will block you off. Laugh, laugh. So what I recommend, our whole theory of micro steps is don't put a limit yourself in a way that's manageable. Like, do it 10 minutes less and build to it. It's like exercise, building that muscle.

Yes, Yes. I love it. I think we get into our habits, whether it's we're Instagramming for hours or we're just kind of trudging through our days, going to countless meetings, and someone comes up to you and they say, how you doing? Oh, I'm fine.

I'm fine.

Right? I'm fine. And you yourself once said that on the very day that you collapsed, if someone had asked you how you were doing, you would have said you were fine.

Yes. Right.

And so I feel like we keep saying, I'm fine, I'm fine, and we keep perpetuating this same delusional cycle that I'm fine. So I'm curious to hear from you. Like, what do we really need to be asking ourselves to try to say, am I really fine? What should we be looking at?

Wow, what a great question. Yes, I would have said I'm fine because I thought that's the only way to do it. And now the way we break it down, we have the Thrive pulse, which you can go on Thrive Global and take it. And the Thrive Pulse has 10 questions that will help you assess whether you're really fine. They're really like ways to see are you allowing yourself to gradually burn out? One of the questions, for example, is, are you sleeping with your phone? This is a judgment free zone. I know the majority of you are sleeping with your phone because 70% of the world is. I just want you to look at the science. You know, I'm sure everybody here is data driven. You know, that's the irony.

Yes.

We are so data driven when it comes to building A product dealing with consumers. But we are not data driven when it comes to how do we live our own lives, how can we be most empowered in our daily lives? So it's absolutely unequivocal that we just need to readdress all these questions and stop kind of believing in this delusion.

Just get out of this rat race a little bit. Take a little step back. Okay. I think that you've spoken a little bit about sacrifice in the past, and I think that there's just sort of this. I feel it like there's just this common belief that you can't really do well at work and have, like, you know, the perfect body and the perfect, you know, medical report that something's got to give. Right. And so, you know, for somebody who's just starting down this journey, what are the sacrifices that you think that they should be looking to make in their work so that they can live more well?

So I don't see it as making sacrifices in your work. There's a quote that we both love by Mark Niepow, which is sacrificing what is not really important in order to focus on what is truly sacred. And so I would say, for example, let me tell you some of my sacrifices. I have not seen a single episode of Game of Thrones. I would like to, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. I also do a regular life audit and look at what are the projects that I put down. Sometimes I don't even put them down in writing, but in my head it's like, I want to do this or I want to do that. And they are like files that you open on your computer and you need to close them. If you are not going to do.

Them, Just sweep it clean.

Yeah. So what I do is like, for example, one of my open computer files in my brain was, I want to learn to be a good skier because my children love to ski. My two daughters and I think it's fun to do something like that together. And I'm a lousy skier. And then I kind of realized that I'm not going to give the time and attention it takes to become a good skier. So I have this rule, which is called, I can complete a project by dropping it. So skiing is done. I still go skiing with my daughters. They ski. I sit by the fire drinking hot chocolate and reading a good book. And there are many things like that. I mean, I gave up thinking that I'm ever going to learn to cook. Whatever it is, write down, I see you, I see you, whatever it is that you think, yeah, that would have been a nice thing to do. If you are not going to do it, sacrifice it. Books, you know, you start a book and you are not really find. You don't really find it sufficiently interesting, but we have this compulsion to finish it.

Yes.

You don't have to, oh, you know, I have left movie theaters, theaters, theaters, you know, anything. The most important thing is to recognize that what we cannot sacrifice is our own health and our own relationships. Because nothing is really worth it if we lose our health or if we undermine our health for no reason. And that, of course, is the ultimate undermining of our work. So that's why we don't use the term work life balance. And you don't either, because I've read a lot of the stuff you've written. Work life balance is a myth. You can call it work life integration. Jeff Bezos calls it work life harmony. The key is that there's never going to be a day when everything is balanced. 50% work, 50% family. We're not talking about that. We are talking about refueling. So there may be a time when you pull an all nighter. I mean, I obviously emphasize sleep, but.

I have you pulled all nighters?

Yes. I mean, let's say the day before we launch Thrive, we're all in the office pulling an all nighter. The question is, how quickly do you refuel? If you can do it the next day or the day after that? Even in our cultural values at Thrive, we have something that we call Thrive time. We don't say this is a 9 to 5 job. There are no interesting 9 to 5 jobs. The question is when you have to exert yourself extra to launch a product, to do something important either for your company or for your family. You have a sick child, you are working. You know, Jodi told me this wonderful story backstage about how she helped her son Rex prepare a speech when he ran for student council.

He won.

And I love. You have to tell them. The best thing was the night before, you know, he had to give his speech.

I love what she's telling this.

He told his mom, mom, am I going to win? And Jody said, well, I don't know, baby, but you know, if you don't win, you don't have to sacrifice recess once a month. And he said, but, mom, there's no other kid who has a senior salesforce executive helping them with their speech, Which I absolutely love. So you have to write about it.

I'll write about it.

Yeah.

I'll write about It.

Okay, so where were we?

I have no idea.

I got cards.

I don't even know. All right, I'll get us back on track. This one. Okay. So one of my really great joys this year has been working with some of the very best talent inside of Salesforce to try and elevate our well being narrative. And I think we're doing some really spectacular and innovative things. And what I am noticing is that there are parts of the company that are grabbing onto it like gangbusters, and it's just so great to. To see them really thriving. Okay. But then there's other parts of the company that are just. They're just not having any of it. Right. And they're just kind of going on business as usual. And I know that you get to speak, you get to work. You mentioned all these companies that you get to work with. And I guess I'm just. I'm curious about how do we all get to this place? It feels like we're kind of half in the boat, half out of the boat.

Right.

And Troy, we got to make a decision as the boat leaving the port or not. Like, how do we all get aligned and like, in one wave forward of taking care of ourselves? Because I do think it's, you know, your energy impacts others and role modeling affects others. And it's hard when you're trying so hard, but you're up against someone who's just not having it.

So first of all, we need to accept that this period of transition is very natural. It's like, just think of it historically, moving from the dark ages to the Renaissance. You know, there is a period when multiple behaviors are coexisting even in the same company. We have found that the most important thing is for leaders in each department to role model the new behavior, because people are looking for permission, and nothing gives them permission more than having managers, executives model that behavior. Let me give you an example. At a dinner a few months ago, Philip Schindler, who is the chief business officer at Google, said to me, I'm now like this doctor when people come and tell them their stories, how they change behavior. I love it. So he said to me, I had this moment of epiphany about my use of my phone. He said, I came back from a trip. I have young children. I told them, daddy's taking you to the playground. My 5 year old said, oh, no, can't the babysitter take us? I was obviously crestfallen. I asked why? And he said, because when you're in the playground with Us, you're always on your phone. So he said, it was like it broke my heart. So he said, since then I have not used my phone in front of my children. I of course said what I always say, Philip, you must write about it. And he said, I'm kind of private. I said, it's not for you. It will help people. So he wrote about it. You can read it on Thrive Global. And then he told me what an impact it had on his orb within Google. So many people who say if the boss can do that, we can do that. So that is key. And I was at a conference last weekend in Aspen and I was talking to Dan Loeb, who is one of the big hedge fund guys and he said to me a few years ago, it was a few years ago, but he was tearing up as he told me the story. I took my 2 year old son to the playground and I was on my BlackBerry, that's how long ago it was. And he said, I suddenly look up and I don't see him. And he said, it's like my heart stopped. I looked everywhere around, I couldn't find him. He said, I called my wife, our home is near the playground. She said she came out with one shoe. And we both started looking. It turns out the little boy was playing hide and seek. So he had hidden himself. But all these years later, he still has PTSD from that moment. And he said, since then, I never used my phone in front of my children. And we have all these stories of people crashing, breaking their legs, going into traffic because they're on their phones. So we're dealing with a real addiction. I don't use the word casually and we need to address it in our own lives and in our businesses. And to go back to your question about companies having different areas endorsing and practicing these new ways of living and working and others not. I think leaders role modeling behavior is the key. At J.P. morgan, we did a challenge for 28 days. They have over 200,000 employees. We did a video for them where leaders, the cmo, the CEO of the private wealth bank, said on video what they were going to work on. And the four challenges were sleep, mindfulness, relationship with technology and gratitude. And immediately it spread that 64% participation and it began to change the overall culture.

That is very impressive. That is great. Okay, so since I have you here and you're sort of trapped, I would like to have you weigh in on a debate that we're having on my team right now. As the world's foremost expert in this is it better to take like a two or three week vacation once a year? Could be a digital detox, no phones. Or is it better to take shorter, smaller breaks throughout the year? And I guess, well, also we should probably cover how much time off should we be taking.

So obviously that's individual, but I think the key here is making sure that when you are not on vacation, you have little breaks to refuel. And when I say little breaks, literally, it could be one minute between stressful events. Literally. Neuroscience tells us that it takes less than one minute to course correct. The problem is not stress. We're not going to eliminate stress completely. The problem is stress becoming cumulative. So you have a stressful meeting and then you go on to another thing and bring the stress with you. If you took one minute to take deep breaths to look at something that helps you course correct with pictures of your kids, it could be a quote that you love. I have quotes that I love all around my office. My favorite is live life as though everything is rigged in your favor.

I love that quote. I love that quote. I have been saying that quote for weeks now, telling everyone who will love.

Listen, I have a few little quote cards laminated in my wallet. I'll give you a few when we go backstage. So in terms of vacation, what is most important is it's better to have a short vacation but really disconnect than a long vacation where you try to take phone calls and be on conference calls. You know, I'm. I was talking to Barry Summers, he's actually the head of private wealth globally at JP Morgan. And he said, I learned the hard way that if I'm on vacation, and I think, yeah, I'm going to do this one conference call, what does it matter? The truth is your whole mode of behavior changes. You are suddenly back at work, you have to prep. Then after the call, you are thinking about it. So you're away from your vacation time with your family or your friends or whoever you are with. So I think it's better to at least have a few days when you can really disconnect. And we have an app for that, as you would expect. Yes, it's called Thrive Away. And if you are on vacation and I email you, I'll get an email back that says Jodie's on vacation until such and such a day. If this is urgent, please contact so and so. If it is not, email her after that date, this email will be deleted. That is hard for, but important because if it's. The whole point is that you are going to have a vacation, it can be two days or two weeks. You decide what you can handle. But during that period, you are going to have zero emails in your inbox. When was the last time you had zero emails in your inbox?

I think it was the day I started my job. Approximately seven years ago.

Exactly.

Yes.

So the point is that if you don't do that and you have that, excuse me, stupid out of office email, what happens with that? How often do you get an out of office email and two minutes later you get an email from that person? It doesn't really mean anything. We need to have that real disconnect in order to reconnect and be recharged. And we all know that really the best things we bring to work are our creativity, our great ideas, our problem solving, our ability to collaborate. And these are the first things that are sacrificed when we are burnt out, right?

So I see people making like small incremental steps, right, to disconnect or to be healthier. And then you sort of fall back into your bad habits, right? And what advice do you have for people to like, what's it going to take to get over the hump and really commit to well being? Because I can tell you every morning I can get up and it's much easier for me to just put a couple drops in my eyes, ignore the evidence of the red sleepless night, you know, and move on and say, oh, I'll get to it tomorrow. Like what? How do you get in it and stay in it?

So I think truly the first and most important thing is no judgments. Like when we fall off the wagon, we need to forgive ourselves and start again. Because everybody here is Taipei, I'm sure. And the worst thing we can do is to have one more thing to beat ourselves up with. Especially I'm talking to women here because we are perfectionists and perfect. And you know, we have this, what I call this obnoxious roommate living in our head that puts us down, judges us, you know, negative self talk. So I think we need to make sure that this is not another thing for the obnoxious roommate to berate us about. So that's why at Thrive, everything we're doing is based on very, very tiny micro steps. And especially if they are micro steps that you can attach to existing habits. Let me give you an example. We are working with a lot of brands. We are working with P and G, for example, with Secret, you know, it's a deodorant, right? And Secret sells itself because it's going to reduce your Stress of worrying that you're going to have sweat stains on your dress if you're having an interview or an important occasion or something. So we are adding a stress reduction micro step that goes beyond the sweat stick and that helps empower women to actually show up confident beyond the deodorant advantage. I can't coin that deodorant because, you know, you're already putting the deodorant. So when you are putting it on, can you say an affirmation about how you're going to show up at this interview? Can you remember three things you are grateful for in your life? Something that will actually connect us with a positive, empowered part of ourselves? Yes.

Yes.

So. And you can do that when you're brushing your teeth, when you are walking to work on an existing micro step, add another micro step.

I love it.

If you don't work out at all, don't say, I'm going to start working for an hour a day working out. No, don't just say, I'm going to do 10 minutes on the bike or I'm going to take the steps instead of the elevator. Create like a small actionable step rather than an overwhelming New Year's resolution you're going to break in a week.

Yeah, great. That is great advice. I'm going to ask Arianna one more question and then we're going to bring out some microphones. So if you would like to ask Arianna a question, then just feel free to come on down. My last question for you. We've talked about the company, we've talked about the individual. I'm going straight to the heart of me and sorry, dear, it might be a little bit. I am really, really struggling to get the devices out of the bedroom. The struggle is real. And I know this is going to make me sound like some sort of digital junkie, but I feel like having the device in the room helps me. It helps my marriage. Like, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I don't have to turn on the light to read. I can like read on my device. And I know that sounds so sick, but, like, I cannot believe I am the only one in the room that's really struggling. This, like, how do you get over the separation anxiety of leaving your phone outside of the room?

Amazing. You know, what I love about this whole conversation is that we are going deeper to some things. It's not just at the surface. And that really goes to the heart of the matter, which is control. Your device is the instrument of control in your life. You can control your work, the arrangements for your family through your device. Sleep is about surrender. We just have to give up control.

Oh, God. Oh, boy.

And that's why, at the end of each day, Rex, I'm going to be in touch with you. Make sure she does that. At the end of each day, you need to pick up a time which you declare. It's an arbitrary time. You declare the end of your day, it's arbitrary because I can say with certainty that there isn't anybody in the room, certainly not you, Jody, who can do everything you could possibly have done before you go to sleep. And if there's anybody in the room who can say, I complete everything that I could possibly have done that day, I think I suggest you change jobs because your job isn't interesting enough. In any interesting job, we have to learn to deal with incompletions at the end of the day. So one of our cultural values is relentlessly prioritize and get comfortable with incompletions. Because if you've prioritized and you handle the most important thing, then the priorities declare an end to the day. And the ritual, we are all creatures of rituals. So the ritual is to take your phone, your laptop, whatever, and take it out of your bedroom. And that's like the demarcation light. And that's why we created a little charging station that we're going to show in a minute. I'm not going to say anything more about it, but the bottom line is, when you take your phone out of your bedroom, you are no longer Jody, the senior executive at Salesforce, or the super mom having to handle everything. You're just Jody, the being that now needs to connect with a deeper part of yourself. We all have it. I mean, everything I'm doing at Thrive is based on this absolute conviction that we all have in us a place of peace, strength, and wisdom. Most of the time, we're not connected with it, and part of life has to be about reconnecting with it. No matter what's happening outside. This is the eye of the hurricane, and we can all go there. And the time at night, the time of sleep, the time to recharge, reconnects us with that part of ourselves, and that's why it's so sacred and so important. I have a quote that I love from Amazon on my Instagram today. You know, my Instagram is full of inspirational quotes. If anybody's giving a commencement speech, you can have a commencement speech done in about two weeks by getting all my Instagram quotes. So Emerson said, what lies behind us. And what lies in front of us is tiny matters compared to what lies within us. And I was on Super Soul Sunday with Oprah a year ago, and she asked me a question she asks everybody, which is, what do you know for sure? And I said, what I know for sure is however magnificent your job operates, however magnificent my job is, who we are in our essence is much more magnificent. So the reason why you need to give up your phone is because there's something deeper and more important that you can connect with. And if you wake up in the middle of the night, this is the time to just stay with that part, to breathe deeply. You can put Bose sleep buds that can play some sleep music. Or if you have Alexa, you can ask again through earphones to play. We have a sleep skill. I have special sleep meditations. I have them at the end of my book. And you have your boss little headphones so that he doesn't wake up.

Rex or Glenn, whoever's in the bed.

Oh, sorry. Rex, Glenn, you know, whoever is sleeping with you at that time. At least I didn't use a different name.

Yeah, you're all in the family.

It's all okay. It's all okay. It's all good. Thank God. And bottom line, you'll begin to see that this is your time. It's not the time even to read. Although reading before you go to sleep is great. But I would only read real books.

Real books.

Real books. There's something about the tactile feeling of real books. And then you know, how you get that drowsy feeling and you can let it drop on the floor, which you wouldn't do with your iPad.

This is true.

So will you try it?

I will. I give you my word.

And let me write.

I respect you too much not to try.

And then if it works, and I'm absolutely convinced it will work, and you write about it, I will write about it. Oh, you know, incidentally, anybody who wants to write about anything you are doing that will help other people. It could be a story of burnout or a story of life hacks. Whatever you are learning to do, please send it to me directly to bypass the growing thrive global bureaucracy. My email is ahriveglobal.com There you go.

We're all writing. We're all writing.

All right.

I do want to get to some questions because I think this is so great that you've offered to do this. So come on down if you have questions. And anyone who asks a question is going to get something very, very special. So, Arianna, where are you? What exactly is this that I am holding?

So this is the little charging station that I was telling you about. It's a bed. It's a phone bed for your phone.

Look, it's all tucked in.

So at night. So at night you put your phone under the blanket, you tuck it in, you read the story, and it's charging. You see, it has room for 10 iPhones and 2 iPads. So. And it comes in light wood and mahogany. Depending on your decor, it has to live outside the bedroom. That's the key. And one, one thing that's important, you know Rex is going to get a phone soon, right? He's nine. At some point he's going to get a phone. You teach him from the beginning. That's where your phone sleeps. And it's not punishment for Rex. That's where mommy's phone sleeps. That's where daddy's phone sleeps. It's like phone hygiene, you know, it's like how we teach our children to brush our teeth. To brush their teeth. We also have to teach them. That would be an interesting.

That would be super fun.

We also teach them where their phone sleeps because one of the worst things is then the battle between parents and their kids. Give me your phone. Don't sleep with your phone. And kids who sleep with their phones and snap and text during the night end up exhausted in the morning. And that's why we have partly this dramatic increase in diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, which very often is nothing more than exhaustion.

Interesting.

You can buy it on Amazon or.

You can ask a question. All right, so we have a few minutes here. We'll take your question first.

So my question is that you tell me after I tell you this, whether it makes you happy or not. But I wanted to share with you the first moment that I was overwhelmed by your poise, your intelligence, and I will say your beauty as well. I graduated from Culver Military Academy, and when I walked into the Huffington library and saw your life size portrait, you sitting in the chair with Michael huffing, who was somebody I actually know from Culver as well, I was immediately enamored with you and remained enamored with you your whole life, your public life after that. So I hope that my question to you is, does that make you happy to hear that?

Oh, Phil makes me happy. Thank you so much. So my ex husband, Michael Huffington, graduated from the Calvin Military Academy and we had done a painting of us before we got divorced. And what do you do with the painting of the two of you after you are divorced. He gave it to the Huffington Library.

Well, the library is equally as elegant as you are. And so thank you very much for that and for the. For being happy about that.

Thank you so much. I'll tell Michael.

Thank you. How about over here?

Sure. Given your relationship with the media and given what's happening politically in the United States as we speak, how do you. I found myself being so reactive, you know, and constantly wanting to find out what was going on digitally with the news and in particular with our president, and then just being pissed off all the time. So now I've just turned off everything, but now I feel guilty because I'm not engaged. How do you think about what our relationship with the media should be at this point in time? And giving you.

Thank you so much for asking that question. I wrote a piece about it called how to Deal with a Constant Cycle of Outrage, and I have also turned off notifications. I'll tell you why. Because I believe that we need to be agents of change, and we can learn a lot from the civil rights movement. You know, the civil rights leaders were incredibly disciplined. Like, they did things that could lead to change rather than simply venting. And you know how easy it is when you read another stupid tweet by the president or who, incidentally, is another case study of sleep deprivation. Right. Then you may want to start texting your friends and venting about it, but it doesn't really change anything. While we can end notifications, you're not going to miss anything, because anytime you want to see what's happening, you just go and get the latest news. But in your own time, you don't have to have your life constantly interrupted with the latest source of outrage. And then you can put your energy into achieving change, registering voters, raising money for Planned Parenthood or whatever it is that is at risk, instead of wasting our precious energy in a meaningless cycle of outrage. That's great advice.

Okay, the little red counter here is telling me that we are at time, so I do apologize, but she's given you her email, so maybe email her.

And you know what? Can we just quickly take these two questions? Yes, that's. And I will just answer very, very quickly.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Because also that way you'll get the beds.

Oh, that's right, the beds. Okay.

We're going to do it very weekly.

Okay.

Is that okay?

Yes, please.

So, thank you so much for coming. I'm glad this was my priority today. One of the things you talked about, which was Thrive Away, the app for when you go on vacation I think like many of the executives and folks in this room, going on vacation in itself is stressful because we're prepared for what is waiting for us when we come back. So that app is extremely interesting to me. But to put it into practice, how do you think all of us in this room can help get everyone else on board within our own corporations to be accepting of us wanting to use something like that in our daily life? It's one thing to say we want to do it, but I think you're right when you talk about role modeling and empowering yourself, how, you know, how can we empower ourselves to do that?

Great. I will take all the questions and then I'll answer them all together.

Fantastic.

Yes.

You're up. Okay. Sorry, I was in my thoughts.

Thank you so much, Arianna. My name is Daria and I came from Russia two years ago. And your work for me, it's like a breath of like, it's like fresh air.

Because I work in health and wellness.

And it's something that I'm super passionate about, like, extremely. And I'm wondering, what's your spiritual practice and how do you relate to spirituality? Great. Thank you. And we have one more.

I was wondering if you had any suggestions on staying asleep. I can fall asleep. I have meditation practice. I'm good at winding down most of the time, but I can't seem to sleep for more. About six hours, and I keep waking up.

Great. So let me just take them. Start with you. Do you sleep with your phone by your bed? You do. So why don't we start with that? You know, do the little ritual of moving your phone out. If you don't have a phone bed, no problem. Put it in the kitchen, wherever you want. And. And then if you wake up, go to that list of meditations. Since you're already a meditator. It's easier if I wake up in the middle of the night and I can't go back to sleep immediately. I say I reframe it as. Fantastic. I can now meditate for as long as I want. And I literally, sometimes without propping myself up, just put an extra pillow or something. I start meditating or I play a meditation tape that I love. I have my favorite. One is called Dying each Day by John Roger. And the other has a great music by Majesty called Dehyoula. And I never have heard them to the end because they put me to sleep. So try these things and if they don't work, although I'm sure they'll work, email me and then Your question about my spiritual practice? I. My spiritual practice is meditation, and I do it every day. I try to do it before I get out of bed because, again, what is very important to me is how I start my day. And I find if I start my day by going straight to my phone, it's almost like saying that the demands of the world on me are more important than what I want to achieve. And if you are not a meditator, even if you start with one minute before you rush to your phone where you take some deep breaths, remember what you're grateful for, set your intention for the day, it changes the quality of your day then. The way most people start their day now is they rush to their phone with all the demands on them and the cortisol is flooding through their veins before they're even out of bed. And the question about vacations, I think that what is important to realize is that even if your manager, let's say, is not on board, you can start with your own team. You know, you can support each other. Let's say you're going on vacation, you can connect with somebody on your team to be the person handling emails when you're away, and they can do the same with you. You can do a little barter and you can start. And then I think increasingly it's important to speak up and raise these issues with our managers and explain why. Then you'll come back recharged. It will be better for the business. And because the emails are deleted. What? We have found that a lot of things are handled without having a pile of emails waiting for you, because the truth is that, and it's actually humbling, we are not the only person who can solve problems. And if we are, there is a management problem here. So I'm really so excited to be here with you. You know, I love Jodi and I love Salesforce, and in fact, Cheryl Poirot has just joined us as Thrive's Chief Technology officer and she used to be the head of engineering@salesforce.org, so thank you so much for letting her come with us. Those of you who are from Salesforce and. Hi, Cheryl. And she's building her engineering team, so if there are any engineers you know, not from Salesforce, you know, from other companies, please let me know. Ahriveglobal.com.