A recorded interview (June 18, 2015) in which Joe Polish interviews Arianna Huffington about her book Thrive. Arianna defines "thriving" as a stage beyond surviving and succeeding that can exist independently of external success. She recounts formative examples (her mother improvising joy amid poverty) and a personal turning point—collapsing from exhaustion, burnout and sleep deprivation—that prompted methodical research and the book's guidance. The conversation aims to share practical insights that challenge conventional definitions of success and promote well-being.
Chapters
Hello, my name is Joe Polish and I'm the founder of a company called Genius Network. And what I like to do is bring together a lot of geniuses and share very valuable knowledge, insights and practices that could allow you to just be better as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, as a mother, as a human being. And I've got an amazing person with me, my friend Arianna Huffington. She's the author of, of a book called Thrive, which is a plan and path to basically develop a life. And I'd like to have you define what do you mean by thrive. And let's talk a little bit about your story and what started you on this venture, because this is your 14th book.
Well, first of all, I'm delighted to be here, Joe. Thank you so much for making this happen. So thriving is really the stage beyond surviving and succeeding. But what is exciting about the concept of thriving is that you can be thriving even in the most extreme and challenging circumstances. So it's not as people think, that first of all, you resolve all your problems, you become financially successful, and then you thrive. There is a place in us in which we are thriving independently of our circumstances. And that is really the key about thriving. It's not dependent on how our business is doing, on whether we got that next promotion, on whether our boyfriend asked us to marry them, or all the things that we normally identify success with. In my own life, I was very blessed to have a mother that I dedicate the book to, who demonstrated that when we were growing up with no money in Athens, Greece, in a one room apartment, she had that capacity to sort of improvise and make life be amazing no matter what was really going on. And so that's something that I obviously took with me for the rest of my life. But it wasn't really until I collapsed from exhaustion, burnout and sleep deprivation seven years ago that I started being very methodical about the science behind thriving and how I could apply it in my own life and spread the word around the world.
Wonderful. And I want to bring up something. In the book you talk about a piece of advice that your mother had given you, which is let it marinate when it came to decision making and what you're going to be able to watch here as we share with you ideas and, and experiences and hope with a lot of these people. If you're a business owner or if you're not, you may have a boss who needs to see this, needs to hear this, and you're going to hear things that are contrary to what many people preach and teach is the way to success, which for a lot of people is completely wrong. And it's leading to a lot of misery, a lot of disease, and in many cases, a lot of death. And this is, I think, knowledge that some people really want to, because it will make sense as you listen to it. So what would be your outcome for people that would read Thrive, that are watching, what it is we're going to share with everyone? What would be your hope that they get out of it?
So my hope would be that we begin to live life as an incredible mystery and treasure, and that therefore, no matter what happens, we can approach each day that way. And for me, the key to that is approaching each day in a fresh way. It's like without carrying yesterday or last year or old resentments or angers. Of course, this is much harder to achieve than to talk about, but if we have that as a goal, then it affects very much the decisions we make and what we value in our lives.
