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Arianna Huffington, 'Get Off That Two-Legged Stool'
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Saturday, May 27, 2017
 

STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

“This is what success looks like,” thought Arianna Huffington, as she came to in a pool of blood on the floor, her cheek bone broken and her eyelid cut after collapsing from exhaustion.

Like many, she had bought into the line that skipping Zzzzzs to work 24/7 was a status symbol.

“But that moment was actually an incredible gift that made me stop, take stock, look around and realize I’d forgotten what it was like to be fully engaged and recharged, not walking around in zombie state,” she told more than a thousand people attending the opening lecture of the 2017 Sun Valley Wellness Festival Friday night.

It was also the start of a calling—a calling to step away from her Huffington media empire and start Thrive Global, designed to improve the way we live and work. And that is how she came to be the keynote speaker at the Wellness conference in a speech that also constituted the final lecture in the Sun Valley Center for the Arts’ 2016-17 lecture series.

The Greek-born Huffington talked gamely even when her breath began to show near the end as temperatures dipped into the 40s.

“Thank you for putting together this amazing festival and thank you for caring about wellness,” she said. “When you started this, wellness was far from mainstream.”

She also kept the crowd chuckling as she poked fun at everyone from herself and how she flunked a Dr. Seuss course designed to rid her of her accent to President Trump—“Tell your kids this is what happens when you wake up at 3 in the morning and Tweet!”

But she was adamant about getting her message across about the value of sleep and about how we need to redefine success.

Huffington said the delusion that we didn’t need eight hours of sleep dates back to the industrial revolution, which tried to make humans into machines. But humans are not machines she said.

She noted that any athlete will tell you they perform better following a good night’s sleep.

“If it’s good for athletes, why don’t we think others will perform better, as well, whether they’re Moms or business leaders,” she asked.

“The value of sleep is a fact—not something ‘Yoga Journal’ came up with,” she added. “It’s like sleep is being rediscovered—the New York Times calls it the new status symbol.”

Unfortunately, 70 percent of us sleep with our phone, she noted, and that interferes with our Zzzzzs.

“Those of us with a child know you don’t just drop them in bed at bedtime, much as we would like to. We have ritual that involves a lullaby, a good night story. Yet, most of us are checking our phone up until the last minute, then we wonder why we wake up in the middle of the night…our brains are racing.”

Huffington said her own nighttime ritual starts with escorting her phone out of the bedroom and tucking it into a recharger.

“The phone recharges and I go to bed and recharge,” she said.

She washes her face, washing away the day. She reads a book—anything  not about war. And she ends the day reciting three things she’s grateful for, as she snuggles under the covers in special nightclothes.

“I used to sleep in the same clothes I went to the gym in, and my body was confused. Was I going to the gym or going to sleep?” she said.

Unfortunately, technology is making it harder and harder to put our devices away and reconnect with ourselves, she said.

“We know more about the state of our smart phones than the state of ourselves, she said, noting that 65 percent of men say they’d rather experience electric shock than be alone without their phone and that 20 percent of women say they’d rather go a month without sex than their phone.

Huffington said Thrive Global offers suggestions about how to organize social media, beginning with ending solicitations from anyone you don’t personally know.

“We’re not meant to be constantly interrupted by our smart phone notifying us every time someone likes our photo.”

Huffington said that Americans have narrowed the good life down to money and power/status. And that’s like sitting on a two-legged stool—eventually we’re going to fall off, she said.

A third metric of success is based on the four pillars of well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving, she said.

We all have a sense of wisdom in us, but it can very hard to connect to when constantly multitasking she said.

“When you know you’re making bad decisions, how quickly can you come back to the center?”

If you stop looking down at your phone, you can look up and see the beauty around you, the mystery of the universe, she added.

“I’m glad art is a big part of what’s happening here because it’s another way to connect with the transcendent,” said Huffington, whose daughter Isabella’s art is currently being shown at Friesen Gallery in Ketchum.

The final pillar is giving, she said.

“It’s amazing how our own problems are put in perspective when we’re reaching out helping others.”

Huffington cautioned the audience that none of us are in control of what’s happening in our lives.

“We need to move into a position of trust and see that everything that happens to us at least has a lesson,” she added.

Huffington recounted how she was called to the emergency room when her daughter Christina became addicted to drugs while attending Yale University. Her daughter’s has since been sober five years. But even during the most difficult time, Huffington said, she was able to think of things she was grateful for, including the fact that her daughter was alive and that she had a loving family around her.

Huffington invited those in audience to share their stories about how getting eight hours of sleep has changed their lives or how they’re able to succeeded in corralling the time they spend on their phones by writing ah@thriveglobal.com.

“It’s about spreading the message, sharing ideas. Your story may be exactly what someone needs to hear.”

She also pleaded for employers to improve the work environment.

“We have exit interviews. Why not entry interviews?” What’s really important to you?” she said. “For one woman it was taking her daughter to school every morning. Another said her weekly physical therapy appointment because she had a frozen shoulder.”

Healthier happier people could even change things like the political landscape, Huffington noted.

“Burned out people are operating on survival mode. All they care about getting through the day,” she said. “If that changes, it changes the decisions people make.”

DID YOU KNOW?

Arianna Huffington’s sister Agapi Stassinopoulos is among the presenters at this year’s Sun Valley Wellness Festival.

She held a workshop “How to Reignite Your Joy and Creativity and Live with a Feeling of Connection in Your Everyday Life” on Friday. She will present a lecture, “Wake Up to the Joy of You,” at 9:30 a.m. today—Saturday, May 27—in the Sun Valley Inn’s Continental Room.

For information, go to www.sunvalleywellness.org.

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