Overcoming the Pressure to Be a “Supermom”: My Never Stand Still Conversation with Arianna Huffington

Arianna Huffington, CEO of Thrive Global, embodies what it means to be an entrepreneur and lifelong learner. From learning English to get accepted into Cambridge University to educating herself on the effects of stress and burnout after co-founding The Huffington Post while raising her daughters, Arianna has let her curiosity chart her path. In fact, she’s become a household name because of it.

Growing up in a one-bedroom apartment in Athens, Greece, Arianna began creating her own success from an early age and has continued doing so throughout her career. She entered Cambridge University at age 16. That same drive led her to found two multi-million dollar companies and author more than 15 books. And in 2016, Arianna found her true calling and purpose for a new company, Thrive Global, to help the working world overcome the epidemic of stress and burnout.

Arianna and I discussed how failure can help us grow, seizing opportunities to learn, and strategies to combat burnout and stress. Here are some of my key takeaways from our conversation.

Failure is a stepping stone to success

The risks we don’t take are often the decisions we regret the most. If we don’t take chances because we are afraid of failing, we will never have the chance to grow. Many of Arianna’s greatest successes happened because she failed.

When Arianna decided she wanted to attend Cambridge University, she was met with significant doubt because she couldn’t speak English. But, she followed her mother’s philosophy that life is a grand adventure, and if it doesn’t work out, there will be another adventure to go on. “It seemed like a long shot to put it mildly,” she told me. “But [my mother] told me, ‘We are going to try, we are going to do everything we can to get you into Cambridge, but if you don’t get in, it’s no big deal.’” In this instance, although she didn’t fail – in fact, she went on to become the third female president of the Cambridge Union – her mother’s words of reassurance gave her the courage to take on other challenges in life.

Arianna and I discussed another point in her life where she was met with adversity. At age 24, she wrote her first book, The Female Women. “Everybody wanted me to keep regurgitating [the changing role of women]…[but] I wanted to explore a topic I was fascinated by [which was] the idea of political leaders,” she said. “Nobody wanted to buy it…I was rejected by [different publishers] 37 times. But I chose to follow my heart and it taught me perseverance.” She was eventually published, and the book became an international success. ?

This idea of continuing on your path, regardless of whether you fail or succeed, resonates with my “Never Stand Still” mantra. If we don’t pursue our passions because we’re afraid of failure, we are asking to get hit, but if we embrace the possibility of failure and pick ourselves up after we fall, it allows us to learn and move forward with, as Arianna’s mother so wisely calls it, “the grand adventure.”

Life is a constant learning opportunity

Arianna shared that following her fascinations has led to stretching her skills, taking on new challenges, and turning them into successes. “The only thing we can control is [our] response to what happens to us, and that is a learned skill [in itself],” she said. “It is not something we are born with; it is a muscle we can train.”

If you look at Arianna’s career path, it’s clear that she’s stayed true to this way of thinking. “The Huffington Post was created because I was fascinated with blogging. Which, [at the time] people despised, but I saw it as something that could be elevated,” she said. This was a time where the power of digital media was just being realized. At the beginning, she said, “it was the combination of a new site but where people could enter the conversation on politics, art, music, and entertainment, etcetera, share their view, and move on.” She talks about how people started to realize it no longer mattered where something appeared: if it was interesting, people paid attention. The Huffington Post was among the earliest forms of digital media properties, and it went on to win several awards, including a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism.

The idea of continued learning throughout one’s life is something I value and am lucky enough to experience through my conversations with every guest I have on my “Never Stand Still” podcast.

Redefine productivity to reimagine how we work and live

Arianna’s personal experience with burnout changed her outlook on life forever. “In order for me to be super founder and super mom…I had to be always on, I couldn’t disconnect,” she said. Two years after founding The Huffington Post, she collapsed from sleep deprivation and broke her cheekbone, which later led to a diagnosis of burnout. “It was at a time when that word wasn’t used much or known as an occupational hazard,” she told me. She became obsessed with the topic and left The Huffington Post in 2016 to found Thrive Global, which she established to help end the stress and burnout epidemic. Arianna told me it’s something she wanted to dedicate the rest of her life to.

In her book, Thrive, Arianna discusses how success is measured outside the metrics of money and power. “It's not like I'm saying let's abandon them, but let's add what I call the third metric, [Thrive], and build a truly successful life,” she wrote. She told me how the COVID-19 pandemic has caused so many to reevaluate life and what matters to them, how the “Great resignation going on right now is connected with this idea, and that the concept of redefining success is relevant now more than ever. “If you [define success] by just money and status you are missing out on what makes a full and complete life.”?

At PayPal we recognize the critical importance of this concept and prioritizing mental health. One example of this is our?focus on fostering emotional and mental wellbeing through trainings and workshops, and removing the stigma associated with mental health.

I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Arianna, and I hope you do, too. Listen to our full conversation below. Are you doing anything to prioritize your wellbeing in 2022? Let me know in the comments!