In April 2007, after years of around-the-clock work to launch and build The Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington collapsed from exhaustion and lack of sleep, injuring her eye and breaking her cheekbone. It was a bloody wake-up call, forcing her to ask herself: is this what success looks like? Is this the life I wanted? In terms of the traditional measures of success, which almost exclusively emphasize money and power, she was very successful. But she was not living a successful life by any sane definition. Arianna knew something had to radically change.
Inspired by her 2013 commencement speech at Smith College and drawing on her experiences as a thought leader and working mother-of-two, Huffington shows how instead of settling for breaking through glass ceilings in broken corporate systems, we can change the system altogether by redefining what success is and what we value the most. Her speech touched a nerve and was quickly followed by conferences in New York, London, Munich and Hawaii, which received international attention and acclaim. The goal of these Third Metric conferences—including the next round this spring in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles—is to look beyond money and power to include a third metric that recognizes the importance of well-being, wisdom, wonder, compassion and giving.
