Mindfulness Practices for Stressful Times with Arianna Huffington, CEO of Thrive Global

Michael Rivo: From Salesforce Studios, this is Blazing Trails.

Laura Woods: Welcome to another episode of Blazing Trails. I'm Laura Woods with the Salesforce Blog. Today we continue with our new 10-part content series called Leading Through Change, to share tips from business leaders who like all of us are doing their best to get through these unprecedented times. If you are a longtime follower of Salesforce, then you know that today's speaker is a guest we love to have on, and one who you heard from in our previous Dreamforce series, it's Arianna Huffington. She is the founder of HuffPost, current CEO of Thrive Global, host of the Meditative Story podcast and author of 15 books, including her most recent one The Sleep Revolution. Salesforce has partnered with Arianna and Thrive several times before to share her story about extreme burnout. Personally, I love to hear about how she's dedicated her time to educating people on the why and how of taking care of both your mind and body. Something especially important for people and employers to be thinking about right now. In this episode, Arianna is joined by Jody Kohner, Salesforce's Senior Vice President of Employee Marketing and Engagement, and Kathryn Bowen, Salesforce's Employee Engagement Programs Director. Arianna will share her three favorite microsteps for combating anxiety and centering yourself and her philosophy of onward, upward, inward, one I really enjoy. She also talks about how she builds space for herself into her daily routine, how practicing gratitude can shift your perspective and resources that her team has made to help you find peace in this time of stress. You'll hear all of this on today's episode of Blazing Trails with Arianna Huffington.

Jody Kohner: Today, we are very honored to have the incredibly talented Arianna Huffington with us. I just adore her and I'm really, really thrilled that she could join us today. And with that, Arianna, I turn it over to you.

Arianna Huffington: Thank you so much, Jody. I am really happy to be here with all of you. I feel that these times are both incredibly trying and so anybody who's buying through anxiety, please don't think this is abnormal. It's completely normal, and the first step is to acknowledge it, but also that we'll have opportunities and steps we can take to help us get back to our own center. And really, the work that I've been doing in the last few years that started really with writing the book Thrive, because Thrive was really about the recognition that we all have in us, this place of peace, strength, wisdom, and harmony. Most of the time we are not there. And especially during a time like this, we are not there more and more because we are legitimately anxious about our health, the health of our loved ones, financial stress, are we going to have our job, and enormous amount of anxiety provoking triggers. But nevertheless, and I want to start with that because it is the key to dealing with anxiety, we need to realize that according to every religion, every spiritual tradition, every major philosophy, if you don't believe in any religion or spiritual tradition it doesn't matter, every philosopher has said the same thing that that place exists by virtue of our birthright. So the question really in normal times, and even more important in times of crisis like this is to find the ways to course correct and get back to that place as fast as we can. So it could be almost like an airplane. If you talk to any pilot, an airplane flies off course more than it flies on course, but they have an impact about course correcting mechanism. So it's off course, on course, off course, on course. How can we create that mechanism in ourselves? It all comes down to microsteps. As Jody knows, at Thrive we're obsessed with microsteps because big changes start with tiny little steps, and in the middle of so much that overwhelms us, we need things that can empower us, and microsteps can empower us. Everything I'm going to suggest is really tiny, but by doing it regularly every day, it's going to really dramatically help with the levels of anxiety. Let me just start by mentioning three of my favorite microsteps. The first that actually you have been mentioning in your social channels, and Mark mentioned it in his tweet is simply breathing, consciously breathing. I can see Jody doing it. If we can all do it, just take a conscious inhale, and a conscious long exhale. One more time, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Mindful breathing switches the neural circuitry of the brain that anxiety ramps up. It's also at the foundation of meditation, and I know meditation is a big part of Salesforce, you have meditation rooms. The first time I spoke at Salesforce, I actually sat on the cloud stage and let people do a short meditation. So, this is something that's kind of in your DNA, culturally, so this is the time to actually practice it. We even, together with Salesforce, launched a podcast for people who still find meditation daunting, called Meditated Story, that I highly recommend in these times. If you say, get into bed, then you are having trouble turning off your anxiety to go to sleep, please listen to Meditated Story, sponsored by Salesforce as it happens, which brings you into meditation through storytelling. Everybody loves stories. We put our children to bed and to sleep by telling them stories, so we can do that for ourselves. A storyteller walks us through a story in their lives and then their mindfulness prompts, music, sounds that help you relax, get centered, slow down your brain and the anxiety levels and the cortisol levels so that you can sleep or you can do it at anytime during the day. I sometimes do it. If I got a particularly stressful notification or I got a stressful piece of news. Again, take a minute either to use your breath or to listen to something that relaxes you and distresses you before you go on and stress and anxiety become cumulative. That's really what we're trying to avoid, the cumulative nature of stress and anxiety. We are not going to avoid anxiety and stress. These are going to be part of the new normal, but we don't have to live that, we can transcend them. And then this will become an amazing muscle that we have built that will transform our lives when we return to normal times. That's really the extraordinary thing of this times. Everything we should be doing now is something we should have been doing at all times, but now it's not just nice to do, it's an imperative. I made that sweater that I'm wearing, which actually is the model of Thrive. Our chief brand officer was at the Huffington Post with me for 11 years, Danny Shea, and now with us at Thrive, gave me this sweater as a gift. It says," Onward, upward, inward." Everybody, I'm sure here who is listening, knows about onward and upward. I'm sure part of why you have successful careers and have gotten where you are, I'd say at first is because you have mastered onward and upward, but inward is also incredibly important. During normal times, it's very hard to prioritize it because we're so incredibly busy and there are so many demands. When now we have an opportunity to practice in work, and actually we absolutely have to. We have to in order to protect our sanity and reduce the levels of anxiety that otherwise become another epidemic. We have the physical contagion, but we can also have a mental stress and anxiety contagion if we don't take active steps. I mentioned microstep, number one, around breathing. There is actually another breath technique if you're feeling particularly stressed, but believe it or not, the Navy Seals use it. It's called box breathing. It's a four... To the count of four one, two, three, four, exhale. One, two, three, four, inhale. One, two, three, four, hold. So it's to the count of four inhale, to the count of four hold your breath, to the count of four exhale. You cannot do the very simple breathing that we did at the beginning, or do the Navy Seal box breathing, you can Google it, which has been proven to be particularly important in particularly stressful circumstances. So the second microstep has to do with grounding ourselves in the present moment. Again, everybody talks about that in spiritual traditions Thich, Nhat, Hahn, and the monastics. When I was at Dreamforce a few months ago, we were talking about it constantly, but now we just have to do it, because if we don't stay in the present and we keep projecting our negative fantasies about the future, our anxiety is going to escalate. So let's ground ourselves in the present moment. One of my favorite quotes is Montaigne. The French philosopher who said," There were many terrible things in my life, but most of them never happened." So a lot of the negative fantasies we are going through in our heads right now, let's assume for the moment are not going to happen. They're not based on any factual information, we are just negative fantasizing. The third thing is gratitude. I did the hand- washing challenge, and you can go on my Instagram and see, then my recommendation is every time we wash our hands for 20 seconds or 40 seconds, as they recommend, please remember during that time three things you are grateful for. You may be stuck at home with your children and that's sometimes I'm sure is incredibly overwhelming and difficult as you're trying to work, but it's also a source of gratitude. Whatever it is that you feel grateful for, right now, I'm feeling grateful for my Bulletproof coffee. I don't know if anybody else likes Bulletproof coffee, but I love it. I just took a sip of my steaming Bulletproof coffee, and right now I'm in the present moment. Very grateful for that. I love working with Jody, and I'm very grateful to be here with her. So here, three things. My children are here with me, my Bulletproof coffee, Jody. Great. Suddenly I've switched from anxiety to gratitude. I really want to open it up to questions, but I wanted to give you just a quick overview and especially to remember that you have that centered place where anxiety cannot leave. By virtue of your birthright it's there we just have to take a few moments, actually 60 seconds, neuroscientists tell us, to tap into it. Thank you.

Jody Kohner: Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. This is just exactly what my soul needs right now. One of the things I know that I'm struggling with, and I think many are, I'm watching my family struggle with it is we feel very compelled to stay on top of the news and to a very real degree, we need to know what's going on. We need to be following the rules, we need to be continuing to check in, right? Yesterday parks were open for me, today they're not open. Being able to understand that is important, but I find that I get very anxious every time after the news and not really knowing how to just divide it and section it off and dip my toe in and get what I need and then kind of get out because it's like a black hole that kind of sucks us in. I'm curious to have your thoughts around just all of the different media that spiraling around and how to manage it and how to regulate it.

Arianna Huffington: That is such a great question. The first thing is to have a cut off point at the end of the day that you stop looking at news and social media, so that you can begin the process of transitioning from your day with all its demands, to the time to be able to get a good night sleep and recharge and start again in the morning. There is nothing you need to know at that particular time when you're having dinner with yourself or your family and getting ready to go to sleep. That's where we need to move to trust. That it's okay to have a cutoff point. That is key because one of the things that we actually can do is things to build our immune system and foundational to that is sleep. So, sleep is no longer just great for our health, for our productivity and all the other things we knew, it is foundational for our immunity. So if we are so anxious because we've just watched something in the news or we just read about the 12 year old in Atlanta, as I just read this morning, who is in a comma with coronavirus and suddenly your mind goes through all sorts of negative fantasies." I thought children had immunity, etc." We never know all the information, we never know exactly what happened. We just feeling the blanks, we can't do that as we're getting ready to transition to sleep because then our sleep will be disturbed. It's not just that we're going to wake up the next day feeling exhausted, and that makes it much harder to deal with the much more difficult realities of our day of navigating children at home, working mode, etc, but also we are at this very moment compromising our immune system. That's what I want to be so clear about. We are ground zero of protecting ourselves from the virus. The people who are most affected and in gravest danger are people with preexisting conditions, and in a sense exhaustion and sleep deprivation become a preexisting condition that makes us more vulnerable to the virus. So the reason why this cutoff point is so key is to protect our sleep and our immunity.

Jody Kohner: That is very, very helpful. Thank you for that. Kathryn, I think you said that there was a question that had come in. Do you want to throw it out for Arianna please?

Kathryn Bowen: Sure, there's a couple of questions that have come in. My college age daughter is home and I don't want to scare her, but she's not taking any of this seriously and it's stressing me out. Should I just let that go and just make sure that she's following social distancing guidelines?

Arianna Huffington: As long as she's following social distance guidelines, that means she's taking it serious, right? So it is absolutely key to have college age children and children of any age that you are not completely in control of as you are of your school aged children, make sure they follow these guidelines. It is imperative, and whatever you need to do to make sure they follow them, you need to do it. If they're under the same roof with you, you need to make it a condition that they need to follow social distancing. They need to find other ways to interact with their friends on FaceTime, on WhatsApp, on any communication method they're using, but, no, we cannot relax about that. It is key, and it has been proven to be the only way to flatten the curve. Again, of course, let's help our children with the same tools that we are giving to each other here. The breathing, the gratitude, the being in the present, the card of point for social media. They need them as much as we need them, and this is a time to give them to them. We are bringing together a lot of influencers that your daughter may listen to much more than she would listen to me or to you while saying these things. When I did my hand- washing challenge on Instagram, I challenged Selena Gomez to do it next, and she did it. It worth going to say she has over 5 million people who liked it and viewed it. Maybe your daughter loves Selena Gomez, so when she talks about social distancing or taking precautions, she may be more likely to listen to. Let's find the carriers of these messages, the different demographics are going to relate to and bring them together.

Kathryn Bowen: Great. Thank you. How do I balance using technology as a lifeline to connect with loved ones and my need to unplug and be present?

Arianna Huffington: I would say the need to unplug and be present and connect with ourselves, the inward part is the most important part. We have all nailed managing technology and I'm sure there's nobody working and says his inaudible who isn't a master at that. So why do we need to nail now is the inward part. Somebody posted on Instagram yesterday," If you can't go outside, go inside," and that's particularly relevant right now. I would always prioritize that, because you can take a few moments to connect with loved ones, but if we're disconnected from ourselves and our own center, it's going to be very hard to navigate the new normal.

Kathryn Bowen: The biggest issue I'm dealing with right now is uncertainty. How do you manage all the uncertainty in the world right now?

Arianna Huffington: Yes, absolutely. Uncertainty is the main condition of the times we're living through and it's not going to end anytime soon, but then it helps us realize that uncertainty is really a preexisting condition for life even before the coronavirus. Just think of all the things that happened in your life that you would not have predicted, good and bad. In the same way, we need to make a friend of uncertainty, and instead of trying to exert control over what's happening, recognize where we have agency, where we have control, which is really about the steps we can take to reduce our anxiety and build our immune system. And then trust that there is a kind of blueprint that we're not clear about, that we only make sense when we're out of it. You know how often life doesn't make sense as we're looking at it now and as we're living it, but it only makes sense in retrospect. So if you can trust that that will be the case now but not try to control what's happening right now, we are going to find a lot more pieces. It's not easy, but with practice, I promise it becomes easier.

Kathryn Bowen: Another question, this feelings of anxiety and being overwhelmed at these times especially when the kids are at home, because all the schools are closed, what kind of tips do you have for any parents who are home, trying to balance the kids with everything else?

Arianna Huffington: We actually have a lot of microsteps for working from home which we can send to you, but it's obviously particularly stressful if you have young children out of school. If you're in a more confined space, I mean, I have friends where both partners working from the same space and with young children. I think what is so important is as much as possible to set a schedule from the night before knowing that, of course, everything is going to change it, but at least have some plan, and knowing who is the... If there are two partners, sometimes they're single parents who don't have that luxury. So kind of operating within the limits of what we have to be able to take turns, to be able to occupy them. It's kind of amazing how children can be occupied with things that are not just video games, iPads. I posted a lot of those things on my Instagram, you can follow them and see. I posted two twins just playing with each other and their pillows, and saying," Bugs go away." Children are internalizing what's happening at every age, and so being able to also talk to them when we're not stressed makes a big difference. Answer their questions, have regular conversations, not just one big talk about coronavirus, but regularly allowing them to express themselves. It's kind of an incredible opportunity and it's challenging and really hard, trust me, I'm not minimizing it, but it's an incredible opportunity to move into our unconditional loving and acceptance. All of us who wear the perfection tendency need to abandon it. My house has never looked more of a mess. I saw a level of dust suddenly as I was walking by and I thought," Oh my God, we really need to clean up this dust." But at the same time, the only way to manage this with less stress is to prioritize. These are the balls we're not going to let drop and other balls will drop.

Kathryn Bowen: Thank you. I have another question. What has your daily routine been like in quarantine and what is your advice for people who are hyper extrovert, who feels suffocated, being isolated and inside.

Arianna Huffington: Beautiful. My personal routine is to kind of get out of my PJ's right away before I start working, not just when I'm doing Salesforce webinars, but I have so many friends who don't get out of their PJ's. I think it's good to dress as though you're going to work. I would go to my office in a sweater and jeans, I have friends who really dress up even though they are in their home office. Whatever makes you feel," My work day started," instead of like feeling like there is no separation. We need to create some separation even though we are in our home the whole time between our work day and the end of our workday. That's important anyway, because many of us have blurred those connections, but we need to... It's even more important when we are all working from home. The other question was there was... there was another question, right?

Jody Kohner: About the extroverted nature and like what are you doing with all this energy, and you're cooped up in your house?

Arianna Huffington: Actually, and that may sound paradoxical. Whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, this is a good time to learn to go inward, even for five minutes. Don't think of it," Oh, do I have to do like half an hour meditation." No, just take five minutes to be still and go inward, don't worry about your mind chattering or anything it's going to. If you don't want to do it without some help, we've launched meditated story in partnership with Salesforce, highly recommended. I think we're sending some links to your teams. It's really a way to get into a mindful meditated space through storytelling, because we all love stories. As we're listening to a different story in each podcast, we get mindfulness prompt to sounds, music, it's super calming and relaxing, and it helps us go inward because truly the only way not just to survive, but to thrive through this period is to tap into that place inside ourselves. Otherwise, truly, we're going to freak out. We call our microsteps, too small to fail. You can't fail. If five minutes of stillness or meditated story or not being an extrovert is too long, do it for two minutes, whatever works for you, and then you begin to build. We need to be extroverts digitally. If you are living alone, FaceTime your friends, create time. I have a group of girlfriends who are setting up a Zoom cocktail hour tonight, get creative. There are so many symphony orchestras and museums who are offering online tools and online concerts. So, arrange to go to that concert digitally with your friends, let's get creative, let's get imaginative. It's a little bit like being children and making do with whatever has been given.

Jody Kohner: Well, and we are now going to be practicing this every morning, every afternoon, so I think, one step at a time. I was taking a couple of notes while you were speaking, and I really loved the three microsteps, right? Just start with breathing, remember that negative things don't always happen... What was that quote again? Can you repeat that quote? All the negative things in my life...

Arianna Huffington: Montaigne quote, there were many terrible things in my life, but most of them never happened.

Jody Kohner: I love this.

Arianna Huffington: I know we only have three minutes left, Jody and Kathryn, and I really wanted to give some resources...

Jody Kohner: Please, thank you.

Arianna Huffington: crosstalk at anytime. First of all, thriveglobal. com, which is our media platform, that's all we're covered. Secondly, my Instagram is just full of quotes like that, the tips, Arianna Huff with two [ apps 00:00:32:15], you can go there and there's always going to be something. It could be a joy trigger to something that will make you laugh, but it's all for these times. They're not going to be a lot of glam pictures of me.

Jody Kohner: Or anyone at this point in time.

Arianna Huffington: Or anyone, yeah. crosstalk and tons of stuff in stories about how people are coming together, what people are doing. And also we are launching a big campaign together with the Harvard school of public health and CAA, the Creative Artists Agency, for first respondents who are the frontline healthcare workers. We'd love you to go there. It will be it's first responders first, and that's where we can also find help for our anxiety by giving and helping others. The people who need us most are the frontline healthcare workers, where really, we call them the first responders of this crisis. The reason I mentioned this as not something that you can give to but as a resource for you, is because when we give to others, it puts our problems in perspective. So when you read there about the doctors and the nurses sleeping in their cars, because they can't go home, not having enough protective gear, putting themselves at risk for us every day, it definitely helps us put around problems in perspective. So, giving which is another microstep, is something we are encouraging everyone to do. And also we have tons of microsteps for first responders first site that you can also use for yourself.

Jody Kohner: Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us, Arianna. We are so grateful for your time. This has been really, really special, and I think this is an exact reason why we have so much pride in working for Salesforce and being able to tap into luminaries like yourself. So thank you. Thank you.

Arianna Huffington: I want to add one more resource to what we are going to give everyone, which is I had recorded four audible, a parody of Goodnight Moon, anybody who is a parent listening knows of course that Goodnight Moon is a perennial favorite, but it has a lot of psychological truth in it. We are basically helping our children disconnect from their surroundings and their world in order to surrender to sleep. So my parody is called Goodnight Smartphone, and people can download it from audible and listen to it as just a way to slow down and then put their phone away, because truly nothing is going to happen between night and morning, and creating a transition to sleep. And also in the morning when we wake up, let's take another microstep one minute, 60 seconds before we go to our phone, so that we can almost like prepare ourselves. Again, remember what we're grateful for, set our intention for the day, something before we go to the latest news, which may be another 300 cases of coronavirus. The parks are closing or whatever the latest news is, which immediately before we've even touched the ground with our feet, floods us with [inaudible 00:36:03].

Jody Kohner: We're really looking forward to bringing you even closer into our Ohana because you are family, and we are all very, very grateful for you. So thank you very much, and we will talk to you again soon.

Arianna Huffington: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Jody Kohner: Bye- bye.

Laura Woods: That was Arianna Huffington, Jodie Kohner and Kathryn Bowen. To support the first responders first program go to thriveglobal. com or check the link in our show notes. Also in our show notes are the resources that Arianna mentioned today, and for more information on how you can lead your business through change, go to salesforce. com/ blog. You can also tune into these conversations live every Tuesday at 10:00 A. M. Pacific, 1: 00 P. M. Eastern. Salesforce is here to help.

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