51 pages • 1 hour read
Arianna HuffingtonThrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder
Arianna HuffingtonNonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
IntroductionChapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction Summary
Arianna Huffington begins by recounting an accident in 2007: Exhausted from constant work and lack of sleep, she collapsed in her office, cutting her eye and breaking her cheekbone against the corner of her desk. This incident served as a “classic wake-up call”: Her life needed to change (2). In her introduction, Huffington provides an overview of the “Third Metric,” which she posits should be included in a modern definition of success in addition to conventional metrics of money and power. Huffington frames “Third Metric” living as having four aspects: well-being, wisdom, wonder, and giving. Citing both scientific anecdotal evidence to emphasize the high personal cost of ignoring one’s health, particularly for women, she elaborates on the four pillars that support this “Third Metric” of success: caring for one’s mental and physical health (well-being), cultivating a sense of delight (wonder), reconnecting with oneself to find one’s center (wisdom), and showing compassion through service (giving). Huffington explains her intent to be both informative and practical throughout her book, which she asserts will teach readers how to “thrive,” which she defines as, “to reconnect with ourselves, our loved ones, and our community” (20).
Introduction Analysis
Huffington’s opening account of how her exhaustion and burnout led to a serious health scare uses vivid imagery to help the reader imagine her reality, making her situation accessible for anyone who has ever had a job and felt stress or weariness as a result. She criticizes herself by offering two different interpretations of her own life up to April 6, 2007 (the day of her accident), when she explains that in the world’s terms, she was successful. However, centering her own perspective with the use of “I” at the start of successive sentences, Huffington makes the need for change clear: “I was not living a successful life by any sane definition of success. I knew something had to radically change. I could not go on that way” (2). Huffington implies here, empathically with a parallel structure thrice repeated, that working toward society’s definition of success alone is insane—that is, unhealthful in myriad ways. This judgment forms the subtext for the entire book to follow, in which she offers ways to improve health—even sanity—through valuing well-being, wisdom, wonder, and practicing giving.
While Huffington does not explicitly state who her intended audience is, she implies that she is addressing women specifically by explaining how she conceived many of her ideas when writing her speech for the Smith College (a women’s college) commencement address in 2013. Huffington also uses gender-specific scientific findings about the cost of ignoring wellbeing in the introduction; she makes it clear the costs are too high for women especially. Huffington also introduces her mother as the female exemplar of how to live life in a healthy, balanced way. Her mother will continue to embody the “Third Metric” lifestyle throughout the book.
The overview of “Third Metric” living and its four pillars that Huffington provides in the introduction conveys that redefining success is a complex process and a multi-dimensional concept requiring attention to all facets of life. The interconnectedness of the four pillars in the introduction establishes a complex web that Huffington weaves throughout Thrive, which makes connections across the book’s four sections often and underscores the holistic nature of truly pursuing success.
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