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Clearly drive, IQ, and hard work are incredibly important. But ultimately what matters most is resilience--the ability to quickly rebound from failures, indeed to see failure as a stepping stone to success.
The goal of any true resistance is to affect outcomes, not just to vent. And the only way to affect outcomes and thrive in our lives is to find the eye in the hurricane and act from that place of inner strength.
Failure is not the opposite to success, it's a stepping stone to success. If our primary goal is to be approved of, then we are not going to take risks, we are not going to speak out, we are going to try to blend in.
The crisis in America that we barely notice anymore is that we've become two nations - divided by poverty, opportunity, and race. It's like a neighbor's car alarm that we don't hear anymore because it rings so often.
I had dinner recently with a guy who bragged that he had only gotten four hours of sleep that night. I didn't say it, but I thought to myself 'If you had gotten five, this dinner would have been a lot more interesting'
HuffPost serves as a starter page for news consumers, a place to find, and be directed to, the best content available on the Web. We consistently link out directly to other sites - often from our top-of-the-page headline.
The first and most important step is to realize that, as my mother used to say, fearlessness isn't the absence of fear, but the mastery of fear. It's not that you never have fear, but that you don't let your fears stop you.
There is nothing that can bring you closer to fearlessness about everything else in the world than being a parent - because everyday fears like not being approved of pale by comparison to the fears you have about your children.
One of the main reasons I wrote The Sleep Revolution was to examine this ancient, essential, and mysterious phenomenon from all angles and to explore the ways we can use sleep to help regain control over our out-of-kilter lives.
I get asked all the time how much sleep I get. That's what happens when you write a book called 'The Sleep Revolution,' travel around the world talking about it, and found a company committed to ending our global burnout crisis.
Liberation is an ever shifting horizon, a total ideology that can never fulfill its promises. It has the therapeutic quality of providing emotionally charged rituals of solidarity in hatred - it is the amphetamine of its believers.
At the moment, our society’s notion of success is largely composed of two parts: money and power. But it’s time for a third metric, beyond money and power - one founded on well-being, wisdom, our ability to wonder, and to give back.
Women need to lead the way to change our culture of burnout - both for their sake and also for the sake of successful men who desperately need a new model of success. And the still-very-macho world of STEM is a great place to start.
Wearing something that you're not comfortable in is the ultimate sin. It's important for each person to discover their own style, and find something that is not trendy or too revealing or anything that would get in the way of working.
Why worry about minor little details like clean air, clean water, safe ports and the safety net when Jesus is going to give the world an "Extreme Makeover: Planet Edition" right after he finishes putting Satan in his place once and for all?
Creating the culture of burnout is opposite to creating a culture of sustainable creativity. This is something that needs to be taught in business schools. This mentality needs to be introduced as a leadership and performance-enhancing tool.
Moving forward, investigative journalists need to train themselves to be media amphibians - just as comfortable with the classic verities of great journalism as they are with video, Twitter, Facebook, and, most importantly, citizen journalism.
There are almost no worldly signals reminding us to stay connected to the essence of who we are, to take care of ourselves along the way, to reach out to others, to pause to wonder, and to connect to that place from which everything is possible.
But, in fact, there is nothing that can bring you closer to fearlessness about everything else in the world than being a parent - because everyday fears - like not being approved of - pale by comparison to the fears you have about your children.
The advice I would give to my younger self is very, very simple: Stop burning the candle at both ends and renew your estranged relationship with sleep. You will be more productive, more effective, more creative, and more likely to enjoy your life.
It's important to remember that the future of quality journalism is not dependent on the future of newspapers. The discussion needs to move from "How do we save newspapers?" to "How do we save and strengthen journalism?" - however it is delivered.
More young people are volunteering than ever before. More people are including service to others on their busy lives' to do list. The promise of America is embedded deep in our DNA, calling us to a much less shallow search for happiness and meaning.
As the newspaper industry continues to contract, one of the most commonly voiced fears is that serious investigative journalism will be among the victims of the scaleback. And, indeed, many newspapers are drastically reducing their investigative teams.
Citizen journalism is rapidly emerging as an invaluable part of delivering the news. With the expansion of the Web and the ever-decreasing size and cost of camera phones and video cameras, the ability to commit acts of journalism is spreading to everyone.
Through the stories of women I admire, and, above all, through my own experience with my daughters, again and again I encounter moments of extraordinary strength, courage, and resilience, when fears are confronted, even overcome, and anything seems possible.
You need to be able to nurture yourself in order to be a good mother, good at your job, good at servicing your community. I really believe women can do it all, but they can't do it all at the expense of their health, their sleep, and their sense of well-being.
It feels like we have two threads running through our lives: one pulling us into the world to achieve, the other pulling us back to replenish us. These threads can seem at odds, but really, they enforce each other. It's not a trade-off between success and sleep.
What preoccupies us is the way we define success. If you see your life purely in terms of money and power, then everything in your life becomes about 'Am I getting ahead?' and that is truly a barbaric way to live, because it eliminates huge chunks of our humanity.
Self expression is the new entertainment, We never used to question why people sit on the couch for seven hours a day watching bad TV. Nobody ever asked, Why are they doing that for free? We need to celebrate [this desire to contribute for free] rather than question it.
It would be futile to attempt to fit women into a masculine pattern of attitudes, skills and abilities and disastrous to force them to suppress their specifically female characteristics and abilities by keeping up the pretense that there are no differences between the sexes.
I usually start with a big question, such as whether people today are happier than in the past, or why men have dominated women in most human societies. And then I follow the question instead of trying to follow my own answer, even if it means I can't formulate any clear theory.
The middle class is teetering on the brink of collapse just as surely as AIG was in the fall of 2009 - only this time, it's not just one giant insurance company (and its banking counterparties) facing disaster, it's tens of millions of hardworking Americans who played by the rules.
In many cases, we make sleep a lot more complicated than it needs to be. Sleep difficulties can turn into serious medical problems. For the vast majority of us, however, sleep difficulties are a lifestyle problem. Yet we tend to treat all our sleep-related woes the same way: with a pill.
I've always been progressive on social issues: pro-choice, pro-gun control, and pro-gay rights - even when I was a Republican. The big difference is that I once believed the private sector would address America's social problems. But then I saw firsthand that this wasn't going to happen.
For far too many people in the world, the vicious cycle of financial deprivation also feeds into the vicious cycle of sleep deprivation. If you're working two or three jobs and struggling to make ends meet, "get more sleep" is probably not going to be near the top of your priorities list.
Citizen journalists can attend events traditional journalists are kept from - or have overlooked - or find and highlight the small but evocative story happening right next door. By tapping this resource, news sites can extend their reach and help redefine news gathering in the digital age.
Our most meaningful relationships are based on a longing for expansion rather than a preoccupation with comfort and security. To live exuberantly-to fully know and be fully known by another-we must be prepared to illuminate the dark spots in our most intimate relationships and in our selves.
I started asking the big questions that I had asked in college, that my compatriots the Greek philosophers had asked, like 'what is a good life?' Socrates famously said that 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' I started asking these questions from the starting point of 'what is success?'
If we don't know ourselves, our essence, where our true power comes from, we will believe our power comes from collecting victories, trophies, money, or recognition. And these are all fine, but it's not ultimately what life is about. When we think it is, we really waste our greatest possibilities.
There is a purpose to our lives, even if it is sometimes hidden from us, and even if the biggest turning points and heartbreaks only make sense as we look back, rather than as we are experiencing them. So we might as well live life as if - as the poet Rumi put it - everything is rigged in our favor.
So great becomes the fear of losing what we have that many of us rush back to hide under the temporary shelter of convention rather than follow the path of self-discovery wherever it might lead. Given adequate time and sufficient fear, we may hide so long that we hardly notice we're slowly suffocating.
What's the third metric beyond money and power? I think it's a combination of wellbeing and wisdom. Because the problem also with defining success just in terms of money and power means that people feel that they have to work around the clock, burn out, and the result is people making terrible decisions.
To speak about this universal force that will lead us beyond on the last horizon of our known self toward a wiser, more loving, more luminous states of being, we do not need to invent a new language. But we do need to listen to the old, the ancient one, not with our jaded minds, but with our awakened souls.
It matters, it matters very much, what each of us chooses to do. The journey toward self-discovery and self-knowledge is not only life's highest adventure, but also the only way to transform society from one based on self-centeredness and compulsory compassion to one based on service and mutual responsibility.
Whether we regard the Women's Liberation movement as a serious threat, a passing convulsion, or a fashionable idiocy, it is a movement that mounts an attack on practically everything that women value today and introduces the language and sentiments of political confrontation into the area of personal relationships.
About five years ago, I fainted from exhaustion. I hit my head on my desk. I broke my cheekbone and got four stitches on my right eye. It started me on this journey of rediscovering sleep and balance and integrating my life. I think everyone should stop and reassess their lives before you hit your head on your desk.
A lot of effort and money are - rightly - expended keeping the president physically safe. But it's up to the president to maintain a schedule that allows for refueling, so as to be physically and cognitively at his or her best at all times. That's what it means to be strong, tough, and truly fit for the highest office.
I've talked about how the future of journalism will be a hybrid future where traditional media players embrace the ways of new media (including transparency, interactivity, and immediacy) and new media companies adopt the best practices of old media (including fairness, accuracy, and high-impact investigative journalism).
In a culture fueled by burnout, a culture that has run itself down, our national resilience becomes compromised. And when our collective immune system is weakened, we become more susceptible to viruses that are part of every culture because they're part of human nature - fear-mongering, scapegoating, conspiracy theories, and demagoguery.
I think people are attracted to The Huffington Post's blend of up-to-the-second news and thoughtful opinion, delivered with an attitude. Plus, I think they enjoy that we cover so many different things - from politics and entertainment to style and satire. There is always something interesting to read and think about - and even to laugh at.