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199 reviews for:
Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder
Arianna Huffington
3.58 AVERAGE
199 reviews for:
Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder
Arianna Huffington
3.58 AVERAGE
Add another book to my list of good books on happiness. Arianna Huffington found herself lying on the floor in a pool of blood, and it was a wake-up call for her. She was driven toward success and realized she was neglecting what she came to call the third metric of success: well-being, wisdom, and wonder. She closely looks at how we can have well-being, wisdom, and wonder in our own lives, and uses research to back up her every suggestion.
A thoughtful and insightful look at what success can mean and how it's more than just wealth and power. Huffington puts her own spin on this well discussed topic and is worth reading no matter your path in life.
If you want to see all the interesting facts and key ideas from this book, then check out my notes and highlights. The rest is honestly fluff.
While her argument for more sleep, meditation, and introspection started out strong, Arianna Huffington quickly devolved into repeating herself several times (and even acknowledges that she's repeating herself!). There's nothing groundbreaking here, although she may have cited studies from every major university in the United States.
This is a good starting point if you haven't read anything about wellness or meditation, otherwise it's mostly general information on how to relieve stress and become a more mindful person.
While her argument for more sleep, meditation, and introspection started out strong, Arianna Huffington quickly devolved into repeating herself several times (and even acknowledges that she's repeating herself!). There's nothing groundbreaking here, although she may have cited studies from every major university in the United States.
This is a good starting point if you haven't read anything about wellness or meditation, otherwise it's mostly general information on how to relieve stress and become a more mindful person.
Most of this quite self-evident, with the same observations made over and over again. I took one thing away from it, and that is to GET MORE SLEEP.
Mostly things I've read before but a good collection. Inspiring and practical.
Some self-help books are amazing. This one wasn't bad, but it didn't necessarily open my eyes to anything revolutionary.
Arianna Huffington is an impressive woman, and she writes well. She also has a lot of interesting stories and snippets of knowledge that keep this book engaging. She does a good job of using data and real-world information to make her case, and you walk away from the book convinced by her arguments. However, it doesn't exactly take a lot to convince me that meditating, asserting my right to work-life balance, and giving my time and money to worthy causes will improve my life. Perhaps I read this book at the wrong time—perhaps when it was new, it made points that were also new. But in 2017, I could have used more advice around how to actually execute her recommendations rather than more arguments that I should.
Arianna Huffington is an impressive woman, and she writes well. She also has a lot of interesting stories and snippets of knowledge that keep this book engaging. She does a good job of using data and real-world information to make her case, and you walk away from the book convinced by her arguments. However, it doesn't exactly take a lot to convince me that meditating, asserting my right to work-life balance, and giving my time and money to worthy causes will improve my life. Perhaps I read this book at the wrong time—perhaps when it was new, it made points that were also new. But in 2017, I could have used more advice around how to actually execute her recommendations rather than more arguments that I should.
Won this from First Reads.
At first I thought this book would maybe be really great and I'd actually learn something new. The opening sentence sure was a great hook.
Thing is, I've read tons of self-help books. I use the term "read" loosely, because generally I lose interest around page 150. I've only ever finished ONE, and that was after skipping 20 pages. Anyways, Mrs. Huffington made the same mistake most self-help writers seem to make in my opinion: her book was too long. It should have been about half the size it was. Honestly, I didn't even finish it, though I eventually will unlike the other books I've read.
I mean, how many books are going to be published about the benefits of getting a good night's rest, disconnecting from the internet for a while, and meditating. And those were only the parts I read about! I didn't even get to "giving" which sounded like the most interesting metric. I have read self-help books up the wazoo just because I keep thinking "eeeeeh, maybe I'll discover something new", but mostly it's just a bunch of inspirational stuff and exercises, and 3 days after I've stopped reading I've forgotten everything I read. I hate when authors go on and on and on about the benefits of mother-flipping meditation! I've done meditation a few times, and the only time it ever helped was the first time I played center field in softball and was so nervous my stomach started burning and I thought I was going to throw up. Meditation just isn't something I'm interested in and when I do it, it's boring and doesn't help at all. Besides, why do so many authors write basically the exact same books anyway? I mean, I can read about meditation online whenever I want. I didn't pick up your book so you could give me statistics on that and the benefits of sleep and exercise. I picked up your book so that I could read something new that I probably couldn't get from anyone else. Something truly inspirational.
It wasn't a terrible book, but if you've read one self-help book you've read them all. Arianna seems like a great lady, really smart and cool, but the iceberg did not run into the titanic (as she says in her book at one point) and I just did not get anything out of what I read.
At first I thought this book would maybe be really great and I'd actually learn something new. The opening sentence sure was a great hook.
Thing is, I've read tons of self-help books. I use the term "read" loosely, because generally I lose interest around page 150. I've only ever finished ONE, and that was after skipping 20 pages. Anyways, Mrs. Huffington made the same mistake most self-help writers seem to make in my opinion: her book was too long. It should have been about half the size it was. Honestly, I didn't even finish it, though I eventually will unlike the other books I've read.
I mean, how many books are going to be published about the benefits of getting a good night's rest, disconnecting from the internet for a while, and meditating. And those were only the parts I read about! I didn't even get to "giving" which sounded like the most interesting metric. I have read self-help books up the wazoo just because I keep thinking "eeeeeh, maybe I'll discover something new", but mostly it's just a bunch of inspirational stuff and exercises, and 3 days after I've stopped reading I've forgotten everything I read. I hate when authors go on and on and on about the benefits of mother-flipping meditation! I've done meditation a few times, and the only time it ever helped was the first time I played center field in softball and was so nervous my stomach started burning and I thought I was going to throw up. Meditation just isn't something I'm interested in and when I do it, it's boring and doesn't help at all. Besides, why do so many authors write basically the exact same books anyway? I mean, I can read about meditation online whenever I want. I didn't pick up your book so you could give me statistics on that and the benefits of sleep and exercise. I picked up your book so that I could read something new that I probably couldn't get from anyone else. Something truly inspirational.
It wasn't a terrible book, but if you've read one self-help book you've read them all. Arianna seems like a great lady, really smart and cool, but the iceberg did not run into the titanic (as she says in her book at one point) and I just did not get anything out of what I read.
This book was okay.
Overall, the content/message was good! A lot of it is pretty common sense at this point, and it does tackle some important health issues in North America rn (definitions of success, people not sleeping, etc etc).
There were a few major issues from my point of view though. The first being how the book was loaded down with so many quotations. I find it made it difficult to actually read the book, and because there were so many on them, they didn't have that much impact. I think Huffington's arguments also used too many sources, which sounds terrible because research and naming your sources is important! But I felt like little examples were constantly being thrown at me without the proper amount of contextualizing or writing about each one. Sometimes I felt like the writing was trying to win me over through the sheer amount of resources rather than building a persuasive argument.
It would also have been nice to see more success stories from average people. Hearing that a super rich successful person was also valued for being a good person is like... that's nice, but the vast majority of us are not going to be wealthy and successful, and focusing on "thriving" within the context of our lives would have been more useful and relevant for the average reader.
I also felt reading the first few sections of the book difficult because it felt like Huffington didn't acknowledge enough that people aren't sleeping and resting properly not just due to personal choice, but due to systemic issues. I'm Canadian, but I have read about how America in particular doesn't have proper laws to allow many workers (mostly minimum wage workers) proper rests. It's also hard people to rest enough when they need to work a ridiculous amount of hours to get by on a minimum wage that is too low. So for that section, I think it would be appropriate for Huffington to argue that a lot of the solution does need to be top-down. In other sections of the book she does praise certain CEOs for treating their employees with human decency, but for some reason it was missing from that first section.
In summary: despite having a few major flaws, this was a decent book that was of use to me personally.
Overall, the content/message was good! A lot of it is pretty common sense at this point, and it does tackle some important health issues in North America rn (definitions of success, people not sleeping, etc etc).
There were a few major issues from my point of view though. The first being how the book was loaded down with so many quotations. I find it made it difficult to actually read the book, and because there were so many on them, they didn't have that much impact. I think Huffington's arguments also used too many sources, which sounds terrible because research and naming your sources is important! But I felt like little examples were constantly being thrown at me without the proper amount of contextualizing or writing about each one. Sometimes I felt like the writing was trying to win me over through the sheer amount of resources rather than building a persuasive argument.
It would also have been nice to see more success stories from average people. Hearing that a super rich successful person was also valued for being a good person is like... that's nice, but the vast majority of us are not going to be wealthy and successful, and focusing on "thriving" within the context of our lives would have been more useful and relevant for the average reader.
I also felt reading the first few sections of the book difficult because it felt like Huffington didn't acknowledge enough that people aren't sleeping and resting properly not just due to personal choice, but due to systemic issues. I'm Canadian, but I have read about how America in particular doesn't have proper laws to allow many workers (mostly minimum wage workers) proper rests. It's also hard people to rest enough when they need to work a ridiculous amount of hours to get by on a minimum wage that is too low. So for that section, I think it would be appropriate for Huffington to argue that a lot of the solution does need to be top-down. In other sections of the book she does praise certain CEOs for treating their employees with human decency, but for some reason it was missing from that first section.
In summary: despite having a few major flaws, this was a decent book that was of use to me personally.
I really enjoyed THRIVE. A lot of the advice that Arianna gives is common sense but sometimes it takes reading it and absorbing the words to make you really think about it and take it in.
There are a lot of statistics and studies mentioned in this book, which means that just under half of the book (in the Kindle version) is a list of resources. I think the epilogue ended at about 59% on the Kindle.
THRIVE isn't just a list of statistics though, Arianna recounts stories of her life and weaves in stories of people she knows.
It's a pretty inspiring book and I'm sure it's one that I will revisit.
There are a lot of statistics and studies mentioned in this book, which means that just under half of the book (in the Kindle version) is a list of resources. I think the epilogue ended at about 59% on the Kindle.
THRIVE isn't just a list of statistics though, Arianna recounts stories of her life and weaves in stories of people she knows.
It's a pretty inspiring book and I'm sure it's one that I will revisit.