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Jack Miller, Cade Humphreys, and Dustin Hansen

Rounding Up Hope

Dustin Hansen remembers the day Roundup River Ranch found him. During a fly-fishing trip on the Colorado River, the bankernoticed a shimmering stretch of ranchland at the water’s edge. His guide told him it was a camp for kids with cancer. Something stirred inside him—his father had died of cancer when Dustin was 16—and from that moment on, he was compelled to learn more, and was inspired to eventually become a volunteer counselor at the camp.A special campPhilanthropist Alison Knapp, inspired by Paul Newman’s camps for children with serious medical issues, founded the ranch in 2006 in Avon, Colorado. Roundup River Ranch gives kids, as Paul once said, a place to “kick back and raise a little hell,” with horseback riding, canoeing, archery and other summer camp diversions.The ranch is now part of the late actor’s SeriousFun Children’s Network and includes a complete 24-hour medical component. Dustin says the ranch has an amazing atmosphere—like “Disney World on steroids.” “Most of these kids are hospitalized; most do not go to school,” he says.It gives them hope“The ranch lets them play and experience joy. The nurses say that it’s as important as their medical treatments….It gives them hope.” Dustin sees the transformation in the children and in his own outlook. He watched an 8-year-old boy with a brain tumor and a leg amputation tackle a climbing wall hand over hand, foothold by foothold, making it to the top by himself.“I’ve never cried like I did that day,” Dustin says. “They were tears of joy. He had so much will and perseverance. These kids are teaching me about life.“They taught me how to play and celebrate more—how to laugh. They taught me that life is short, that you need to count your blessings each and every day, and that there is joy even in bad situations.”Marie Speed is the editor of a number of South Florida-based magazines.

Self-Care

4 Secrets to Following Your Dreams

A decade ago Margaret was accepted into the University of Pennsylvania’s MAPP program, the first applied positive psychology graduate program of its kind. “What’s the big deal?” you might think. People apply to college and graduate school every day. For Margaret, it took courage.First, she had responsibilities. She was already paying college tuition for one daughter. She was also taking care of her teenage daughter still at home, who would be starting college the next year.Obstacles to the dreamExpenses were increasing, and the MAPP degree had a hefty price tag. She also had a busy consulting and coaching practice to run. She couldn’t just take a sabbatical, study full time, and expect her business to still be afloat when she returned. Lastly, Margaret hadn’t stepped foot into a college classroom for more than 20 years.Yet in her heart, Margaret was convinced this new field of positive psychology was something she just had to study. She had to find the courage to follow this direction. Courage originates from the French word coeur, meaning heart.Follow your heart—and your brainOur brains give us the ability to dream of what we want, but our hearts motivate us to act on those dreams. It takes courage to start a business. It takes courage to leave a comfortable job to embark on a new career. It takes courage to ask your boss for more challenging work or a raise. And most of all, it takes courage to go against the expectations others may have of you.In our coaching of hundreds of business leaders, colleagues and friends, we have found three main culprits that prevent people from pursuing their dreams: fear of success, fear of disappointing others and uncertainty of the very next step.So what can you do to be more courageous and resilient or to be what we call a “positive deviant” in our book, Profit from the Positive.1. Quit being an expertAsking for help is one of the hardest things any of us can do. But remember this: You know how good it feels to help someone, right? Give your friends, family and colleagues that same opportunity.2. Put on an explorer's hatExploring empowers and creates momentum. Dust off your resume and go on an interview just to practice. Looking to start your own business? Reach out to other business owners and pick their brains. Ask, "How can I make this work?"3. Win debates against yourselfIgnore the inner critic that tells you to "Play it safe" and "Don't look stupid." Trust the inner voice that says, "You can do this"; "What's the worst that can happen? and What might I learn even if I fail?4. DabbleHerminia Ibarra of INSEAD business school suggests that if you want to follow your dreams, don't quit your job cold-turkey. Dabble in the field or job you want. Blog. Volunteer at a business or organization for a few hours a week.Read more about avoiding pitfalls when starting your dream business.What have you been dreaming of doing? What is one small step you can take today to act on those dreams? Let us know in the Comments section, below.Margaret H. Greenberg and Senia Maymin, are organizational consultants and executive coaches, and authors ofProfit from the Positive: Proven Leadership Strategies to Boost Productivity and Transform Your Business, with a foreword by Tom Rath.For more information about Senia and Margaret, go toProfitFromThePositive.com.

Lifestyle

Orange Is the New Black Character Writes Book

When Cleary Wolters received her prison sentence, she started looking for her purpose. “I didn’t want this to break me,” she explains. “It was such a tiny piece of my life that I didn’t want that to define who I was.” Not your typical drug smuggler In 2003, Cleary was sentenced to nearly six years in federal prison for smuggling drugs. She served her time and had resumed a low-key life in Cincinnati when, in 2013, she saw a commercial for the upcoming Netflix original series, “Orange is the New Black.” Based on the memoir by Piper Kerman, the story immediately looked familiar. And when the character of drug smuggler Alex Vause (Laura Prepon) appeared, Cleary dropped the remote. The name had been changed, but she recognized the character. It was herself. National exposure She hoped to remain anonymous–the name had been changed, after all–but within hours of the series’ release, Cleary’s mugshot, name and other personal information were posted online. But instead of shame and disdain, Cleary found a public that was welcoming and interested in the person behind the character they saw on the screen. Before long, she was contacted by a literary agent. In an ironic twist that did not escape her notice, being outed as a former criminal allowed her to achieve her lifelong dream of becoming a published writer. A fearless retelling “I had to be absolutely fearless [when writing] about what I did,” says Cleary, whose book Out of Orange was released in May. The book details the missteps that led her to prison, then chronicles Cleary’s choices to better her life, beginning with teaching computer classes behind bars to help women leave prison with marketable skills. The book also illustrates how the warehousing of prisoners instead of providing rehabilitation is harming society as a whole. It is alternately heartbreaking and hilarious, but most of all, it is honest and human. Opportunity and responsibility Cleary believes she has an opportunity as well as a responsibility to use her writing talent to increase understanding about the need for greater humanity inside the prison walls – and toward people who are trying to better themselves. “Human beings have a capacity for unbelievable stupidity,” she says, noting that many are forced to continue paying for their crimes long after they have served their sentence. After a fall, a rebirth “But we can reinvent ourselves. You can absolutely rebuild yourself from the ground up. I’m proof of that. I feel as though I’ve taken my life back, and now I’m doing exactly what I’ve always wanted to do. It’s a wonderful gift.”

People

The Heroes Among Us

Author Brad Meltzer knows what makes a hero or superhero tick. He’s written best-selling books about espionage in the nation’s capital in books including The Inner Circleand The President's Shadow, scripted conversations among the members of the Justice League of America for DC Comics, and uncovered secrets that only top FBI agents and international spies may know on his History Channel shows Decoded and the new Lost History.New series on down-to-earth heroesHowever, it is in his recent series of family-friendly books, such as the popular Heroes for My Sonand Heroes for My Daughterand his series collectively called Ordinary People Change the World that Brad has been perhaps most able to define and depict heroism and how it can be achieved and accepted by all of us.“There’s one [strength] that repeats over and over—and defines a hero: You have to help someone,” Brad says. “You may help people directly, like Abraham Lincoln, or maybe you inspire us like Amelia Earhart. But to be a hero, you have to help someone. In these books, these aren’t just the stories of famous people. They’re what we're all capable of on our very best days.”American mythologyWhile Superman and Wonder Woman amaze with their super-human powers, for many, it is their humanity and our ability to connect with them that makes them so super. This is all the more true of everyday heroes like Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks and Meltzer’s latest subjects, Albert Einstein and Jackie Robinson. These people could not leap over buildings or bend steel bars with their bare hands, but they did even more to overcome obstacles, bend rules and change hearts, minds and points of view.With this in mind, Brad suggests that there is really not much difference between a female flier like Earhart and Wonder Woman. “They are all part of the American mythology,” he observes, “and the reason these stories still persist so strongly for all these decades isn't just because they tell the stories about other people. It’s because their stories also tell us about ourselves.”Giving backBrad’s helpful definition of a hero has also directed his own life. As each new best-seller is released and more people come to know his name, he does even more to reach out and help out. Proceeds from his sales go to such organizations as City Year, Alex’s Lemonade Stand and Sharsheret, a Jewish community response to breast cancer. While many of the heroes he writes about are his own (including his parents, grandparents, and eighth-grade English teacher), Brad’s Son and Daughter books also feature many of his family’s favorites.“My daughter…loves Lucille Ball,” he says, offering an example from “her” book and noting that his daughter is so enamored with the pioneering and famously charitable comedienne that she is probably “the only girl in America watching black and white TV!”Leave room for your own heroesAnd while all of his books depict and discuss the helpful and heroic lives of such people as Gandhi, Ben Franklin, Golda Meir and “Superman” himself (i.e., Christopher Reeve), Brad says that he always saves the best for last by including members of his own family toward the end of each collection. In both books, there is also a set of blank pages where readers can add their own chapters and pay their own tributes to the people who have helped them and been their heroes as well.“If you take a picture of your mom or grandparent or teacher, and you paste it in the book and write one sentence on what that person means to you,” he pledges, “it will be the most beautiful page [and] the best present we can give our children: the reminder that it is ordinary people who change the world.”Who are the everyday superheroes in your own life? Let us know in the comments section, below.Matt Robinson is a freelance writer living in Boston.

relationships

5 Tactics for Coping with Cranky People

Whether it’s at work or at home, you’re bound to find yourself faced with crankiness from time to time. Crankiness can certainly stand in the way of happiness, but you don’t have to let it rule your life. Here are some of the best ways you can cope with cranky people so they don’t negatively impact your mood:1.Use a kind—or at least neutral—toneIt’s tempting to respond to someone in the same (cranky) tone of voice in which you’ve been spoken to, but doing so will only make an unpleasant interaction worse. Keep in mind that you’re encountering someone at his or her worst (perhaps in the middle of a bad day, during a period of low blood sugar, etc.) and pause before you respond. In that pause, remind yourself to use a kind — or at least neutral — tone. This will be a challenge sometimes, but controlling the tone of your voice is one of the best ways to have a positive interaction with a cranky person. Not only do you not exacerbate the situation, but your composed tone keeps you calmer too.2.Try reversing your reactionWhile it’s a challenge not to react in a negative way to someone else’s crankiness, you can take charge of your words and actions. One of the best things you can do when you feel ready to lash out at someone else’s crankiness is consider reversing your reaction. If you want to yell, speak softly. If you want to clench your fists in frustration, release your hands and exhale deeply. Responding the opposite way from how you want to react can lead to a much more positive interaction—and it’s another great way to help you keep your cool.3.Don’t take it (too) personallyIt’s challenging not to take others’ moods personally. If someone snaps at you, speaks to you in a sassy tone or is emotionally distant, it can feel as if you are somehow the cause of this change in mood. More often than not others’ crankiness is a result of something going on internally or something unrelated to the current interaction (such as bringing home negative feelings after a bad day at work). Consider how you feel when you’re cranky. Usually it has little to do with the other person, right? Keep this in mind when you encounter crankiness around you and it’ll be much easier to handle.4.Break it up with a time outIf someone is feeling cranky, usually the last thing he or she wants to hear is: “Are you okay? Is everything all right? Why are you in a bad mood?” Questions like these are rarely answered honestly and often irritate those feeling cranky. Instead of peppering someone with questions, take the crankiness cues as a sign to step back and do something by yourself. Take your book into another room to read (if you’re at home) or take a quick walk around the building (if you’re at work) to avoid getting sucked into someone else’s negative state of mind. This will prevent you from catching the negative vibes (they are contagious!), and it will give the other person a chance to have some alone time.5.Create a crankiness code wordThe person you’re trying to cope with might not even be aware of his or her current attitude. To communicate quickly about crankiness (without having to ask questions about the state of someone’s mood), create a simple code word to use when you’re noticing (or feeling) crankiness. It will be a one-word signal to say, “Hey, you’re being a bit cranky now so I’m going to give you your space,” or “I’m feeling irritated now so I’m going to need a little alone time.” Having a code word has another powerful benefit too: if you find yourself using or hearing it a lot, there’s a good chance something’s not making you happy. It’s a reminder to take a closer look at when you (or someone else) feel cranky and make changes if necessary.Though you might want to, you’ll never be able to completely avoid the crankiness of others, but with these tips in hand, you’ll be able to better cope when the moods of others go from good to grouchy.Dani DiPirro is an author, blogger, and designer living in a suburb of Washington, DC. In 2009, she launched the websitePositivelyPresentwith the intention of sharing her insights about living a positive and present life. Dani is the author ofStay Positive,The Positively Present Guide to Life, and a variety ofe-books. She is also the founder of Twenty3, a design studio focused on promoting positive, modern graphic design and illustration.

Practice

33 Ideas on Leadership

1. “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” —John Quincy Adams2. ReadThe 5 Levels of Leadershipby John C. Maxwell.3. WatchLincoln.4. Become a Big Brother or Big Sister (bbbs.org).5. WatchLean On Me.6. ReadThe Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadershipby Richard Branson.Read about the trajectory of media mogul Arianna Huffington.7. WatchTheIron Lady.8. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” —Steve Jobs9. Start aJimRohnLeadership Journal.10. Download theMind Toolsapp.11. WatchSaving Private Ryan.12. Read The7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleby Stephen R. Covey.13. Volunteer as a mentor in your area of professional expertise.Read more about the benefits of mentoring.14. Listen to“Centerfield”by JohnFogerty.15. ReadThe Last Lionby William Manchester.16. WatchCoach Carter.17. “The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.” —Tony Blair18. Follow your favorite entrepreneurs onLinkedIn.19. Listen to“GonnaFly Now (Theme to ‘Rocky’)” by BillContievery morning.20. ReadLean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Leadby Sheryl Sandberg.21. WatchRemember the Titans.22. “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” —C.S. Lewis23. Participate in a project to improve your community.Read more about how you can improve connectedness in your community.24. Listen to “On Top of the World” by Imagine Dragons.25. ReadHow to Win Friends and Influence Peopleby Dale Carnegie.26. Watch Drew Dudley’s “Everyday Leadership” TED Talk.27. “You cannot be anything you want to be—but you can be a whole lot more of who you already are.” —TomRath28. Set regular self-improvement goals.29. “The speed of the leader determines the speed of the gang.” – Mary Kay Ash30. ReadDriveby Daniel Pink.Watch our interview with best-selling author Daniel Pink.31. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” —WarrenBennis32. Watch SimonSinek’s“How Great Leaders Inspire Action” TED Talk.33. Check out the next issue ofLive Happyfor 33 Ideas for Happy Travels.Let us know your ideas of what makes a strong leader by leaving a comment, below!

Live Happy's Tips for Happy Healthy Summer

Well-Being

9 Ways to Stay Healthy and Happy This Summer

Summer is synonymous with happiness. How can you not be happy basking in the sunshine, relaxing on the beach, celebrating with a cookout, playing with your kids or lounging poolside? And while it all sounds heavenly, sometimes summer is spent figuring out how to entertain the kiddos from dawn to dusk so they don’t drive you wacko. If you really want a happy, healthy summer—one where you can bask in its long days without the kids driving you crazy—try these nine tips. (We recommend reading this in your hammock.) 1. Plan “me” time When life gets crazy, (when is it not?) the first thing that usually goes to the wayside is time just for you. Take turns with your spouse and make dates with yourself. Watch the kiddos while your spouse gets a little solitude, and then let your spouse give you that precious time, too. Hang out in a coffee shop, read a good book, meditate, take a long bike ride or catch an afternoon matinee—do something that allows you to think, reflect, relax or just unplug. 2. Make healthy eating fun Browse farmers markets and get some gorgeous seasonal produce. Teach your kids about the health benefits of real foods by experimenting with clean-eating recipes to make delicious, colorful meals and snacks. Learn the three easy steps to healthier eating. 3. Fill your calendar with joy You can have a lot of control and influence over how happy your summer is if you proactively plan weekends with your absolute favorite things to do, like hosting a cookout for your street, planning a weekend getaway or scheduling an outdoor adventure. Not only do you get the joy that comes from anticipation, but you also get a fun experience and a wonderful memory! (It’s a trio of happiness.) 4. Investigate your favorite exercise The key to exercising regularly isn’t about finding the time—it’s about finding an exercise you love. Because if you love it, you will do it. Summer is the ideal time to try out some new activities. Paddle-boarding anyone? Golf? (Skip the cart.) Take your kids on a family hike. Sign up to jog your first 5K. Go in search of an exercise to fall in love with, and you just might get hooked. 5. Remind yourself why sleep is wonderful Make your bedroom a place of serenity and calm by cleaning out any clutter that could be clogging you mentally. Get your favorite sheets and comforter. Open a window if it’s cool enough for gentle breezes. Fully embrace sleep as one of life’s great pleasures. 6. Know what recharges you When you’re feeling run down and frazzled, what restores you? What fills you up? Make a list of the top three activities that replenish your mind and body and then carve out time to do them. You’ll love life more when you feel full and mentally clear, instead of frazzled and depleted. 7. Seek a change of scenery Go on a vacation, drive to your neighboring town or just try a new restaurant. Changing up your normal environment can be uplifting and offer a new perspective. Read our 5 tips for an energy-boosting vacation. 8. Keep a journal Journaling helps with self-awareness, mental clarity and preserving memories, but keep the right journal for you. It could be a one-sentence journal about your day or maybe a travel journal where you record your summer adventures. You may even consider keeping a gratitude journal, where you jot down what you appreciate about your day. If it’s more your speed, use your journal to doodle or brainstorm your next big idea. Read more about journaling as a five-minute misery cure. 9. Go deeper with conversation If you’re having a dinner party, as you set the table, think about how you’d like to direct the conversation with your guests. Sometimes, with a little planning, you can cultivate meaningful conversations instead of surface chitchat. Bonus tip: Don’t start cleaning up when people are done eating, as that signals everyone that dinner is over. Sit and just enjoy your conversations—it’s good for your health and longevity! Make this your best summer yet by aligning it closer to what you value most. Happiness will follow. Click here to read about how to have a happy family roadtrip this summer. Sandra Bienkowski worked as the national columns editor for SUCCESS magazine for three years, and is widely published in print and on the web. See more about Sandra at The Media Concierge.

Practice

6 Steps to Mindfulness Meditation

1. Get Comfortable Find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed. Ideally this would be a room in your house where you can be alone and at peace. 2. Get in position You might try sitting cross-legged on a low cushion on the floor, or upright in a chair. Some people prefer to meditate lying down. 3. Get relaxed Close your eyes, set a timer for five minutes if you are just starting out, and begin by taking a few deep, cleansing breaths. Breath in deeply (but naturally) through your nose, and out through either your nose or mouth—whichever feels more comfortable to you. Let the breaths flow all the way down into your abdomen. 4. Focus on your breaths Become aware of the sound of your breaths as you inhale and exhale. As you inhale, you breathe in all the peaceful and joyful things around you. As you exhale, you rid your mind and body of all the stress and toxins that have been bothering you. Let your mind become mesmerized by the rhythmic pattern of your breathing. 5. Bring your thoughts back to center Your mind will wander. When you notice your thoughts wandering off from your breath, don't chastise yourself—it's totally normal. Simply acknowledge it and bring your focus back to the center, back to your breaths. Take in your immediate surroundings. What do you hear? What do you feel right now, at this moment? Try not to ruminate on the past or worry about the future, but be present in this pure moment. 6. Make a commitment Like exercise, meditation takes practice. And the more we practice, the better we get and the stronger that mindfulness muscle becomes. Even just five to ten minutes per day has been shown to make an enormous difference to well-being after just eight weeks of meditation practice. Let us know about your own mindfulness practice in the Comments section, below.

Self-Care

5 Strategies to Make You More Productive

Whether we love or hate our jobs, the amount of work most of us have to do each day has reached unsustainable levels. We start a typical workday anxious about how we will get it all done, who we might let down and which important tasks we will sacrifice—again—so we can keep our heads above water. As we grab our first cups of coffee, we check our e-mail in-boxes on our handheld devices, scanning to see who has added a new task to our to-do list. The stress builds as we read e-mail after e-mail, each containing a request that we know can’t be dealt with quickly. We mark these e-mails as unread and save them for . . . “later.” We mentally add them to the piles of work left undone the night before (when we left our offices much too late). More e-mails to answer, more phone calls to return, more paperwork to fill out. And everything needs our immediate attention. Attention deficit In fact, too many things need our attention before we can even get to the tasks that really matter—and too many things matter. We frequently work all day long—at the office and then at home, taking care of our families, cleaning up, paying bills—sometimes only stopping to sleep. There simply isn’t enough time, but so much always needs to be done. Work with your biology, not against it The key to achieving fantastic levels of effectiveness is to work with our biology. We may all be capable of impressive feats of comprehension, motivation, emotional control, problem solving, creativity and decision-making when our biological systems are functioning optimally. But we can be terrible at those very same things when our biological systems are suboptimal. The amount of exercise and sleep we get and the food we eat can greatly influence these mental functions in the short term—even within hours. The mental functions we engage in just prior to tackling a task can also have a powerful effect on whether we accomplish that task. Follow the science Research findings from the fields of psychology and neuroscience are revealing a great deal about when and how we can set up periods of highly effective mental functioning. In my book, Two Awesome Hours: Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work DoneI share in detail five deceptively simple strategies that I have found are the most successful in helping busy people create the conditions for at least two hours of incredible productivity each day: 1. Recognize your decision points Once you start a task, you run largely on autopilot, which makes it hard to change course. Maximize the power of those moments in between tasks—that’s when you can choose what to take on next, and can therefore decide to tackle what matters most. 2. Manage your mental energy Tasks that need a lot of self-control or focused attention can be depleting, and tasks that make you highly emotional can throw you off your game. Schedule tasks based on their processing demand and recovery time. 3. Stop fighting distractions Learn to direct your attention. Your attention systems are designed to wander and refresh, not to focus indefinitely. Trying to fight that is like trying to fight the ocean tides. Understanding how your brain works will help you get back on track quickly and effectively when you get distracted. 4. Leverage your mind–body connection Move your body and eat in ways that set you up for success in the short term. (You can eat and physically do whatever you want on your downtime.) 5. Make your workspace work for you Learn what environmental factors help you be on top of your game—and how to adjust your environment accordingly. Once you know what distracts you or what primes your brain to be in creating or risk-taking modes, you can adjust your environment for productivity. Reap the rewards These strategies, derived from neuroscience and psychology, may sound simple; some may even seem like common sense. But we rarely employ them. Understanding the science behind them helps us know what’s worth acting on and how to do so within the constraints we have. We can all learn to deploy them regularly and consciously with powerful results. While I believe that you can accomplish great things under the right conditions, I’m not suggesting you’ll be able to get all your work done in just two awesome hours. I do think, however, that when you are mentally effective, you can accomplish whatever matters most to you at that moment, with pride in your work and inspiration to do more. Working in tandem with our biology—setting up the conditions for a couple of hours of peak productivity—allows us not only to focus on the tasks that are most important to us and our success but also to restore some sanity and balance to our lives.

Arianna Huffington: Balanced Media Mogul

People

Arianna Huffington is Redefining Success

Arianna Huffington is passionate about success. And while success has been a focal point throughout her life, she sees it much differently now than she did even a few years ago. Today, her view of success is tied closely to happy living: “Well-being is now going to be in the center of my life, not on the edges.”Speaking at the International Symposium of Contemplative Studies in Boston in November, Arianna shares how she has accomplished the far-reaching goals she set for herself and did it in a way that helped define many of the major topics of our lifetime: women’s roles in the workplace and the world, the changing nature of political leadership and 21st-century innovations in media. Now, she has turned her attention to living a good and happy life.Playing the game of life“We have, if we’re lucky, about 30,000 days to play the game of life,” Arianna says in a recent interview. “How we play it will be determined by what we value. A huge part of that is our relationship with time. So for me, a well-lived life is one where there is ample time for the people in my life who truly matter, time to pause and wonder at the world, and time to delight in the mysteries of the universe, as well as the everyday occurrences and small miracles that fill our lives.”In her 2014 best-selling book, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder, she asks us to consider redefining success beyond the timeworn standards of money and power: “To live the lives we truly want and deserve, and not just the lives we settle for, we need a third metric, a third measure of success that goes beyond the two metrics of money and power, and consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving.”The value of failingArianna credits her mother with instilling optimism and resilience. “My mother taught us that failure is not the opposite of success, it is the stepping stone to success.”She lives that life philosophy firsthand. After graduating from Cambridge, she wrote a successful book, The Female Woman. But 36 publishers rejected her second book, and a seven-year relationship ended shortly after that.“By about rejection 25, you would have thought I might have said, ‘Hey, you know, there’s something wrong here. Maybe I should be looking at a different career.’ ” Instead she walked into a bank in London where she was living at the time and asked for a loan. “Even though I didn’t have any assets, the banker—whose name was Ian Bell—gave me a loan. It changed my life, because it meant I could keep things together for another 13 rejections and finally, an acceptance.Getting up one more time“In fairy tales there are helpful animals that come out of nowhere to help the hero or heroine through a dark and difficult time, often helping them find a way out of the forest. Well, in life, too, there are helpful animals disguised as human beings, as bank managers like Ian Bell, to whom I still send a Christmas card every year. So, very often, the difference between success and failure is perseverance. It’s how long we can keep going until success happens. It’s getting up one more time than we fall down.”Arianna moved to New York, where she continued writing books and magazine articles. After weathering ups and downs in love, career and even politics, Arianna co-founded The Huffington Post in 2005.The site was not an immediate success; it faced a storm of negative reviews, including one particularly harsh but memorable criticism from LA Weekly’s Nikki Finke, who called it “the movie equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate rolled into one.”Yet Arianna refused to be diverted by the criticism. Today, she says that backlash gave her the incentive to persevere. The truth is, we are always going toget bad reviews, she says. The answer is to rely on our personal resilience and continue our journey. In her case, the critics may remain, but the site has gained respect, credibility and worldwide recognition.The most powerful blog in the worldIn 2012, The Huffington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for a 10-part series on wounded veterans, becoming the first commercially run digital site in the United States to win the prize. It also has been ranked No. 1 on the Most Popular Political Sites by eBizMBA Rank, and The Observer, a British newspaper, named it the most powerful blog in the world.“At some point, I learned not to dread failure,” she says. “I strongly believe that we are not put on this earth just to accumulate victories and trophies and avoid failures but rather to be whittled and sand-papered down until what’s left is who we truly are.“My advice to those facing critics or challenging times is to refrain from adding our own self-criticism into the mix. This means dealing with the voice I call the obnoxious roommate living in our head, the voice that feeds on putting us down and strengthening our insecurities and doubts.”Refocusing attentionArianna now uses her media platform to showcase her happiness discoveries. The Huffington Post regularly includes news on happiness and how to achieve it. It’s a journey she embarked on after receiving a serious wake-up call in 2007.Exhausted from the relentless hustle of running a booming media enterprise, Arianna collapsed while at her computer in her home office. As her head hit the desk, she injured her eye, broke her cheekbone and ultimately realized she needed to find a new approach to her hectic life. She returned to the meditation and yoga exercises her mother had shown her as a child. She says now, “I wish they had just told me, ‘You have civilization disease.’ ”That’s how she sees it today, she explained at the Boston symposium: If you are driven to focus only on wealth and power, you, too, might have civilization disease. “Our society is made of highly educated good people making bad decisions. It’s not that they’re not smart, it’s that they’re not wise. We all have that wisdom in us,” she says. “I would never again congratulate someone for working 24/7. It’s like coming to work drunk.”Arianna is using her resources—such as books, speaking engagements and her media company—to help others learn how to adopt a lifestyle that encompasses well-being and wonder, wisdom and giving. She sees mindfulness as an important element in redefining success, in slowing down or even stopping the busyness of our lives, if only for a few important moments to begin each day.“The fact that there is now so much scientific exploration that builds on ancient wisdom is cause for great optimism,” she says. “It doesn’t matter why we start on this journey…at some point we’ll all realize that we’re bigger than our jobs.“However great your job is, you are more marvelous! Getting in touch with that magnificence is part of your journey.”Jan Stanley is a writer, coach and speaker who has worked with Fortune 500 companies to develop leaders and with many people to help them find meaning and joy in work and life.

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