Arianna Huffington commencement
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Arianna Huffington told graduates at Smith College, a women's college, to shoot for more than just personal success during her commencement address.
"Money and power by themselves are a two legged stool," Huffington told graduates on Sunday, "you can balance on them for a while, but eventually you're going to topple over. And more and more people, very successful people, are toppling over."
Instead the Huffington Post editor-in-chief told graduates to "redefine success" in terms of the lives they actually want to live.
Huffington says that women should think beyond breaking the class ceiling and began focusing on "the third women's revolution" — making the world a better place.
Here's an excerpt from the speech:
Commencement speakers are traditionally expected to tell graduates how to go out there and climb the ladder of success, but I want to ask you, instead, to redefine success. Because the world you are headed into desperately needs it. And because you are up to it. Your education at Smith has made it unequivocally clear that you are entitled to take your place in the world on equal footing, in every field, and at the top of every field. But what I urge you to do is not just take your place at the top of the world, but to change the world.
What I urge you to do is to lead the third women's revolution.
The first was led by the suffragists over a hundred years ago, when brave women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought, among other things, to give women the right to vote. The second women's revolution was powerfully led by Smith alumnae, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. They fought -- and Gloria continues to fight -- to expand the role of women in our society, to give us full access to the rooms of power where decisions are made.
And while the second revolution is still in progress, we simply can't wait any longer for the third revolution to begin. And I can't imagine a place where I would be more likely to find the leaders of that revolution than right here at Smith.
At the moment, our society's notion of success is largely composed of two parts: money and power. In fact, success, money and power have practically become synonymous.
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. Money and power by themselves are a two legged stool -- you can balance on them for a while, but eventually you're going to topple over. And more and more people, very successful people, are toppling over. Basically, success the way we've defined it is no longer sustainable. It's no longer sustainable for human beings or for societies. To live the lives we want, and not just the ones we settle for, the ones society defines as successful, we need to include the third metric.
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So please don't settle for just breaking through glass ceilings in a broken corporate system or in a broken political system, where so many leaders are so disconnected from their own wisdom that we are careening from one self-inflicted crisis to another. Change much more than the M to a W at the top of the corporate flow chart. Change it by going to the root of what's wrong and redefining what we value and what we consider success.
Burnout is a growing problem, even for CEOs. There's a workplace culture that glorifies long hours at the office, but rarely discusses the consequences. When the end goal of all of that work is the narrow possibility of a larger paycheck or more power, burnout becomes even more likely.
Research shows that more sustainable motivation comes from helping other people, or from the kind of mission that Huffington describes.
Find the full transcript here and the video here