I studied, I met with medical doctors, scientists, and I’m here to tell you that the way to a more productive, more inspired, more joyful life is: getting enough sleep.
Arianna HuffingtonRead
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.
Interpretation
Being a parent brings profound fears that overshadow other worries in life.
This quote emphasizes the transformative experience of parenthood and how it alters one's perspective on fear. When you become a parent, the fears associated with caring for your children - such as worrying for their well-being and striving for their approval - substantially outweigh the typical fears one may have about personal acceptance or success, leading to a unique courage in facing the world.
In practice
In a speech about the challenges of modern parenting, you might use this quote to illustrate the extraordinary fears that parents face.
I studied, I met with medical doctors, scientists, and I’m here to tell you that the way to a more productive, more inspired, more joyful life is: getting enough sleep.
Don't buy society’s definition of success. Because it’s not working for anyone. It’s not working for women, it's not working for men, it's not working for polar bears, it's not working for the cicadas that are apparently about to emerge and swarm us. It’s only truly working for those who make pharmaceuticals for stress, sleeplessness and high blood pressure.
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.
Don’t just climb the ladder of success - a ladder that leads, after all, to higher and higher levels of stress and burnout - but chart a new path to success, remaking it in a way that includes not just the conventional metrics of money and power, but a third metric that includes well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving, so that the goal is not just to succeed but to thrive.
We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in.
Failure is not the opposite of success; it's part of success.
Even families with health insurance are quite vulnerable to a severe economic reversal if someone gets sick.
~Sometimes, when I want to take on the world, I try to remember that it's just as important to sit down and ask my son how he's feeling or talk to him about life.~
It's not an accident that both my sister and I are writers. Our parents created an accidental Petri dish. My family has great storytellers, and I grew up in a very funny, conversational house and didn't have television. This small family farm was a bubble world that didn't have much to do with reality.
I usually claim that pregnant women should not read books about pregnancy and birth. Their time is too precious. They should, rather, watch the moon and sing to their baby in the womb.
I keep my family out of my public life because it can be an awful nuisance to them. What's my mother going to tell strangers anyway? That I was a cute baby and that she's terribly proud of me? Nuts. Who cares?
If your dad died before you were born, yeah, it hurts - but it's not like you had a connection with something that was real. Not to say it's any better - but to have that connection and then have it ripped away was, like, the worst. My dad was such a good dad that when he left, he left a huge scar. He was my superhero.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.