Huffington redefines success at Real Estate Connect

Arianna Huffington addresses attendees of Real Estate Connect (PAR photo/Diana Dietz)

Arianna Huffington is the president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, an author of 13 books, a nationally syndicated columnist, and was recently named to the Forbes Most Powerful Women list for 2013.

In 2005, she launched The Huffington Post, a news and blog site that quickly became one of the most widely read, linked to and frequently cited media brands on the Internet. In 2012, the site won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

Huffington delivered the keynote address at the Real Estate Connect conference in New York City on Wednesday. She spoke about leadership, and leading in today’s all too busy, and interconnected world.

Here are some highlights from her speech:

The principle of partnerships. “Partnership is about seeing the opportunities that are there,” said Huffington. “You will see them ahead of everyone else if you’re willing to follow your own intuition – even if people around you are criticizing you.”

Failure is a stepping-stone to success. Growing up, Huffington admitted she was lucky to have a mother who made her believe failure was a stepping-stone to success. “When you succeed, people forget about all the times you failed along the way,” she said. “Perseverance is the difference between success and failure. Failure is not the opposite of success, it is the stepping stone to success.”

Reduce your stress. “I came to this realization the hard way,” she said. “Human beings in stressful positions are living their lives in fight or flight mode. That’s not good for our health, our decision-making, or our careers. There’s no tradeoff between our careers and our own personal well being.”

Multi-tasking is an illusion. You’re doing neither well, says Huffington. “You are creating stress in your life and not actually being productive. We are living in a state of partial attention. We are not giving anything 100 percent in real time. It’s only when we give something 100 percent of our attention that magic happens.”

With more sleep, comes more wisdom. Huffington spoke about a time in her life when she passed out from exhaustion, woke up bloodied, broke her cheekbone and was forced to get five stitches under her right eye. From that moment, she realized the ultimate key to stress reduction was rediscovering sleep. “I went from sleeping four hours to seven to eight hours. It changed my life.”

Connect with yourself. In order to really connect with your customers, you also need to connect with yourself, says Huffington. “The greatest leaders have found that place of connection. If you’re not fully charged, you are not going to be able to make the most of the opportunity.”

Take time to recharge your battery. Huffington said when she goes to bed, she doesn’t take her phone or any tech devices with her. “I unwind with a book,” she said. “It is important to find even the smallest amount of time each day for yourself to help you relax and essentially recharge your battery.”

Take time to disconnect from technology. “There are studies that show when people come back from vacation they are more stressed,” notes Huffington. “They go on vacation and try to stay plugged in. This is not easy to break. This is an addiction. If you talk to the people who make these devices, they make them this way deliberately. It’s not accidental.”

You can’t control your environment. Whether it’s real estate trends or the weather, the only thing we can control is how we react to things, says Huffington. “I gauge whether I had a good day or not by how I react to things. When we are fine-tuned, we are at an incredible capacity for wisdom and intuition.”

“All of these things that give you anxiety prevent you from taking risks and challenges,” she added. “The truth is, things will go wrong in our lives. But you can deal with them when you are awake and recharged.”

“Now is the time to use our skills for innovation and creativity,” Huffington urged, concluding we can move forward and make a difference “with more gratitude, with more joy, with more balance in our lives and, yes, more sleep.”