Rachael Shoff

7/27/2022
FAS 101

Module Five Assignment – Thrive

After reading the book “Thrive: The third metric to redefining success and creating a life of well-
being, wisdom, and wonder.” By Arianna Huffington I would critique this book a seven out of
ten. The reason I chose to critique this book as a seven and not a ten is because I was not a fan
of the words used like metrics or pillars when compared to one’s life. I thought the author
could have used different verbiage. When you compare a life to a metric or a pillar that seems
just so cooperate like or business like if you would. It almost seems heartless in a way. I also did
not like the religious aspects of the book. Words like blessed, and God were incorporated into
the book. For someone who is not religious whatsoever, just seeing the words blessed or God
made me cringe. Now this is my own opinion, and I also wouldn’t normally choose this book to
read. However, I really enjoyed most of the book hence the critique of seven out of ten.
One of the areas I felt most connected to what the author Arrianna Huffington incorporated in
the book was the topics of stress, burnout, and depression. Huffington describes the damages
of stress, burnout, and depression in several different countries as well as the percentages of
health risks and even prescription usage to try and cope with burnout, stress, and depression.
This is something very relatable to me because I work in a field that has an extremely high
suicide rate alongside a burnout rate. The average burnout rate for my career is eight years.
Very unfortunately most of the people I graduated college with left our field of work and
switched careers completely. I am on year 13 in my field of work, and I am attending Arizona
State University so that I can open more doors in my field. I am reaching that burnout portion
of my career and COVID 19 has only sped that process up. There was one portion of the book
where Huffington mentioned her mother scolded her because she was listening to her children
and answering her emails at the same time. This is something relatable because I used to do
this to my husband. When you are multi-tasking like that you truly are not listening. I remember
my husband would be talking to me, but I couldn’t repeat back to him what he was saying. He
knew it too; he would eventually just walk away and then I would realize oh no he knows I am
not paying attention to him. That was always the worst feeling to have to go apologize for not
listening. Especially when I worked a twelve-hour day to come home, and my dinner get cold
because I was still working remotely instead.
The second area I felt most connected to what the author Arrianna Huffington incorporated in
the book was the topic of women, especially mothers in the workplace or workforce. I always
knew that full time mothers didn’t always come back to work full-time or at all. I never realized
that 43% of women after having children don’t come back to work at all, and 40% of women
only come back to work part time. This is something that really hit me. I personally had been
postponing coming back to school for years because I thought to myself what is the point? If I
have children, I know I won’t excel in my career. I am already having a difficult time juggling
work and school. Add a child to that and oh no, you bet the first thing gone would be work. I
would like to think that I would go back to work part time but if you don’t work full-time in the
workforce, you really can’t climb the ladder so to speak. Unfortunately, in America the
workforce is not set up for mothers. Men are normally the bread winners and women are the
ones being called by the school or daycare to come pick up a sick or injured child. In my place of
work if you call in you ruin everyone else’s day. For the person who calls in you are pretty much
shunned by every other coworker or employee. You are only allowed so many call ins and we
don’t have personal days. Our personal time off must be submitted six weeks in advance. I
would be fired very quickly if I had children.
I mostly connected the book Thrive by Arriana Huffington to Close encounters: Communication
in relationships by Anderson Guerrero in the second chapter Community Identity: The Social
Self. There was one quote from textbook that I connected to the book from the assignment in
the section The Image” Creating an Identity - “We are known by our image. Few people know
the real us, but they know us by the image we project (Guerrero et al., 2021).” This reminded
me when Huffington was speaking about the third metric being your eulogy. How when
eulogies are written it is not typically are success or accomplishments in work but who we are
as a person. How we were with our families. Memories shared about the person at rest. I really
felt that when Huffington was describing that. She is right. I have never been to a funeral where
they say things like so and so was the CEO and led the company but such and such metrics to
the top of the stock market. It is always so and so was a wonderful father, brother, son, uncle,
or cousin. They loved hiking, nature, meditating, animal rescue. Things of that nature. That was
an excellent point.
The major relationship takeaway from this book for me personally is don’t work so hard to
achieve money or status. Learn to love yourself as you are. You need to have a relationship with
yourself and learn to love yourself. You should always come first. Live your life. Life is not all
about work. As the author described it took for her to fall and hit her head and end up in
multiple doctor’s offices at multiple appointments for her to realize life is too short. Don’t work
yourself into the ground. Enjoy your life. Life is meant to be lived. If you really think about it, we
live every day, we only die once.
References

Guerrero, L. K., Andersen, P. A., & Afifi, W. A. (2021). Close encounters: Communication in
relationships. SAGE.

Huffington, A. (2014). Thrive. WH Allen.