Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder

The fourth and final section of Thrive, titled “Giving,” is a departure from the previous sections. While well-being, wisdom, and wonder are internally focused avenues for change, giving is externally focused—emphasizing the individual’s relationships with other people. In this section, the motif of technology takes new form as a tool to facilitate giving. Huffington has previously characterized technology primarily as a distraction—something that gets in the way of mindfulness and living in the moment. In this context, however, technology is redeemed as a powerful tool for extending an individual’s philanthropic reach.  Rather than “sit on the sidelines bemoaning the fact that [the government] is not doing enough” (226), Huffington urges readers to take the work of building a better world into their own hands. Throughout, Huffington uses metaphor and repetition to emphasize Giving as a Path to Personal Growth.

While Huffington frames giving as an act benefitting both the giver and the receiver (224), she devotes far more space to the benefits of giving for the individual. The world tends to “focus on the good giving does for others” (255), she says, whereas she wants her readers to understand how giving can benefit them. In her discussion, Huffington echoes her earlier points from the wisdom and wonder sections regarding meditation. Here, meditation’s benefits include boosting compassion (226). Huffington employs empirical evidence about salary increases and health to quantify the benefits of giving to an individual’s well-being (239-43). Given that the statistics attest so clearly to the benefits for individuals, Huffington uses rhetorical questions to highlight for her audience that giving should certainly be part of their routine (243). 

In nearly every subsection, Huffington uses hyperbolic language to underscore both the impact of giving and the myriad places and ways in which one can give to others. In subsection 1 (“Widening the Boundaries of our Caring: What are We Going to Do this Weekend?”), Huffington calls routine acts of service and increased compassion “revolutionary” (226). She has said at the beginning of the book that redefining success is a revolution (23), and here she echoes that language, making clear that giving is part of that revolution. In subsection 2 (“It Shouldn’t Take a Natural Disaster for Us to Tap into Our Natural Humanity”), Huffington uses the pronouns “we” and “us” over twenty times, emphatically including her readers in the communal project of reinventing success. As Huffington reminds her readers, “every place is full of openings to make a real difference in the life of another human being” (232). In her final subsection (6: “Yaya Lessons in Giving: ‘It’s Not a Trade, Darling, It’s an Offering’”), Huffington uses anaphora to offer an extensive list of places where her mother helped others, underscoring the ubiquitous nature of opportunities to help (254). These examples all suggest that the opportunities exist; it’s in the reader’s hands to take action and make change through service.

Huffington initially presents service as a metaphorical “wake-up call for humanity” in subsection 1 (224), underscoring the dire need for compassion in the world. In subsection 6, she notes that people have been paying a “growing price” for living according to the societal definition of success (257). Given that the price of conventional success is growing, giving can be seen as an investment just as valuable as money—if not more so. This economic metaphor places the “Third Metric” within the familiar framework of money: Even if society only values money, it is possible to place a monetary value on physical and mental health.