Arianna Huffington On Coming Out, 'Thrive' And Ellen DeGeneres' Success

“When we completely define our identify with our job, we operate from fear,” Arianna Huffington said, discussing the stress that being closeted causes so many LGBT people. “And it often stops us from being true to ourselves.”

The chair, president and editor-in chief of The Huffington Post Media Group was discussing her bestseller, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder, and she talked about how coming out is another example of redefining success and relieving that stress.

“I was doing Ellen’s show and and we were talking about how she had her big sitcom success and she was the star of that sitcom, but she had not come out, [so] there was that sense that somehow she was hiding and she wasn’t living her truth,” Huffington explained, speaking with me on SiriusXM Progress. “But she said that if she had completely identified with her success as a sitcom star, she would not have come out, because she would not have risked… what happened, which she kind of knew was going to happen, because it was a different time than now. Her show was canceled. She said her phone did not ring for three years. But then, now, she’s truly thriving and living her truth and is more successful than ever by conventional terms.”

"So that, for me, is a great sort of lesson of how,” she continued, ”when all we think we are is our radio show or The Huffington Post or the sitcom, then we live out of fear and we don’t practice our own truth."

Listen to the interview below. For more on Arianna Huffington's new book, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder head here.