Arianna Huffington - An inspirational woman who demonstrated beautifully the power of "Walking your Talk" this morning at the Business Chicks breakfast in Sydney.
I got up to a rainy Sydney day (again!) at 5am this morning to see Arianna Huffington (The Huffington Post) deliver a keynote speak at the Business Chicks breakfast.
After taking the ferry in and appreciating the beauty of this town, even in the rain, and a power walk up to the Pavillion at Darling Harbour, I joined in a long line of like-minded female professionals enduring the weather and early rise to listen to one of my idols share her wisdom.
Inside I was greeted by the familiar buzz of the business chicks events, meeting new and known faces, and the generous Business chicks goody bag full of treats for the modern professional woman (Thank you, Business Chicks!!).
Timely with Arianna’s talk the construction work that is currently reshaping Darling Harbour started. Arianna clearly became agitated by the noise but at the same time knew that whatever she was going to do, it was not going to go away! So, she took a deep breath, made a joke about the hammering noise and after checking that we could all still hear her well, moved on. Just like that. She accepted what she could not change, put her focus on what she could change (how she responded to it) and got on with her job which was delivering an inspirational talk about Wellbeing, Wisdom, Wonder and Giving as the third dimension to success (dimension 1 & 2 being power and money).
On another occasion during her talk, she demonstrated how to respond to adversity by taking action. When the team of waiters started going around the tables of the hundreds of business chicks to clear the plate, they created some distraction and additional noise. But in this instance, rather than accepting the noise issue as her “fate” during the delivery of her speech, she kindly asked the waiting team to stop clearing the plates. Gracefully, politely and with some humor she took charge of the situation and created the circumstances for her to perform at her best.
The world needs people like Arianna to lead by example on how we can be hugely successful in this world and still have balance.
There are many more pearls of wisdom Arianna has to share, so I highly recommend you reading her book "Thrive" or catching her live while she is in Oz (Business chicks still have some seats at their event in Melbourne tomorrow, I believe).
