In the “What I’ve Learned” podcast, Arianna Huffington sits down with people she loves and admires, in fields from music and technology to sports and business, to explore the lessons they’ve learned over the extraordinary past year about themselves, their lives, and what they truly value.
This week, Bozoma Saint John, the Global Chief Marketing Officer at Netflix, joins Arianna to share what she’s learned about the value of going deeper, how her relationship with her daughter has changed, and her newfound love of being alone.
On what living life urgently means now:
“My mantra is to live life urgently. But 2020 shook me up and challenged me to change the way I think about living urgently. I was constantly getting on and off planes and interacting with new people all the time. It began to feel like urgency meant how quickly I could move through life. And then, boom! I was forced to be at home and re-evaluate how to live life urgently without moving at all. Now urgency is no longer about moving fast, but about intention and living every day with that purpose in mind. And the way I do it is by going deeper, by going further in.”
On spending more time with her daughter:
“Before, I thought productivity meant having a lot of things going on. But now it’s a different type of productivity. One that has nothing to do with where I am in the world, or how many places I’m in during the week. I’ve been able to spend more time with my daughter Lael, who’s 11. So after a year of being at home together consistently, our relationship is different. It’s not about how much I love her or how much she loves me. That hasn’t changed. We’ve always loved each other in absence. But what has changed is that there’s no rush in the way we love each other.”
On the reaction to the protests over racial injustice:
“I was surprised by the wakefulness people showed. Obviously, we all know we have a lot more work to do, but I’m seeing a lot of people willing to look at themselves and instead of seeing privilege as an insult, they’re acknowledging it and saying, ‘OK, I have some power and privilege here. What can I do with it?’”
To hear more from Boz, listen to this full episode of “What I’ve Learned,” available wherever you get your podcasts.