Global future is what we are going to build together. It's going to have our humanity at the center. Technology has led to some amazing, amazing progress in our lives. But we need to set boundaries to our addiction to technology. And make the humanity at the center. While augmented reality is amazing, augmented humanity is going to be even more important. And China has a lot to teach us here, a lot of ancient wisdom that we desperately need to build a global future.

Arianna Huffington is widely regarded as a superwoman who straddles tech, business, media and politics. She ran for Governor of California, she founded the Huffington Post, and now she's celebrating one year anniversary of Thrive Global, a health and wellness company. She stands at the forefront of societal transformation. This is Global Future with me, James Chau in New York – and here is Arianna Huffington.

JC = JAMES CHAU

AH = ARIANNA HUFFINGTON

JC: Let's begin with Thrive, which is, in a way born, from some of the struggles in your life, It seeks to help others achieve a balance in their lives, You turn to a lot of ancient Chinese wisdoms, The question that comes to me is why is that?

AH: So Thrive as you said James was born out of my own collapse in 2007 ten years ago, collapsed from exhaustion, sleep deprivation, burnout. And as I started redefining my life, I turned to a lot of Chinese wisdom because I feel that Chinese philosophy which is embodied in the concept of yin and yang. It's really what I needed, and what the modern world needs. If you think of it, yang is you go out, you achieve, you conquer. Yin is you come back, and refuel well. We've lost that rhythm, and the results are alarming. I mentioned my own personal experience, but literally hundreds of millions of people around the world are suffering from stress, burnout, mental health issues, disease that is stress-related and preventable. We need to recalibrate and re-find some of the wisdom in Chinese philosophy, which is also now validated by modern science. So this convergence of ancient wisdom and modern science that I wanted my new media platform to actually help bring to the world. And Chinese wisdom is one of the foundations.

JC: For you in your various roles as a mother, as a woman, as a person, what was that moment when you realized that my life has fallen apart?

AH: Well, the moment was a very dramatic moment because when I say I collapsed I literally collapsed and hit my head on my desk and broke my cheek bone. And as I came to a pool of blood nobody had shot me. I had no choice but asked myself the questions, how come that I got to that point. What I really discovered was that I really discovered that I, liked so many millions of others around the world, have been living under the delusion that in order to achieve and succeed we have to burnout, we have to be all our own, we have to not allow ourselves time to get recharge and refuel well. That, James, goes back to the first industrial revolution, when we became thrown out? by machines, and the goal with machines is to minimize down time. That was the same goal with software, but human operating system is different. In the human operating system, down time is not a bug, it is a feature. We needed in order to be able to tap into our own wisdom, strength and peace, and that's why now we need to rediscover.

JC: You were sitting at your home in New York not far away from where the Twin Towers came down not that long ago. When you think about of some of the modern challenges in our global society, be it terrorism, be it refugees, be it climate change. Is there anything that you would take from those teachings that you opened up with and say well maybe those can be reapplied today?

AH: Absolutely, because what we're missing is not IQ but wisdom, and especially among our leaders. You know that it was interesting that at a JP Morgan summit a few months ago, Jack Ma spoke about AI that we need to move beyond IQ and EQ to embrace AI. And AI is the love quotient. It's basically based on empathy and cooperation, and bringing people together. In order to tap into AI, in order to tap into wisdom, we need time to reconnect to ourselves. And a lot of tendencies in modern life are taking us away from ourselves, not just work and of course in China, as you know, "9-9-6", working from nine to nine, six days a week, makes it harder to refuel. But it works beyond work out, it's a growing addiction to technology that makes our force that makes us harder to reconnect to ourselves, which is the only place we can find wisdom. If you think of it, we're always exposed to challenges. We're always exposed, especially now as the pace of change has accelerated, to tough choices. The question is from which place I will going to make these decisions and applaud the challenges. There is a story from FDR. When FDR was President at a very difficult time in the world, when he had to make the decision to enter the second world war and support the allies but the American people were against that decision. So what he did was he literally took ten days off on the naval ship to think and reflect, and he came up with what has been regarded as the political masterpiece, the Lend-Lease Program that allowed America to enter the war with the support of American people. The fact that a leader recognizes they need to make time to reflect rather than to live in a perpetual state of fanatic, fighter flied stress existence. It's something which we need to recapture the amount of Chinese wisdom that we can tap into. 

JC: The media is very polarized, the global media in the way that I understand. And it subsequently reports the one point four billion people who live in China, their lives, their homes, their dreams. One side is not necessarily right or wrong, but with a media network like CGTN which you are speaking on now, how do you think its role can be better utilized and stretched out with that context in mind?

AH: Well, there's a lot that you've done through Travelogue, through many of the shows that humanize China and bring us the stories of the Chinese people. I would love to hear more from the Chinese people themselves. I would love to hear their stories, their struggles, and how they are solving their problems, and I have met for example many Chinese Muslim women who have chosen to change professions and become life cultures. I'd love to hear more about that, what made them do that, what is their response. And I read that one of the most popular holidays in China is now to go to meditation retreats. I'd love to know about that. And I'd love to know more about them, the monk who gives us life advice on WeChat. These are all sort of practices that we can now learn from and I'd love to see more of that on television.

JC: You shared these stories. You brought new light at the Harvard China Forum. But many years ago you told me to discharge, to put away the phone, to put them in a different room, to disconnect them from anywhere but close to the bed. I think you even tweeted that to me, and I have to confess with you that I had a very difficult time to do. Let me just say I haven't been able to do it at all. So…

AH: So, first of all, we all work in progress. And that's really another great lesson from Confucius. That's about creating rich wills, creating daily new habits. That's kind of for me one of the great Confucius teachings that the modern world needs. We call it "thrive micro steps". We change through micro steps. So instead of judging yourself James I would suggest that you make a little step of turning off your phone five minutes before you're going to turn off the light, and charging it outside your room. That is absolutely critical because if you think of it, your phone is the repository of every problem, every project, everything you're doing in your life. And in order to fully recharge, you need to disconnect from that. And all the modern sleep scientists and there're now tens of thousands of them are agreeing on this one topic. That time of sleep is the only time that our brain can get rid of the accumulated toxins of the day, and if we don't do that the toxins accumulated are causing performance declines and it also leads to many diseases including Alzheimer's.

JC: You not only understand China intrinsically but also where we are in the United States. You're a former, some would say, establishment Republican who is now becoming very much an activist Democrat. With that span of knowledge, how do you think that the US has reached the point, and which now it finds himself?

AH: So what is interesting is that when I was a Republican it was a very different party. You know, I was a pro-gay rights, pro-gun control Republican. They are becoming pretty extinct right now in the Republican Party. I feel that the most important thing for the States now is to look at the problems they're facing beyond left and right. The biggest problems we are facing, whether climate change, growing income inequalities, the growing drug addiction that is leading to so many untimely deaths, these are not problems of political party or political ideology behind them. These are problems that require all of us to come together to solve.

JC: I want to ask you another question connected to your advisory role. You were born in Greece, a country that is struggling economically today in a continent that is experiencing severe ruptures in its concept of identity and how one person relates even to the person in their own family. You meet leaders all the time, heads of state, heads of government, what do you suggest and advise to them, in terms of the clear way forward in the way that you've done with corporate governance?

AH: Leaders need to understand that there can be no stability when there is such huge income inequality. In Europe we saw that Brexit. It was definitely the result of people feeling out of control, and take back control was the big slogan. People feel out of control when they don't have the hope for the future. And when people don't have hope about the future, whether in Europe or here in the States, they turn on each other. They turn on outsiders. They turn on immigrants. I mean we've seen that throughout history. We are seeing it again. But many leaders are acting as though that has never happened before.

JC: So what's going happen? The action still doesn't count. Is it going to be more than just more than demonstrations in the city squares?

AH: Yes, and that's why it has to come. It's not a left right issue. Conservatives need to be particularly alarmed because the stability, which is a key conservative principle, cannot exist. Without people at the lower end of the economic spectrum having hope for the future, you know, the whole essence of the American dream is the expectation that your children will do better than you're doing and that life can be better no matter the circumstances of your birth. If that American dream is lost, and that Greek dream or French dream is lost, then the consequences can be horrendous.

JC: One area in which you increasingly being recognized is as a moderator of extremely complex situations. The example of Uber comes to my mind. You are a board member of the committee. You head that committee that want to seek a change. Uber is an example of being incredible sharing economy, and we all click on its logo today. Out of the very negative and sad stories coming out from Uber, do you think we are going to see a shift in the way that we interact with one and another, user, provider and everything in between?

AH: Well definitely. We're seeing a massive shift. I mean Uber became sort of a teachable moment. It's not so much about sharing economy. I think it's more about a culture of hyper growth, where top performers were allowed to misbehave, and that's why, because I was the only woman on the board, I took, you know, a more central role in the investigation, and one of the things that I promised when I spoke at the first on hand after Susan Faller's blog post exposed a lot of what was happening was no brilliant jerks allowed. You know, the fact you are brilliant, the fact that you are helping the company grow, is not the excuse for bad behavior and…

JC: What if you are brilliant…

AH: Well if you are brilliant and you're the boss, and you started the company, there are two things to remember. First of all, three quarters of startups fail. So there is a better way to build the startup than being a jerk, and being professionally sleep deprived and making bad decisions. So we need to kind of end this founder myth, founders are allowed to misbehave. 

JC: I have seen it myself you are a champion not only of women but also men. It's about gender equality, across genders. But I just want to refer back to that painting behind us which your daughter did and it says "the glass ceiling breaks; the glass ceiling holds". Has that glass ceiling ultimately progressed and experienced a shift?

AH: A lot of young women, of course, not just young women but, a lot of young women particularly, were incredibly sad and disappointed by the result of the election, especially because it was an opportunity to finally break that major glass ceiling. Yes I think many glass ceilings have been broken but many remain. And we haven't really moved the stats around equality in the workplace especially at the top fast enough. And I feel one of the reasons is that many work places are filled by burnout and women internalize stress differently as the men. So women who have stressful jobs have forty percent rate of risks of hearts disease, and a greater, a sixty percent greater, risk of diabetes. Many women end up leaving work places, and often not really returning full time, because the conditions at work are so difficult for them and the culture of burnout also brings out the worst among men, because when we are burned out we operate at our worst in every respect. We are more reactive. We're more irritable.

JC: Even you.

AH: Yes. I got upset very often that when I sleep deprived and exhausted, I don't like myself you know. I over-react to things. I'm not creative. I am not as able to deal with challenges. So for everything, including equality in the workplace, greater diversity, we need to change that culture of burnout.

JC: You mentioned the word, children. You have two highly accomplished daughters of your own. When you think about your children and what you seek to achieve for everybody's children, is there a singular life experience you find yourself returning to time and again?

AH: It's the experience my mother gave me. We were brought up, my sister and me, in a one bedroom apartment. We have no money, but my mother always made me feel that I was more than my circumstances. But equally important that she wouldn't love me any less if I failed. So I'd love to see children be given that unconditional love. And I think that is also very important in China when so many parents obviously put so much importance on their children's education. That's wonderful. My mother put a great amount of importance on my education, but it's also important for the children to know that they are loved if they don't do great with their exams. Because the stories that we hear about, you know, the stress the Chinese children go through in middle school and then in college and then taking exams and having ambulances outside schools where exams are taken because of the level of stress, that I believe also has to change. And that's not about not working hard. That's not about not wanting to achieve. It's also recognizing that we are more than our achievements. You know that who we are as human beings is profoundly sacred, and it is not just a reflection of how much we achieve or how much money we make, or how many people report to us.

JC: When I look at your face and hear you, I can see you almost a flicker through all these years, how you have been influencing people. You had a whole career in Britain before you came to the United States. You're always on television there. You've created new ways we communicate here and beyond the United States, and in that process you've become not only a defining figure of contemporary culture and serious history, but you've also become more simply more than your achievements, more than your circumstances. You've become a trusted figure who measures the polls, what's happening, what's going to happen next. This is all about global future. What do you predict for us watching this?

AH: So I'm actually optimistic that as we are shaping a global future, we're going to recognize that humanity has to be at the center. Technology is amazing. We celebrate it. We honor it. We use it, but it cannot be at the center of human existence. People talk a lot about augmented reality. I want to start talking more about augmented humanity. And I think that's where China has a huge role to play. China is a country very rich in resources but at this moment the most important resource that China can offer us is its wisdom, the wisdom of the past which is validated by the science of the present, and which will desperately we need in order to disrupt the way we work and live because the way we work and live at the moment is not sustainable. And if we don't change it, we are not going to be able to address all the growing challenges that we are facing.

JC: Arianna Huffington, thank you so much for having us at your home, thank you very much for sharing with what you have.

AH: Thank you, James.