Fearless and Fabulous
Blogger, Author and Activist Arianna Huffington on Mommy Fears and Squelching Her Inner Critic

By Jill Hudson Neal
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, December 5, 2006 3:43 PM

Arianna Huffington is a nationally syndicated columnist, best-selling author and now successful blogger, whose huffingtonpost.com Web site has become a go-to site for political opinion and social commentary. Born in Greece and educated at Cambridge University, Huffington gained prominence in the mid-1990s as a conservative pundit, but morphed slowly into an outspoken liberal critic and activist, promoting causes such as opposition to SUVs, the Iraq war, and, well, all things George W. Bush.

Her many critics deride her as a camera-hogging, issue-of-the-moment lightweight. But her supporters say she is a brilliant and principled thinker, debater and polemicist. Earlier this year, Time magazine named her as one of the most influential people in the world. Through it all -- the books, the causes, the television appearances and a lucrative, high-profile divorce from oil heir and failed senatorial candidate Michael Huffington -- she's managed to raise her two daughters and her political profile while juggling a very busy life. Her latest book, "On Being Fearless: Love, Work and Life" takes a clear-eyed look at how leading a fearless life can lead to success and happiness. At age 56, Huffington remains as ambitious and savvy as ever -- a modern working mother who practices what she preaches.

What is it about motherhood that inspires so much fear?

Everything! I'm kidding, but not really. All of my biggest fears revolve around my children -- fear for their well-being, fear that I might be doing the wrong thing or making the wrong decision. There is nothing like becoming a mom to fill you with fear. I often think that when the doctors help take the baby out, they replace it with a combination of fear and guilt. There's no love more intense than the love we have for our kids -- and where there is intense love, there is also intense fear lurking beneath the surface. I'm making motherhood sound so appealing, aren't I?

But, in fact, there is nothing that can bring you closer to fearlessness about everything else in the world than being a parent -- because everyday fears -- like not being approved of -- pale by comparison to the fears you have about your children.

How does the Supermom myth instill such fear in so many women? Intellectually, most mothers know they can't do it all, but the tendency is there to want to attain perfection. And why is it important to purge the guilt that comes with being a mom?

Well, if you don't get rid of the guilt you'll never be fully present for your kids. You'll spend so much time handwringing and obsessing about your own issues that you won't be able to help your children deal with theirs. It's a lose-lose.

Trying to be Supermom is as futile as trying to be Perfect Mom. Not going to happen. But that doesn't stop us from feeling we should be, just like our intellectual knowledge that the beauty myth is a crippling one doesn't stop us from looking in the mirror and comparing ourselves to Angelina Jolie. And, of course, that creates fear -- the fear of not being good enough.

And it doesn't help that our culture reinforces the Supermom concept by putting so many expectations on us as women and mothers. I think many of our motherhood-related fears stem from a desire to control the outside world. All too often, we take it upon ourselves to try to be everything to our children that society refuses to be -- not just nurturers, but educators, media critics, protectors, spiritual guides, etc.

The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless is mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly -- indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection. We need to accept that we won't always make the right decisions, that we'll screw up royally sometimes -- understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of success.

We also have to realize that we can't mother alone, that we need the support of what I call our "fearless tribe" -- those friends and family members we surround ourselves with, who are there to help us through the hard times, and to share in the good times.

What do you think are the top three fears every mother faces? Are those fears different for stay-at-home moms and working mothers?

Let's start with the main difference: I think while all mothers deal with feelings of guilt, working mothers are plagued by guilt on steroids! No matter how many times I tell myself that I am what I am -- and that I cannot imagine myself not working (it's such a big part of who I am), the truth is I will always keep comparing myself to my own phenomenal stay-at-home mom, for whom the universe began and ended with her children. She was the ultimate nurturer -- and she set the good mother bar very high indeed.

But I think all mothers share a number of fears -- the main one being the fear that something bad is going to happen to our kids. We're constantly asking ourselves: are our children going to be safe in a world where we are constantly bombarded with stories of kidnappings, Internet predators, drug overdoses, and women starving themselves to meet an increasingly unrealistic idea of beauty.

How can mothers move past the fear of what others think of them or their "job" performance as a parent?

As much as we are sometimes limited by our fear of what others will think of us -- and our fear of being judged for the "job" we are doing as parents -- I actually think the bigger problem is the way we constantly judge ourselves. In the book, I talk about how if we could TiVo our innermost thoughts we would see that not even our worst enemies talk about us the way we talk about ourselves. We are bedeviled by this inner critic -- what I call the obnoxious roommate in our head. We've got to give this critical roomie an eviction notice. And if they refuse to leave, we've got to walk into another room -- or slip on an iPod and turn up the volume.

You have to train yourself to stand up to her. And you do this by repetition. The more we refuse to buy into our inner critics -- and our external ones too -- the easier it will get to have confidence in our choices, and to feel comfortable with who we are -- as women and as mothers.

A lot of women reading this will think, "Well, Arianna can afford to be fearless because she's rich and has the necessary financial parachute to take big chances."

There have certainly been times in my life when I didn't have money. When I chose to write my second book, I chose to go get an overdraft as they call it in England -- a loan, basically -- from Barclay's Bank to subsidize my dream of writing about the things I wanted to write about, like leadership and politics. I wasn't without fear then -- I want to stress that. But you have to do what you dream of doing even while you're afraid. And that book was not a success, by the way. It was rejected by 36 publishers before it was finally published. But it set me on the path of what I wanted to be doing. That's one of the messages I try to give to my kids: any interest in life includes failures along the way.

You call your mother your fearlessness role model.

She left my father who was a major philanderer even though she had no money, job or formal education. She made ends meet and we lived in a one-room apartment, but she felt that she did not allow herself to be in a humiliating situation that would have brought her a lot of pain. Some of the decisions that we take that are fearless involve work and money, but some of them involve relationships. We have to confront those fears that aren't tangible: being alone or not being pretty enough, for example.

Do you think of yourself as a cool mom, or do you even concern yourself with such things?

My daughters are 15 and 17, and they're a tough crowd. I find that coolness can be bestowed on you and then withdrawn. For example, I was on a morning show a while ago and I happened to be in the green room with the Black Eyed Peas. When I came back with backstage passes for them to the concert and pictures of me with them, I was momentarily very cool. It depends on what kind of perks you can get. I do ask them for fashion advice. Once I was getting ready to leave for a dinner and my youngest daughter did a universal intercom throughout the entire house saying, "Fashion emergency! Fashion emergency! Do NOT let her leave the house!"

How did you develop your famously tenacious drive?

It's like finding the way to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice. Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me. The first time we take that first fearless step, we begin to change our lives. And the more we act on our dreams and our desires, the more fearless we become and the easier it is the next time.

Being fearless has been the foundation of any success I have enjoyed -- both personally and professionally. It's what's allowed me to persevere through the hard times -- and there have been plenty of those -- and come out on the other side stronger and ready for the next challenge

I started sticking my neck out with my first book, which was published when I was 23, and it was really hard to take the criticism that followed. But as I continued taking risks, it got progressively easier. By the time I launched the Huffington Post, the naysayers and doubters were just a small blip on the radar that didn't in any way affect my decisions. For me, the key is in remembering that fearlessness is not the absence of fear, it's the mastery of fear. Fearlessness is about getting up one more time than we fall down -- or are tripped by our critics!