Arianna Huffington’s Dramatic Lesson After ‘Coming to in a Pool of Blood and Realizing Nobody Had Shot Me’

By Catherine Clifford Jul 05, 2016

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Arianna Huffington was trying to be the perfect entrepreneur and perfect mother at the same time when she collapsed, “coming to in a pool of blood and realizing nobody had shot me,” she says.

At the same time that she was growing a fledgling media company, Huffington was working to honor her oldest daughter’s rule that her mother should stay disconnected from her devices — and her work — while they were touring colleges. Huffington, now 65, did just that, but she didn’t get away with it. In a dramatic wake-up call, Huffington lost consciousness and broke her cheekbone.

Related: Arianna Huffington: ‘Sleep Deprivation Is the New Smoking’

“Building the Huffington Post, I had bought into the mythology that everything was dependent on me — and that I had to do everything at the expense of sleep, health,” Huffington says during a video interview with Entrepreneur.

Huffington recently published a book about the importance of sleep, The Sleep Revolution (Harmony, April 2016). In addition, she is also the author of 15 books and is the 70th most powerful woman in the world, according to Forbes’s most recent ranking.

Related: Arianna Huffington: Talk to Your Children About Your Struggles. It Allows Them to Understand Failure as a Stepping Stone to Success.

To hear how Huffington learned from her scary experience and changed her life, watch the video embedded above.

Arianna Huffington was trying to be the perfect entrepreneur and perfect mother at the same time when she collapsed, “coming to in a pool of blood and realizing nobody had shot me,” she says.

At the same time that she was growing a fledgling media company, Huffington was working to honor her oldest daughter’s rule that her mother should stay disconnected from her devices — and her work — while they were touring colleges. Huffington, now 65, did just that, but she didn’t get away with it. In a dramatic wake-up call, Huffington lost consciousness and broke her cheekbone.

Related: Arianna Huffington: ‘Sleep Deprivation Is the New Smoking’

“Building the Huffington Post, I had bought into the mythology that everything was dependent on me — and that I had to do everything at the expense of sleep, health,” Huffington says during a video interview with Entrepreneur.

Huffington recently published a book about the importance of sleep, The Sleep Revolution (Harmony, April 2016). In addition, she is also the author of 15 books and is the 70th most powerful woman in the world, according to Forbes’s most recent ranking.

Related: Arianna Huffington: Talk to Your Children About Your Struggles. It Allows Them to Understand Failure as a Stepping Stone to Success.

To hear how Huffington learned from her scary experience and changed her life, watch the video embedded above.

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Catherine Clifford

Senior Entrepreneurship Writer at CNBC
Catherine Clifford is senior entrepreneurship writer at CNBC. She was formerly a senior writer at Entrepreneur.com, the small business reporter at CNNMoney and an assistant in the New York bureau for CNN. Clifford attended Columbia University where she earned a bachelor's degree. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. You can follow her on Twitter at @CatClifford.

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