THE THIRD METRIC
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ewlyweds Meghan
Telpner and Josh Gitalis’ professional lives are
the stuff of overworked
urbanite fantasies. Both
are self-employed —
Josh, 31, as a nutritionist, Meghan, 33, teaching online
cooking courses. Their daily routine
involves meditating together in the
morning and evening trips to the
farmers market, with lots of yoga
and bike riding in between. They
fell in love in part because each prioritizes healthy living, which Josh
describes as “almost a religion.”
Meghan and Josh, and other
like-minded couples profiled in The
Huffington Post, have intentionally
reshaped their lives to be, as one
couple puts it, “a little bit simpler.”
They value exercise and recreation
as much as work. They reject corporate ladder-climbing and the miserable home life that can be its byproduct. They simultaneously want
less and so much more.
This new approach to work and
life was the focus of a conference
hosted by Huffington Post President
and CEO Arianna Huffington and
Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski in June 2013 called “The Third
Metric: Redefining Success Beyond
Money & Power.” “Society’s defini-
HUFFINGTON
08.18.13
tion of success [is] not working for
anyone,” Huffington said recently.
“It’s not working for women, it’s
not working for men ... It’s only
truly working for those who make
pharmaceuticals for stress, diabetes, heart disease, sleeplessness and
high blood pressure.”
Instead, Huffington argued, we
should measure success in terms of
a third metric: well-being.
The couples you’ll meet below
are taking a Third Metric approach
not just to their lives, but also to
In a 2007 study, 662
divorced individuals...
“considered the accumulation
of everyday stresses as a
central trigger for divorce.”
their marriages. Given the fact that
50 percent of first marriages fail,
it’s not a bad strategy. In a 2007
study, 662 divorced individuals
didn’t cite general stress as a cause
of their split, but a majority of them
“considered the accumulation of
everyday stresses as a central trigger for divorce.”
In an era when it is often financially necessary for men and
women to “lean in,” marriages like
Meghan and Josh’s seem almost
transgressive. However, data from