Be Useful
From the book "Be Useful" by Arnold Schwarzenegger
Have a clear vision
[Growing up] was complicated. I'm sure your story is complicated too. I bet growing up was more difficult than the people around you think it was. We can't change those stories, but we can choose where we go from here.
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That is what a clear vision gives you: a way to decipher whether a decision is good or bad for you, based on whether it gets you closer or further away from where you want your life to go.
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The only difference betwen [the most successful people] and us... between any two people, is the clarity of the picture we have for our future [and] the strength of our plan to get there.
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How do we create a clear vision from scratch?...You can start small and build out until a big, clear picture reveals itself to you. Or you can start broad and then, like the lens on a camera, zoom in until a clearn picture snaps into focus.
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When I go to the gym these days, for example, I will sometimes see a person wandering around, bouncing randomly from machine to machine like a Ping-Pong ball, and it's clear they have no plan at all for their workout... "What's your goal of coming into the gym?" I'll ask them... Zooming in like that gives their vision some specific direction, which will help them focus on the exercises that are best for achieving that goal.
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For a lot of people, finding that kind of vision is a long-term discovery process that takes years, if not decades. Some never get there. They live with no vision. Not even memories of an early obsession when they were young that could become a vision now as an adult.
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First, create little goals for yourself. Don't worry about the big, broad stuff for now. Focus on making improvements and banking achievements one day at a time. They can be exercise goals, nutrition goals. They can be about networking or reading or getting your house organized. Starting doing things you like to do or that make you proud of yourself for having completed them.
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I'm not saying that if you just visualize what you want, then it will come true. Hell no. You have to plan and work and learn and fail and then learn and work and fail some more. That's just life. Those are the rules... What I am saying is taht if you want your vision to stick, if you want to increase the chance of success looking exactly like you hoped it would when you first figured out what you wanted your life to look like, then you need to get crystal clear on that vision and tattoo it to the inside of your eyelids. You need to SEE IT.
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As important as it is to know what success looks like, it's equally important to know what it doesn't look like. There are a lot of things you can end up settling for in this world that will get you a knockoff version of your goals, but that ultimately knock you off course. If the mental picture you have of your life is even a little bit blurry. Knowing what is and isn't success brings crystal clarity to your vision. And with that clarity, I have found, comes a sense of calm, because almost every question becomes easier to answer.
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If you can't fully see your vision- if you can't picture what success is and what it isn't- it becomes very hard to assess opportunities and challenges like [Arnold S's Jack Lalane spokesman opportunity]. It becomes next to impossible to know for certainf if they'll get you what you want or something close, and if 'close' is good enough for you.
Never think small
Naysayers are a fact of life...It's ot that they're badk people. They're just not very useful to someone like you. They're scared of the unfamiliar and the unknown. They're afraid of taking risks and putting themselves out there.
They've never had the courage to do what you're trying to do. They've never crafted a huge vision for the life they want and then put a plan together to make it a reality. They've never gone all in on anything. Because if they had, they would never tell you to give up or that it can't be done... When it comes to you and your dreams, the naysayers have no idea what they're talking about. And if they haven't done of the the things that you're trying to do, the queston you need to ask yourself is- Why should I ever listen to them? The answer is, you shouldn't. You should ignore them. Or better yet, hear what they have to say and use it as motivation.
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Watching someone with a crazy goal give it everything they've got and then succeed is so powerful. It's like magic, because it unlocks potential we didn't even know we had. It shows us what is possible if we put our mind to something and then back that up with effort.
Work your ass off
If there is one unavoidable truth in this world, it's that there is no substitute for putting in the work. There is no shortcut or growth hack or magic pill that can get you around the hard work of doing your job well, of winning something you care about, or of making your dreams come true. People have tried to cut corners and skip steps in this process for as long as hard work has been hard. Eventually, those people either fall behind or get left in our dust, because working your ass off is the only thing that works 100 percent of the time for 100 percent of the things worth achieving.
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Work works. That's the bottom line. No matter what you do. No matter who you are. My entire life has been shaped by that single idea.
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Putting in the work has always meant repetitions. Not just doing reps, but tracking them...As governor, I'd do the same thing on the front page of my speech drafts. I knew once I got to ten reps I could do a decent job delivering the speech, but twenty reps meant I could knock it out of the park. The words would feel more natural, like I was speaking off the cuff and from the heart. The more I practiced the speech, the more of myself would be present in the room, and the more likely it would be that the people in the audience felt connected to me and the ideas I was sharing with them.
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The whole point of doing lots of reps is to give you a base that makes you stronger and more resistant to silly, unfortunate mistakes. The goal is to increase the load you're able to handle so that when it's time to do the work that matters- the stuff that people see and remember- you don't have to think about whether you can do it. You just do it.
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Get out of your comfort zone. Embrace the suck. Lean into the pain. Do something every day that scares you.
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Nothing builds character like resilience or perserance through pain. That being siad, enduring pain for no reason is stupid. Now that is masochism. But we're talking about productive pain. The kind that produces growth, that builds a base and builds character, that gets you closer to achieving your vision.
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The great Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami once wrote, 'I can bear any pain pain as long as it has meaning.' I've learned over the years that this is true- pain only needs to have meaning to you for it to be bearable.
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Follow up and follow through, full. Do just those two things, which I know you can do if your vision means enough to you, and it will set you apart from the pack. (this sounds like 'Under-promise, over-deliver'.)
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Do you know how many times people tell me they don't have time to work out, and then I ask them to take out their phones and show me their screen time stats and it says they spent three and a half hours on social media? It's not hours in the day you lack, it's a vision for your life that makes time irrelevant.
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The only way to achieve the kind of sustainable, life-changing success that I wanted was to do the hard, incremental work day in and day out. I had to focus on doing the reps and executing well. I had to listen to the pain and build on the growth that would eventually come. I had to follow through, every day, on the pain I'd created in pursuit of my larger vision.
Sell, sell, sell
A good salesman knows that they key to making a sale and creating a customer for life ist o give the customer more than they expected and leave them feeling like they're always getting the better end of the deal. When it's you that you're selling, the best way to exceed expectations every time is to keep those expectations low for as long as possible. Or maybe a better way to put it is that you shouldn't be afraid to let your customer hold on to their low expectations, because then it's that much easier for you to blow them away and sell them on what you have to offer.
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Nothing sells better than a true story from a genuine person. Especially when the story is about that person. This doesn't just relate to getting elected or getting featured in a magazine... In every case, no matter what your dream is, you are selling yourself, and you're selling the story of the life you're trying to create for yourself. Either you fill that bucket openly and honestly in your own words or someone else does it for you and reaps the rewards at your expense.
Shift gears
People come up to me all the time and say, "Arnold, I didn't hit the goal I set for myself, what should I do?" Or they say, "Arnold, I asked out my crush and they said no." Or "I failed this week to get the promotion I wanted, what do I do now?"
My answer to them is simple: Learn from your mistakes and then say: "I'll be back."
Let me be very clear about something. And this is for anyone out there who has ever experienced failure, which is every single one of us: failure is not fatal. I know, I know, that's such a cliche. But all positive talk about failure has become a cliche at this point, because we all know it's the truth. Everyone who has accomplished something they're proud of, who we admire as a society, will tell you that they learned more from their failrues than from their successes. They will tell you that failure isn't the end. And they're right.