Lessons from “Arnold”: The Mastery of Life Part 2

There was so much to learn from the Arnold documentary and this is why I had to split this post up into 2. One of the things that you notice about Arnold Schwartnegger is his intense drive and hunger. This is something I specifically look for when I am hiring or looking for in startup founders I invest in. No surprise that I tend to see this in immigrants or children of immigrants. It’s like that old saying: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

He shares the traits of everyone I know who has accomplished anything in life. He was literally never satisfied.

“Everytime I won anything. I say to myself ‘Okay, What’s the next thing.’ If you are always hungry you are never really satisfied. Because Reg Park of course won 3 Mr Universe contests. Arnold has to break that record. When people think “this is too much. For me, it was definitely not enough. And then I wanted more.”

He said: “My Mind is just geared differently. It’s geared to moving forward. What is the new thing? A new challenge. A new mountain to climb.”

It’s absolutely about a driving mission which crowds out all the useless distractions we humans find ourselves with in our brains.

Arnold says:

“I mean, I’m not an expert in psychology or anything like that. All I can tell you is that when you are a person that has always a goal, that always has a mission, the less the time that you have to think about ‘How do I feel today?’ ‘Am I depressed today?’ ‘Do I feel sorry for myself’ ‘Have I become a victim?’ ‘Oh my god I feel so bad about myself.’ and all this. I don’t have time for this crap. A lot of time, it’s people didn’t work enough. If you’re busy all the time, you don’t have time to think about this stuff. Let’s just move forward. Move. Move. Move. Move.”

He is not wrong. I find many of the issues that plague modern life. People have too much time on their hands whining about how their life sucks but not doing anything about it. Or distracting themselves through video games, porn or Netflix. Or worse through alcohol and drugs.

Another big lesson from Arnold, you have to sell everything! James Cameron said of him:

“He saw half the job was performing the film, half the job was promoting the film.”

Arnold goes on to say: “You have to be involved yourself. You have to go in there and just say ‘Here’s why you should see this movie.’ You have sell everything. No matter what you do in life. You have to sell it.”

Another reason for his success is his attitude to work. Work was not just work. Work was fun.

“You have to have fun. Fun and work. Work and fun. Most people don’t know that. They worry. And they work. And they worry and they work. Where’s the fun?”

This seems to have served him well as he has incredible mental acuity and looks pretty awesome at age 75.

“I think destiny is what we make of it. You have to have the vision, and then if you follow that, I think miracles can happen. So this is exactly what my life has been about. I saw the peak of bodybuilding. I climbed that peak. Then I saw the other peak. The leading man. The movie star.

And it reminds me of this famous mountain climber, Edmund Hillary, who was the first man to ever climb Mt. Everest. The press asked him ‘what were you thinking about when you looked around and you were up on this peak.’ He said ‘I all of a sudden saw another peak far away. And I started planning my route. How do I get up there to that peak?”

“Visions were so clear and were so targeted. It was like the rifle approach. The target is in front, and I was aiming for its bulls-eye. And you just have to really be careful of that, because you can get so obsessed that you start losing sight of everything else around it.”

He finishes the documentary saying: “I hope that when I am long gone, people say that he made a difference.” I think this is something that all of us aspire to as well.