Be Useful: Seven tools for life

by Arnold Schwarzenegger

We’re here now. The choices you make from here on out are what matters.

Going for a walk, going to the gym, reading, riding your bike, taking a Jacuzzi, I don’t care what you do. If you are stuck, if you are struggling to figure out a clear vision for the life you want, then all I care about is that you make little goals for yourself to start building momentum and that you create time and space every day to think, to daydream, to look around, to be present in the world, to let inspiration and ideas in. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, at least give it a chance to find you.

Let me tell you something: Nothing good has ever come from having a plan B. Nothing important or life-changing, anyway. Plan B is dangerous to every big dream. It is a plan for failure. If plan A is the road less traveled, if it’s you carving your own path toward the vision you’ve created for your life, then plan B is the path of least resistance. And once you know that path is there, once you’ve accepted that it’s an option, it becomes so, so easy to take it whenever things get difficult. Fuck plan B! The second you create a backup plan, not only are you giving a voice to all the naysayers, but you are shrinking your own dream by acknowledging the validity of their doubts. Worse, you become your own naysayer. There are enough of them out there already; you don’t need to add to their ranks.

It’s no harder to think big than it is to think small. The only hard part is giving yourself permission to think that way. Well, I don’t just give you permission, I demand it of you, because when you’re thinking about your goals and crafting that vision for your life, you have to remember that it’s not just about you. You could have a huge impact on the people around you. While you are breaking new ground in your own life, you could be blazing trails for people you didn’t even know were watching. How big you dream, whether you give it your all, or whether you give in at the first sign of trouble—these things matter. They matter for your own happiness and success, obviously. But they also matter because it could make a real difference in the world, far beyond what you can directly impact yourself.

From my earliest bodybuilding days, putting in the work has always meant repetitions. Not just doing reps, but tracking them. At the local weight-lifting club in Graz, I’d write my entire workout on the chalkboard, down to the number of sets and number of reps, and I wouldn’t let myself leave until I’d marked them all off. When I prepared for movies years later, I kept track of the number of times I read the entire script by making tally marks on the front cover, and I didn’t stop reading until I’d memorized every scene.

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.

The key is, they have to be good reps. Not lazy, distracted, arched-back, noodle-arm, bullshit reps. You have to use proper form. You have to complete the entire exercise. You have to give maximum effort. Remember, wenn schon, denn schon! It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about a dead lift, a press conference, or a run-through of an entire speech. You need to be all there, all in, every time.

Pain isn’t just an indicator of sacrifice, though, it’s also a measure of growth potential. In the gym, if an exercise doesn’t start to hurt, then I know I haven’t done enough to unleash the growth potential of the muscle I’m targeting. Reps build strength, but pain builds size. That’s why I wanted the pain.

I’m not the first person to realize this about pain. Not by a long shot. Muhammad Ali famously said that he didn’t start counting his sit-ups until they hurt. “They’re the only ones that count,” he said. “That’s what makes you a champion.” Bob Dylan said there’s pain behind every beautiful creation.

Except you can’t just expect that other people are going to do what you think they’re going to do or what they say they’re going to do. Especially at the moment of truth, whether that’s the cusp of success or the brink of disaster. (Making your dream come true often requires the same effort as preventing a nightmare scenario from occurring.) Shit happens. Signals get crossed. People are lazy. Some people are just plain stupid. If you have a job to do or a goal you’re trying to achieve, or you’ve made a commitment to protect something or someone, and it’s important to you that everything happens the way it’s supposed to, it’s up to you to follow through all the way.

This is how you follow up. This is how you follow through. It’s about leaving no stone unturned. It’s about dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s. It’s about closing the loop and circling back. I don’t even want to think about what might have happened to some of those nursing home residents if we’d done even 1 percent less than we did. And yet so many people are content to depend entirely on plans and systems, or to do the bare minimum asked of them, and then think to themselves, This is all set, I took care of it. No. Don’t be a lazy fuck. Do the work. The only time you are allowed to use the phrase “I took care of it” is when it is done. Completely.

Ironically, follow-through is usually the easiest part of the work, at least in terms of energy and resources; yet it’s almost always the thing that we either take for granted or let slip through the cracks. We say, “I want to do this great, fantastic thing,” then we get the ball rolling, and we just expect it to keep rolling, simply because we want it to. As if hope and good intentions are worth anything.

It seems like a small thing in isolation, but a lack of follow-through at any moment can cause you to lose a match or lose potential gains, just like it can cause you to lose out in life. It’s an indication that you’re not committing fully, that you’re not going all out, that you’re just going through the motions. This is a much bigger problem than you think it is, because if you accept a poorly executed shot attempt or a half-assed lat workout from yourself as good enough, then you’re more likely to accept half-assed versions of other, more important things from yourself.

actually think it was the American country singer and sausage maker Jimmy Dean who nailed it. He said, “Do what you say you’re going to do, and try to do it a little better than you said you would.” Follow up and follow through, fully. 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. Unlike the vast majority of people who say they’re motivated to do something important or to make a difference, it will show that you’re serious about doing the work to make your vision real.

You have to communicate and promote so that people know it exists. So they know what it’s all about and why they should care. In other words, you need to sell it. That’s our job, I told the guys, to articulate what bodybuilding is to the public. Newspapers, TV shows, journalists? They shouldn’t be our enemy, they should be our partners. They need stories to fill up their pages and their air time just as much as we need to get our story out there.

For some, publicly committing to their vision is essential, because they get caught up in planning instead of executing. Dreaming is always easier than doing. Publicly committing to a big goal is a great way to get moving. It is also a critical step for the many of us who need people to know about our dreams in order for those dreams to reach their full potential.

They do this all the time in political campaign rallies. It’s not “Please welcome to the stage, the man who will be the next governor of California …” It’s always “Please welcome to the stage, the next governor of California …” Saying things this way is very powerful for two reasons: First, it presents your vision to the world as if it were real, which puts you in the position of having to work hard right now to make it true. Second, in cases where you need other people to believe in your vision for it to reach the highest heights, making it sound like it’s already gotten there is the ultimate marketing.

There is a motivational saying I love: “See it. Believe it. Achieve it.” But I think it’s missing a step in between: Explain it. Before you can achieve your goals, I think you need to express them. Share them. I think you need to admit to yourself, and communicate to others, that this thing that started in your mind as a little idea has exploded into a massive dream with huge potential to benefit your life and theirs.

Do not let your ego win. Don’t correct them. If you can stay focused on winning and on achieving your goals, you can use their doubts and underestimation against them to effortlessly bridge the conversation, or the interview, or the negotiation to whatever you want to talk about.

You don’t owe them anything. You definitely don’t owe them the answer they think they deserve. This is your time as much as it is theirs. This is your opportunity to tell your story and sell your vision as much as it is their opportunity to craft whatever narrative interests them. So take that time and opportunity to bridge the conversation from what they want to hear to what you need to say in order to achieve your goals. The way you do this, Jim taught me, is to listen to the question being asked and then to start your response by accepting the premise of the question in order to establish common ground with your questioner. Once you’ve made them feel a little more comfortable by doing that, then you immediately pivot to reframe the question and say whatever you want. Here, I’ll show you. “Arnold, you’ve never run for office before at any level. What makes you think you’re equipped to run the biggest state in the country?” “That’s a great question, but you know a better question is how can the greatest state in the country afford to continue down this road with the same kind of politicians who got us into this mess in the first place?”

Media outlets across the country wrote stories after the election about my meteoric ascent. Except I hadn’t ascended anywhere. I’d done hours of prep, I’d rehearsed the jokes I peppered in, I went over and over my talking points until I knew them cold, I had my arms fully around all the policies I felt were most important for the future of California. In short, I was right where I had always been. It was everybody else who finally got on my level by recognizing what they had been underestimating the whole time.

And you know what the key was to selling that infrastructure package to the people? Having learned my lesson from 2005, I rarely ever used technical words like “infrastructure” by themselves. Instead I talked about needing to fix our old roads and build new ones so parents wouldn’t be stuck in traffic for so long and miss their kids’ soccer practices so often. I talked about fixing bridges and railroad lines so that people could buy the things they needed when they needed them. The faster we moved people and goods around, I told California voters, the more that increased our economic power. I stopped talking about the corruption and inequities of our state’s redistricting policies, and instead explained to voters that I wanted to take the power away from the politicians and give it to the people. I told my story using language that actually connected to the lives of the people who I was trying to sell. Then, in June 2006, I was reelected governor with an even greater share of the vote (55.9 percent) and even more total votes (4.85 million) than in 2003.

They were typical political analysis and commentary. Because I had made a choice, just as you have a choice, to own my story, to write it myself, in my own words. In those first two days after the special election, the analysts who were predicting my downfall considered it unthinkable that the Democratic-controlled legislature would even entertain working with what everyone assumed was now a lame-duck Republican governor. That I would be reelected in a landslide less than eight months later … that probably sounded like the plot of a science-fiction movie. It turned out to be a true story.

It might sound scary right now, but you can do it, I promise you. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve met a lot of happy, successful people from all over the world. Famous people. Powerful people. Interesting, creative people. Normal, good, hardworking people. What they all have in common is that they never let anyone else write their stories. They know how to sell their vision better than anyone, and they walk peacefully through the world confident in that knowledge.

owe a lot to my upbringing. I was made for it and made by it. I wouldn’t be who I am today without each one of those experiences. The Stoics have a term for this: amor fati. Love of fate. “Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to,” the great Stoic philosopher and former slave Epictetus said. “Rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens. Then you will be happy.”

Anytime I find myself in a shitty situation and I feel that urge to bitch and moan rising up within me, I stop, take a breath, and tell myself that it’s time to switch gears. I will actually talk to myself out loud and remind myself to look for the positive in my situation.

Had I ignored the lessons from 2005, had I chosen to whine about the outcome of the special election, had I vilified my opponents instead of defying political convention and taking responsibility for my policy failures, there’s very little chance that any of this stuff gets done and there’s no chance in hell that I get reelected a year later. It’s not an exaggeration to say that these successes I was fortunate enough to enjoy were the direct result of learning from failure.

As a bodybuilder, I did two full workouts a day, not one like everybody else. As an actor, I didn’t do bit parts in TV shows or films, like producers said I should; I went after starring roles only. As a politician, I didn’t run for city council or mayor or state senator, like the party bosses and the kingmakers said I had to; I went right after the governorship.

Not someday, not eventually, but as soon as I possibly could. There was no room in my plan for paying dues or climbing some invisible ladder or waiting for permission. That didn’t sit very well with the gatekeepers, power brokers, and status quo minders who I came up against in each of these phases of my life.

Is there a risk in taking that kind of approach to achieving your ultimate vision? Possibly. But this is your life and these are your dreams we’re talking about, not theirs. I would argue that doing whatever you need to do to make your dreams a reality and to create the life you want for yourself is worth the risk.

You might argue there was my reputation that I could have lost if any of those things I pursued had gone horribly wrong. But that assumes I cared what anyone thought about the goals I wanted to achieve with my life. It assumes that I wanted or needed the approval of some group of people to go after my dreams. The only approval I ever sought was from the judges at bodybuilding competitions, moviegoers at the box office, and voters at the ballot box. And if I didn’t get it, if I lost or failed, I didn’t complain. Instead, I used it as a learning experience. I went back to the gym or to the drawing board or to the briefing books, and I did the work to get better and smarter and to come back stronger the next time.

My questions served multiple purposes. The answers, if they made sense to me, would alleviate any of my doubts or concerns. By being curious, like we just talked about, I showed humility and made myself an ally to Vince, which made it more likely that he might share other valuable training techniques. But most important of all, asking good “how” and “why” questions about something you’re interested in increases the chances of that information sticking in your brain and connecting with other related bits of information—making all of it more useful to you when it’s time for you to put it all to work in service of others.

When you listen and learn and approach a problem with genuine concern. When you hold nothing back and give everything you have to make your corner of the world a better place. Curiosity. Hunger for information. Being open-minded. Putting your knowledge to good use. This, it turns out, is a formula for anyone to create real, meaningful change in the world, whether it’s personal, professional, or political. It’s also how you create change in your circumstances and make space for a vision to grow and evolve, which is essential, since I know that you want to grow and evolve too.

Immediately, I wanted to do more of it. If you were in my shoes, you probably would have felt that way too. But don’t take my word for it. Look at the science. In multiple studies over the last forty years, psychologists and neuroscientists have learned that giving back, whether through charitable donations or volunteering, releases oxytocin and endorphins. These are the same hormones your brain produces during sex and working out.