Like most people, I assumed for a long time that Arnold Schwarzenegger was just a dumb gorilla whose success and fame was mainly due to luck, being at the right place at the right time and marketing devices by people surrounding him. 

I couldn’t be more wrong.

The truth is that you don’t make it out of post-war Austria and build a successful career in culturism and cinema and eventually politics without a strong sense of purpose and an iron discipline. 

So I started to read his autobiography Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story and everything was confirmed.

Did you know for example that Schwarzie was born in the little village of Thal and his parents house didn’t have running water? 

There was no plumbing, no shower, and no flushing toilet, just a kind of champer pot. The nearest well was almost a quarter mile away, and even when it was raining hard or snowing, one of us had to go. So we used as little water as we could.

This sounds completely different from how most millionaires grow up nowadays. But Schwarzie all along his biography takes good care not to pass himself for what he is not. He is not a self-made man because he was constantly well surrounded by his parents, teachers, friends, colleagues and family and he constantly listened to their advice. 

So, here are a few life lessons from Schwarzie’s life. Of course, they are nothing ground-breaking. You have listened to that before. However, they are worth remembering and highlighting with the experience of a guy who really MADE IT!

Turning obstacles around to fit your life goals.

As any young Austrian growing in the fatherland, Arnold was supposed to do his military service. By this time, young Arnold already knew what was his goal: become Mr Universe, get to America, and eventually make it big in Hollywood. Of course, the military universe could have been a blow to his plan but he made sure to fit it in his plan.

I was looking for a way to fit the army into my life goals. I realized that the logical thing for the army to do with somebody my size would be to put me in the infantry and have me carry machine guns and ammunition up mountains. But the infantry was based in Salzburg and this was not consistent with my plan. I wanted to stay in Graz and continue with my training. My mission was to become the world champion in bodybuilding, not to fight wars.

So, young Arnold maneuvers to enter the armored infantry and becomes a tank driver in the Austrian driver. This way, he can stay in Graz and keep training in order to become the strongest man in the world. The lesson is pretty obvious: whenever there seems to be an obstacle on your way, see how you can turn it into an advantage for your life goals, or at least don’t let it have a negative impact on them

Lean from everything around you

In the army, young Arnold makes the most of his experience:

I’d learned a thousand little things in the course of nine months: from washing and mending shirts to frying eggs on the exhaust shield of tank. I’d slept in the open, guarded barracks for nights on end, and found out that nights without sleep don’t mean you can’t perform at a high level the next day and that days without food don’t mean you’ll starve. These were things I’d never seen before. 

Always make sure to extract as much knowledge as possible for any experience. You never know when it can become useful again. Don’t underestimate your experience. There is something to be learned from everything.

Obedience is not slavery

I aimed to be a leader someday, but I knew it was important to learn obedience as well. As Windston Churchill said, the Germans were the best at being at your throat or at your feet [...]. If you let your ego show through, they’d put you in your place. Age eighteen or nineteen is when the mind is ready to absorb this lesson; if you wait till thirty, it’s too late. The more the army confronted us with hardship, the more I felt like “Okay, it’s not going to worry me, bring it on.” 

Being obedient is a skill and requires discipline, and does not mean that you are inferior or that you consider yourself inferior. There is pride in having things done the correct way and to follow protocols with discipline and by the book. This is about recognizing your place in the order of things. An order which you can start understanding and climbing.

Go for the Win

After his discharge from the army, young Arnold gets to Munich where he is offered a job in a gym which enables him to make ends meet and to keep training. Later on, he submits for the Mr Universe contest in London and achieves the second place! However, this “victory” leaves him a bad taste:

I was ecstatic being the runner-up; I felt like I’d won. [...] The giddiness only lasted until I had time to think. [...] What if I had gone to London intending to win? Would I have prepared better? Would I have performed better? Would have I won and now be Mr Universe? Instead, I’d underestimated my chances. It really taught me a lesson. After that, I never went to a competition to compete. I went to win. Even though I didn’t win every time, that was my mind-set. I became a total animal.

Even if it’s normal and logical to go one step at a time to achieve your goal, never underestimate you. You must think from the beginning about what you want to achieve and never sell you lower than the goal you have fixed yourself. Don’t settle for second place!

Never forget the audience

Coming back to London after this show, young Arnold is taken care of by a couple of English people who try to help him achieve his potential and feed him culture and manners. Young Arnold is a brute diamond and they make sure to refine him as much as possible.

One of the few times [Dianne] ever got mad at me was when she saw me shove my way through a crowd of fans after a competition. The thought in my head was “I won. Now i’m going to party.” But Dianne grabbed me and said, “Arnold, you don’t do that. These are people who have come to see you. They spent their money, and some of them traveled a long way. You can take a few minutes and give them your autograph.” That scolding changed my life. I’d never thought about the fans, only about my competitors. But from then on, I always made time for the fans.

                                                                            

Shake up the rules

In Munich, young Arnold keeps training as hard as ever and even finds a new technic to get his muscles to grow bigger. The idea is to break the rules and don’t let them too comfortable with the same exercise.

It always seemed to me that the biggest obstacle to a successful training is that the body adjusts so quickly. Do the same sequence of lifts every day, and [...] the muscles become very efficient at performing the sequence they expect. The way to wake up the muscle and make it grow again is to jolt it with the message “You will never know what’s coming. It will always be different from what you expect. Today it’s this, tomorrow it’s something else.” 

So, young Arnold devises an exercise where the sequence is reverted. Instead of followed a sequence of weight starting from the lighter weight to the heavier…

And so on, all the way down the rack. By the time I reached the 40s, my shoulders would be on fire and six reps would feel like each army was lifting 110 pounds, not 40. [...] The deltoids were screaming from the unexpected sequence of sets. I’d shown them who was boss. Their only option was to heal and grow.

                                

That's all for now. Stay tuned for more life-affirming lessons from Arnold Schwarzenegger!