Tim FerrissArnold Schwarzenegger on Thinking Big, Building Resilience, 7 Tools for Life, and More
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
65 min read · 12,878 words- 0:00 – 0:14
Intro
- TFTim Ferriss
[upbeat music]
- 0:14 – 6:19
Recovering from heart surgery.
- TFTim Ferriss
We've talked about a lot the last few times that we've spoken, but I'd love to chat maybe about the heart surgery and your recovery from the heart surgery, which I think might be perhaps a inspiring place to start for a lot of people. Would you mind just describing the heart surgery and what the recovery has looked like for yourself?
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
You're referring to the most recent one, which was two thousand eighteen or nineteen.
- TFTim Ferriss
Eighteen.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
It was eighteen. And that was when I just went into a routine, a non-invasive aortic valve replacement.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Where it goes through your arteries and your arm, neck, and then your groins into your heart, and then they replace your valve.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
It's a standard procedure that they have now in the last ten years, and you don't have to perform open heart surgeries anymore because of it. It just happens to be that in my case, they had a difficult time somehow, and they poked through the heart wall-
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
... with the cable, and so I got internal bleeding, and they now had to perform an emergency open heart surgery. And I, of course, was not aware of any of that because I was out.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
The next thing I know is I wake up, and I'm really happy, and this is over, only to find out that I was having a breathing tube in my throat, and I couldn't talk. And I saw three doctors in front of me, not smiling, but kind of having a concerned look on their face. And one said, "Don't try to talk because you can't. You still have a breathing tube in your mouth, and we're gonna pull that out right away now. So just stay with us. Okay, one, two, three." And then I was like [gasping] So I was breathing heavy.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
And someone ripped the breathing tube out of my mouth. And then the second doctor said, "Oh, we are so sorry, Arnold, but something went wrong with the valve replacement, and we had to perform open heart surgery." So I digested all that, and also that the breathing tube was just ripped out of my kind of throat and lungs. And so I'm still kind of not, not saying anything and just looked staring at them. And the next thing, the next doctor says, "Yeah, it's like sixteen hours later now since you were first put down. So now we are keeping you awake, and everything hopefully will be fine. The most important thing is now for you to make it through the first night because that's usually when you can have pneumonia and where things go south." And so I was like saying there was a... I'm just gotten out of a open heart surgery where it could have cost my life, and now they're telling me that this next night or two is very crucial, so I don't lose my life. So I said, "What the hell is that? What kind of a deal did I go and get into here?" So anyway, the bottom line is, is that it was I had to kind of connect quickly, shift gears, and realize what has happened, which takes you a while because you're on drugs and you're on medication, and you're still under anesthesia somewhat, and you're not with the program. So as I slowly started getting with the program, I had to kind of shift gears, and I realized that the simplest things were impossible to do. Couldn't go to the bathroom. I couldn't get up. I couldn't do this, couldn't do that. And then slowly, I started getting with the program, started pulling out the tubes during the night, and they started adjusting this and adjusting that. And then eventually, I was able to go and get up a little bit. And so now the doctor said, he said, "The key thing is to walk because if you walk, then you exercise your lungs. And when you exercise your lungs, the danger of having pneumonia starts really slipping away, and you don't have to worry about that. But the key thing that kills you always is the least amount of lung activities that you have can create, you know, this problem, and you die with pneumonia." And so I was right away setting goals for myself. "Okay, I'm gonna go and walk around the bed right away. I'm gonna get up, have someone pull along the machines." Then after I walked around the bed, I sat down again and relaxed a little bit. Then I went outside to do the same, so I got to make it outside the room. And I started going outside the room and back in again, and outside the room, back in again. And so I take doing exercises like that. Then eventually, I was walking around the nurse's station. And then eventually, two days later, I was walking down the long hallways over to another building and back, which was like hundreds of yards. So I could really build up strength and, you know, get out of that hospital as quickly as possible. And so after six days, rather than what they thought seven days, after six days, I got out of the hospital, and I was exercising, and I was walking, and I asked friends of mine That were working out with me to put the pressure on me, and my family, my kids and everyone put the pressure on me to make me walk and to not let me get away with not walking, and so that's exactly what we did.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- 6:19 – 11:17
Age 10 entrepreneurship.
- TFTim Ferriss
So you've always seemingly been very good at setting goals, having a vision, and then setting these intermediate goals. I'd like to rewind the clock because I was trying to find some, some aspects of your life that we haven't explored already is... And this is gonna go back to age 10. So age 10, roughly, is it true that you were selling ice cream at the time? I think they were ice cream pops or, uh, some type of ice cream. You can't believe everything you read on the internet, but I did find that, and I'm wondering if that was one of your first experiences with entrepreneurship or at least trying to make money by selling something.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
You're absolutely correct. And, and it was not that I wanted to become an entrepreneur or anything like this at that point.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
What it was was just really a necessity. You know, I felt like I needed a training suit. Friends of mine had training suits in the winter and, you know, tennis shoes, and I didn't, and my parents refused to buy it. You know, they just would give me my lederhosen, you know, the pants that I wore day and night and, and in the winter and in the summer, and then some high shoes, boots, and just clothes that would work all the time and... But nothing fancy. And so then I wanted to have... When I go to the soccer field, I wanted to have a training suit. I was... So they said, "Well, you go out and make your own money, that's fine. You can buy your own stuff, but you definitely, you're not gonna get it for us because that's not the kind of money that we have."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
And that's exactly what I did. So I went downstairs to the lake where I grew up and where I learned how to swim, and I asked... There was a ice cream and dessert kiosk in front of the big restaurant right near the lake. And as I asked them, I said, "Do you have anything that where I can go and put ice in it and then carry it back there where the people are lying around in the middle of the grass and the bushes and all around the lake, that they're too lazy maybe to come to the front here and buy the ice cream here, and, you know, have it melt on the way back there, and it's gone already?" So I said, there are some people, I think, this was maybe the entrepreneurial kind of mentality, 'cause I felt kind of there is maybe a need for someone like to deliver the ice cream to those bushes and to those different locations around the lake rather than have them to go, have those people go all the way to the front to get the ice cream. And so I did not know, but I thought that maybe it would be interesting idea. Let's try it. So I would just take a little box that the guy gave me with like some kind of a container. So you normally put water in it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
And some round kind of a container with a handle on it. And he put in ice from the winter that they... When they cut the ice in the winter on that lake, they used it in that restaurant below for keeping, because there was no refrigeration yet, keeping the drinks, the beer, and the vegetables and everything cold.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So they had broken ice, huge amount of broken ice in the bottom of that restaurant. And so the guy had in his trunk, there where the ice cream was, this ice in it. So he gave me a little bit for my container, and then he put in 20 ice creams. They were like, you know, just icicles.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So the, those bars. And he put those in. They had a little bit of cellophane, this little kind of paper over it. And so I ran with those around the lake, and I said, you know, "Ice cream, ice cream. Fresh ice cream, ice cream." Then every so often someone would pop up and say, "Yeah, I want some ice cream." And then I would go over there to the bush, and there would be three guys lying there with a girl. And so they says, "Give me four ice cream." I'd give four. So the next two are four. So by the time I was like 100 yards gone, I already was out of ice cream-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
... from my bucket. So I had to run back to the front again, get more ice cream, and go back out again. And that's what... And then eventually I just took 100 with me.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
You know, and there was enough ice underneath so to keep it cold in that hot day. It was around thirty, thirty-five degrees. And so I sold this ice cream, and in the end of the day, I ended up what this guy gave me, one shilling for each ice cream. So I sold like a hundred and forty-five, hundred and fifty, a hundred and eighty ice creams, and so I made a hundred and eighty shilling. So that got me enough money to buy myself a training suit.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Then the next weekend I would go back, and I would buy myself with the money then some tennis shoes
- 11:17 – 18:01
Arnold’s dad and the importance of being useful.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
and stuff like that. And so this is kind of how I started to realize that if you work your ass off, you can really accomplish a lot of things. That's why my book, you know, Be Useful, I put in there, this is the main chapter is just work your ass off.
- TFTim Ferriss
Work your ass off. And we're definitely directly gonna segue to Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life. This title, Be Useful, could you explain, and that's probably ties into similar chapters around the story around earning money and working your ass off in your younger years. Where did this title come from, Be Useful?
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
It comes from my father. You know, he would always say that. And his whole attitude always was, "Whatever you do- Try to serve the people. Try to do something good for your community or for your family. Don't just think about yourself. That's why my father was so heavily kind of against bodybuilding.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Because he felt like that, what he was called, this is selbstfreunung.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Selbstfreunung.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Which means you're kind of like glorifying and you're treating yourself-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
... rather than worrying about others.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
And so he just felt like he says, "Instead of lifting for yourself, why don't you go out and chop some wood?"
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
"Why don't you go and shovel some coal? And this way you help some older person that has coal delivered, shovel coal into their basement so they have coal in the winter, and they have wood in the winter, and you help an older person that doesn't, that is not able to do those things anymore. That's what you should do. Then you get also muscles, then you also get strong, then you also can kind, kind of look good." Look at these guys like László Papp. László Papp is a boxer from Hungary. He was the w- European champion in boxing. How does he train? He, there's pictures all over the place where he's chopping wood in the forest. I said, that's how he trains. That's how he becomes a world boxing champion. He doesn't just think about his boxing, he thinks about other people, too.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So that was his rap. And so he says, "You gotta be useful. You know, you got to go and use your talent, uh, to help people." And so that's where it kind of came from, and it's something that was really interesting because I think you and I, we talked about that in the past.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
That, uh, sometimes things come to you as a kid, but then later on in life, it kind of comes back. It's like kind of you lie there at six o'clock in the morning and you want to stay in bed and you say, you say, "Wait a minute, I heard this voice from my father screaming, 'Be useful.' You know, people have never accomplished anything. No country ever was built by people sleeping in."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
You know, Austria was not built by people sleeping in, America was not built by people sleeping in. People struggled, people suffered, people worked their asses off to build this country. So do you, do you want to go now and sleep in? You know? So then you start feeling guilty, and you just jump out of bed right away because those sounds, you hear those sounds.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
They come back. And it's kind of motivational because it really has driven me my whole life and has pushed me. That's why I called the book Be Useful because it's kind of an overall title, and then within that book, I put all the chapters in there. You know, if it is, you know, have a clear vision or, you know, never think small or work your ass off or sell, sell, sell, and all of those kind of things. Shift gears or whatever it is, you know, I've, I've put this kind of, uh, lessons together, which were very crucial lessons that I've learned throughout my life and throughout the various different careers, but especially in the gym. Most of my lessons I learned in the gym because there's no better place than to learn in the gym because this is where, you know, the, the rubber hits the road.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
I mean, this is where you, if you don't do the forced reps, and if you don't work until it burns and until it hurts, and then you go beyond that and do the forced reps, you're not gonna grow. So now you get this message that only through pain you can actually grow. Only through pain you can go in discomfort and misery, you can kind of grow as, also as a person. Not just physically, not just muscle wise, but as a person. Through comfort, no one ever grows. You know? The only guy who can grow through comfort into going through, you know, things where you have to have discipline and where you have to, where you struggle. If it's in the military, if it is in a real good job, or if it's studying in the university, the more these kids struggle and study all night and, and, and goes through hardship, the further they're gonna go. Look at the, the students that go through medical college and all this stuff, how much, how many night, sleepless nights they have and all this. So this is what it takes.
- TFTim Ferriss
How did your father say be useful in German? What is the way to say that properly? Or how would he say it to you?
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Well, he would have different versions of it. He would just say, ""
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm. Right.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
You know, work hard.
- TFTim Ferriss
Work hard.
- 18:01 – 26:17
Arnold and his brother: same upbringing, different outcomes.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
"
- TFTim Ferriss
Arnold, when I think about you, the adjective that comes to mind, I was, I was asking myself this question earlier today, the, the adjective that comes to mind for me is resilient. And, uh, v- many people have seen the Netflix miniseries Arnold, and one of the lines, and I'm not gonna get this perfectly right, that stuck out to me was that your upbringing made you but broke your brother. And I'm probably getting the phrasing off a little bit, but I'm wondering if you could just elaborate on that a little bit and speak to what the upbringing was like, and then also what made you different from your brother in that respect.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
I think that my brother was by nature more fragile. And you know, I never really realized that when I kind of grew up, but just the very fact certain things that kind of unfolded made me then realize that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
And there was two things. One of them was that he was more fragile, and the other one was that he appeared to be more fragile, and that I appeared to be stronger.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
And the reason I'm saying that is because, like for instance, when he was like eleven years old and he was going to school in Graz outside the village, and he had to go with the bus there, then he had to be picked up at the bus station a half an hour away from our house, and then it was night in the window in the fall, and then he was afraid to go home. He would say, "I'm afraid to go home by myself." And so my father would turn to me, he says, "Well, Arnold, can you pick him up? I'll give you a shilling every night that you pick him up, so you're making at the end of the week five shilling." He said, because on Saturday it was only half day of school, so he would go home at the time that it was still light. So I said to him, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I pick him up. No problem." He says, "You're not afraid?" I said, [laughs] "You kidding me? No." But in the meantime, I was also scared shitless.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So I appeared tougher than my brother, but I was also afraid.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
But I was not afraid enough not to go.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So I did go, even though I was afraid. My brother refused to go because he was afraid.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So there was both, that I was a little tougher than him, but that I also pretended to be tougher than him.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
And so that kind of unfolded as time went on. So as w- we were punished and beaten and all of this kind of things that was going on, it was clear that my brother couldn't quite handle the thing because he ran away more often from home. Well, not only more often ran away, because I never ran away. So he would... He ran away, and he would not appear sometimes for a week. My father would have to look for him all over the place, and he was scared that he'd get lost, is he gone, or what is going on. So it freaked him out. And he treated him for a while when he came back home, he treated him for, for a while nicer and then, you know, it started getting to be again too much for him. So what happened was, really when I look back, was that each time my father punished us, it made my brother more and more vulnerable and weaker, and it made me stronger. So I thrived on that kind of like, my mind started gearing up to, I'm gonna get back at him. I'm gonna leave this house as soon as I can. I'm gonna be out of here at the age of eighteen. I'm gonna go to the military, and then I'm gonna go and get my passport, and then I'm gonna go to Germany, and then I'm gonna go to America, and I'm gonna be out of here. This is it. I'm not gonna take this any longer. And it would make me stronger and really set a program and set a goal and a vision of what I'm gonna do in life. Whereas my brother crumbled. He got weaker. He started drinking. He started, uh, getting involved in alcohol, and I could see in his behavior that he didn't behave well. He was abusive. And, and eventually he died because of a car accident, drunk driving. With a- with the age of, he was, I think, twenty-four, and I was twenty-three when it happened. I was already in America at that time. But it was like, it was really sad because I could see that he just could not handle anymore the punishment, and I could. I was thriving on it, and I used it to my big plus and as a support system, and it was like all about kind of like gave me the motivation. It created the fire in the belly. It made me create a vision, a, a necessary vision. This is what I want to do. I want to get to America. I have to become a bodybuilding champion. I have to get away from home. I had to find my... a new father figure. My father was great to be the father, the official father, but there were others, the trainer in the weightlifting club, Kurt Marnul, and Muy. There was a guy that Kurt knew that we also knew that was in his forties and fifties that became a father figure, a very smart guy that spoke English and was very worldly. And then there was a Jewish fellow there that became our kind of mentor and helped us with the weightlifting club. So these all became kind of my new father figures in a way. And then eventually Joe Weider when I came to America, and all of these people I looked up right away as an idol because they would kind of like treat me In a better way, and they will educate me, and they will really, uh, you know, kind of usher me along and nurture me along. And, uh, so... But I never really resented my father because of it. I always kind of felt that he served a really extraordinary purpose for me, not for my brother, but for me, which means to get me to America to become a great champion, to have that will to be able to work no matter how many hours it takes, to do no matter what it takes, and to not shy away from misery, or from pain, or from obstacles, or from falling down and having to get up again and crawl on all four for nothing. It... That was the power and the strength my father gave me, and so I've always kind of like appreciated that, and nothing comes in the perfect package because I knew that if he would've given me all the love and if he would have not done none of that, and if I would have had all the money in the world, I would have not grown up as tough.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
And I would not have been able to accomplish what I did coming to America and becoming this world bodybuilding champion and do all the things that I was, that I was doing. It was all because of that upbringing. And so when I look at, for instance, my in-laws, you know, when I see those kids, they're very smart kids in the Kennedy family, but I always felt kind of like they couldn't have grown up, like Maria or Maria's brothers or, you know, anyone around them, they couldn't have grown up, or my children couldn't grow up with the same desire and the same hunger. Yeah, but they can get other qualities, and so that's the key thing to focus then on that, but I mean, they could never have that quality of hunger and desire and deep inside kind of like reach, being able to reach inside no matter what it takes.
- 26:17 – 33:48
Building ladders and never thinking small.
- TFTim Ferriss
So let's talk about one of the rules, never think small. You seem like the walking archetype of not thinking small. You've lived multiple lifetimes compared to most people. How would you suggest people think of never think small, or what stories come to mind that from your life exemplify that?
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Well, just, just the very beginning. I mean, for me to go and say, I want to compete in the Junior Mr. Europe competition rather than just in the Mr. Austria competition, it would-- I trained just as hard as everyone else in the gym. Their goal was just smaller. They said, "I want to be Mr. Austria," and I said, "I want to be Mr. Europe, so I'm gonna start with Mr. Junior, Junior Mr. Europe, the best-built man of Europe. I'm gonna go to this competition." And I was thinking bigger, and I was training as hard as they were. Everything was the same. But then when I won that competition because I had a very clear vision, that's what I want to win, that immediately launched me into getting a job to become a trainer in Munich in a bodybuilding gymnasium. Now imagine how in heaven is that? You're a young bodybuilder, you're eighteen years old, you just won your first international competition, you win some local competitions in Austria, you win some powerlifting competitions, some weightlifting competitions, but now you're Junior Mr. Europe, and you have this trophy, and now you're getting a job to train in the second biggest gym in Munich. So that was like absolute heaven. So at nineteen, I started training, become the trainer in the gym. So now I had the opportunity to train day and night. When I wake up, because I was sleeping in the gym, I was waking up, and I was training. I was taking a nap in the afternoon, I was training. I was, uh, going to sleep before going to sleep at night after dinner, I was training. I was training day and night. So this is a dream. But it was all because I thought big. They were still stuck working for some bathhouse in, uh, Austria or for the government or being a trash collector or being a teacher or something like that. They were still stuck in the same job. I was already moving on to Munich, and I was already a trainer in a bodybuilding gymnasium, making this the launchpad to America, which was my ultimate dream.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So this is what I'm saying. So it didn't take more work to think big. It just thinking big, just thinking big makes you bigger. And what, uh, my point is, is it takes just as much effort. So I, my whole... And, and I learned again from bodybuilding. From that kind of thing, I learned that don't hold back. So when I went within age of nineteen, I was the youngest Mr. Universe competitor. I competed in the Mr. Universe contest, and I wo-- I placed second. I placed runner-up, so that a year later, I went back with the age of twenty and won Mr. Universe, the youngest Mr. Universe ever. But this is all because I was thinking big. I was not saying, "Oh, maybe in a few years from now, I go there," or, "I shouldn't go there right now," or something, or, "It's too early," all this. And then it's just still saying right away, I'm gonna go for the second Mr. Universe next year. I'm gonna go to America. I'm gonna go and make Joe Weider aware of me and, you know, make sure that I win another competition and all this. So I was driven bigger and bigger and bigger. And even when I got into acting, I didn't look at it as kind of like I'm gonna get some character roles. I wasn't interested in character roles. I wanted to be another Steve Reeves or Reg Park. They were the stars of the Hercules movies. Clint Eastwood was the star. We always... Clint Eastwood, you know, in, uh, Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood in A Dollar... Few Dollars More, Clint Eastwood in, in, in, uh, in this movie. Whatever it was, it was like I-- that's what I wanted. Charles Bronson. I want to be like Charles Bronson. I want to be like Warren Beatty. I want to be like those guys. They were the top stars, and that's what I saw myself. And they said, "Well, this ladder is very hard to climb up." I said, "Well, then I build my own ladder."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
I build my own ladder, and then I know exactly how to get up there. And that's exactly what I did. I created my own way of getting up there. I took five hours that I learned in bodybuilding. I- it took five hours every day of working my ass off to train, and to train, and to train, and to pose, and to pose, and to do all the stuff that I needed to do. I said, I'm gonna do the same five hours, but I'm gonna go and learn English, I'm gonna learn acting, speech lessons, voice lessons, accent remove lessons. Well, I, I should get my money back for those. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
But in any case, I took all of those lessons one hour every day, and I was grinding it out. And then I remember eventually it happened.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
People started hiring me. And the great thing was that I felt that I should not be financially vulnerable. So I'd first got into real estate, and I worked my ass off in real estate. My first million I actually made in real estate before I really got into acting. And that helped me because now when they came to me with stupid parts and says, "Do you want to play a bouncer?" I said, "Fuck no. Why would I play a bouncer?"
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
They say, "Well, what about a Nazi officer? You have a great... You have the German accent." I said, "No, I don't want to be a Nazi officer."
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
I say, "I want to be a star. I want to be a leading man. I want to get rich and famous."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Just like Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson. And they said, "You're crazy. It would never happen." Well, I applied the other rule, which is don't listen to the naysayers.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So I worked my ass off. I did exactly what I did in the bodybuilding, I did in the movies. Eventually it happened. I started doing The Jane Mansfield Story. I started doing the, with Kirk Douglas. We did an Anne Margaret, the villain. I was doing Streets of San Francisco. I was doing Stay Hungry and Pumping Iron, all in the '70s. And even with Lucille Ball, doing Happy Anniversary and Goodbye. So I did all of those kind of things, and then that led to the big role, and now I've arrived, starring role in Conan the Barbarian.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
You know, when John Milius saw me, he says, "If we wouldn't have Schwarzenegger, we would have had to build one."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So all of a sudden, the body-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
... that everyone said would never ever become famous in the movies because the movies, no one is seeing muscle movies anymore, all of the opposite came true. My accent became very welcome. When they did Terminator, they loved the German accent. They, they, which Jim Cameron called, "Schwarzenegger's talking like a machine, that's why it worked," saying the Terminator. You know-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
... so things like that. So all of a sudden, the things that they said would never make it in Hollywood, you know, the accent, the name, the body, all of those things became big pluses, and it made it. So that's the, my own ladder that I built.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
That's why it's important. You know, don't just worry about climbing a ladder that someone else has built. No, build your own ladder. You know, just don't wait for anyone else. So that's what I
- 33:48 – 40:47
When Arnold’s self-bet to be a comedic lead paid off.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
did.
- TFTim Ferriss
So let me, I want to s- underscore a few things for folks. Number one, the building of the ladder was not, many ladders, was not haphazard. It was systematic. So you had the real estate as a financial buffer, which gave you then the ability to pick your shots, and you've been very good at doubling down on betting on yourself in many different areas. Could you speak to Twins and what that looked like with that particular film to bet on yourself?
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Well, Twins was a little bit out of nowhere, because I had certain goals, but comedy was not one of my goals when I got into movies. And I felt like that I can be funny in the movies. You know, in Conan, there were funny moments and all that stuff. But only when I started doing one action movie after the next, you know, my hunger, you know, the whole philosophy of staying hungry kind of came out a little bit. And I said, I said, "Well, I wonder if, uh, if we ever could sell the idea of me doing a comedy." And then all of a sudden I started getting obsessed with the idea. And I started talking to everyone. I said, "Have you ever thought about me doing a comedy?" And of course, every studio executive said, "Are you crazy? Arnold, I mean, what do you think? I'm making now millions of dollars of you being an action hero. We finally built you up to, to be this international action hero, not only in America, but all over the world. Why would I go and start spending money on something else that is not sure? I love the action movies. We're gonna give you all the scripts for action movies." And so I said, "Yeah, but I understand, but what about me doing an action movie for you, and then the next one we do is a comedy?" "No. Why would I do that? You tell me. I mean, would you do it?" I said, "Yeah." I said, "But here's the thing what we need to do." So then when we finally formed the partnership, Danny DeVito, Ivan Reitman, and myself, we got together and we said, "You know, I can sympathize with the studio. Why would they take the risk? For what? Why don't we all take a risk? Why don't we go to them and say instead of us getting the big salaries, why don't we just say we do the movie for nothing?"
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
"Just give us a back end. You don't have to pay us any salary whatsoever. If the production costs $16.5 million, that's all you use."
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
"Not one penny more for us." Fuck us.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Don't worry about us at all. We have plenty of money, and if the movie goes in the toilet, we all go in the toilet.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Everyone takes the risks, not just you, the studio. Wouldn't be fair, would it?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
They said, "Hey, this is my thinking. Guys, you guys are really good." They said, "What do you want in return?" We said, "All we want is just you give us three thirty-seven and a half percent of ownership of the movie, and then we all go to the bank together. If the movie goes through the roof, we all make money. The movie goes in the toilet, none of us make money." They said, "We're in."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
That's exactly what we did, and it happened to be with Ivan Reitman's genius directing, and with Danny DeVito kind of great, great acting, and everyone else around us, like Kelly Preston and everyone else, and me being involved, we made the movie a huge hit. As a matter of fact, that movie made more money than any action movie made up until that point for me.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So my action movies made always to like seventy, eighty million dollars. And that movie made a hundred and twenty-eight million dollars domestically, and worldwide, two hundred and fifty million dollars. So now imagine the budget being sixteen and a half million dollars, and your box office is two hundred and fifty million. So now we owned thirty-seven and a half, almost forty percent of that chunk. So we all cleaned house. It was so fucking funny to go around... As a matter of fact, Tom Pollock, who was a fantastic studio leader and great producer and lawyer, he, after the deal, he just basically said... He went around the desk in his office, and he bent over and pulled out his pockets, and he says, "You guys fucked me-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
-and robbed me blind." And so it was like [laughs] we all were laughing because we all were very good friends.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
I mean, he was right. I mean, like, it really because they were so worried about the risk-taking that we said, "We take the risk," and sure enough, we did.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
And the, the, the risk paid off, and so we just really cleaned house. So I made like, I think, seventy million dollars on Twins or something like that on the end, and Danny made a fortune. Then he bought two houses and built two houses. So we all got kind of a lot of money. And Ivan Reitman. And so, and so there's a, there's were deals that we did then in the future with Kindergarten Cop, we did it. With Junior, we did it. So it became a model that no one is gonna do today anymore.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
The studios got smarter than that.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So no one does do those, those deals anymore. But anyways, it was like historic kind of a deals. But it was, I had the confidence that I could pull it off, and Ivan had the confidence, and Danny had the confidence. And so to-together we all did it, and Universal Studio then had the confidence, and they promoted it really well. We hired Annie Leibovitz to do the photo shoot, and she took us on top of a bus against the blue sky and just photographed Danny and me leaning against each other, and that became the poster, and it was like really genius. So everyone kind of worked together to make this a brilliant movie and a successful movie.
- TFTim Ferriss
So this ties into sell, sell, sell. Why have an entire chapter/rule dedicated to sell, sell, sell? Because for a lot of people, they think of selling as a dirty thing. Um, I don't happen to think of it that way. But why is this so critical that sell, sell, sell would be one of the primary sections in the book?
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
You can imagine the reason why I called it sell, sell, sell is because it does raise eyebrows.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- 40:47 – 45:44
We’re all in sales.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
a salesman. And so I realized then the importance of selling, that no matter what you have, if you have a podcast, if you have a movie, if you have a painting, if you have a car, a technology, a medicine, whatever it is, if people don't know about it, you have nothing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
The more people that know about your product or about your talent, the more you can go and be successful. So therefore, this idea of selling, publicizing, marketing, communicating, convincing, all of those kind of things is an art. And there's art agencies that make millions and millions of dollars to just figure out what the language should be in order to really sell to the right people and have the right customers and sell a product the right way. So it's an art to do that, and I've learned it way back when I was fifteen years old, and I learned how to sell. I remember when my boss said to me, he says, "Now look at, watch me carefully when I sell. There's this couple coming in." So this couple comes in, and they, they wanted to... I, I worked in a, in a store that had, you know, wood products and it was like a lumberyard. It was kind of like a hardware store type of a thing. So this couple comes in, they wanted to have tiles. And so immediately the guy started talking, uh, the, my boss started talking to the guy and said, "What kind of tiles do you want? Do you want the black tiles or pink tiles or white tiles?" And the guy said, "This is... Well, I don't know." So the woman said, "We want white tiles. And for the bathroom, we want to have pink tiles." And so the guy looked at her and he says, "Okay, fine. Let me take you over there." He said, "How much space, how much tile do you need?" Again, the man didn't answer, and the woman answered. And she says, "Oh, I need certain... I have it written down the measurements here. I need two meters by a meter eighty tall, and blah, blah, blah." And so the guy then all of a sudden realized that she's the customer.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So he started really paying attention to her and asking her all the questions and thinking around, but included him also. And then in the end, when they were satisfied, and we wrote up the order, and we then, uh, told them that they will be, they will be all delivered on Thursday, he came to me after they left. They said, "So what did you learn?" I said, "Well," I said, "Did you really sort the, the tiles well and the colors and the difference between real tiles and fake tiles and all of that?" He says, "No, no, but there was one other thing. I switched who I thought was the customer."
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
He says she was the customer, not him. He paid for it, but she was the customer, so I had to talk and address her because that was the important thing. She needed to be convinced, so I had to sell to her. And so I realized then selling is an art, that you have to improvise and adjust all the time. That if you go in front of a children audience, for instance, you have to speak a totally different language than I talk in a class, in a school, in after-school programs than I talk in Washington when I talk to legislators. I have to talk to differently when I talk to a crowd of fans at the movie theater than I talk to a bunch of lobbyists. So it's always different, so you have to learn the art of selling, and this is why selling is so important. And I remember that when Andy Warhol, when I was being painted in his warehouse down in Soho, and Jamie Wyeth was there, and Andy Warhol was there, and he always talked about that the most important thing is that you don't just sell the art, but you sell yourself. You have to sell yourself. You have to become a kind of a, a interesting person with what parties you go to, who you hang out with, you know, the photos that you take, the recordings that you make, the magazine that you publish. And all of this to-together, he says, makes me a character and makes people fascinated to write about me, and therefore, they write about my art. And sure enough, it worked because in no time, Andy Warhol's art became worth millions and millions of dollars. I used to, I used to buy it for fifty thousand dollars, thirty thousand dollars. I have the big Indian that is hanging in my office that is now, you know, ten, fifteen million dollars. I bought for thirty thousand dollars.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So imagine the value that Andy Warhol gained by being just a character, a different character, and being just strange to people with a wig on it and with glasses and all of these different things. He ran around with a little tape recorder, and he, by the way, was a great promoter of mine.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- 45:44 – 50:09
The significance of shifting gears.
- TFTim Ferriss
What is the significance of shifting gears? I mean, people can think of it, of course, in an automotive capacity. But shift gears, what does that mean to you, and are there any particular stories that stand out related to that?
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Well, well, I mean, shifting gears, like to give you an exa-- [laughs] I talked about it earlier. You wake up from a surgery that you think is two hours. They replace your heart valve, and then someone tells you, "We poked through your heart wall, and you now have been out for sixteen hours, and now you have to stay here six ye-- days of seven days. And, you know, we- you're not out of the woods yet. You know, we have to do everything we can to keep you alive. And, you know, you almost died on the operating table, and it could still happen next night."
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
"You know, if you don't really get going with the walking, and we-- if you get pneumonia."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So that you have to shift gears very quickly. I usually call it the art of improvisation.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
You know, that you have to be very good in improvising because there's a lot of things that come up to you in life where you have to be really good in improvising.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
And this happened to me all the time when I was governor. I had to quickly shift gears. And it happened also in show business, where you have to shift gears, where there's-- the unexpected is happening, and you have to be kind of, like, ready for that and confront that. I mean, that, that's the most important thing. So it's just, it's just so many people get stuck on certain things on a track, and they then cannot get off that track. I just always felt like I was very good in shifting gears, like going from bodybuilding to show business. I mean, you really had to shift gears because all of a sudden, certain other things became important. I mean, think about it. You go and you do bodybuilding. Every athlete always tells you that you got to go and keep the emotions out of the way because it's the emotions that are going to kill you.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
You guy cannot go train and compete and train for a competition for a world championship or the Olympic Games or whatever it is and be emotionally involved in whatever it is, you know, because it can derail you. So, okay, so you do that, and I've become a master in that. I became, like, cold as stone. But then all of a sudden, you go and you start taking acting classes. And you start hearing from the acting teacher, "Arnold, you talk like a fucking cold fish."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
"There's no emotions there. I got to go and find your emotions." So think about that for a second. All your life long, you hear now that this is, like bad, and now all of a sudden, you hear you have to be more emotional. You have to be in touch with your emotions. Have you thought about lately the smell of a rose? I said, "The smell of what?" A rose. He says, "A rose smells a certain way. It's a beautiful smell." So I said, "What does this have to do with acting?" He says, "Ah." He says, "If you sit there in a scene and you start thinking about that smell of a rose, you have a totally different facial expression. You close your eyes. You know, let's assume that you want to compliment the woman, the perfume she wears. You can't go and says, 'I like your perfume.'"
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
It's stupid. But if you go and say, [sniffs] "Ah, what are you wearing? [sniffs] Oh, it smells wonderful. I mean, you have good taste." You know? He says that's a totally different tone. He says it would change your voice. If you smell the rose, it would change your voice. But you only can do that if you really smell it, and be in touch with that. So that's what I'm talking about shifting gears very quickly. So from one year to the next, I had to kind of all of a sudden have all the emotions kick in.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
And make everything work that didn't really work in the past.
- 50:09 – 55:20
Grieving Franco Columbu.
- TFTim Ferriss
So I'm curious to ask you about how that re-accessing of emotion maybe has informed how you experience grief yourself. Since we last spoke, you lost Franco, Franco Columbu, and I'm just wondering what that grief was like for you to experience.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
I have to say I react a little bit differently to those kind of things-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
... than everyone else, because to me it's not so much the shock as it is the ongoing missing a person. Because there's certain friends that have become part of you, and so if they pass away and they die, something dies in you. And so when I... Imagine every day when I walk into my living room and I see this chess board where Franco and I played chess in the last 10 years, two, three times a week, and drank wine, smoked a stogie, and just talked. And I talked like 65 and 70-year-olds talk rather than the way 20 years-year-olds talk, you know, like in the old days. And because Franco I've known since I was 18 years old, so then our conversations were differently than, than they was, they were as of the last 10 years, where we talk about kids, where we talk about family, where we talk about where we grew up and about the past. And it were kind of like deeper conversations, and more emotional conversations. And now all of a sudden your, every day, when you, you walk into your living room, you see this chess table down the corner, but Franco is not sitting there anymore. And that, to me, you know, is heartbreaking. And when I go to the gym and I drive down with the bicycle, and Franco came on a bicycle ri- He was not good in bicycle riding.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
He was all over the place. That was funny. And I had people sometimes videotape him, you know, just to show how goofy he looks on a bicycle. I think the bike seat was maybe too high up or we couldn't-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
... whatever the problem was, it was just hilarious because he was, you know, 5'3" according to him. I think he was 5'1" or 5'2" at the most. But anyway, he say, he always said 5'3". And then working out with him, the fun of working out with him. Then I had him in so many movies. I remember when I directed the movie The Switch for Tales of the Crypt, I had him in there. In Conan the Barbarian, I had him in there. In Terminator, I had him in there. I had him in all those movies in there. So he was just... He became, you know, kind of part of me. So to me, it's not just the initial shock when someone tells you, "Oh, Franco just passed away on a beach in Sardinia." It is also then a daily thing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
A weekly thing, a monthly thing. Every day, every time I go to the Arnold Classic and we hand out the... I have a trophy that is the Franco Columbu Posing Trophy or Most Muscular Man Trophy, and we hand those out. It'll be Franco's body on it that I got made by a really great Italian sculptor, the double biceps pose. And, and the double biceps pose intentionally because Franco was really not never known for his biceps, because he was known, he had s- such overpowering back, his lats, his chest, his deltoids. They were so overpowering that people sometimes didn't even see the, the arms. So I on purpose wanted to do a double biceps pose, so in the future people also remember him for his biceps.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
But it's just a great, great sculpture. So to, to me, Franco will live on forever. So is Joe Weider, you know, and Ben Weider, and Dave Draper, and Sergio Oliva, and Bill Pearl, and Reg Park. To me, I see them all sitting in front of me when there's the Arnold Classic And I see them all sitting there laughing and having a great time and watching Arnold Classic, and watching how bodybuilding is progressing, how the cash prizes are going up, how we have bigger and bigger sponsors, how we have a bigger and bigger convention and expo, and all of this, how they enjoy all that. So that's what I see out there now. And but it's, it's kind of like, you know, it's in between kind of like, should I have tears in my eyes when I'm out there and looking at all those faces of those bodybuilding champions and promoters of bodybuilding, or should I smile? You know, it's this combination of things.
- 55:20 – 1:03:59
Aging.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm. I would love to get your thoughts on aging and relating to aging because a lot of people struggle with relating or thinking about aging. I, for the first time in the last nine months, have had chronic pain for the first time due to a spinal issue, uh, which is the first time in my life I've ever experienced that. And I'm wondering if you could share anything about what you've learned or decided with respect to aging, just getting older as we all do.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
You know, the first time at all I experienced something similar to that is when I had my open heart surgery. I was not even fifty years old. It was in April, and in July I'm fifty. So it was, it was just a few months before I was fifty. And it was the first time where I woke up after two heart surgeries. The first one didn't work, so they did a second one within, uh, forty-eight hours. And after that, I felt like I was damaged goods.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
I didn't feel anymore like invincible. You know, I didn't feel like I can handle anything. All of a sudden, there were limits put on me, where the doctor said, "Don't train as heavy. You know, every time you force your reps, you put pressure on your valve unnecessarily. We have to replace those valves again in maybe ten, fifteen years from now. So the more you put pressure on it, the faster we will have to... It's like a tire."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
"Thirty thousand miles the tire, you can use it up in one year, you can use it up in twenty years. So it's up to you." You know, it's that kind of a thing. So it was the first time where I started thinking about when I did stunts. I remembered it right after that was a stunt in End of Days where the woman that was possessed by the devil takes the piano and runs it against my chest, wanted to kill me. So... And normally, you can run a chest, a piano into my chest, doesn't make any fucking difference. I don't care. Right? So, but because of the heart surgery and having been now cut open in the chest, I did not know how vulnerable that ribcage is.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So I told them to measure out the distance with a rope, and then the rope comes to an end, and it stops an eighth or a quarter of an inch before my chest.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So it looks still like it's smashing full in, and I still sell it, but it was... It's like you start planning on your vulnerability. And this then continues on because all of a sudden, you know, you used to kind of hop upstairs and hop downstairs in a squatting position to just get out of breath, so that when you start a scene, you're exhausted. You know, like you, you cut again in the middle of a fight scene so that you're [panting] and you have to big, big breath. So all of a sudden, you start jumping up and down, and your knees start hurting. So now you, you realize, okay, between fifty and sixty, it's the knee punishment.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So I have to watch my knees. Then after you're seventy, you said for the first time saying, you know, "I noticed myself walking less.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Why am I walking less? I used to love hiking four, five hours up the steep mountain, and all of this I love. Why am I walking less?" Then I realized that I got back pain. When I walked a long time, I started getting cramps in my back. So I started walking less. So I started doing stretching exercises for the back. And so it's things like that start creeping up, then you have to start kind of really be disciplined and say, "Okay, I still have to walk so many miles a day, so many steps a day," and blah, blah, blah. But now you have to make yourself what came normally natural. So you get kind of like one thing after the next. Then you have shoulder surgeries on both shoulders. Then like yesterday, I had elbow surgery because my nerve had to be kind of relocated because where the nerve was, it created pressure on my nerve, and therefore my little fingers started getting numb.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So now that comes in. That's in the late seventies. It's all of a sudden it's a bit of nerves. And then someone talks to you about then neuropathy, about your legs and feet. And this is how it just, you know, creeps up on you, all this stuff. And the interesting thing is it's like weightlifting. It doesn't matter- How old you are or how young you are. It doesn't matter how rich you are. It doesn't matter what color you are. It doesn't matter from where you're from. 200 pounds is 200 pounds. It's the same fucking thing for everybody.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
And the same is also when you get older. It makes no fucking difference who you are. You can be the biggest fucking celebrity in the world, but you still get your back pain, you still get your hip pain, you still get your shoulder pain, you still get your elbow pain, you still get numb fingers, you still have to watch your heart, you still have to watch the diet, you still get fat if you don't watch the diet. If you eat three times a day a full meal, you get fat. You have to cut one meal out. All of this kind of stuff you have to start doing, so it's just that, that simple, and this is all kind of so that we stay alive longer and that we kind of like... 'Cause we all are... The time you're born, your time clock is set. It's set. The only thing that changes it is you.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Right? So let's assume I'm set for 85. So I can decide, do I want to go to 90? Yeah, I can do that, but then you have to real- live really healthy.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Someone else is set for 90, he can live to 100. But you still... But you, you can stretch it a little bit. And you can also fuck it up big time. You can be set for 85 and you wipe out with 70. You know, my dad wiped out with 66. He, uh, was in pension for one year and then he wiped out. He died and, uh, because of too much smoking and alcohol and all of those things. So he cut himself short. He maybe was meant to be 80, but he definitely wiped out with the 66. So my mother, you know, she died with 76. Well, she did it to herself because, I mean, she had a congenital heart disease, which is what I have, which is the valve, but she had the choice to get surgery or not. She says, "No, if God wants me, He should have me," and so she resisted any surgery. But that's how we basically kind of... There are some people when you watch the shows in Sardinia, they live to 100 because they have no problems. You know, they... What, they sleep in the afternoon, they take their naps, they eat well, they walk around for miles and miles every day. They still walk and work. I mean, the women are still in the kitchen with the age of 90, making food for the whole family and all this stuff. So they push it. They push the envelope beyond of what they were meant for. So this is the way we can do it. But, I mean, I think there is a reason when you get to a certain age to be concerned about it. I don't know if it's the age that you're in now, because you, you're still young punk.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] I can hope.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Like for you, for your whole life, every year you could be my grandson. [laughs]
- 1:03:59 – 1:06:59
Arnold’s current state of self-identity.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] So you have been an athlete, right? As, as it was laid out in the three chapters in the miniseries, athlete, actor, American, right? You've had this, this arc. How do you think of yourself now? Like, what is your identity now, and how do you hope to use the time that you have left? Because, of course, you have this book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life. You have the newsletter, which has done very well. You have more than half a million people for Pump Club. You have the Pump app. But how do you think of yourself now, and f- and what do you want to focus on in the next 10 years, if you have, let's say, 10 years left, something like that?
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Well, I don't really think of myself now any different than I thought of myself when I was governor, when I thought of myself as an actor, as a bodybuilder. You know, I'm very rarely in the moment of where I just appreciate what I'm doing right now, because I always think about the future. You know, I don't like the past. I appreciate the present, but I really live for the future. I always just live about where I want to go. There's a lot of things I want to accomplish environmentally. There's a lot of things that I want to accomplish when it comes to public policy. There's a lot of things I want to accomplish in show business. There's a lot of things that I want to accomplish in the promotion of health and fitness and bodybuilding. So all of those different worlds, I hopefully can manage to combine them and create a certain synergy, synergy so that one can help from the other, so the bodybuilding can help from the show business, my success in show business, that the show business can help, get helped with the success of the fitness movement. Then my newsletter that I have, which is going through the roof right now, the Pump Club, all of that is kind of like playing into this whole thing. I'm very happy that all of a sudden now it's, as it's kind of like an unexpected new era for me, which is the era of motivational speeches, the era of motivational books, the era of motivational newsletters. I mean, not in my wildest dreams did I ever think about that I want to create a positive corner in the, on the Internet, and it was only because there was just so much negativity out there, I started thinking about, well, maybe I should say some nice things and some positive things, and it became a huge hit beyond my expectation. And so I now, I do speeches every so often if it's the Ukrainian war, the Russia war in Ukraine, or if it's, you know, the insurrection, or if it is prejudice or whatever the issues are, I, I tackle those. So as I said to you earlier, I'm the guy that climbs up Mount Everest and sees a, another bunch of peaks, and therefore I say, "Oh, my God, I didn't even know they were there," and I climb them And so that's what I do. This, it's just a continuous climb. Nothing changes. I climbed to twenty, I'm climbing now.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- 1:06:59 – 1:15:10
What Arnold hopes readers take away from Be Useful.
- TFTim Ferriss
What do you hope the impact of, of Be Useful will be? Like, what, what would you hope people to gain from it or use it for?
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
I think that the whole thing is about helping people live a better life and kind of be able to fulfill their dreams, whatever those dreams are. You know, it's just simple things like that. Don't listen to the naysayers or create a vision. And I know that because I asked my kids when they were like 18, 19 years old, "What do you want to do? Where do you want to go to college?" They couldn't answer me. Well, I could answer that question when I was 18, 19. You know? And so I'm concerned about that because I said to myself, they're looking too much in the computer, too much on the iPhone and on the iPad, and they get ideas from someone else, that this is their ideas, but not their ideas, not my kids' ideas. They need to be by themselves and sit in the jacuzzi or sit somewhere on a mountain or out there by themselves and start thinking. Let the dreams come into your mind. Let you, the deep inside come out and give yourself time. Don't always look at the machine. And so I'm trying to tell people there's simple rules that I talk about in the book where you kind of learn, you know, that here's how I create a goal. Because without a goal, without a vision, you have nothing. Where are you gonna go? You know, it's like you, you have an, an airplane pilot that doesn't know where to fly, and he has the best airplane. He, he can fly around, around, around, and he'll eventually crash. That's what happens to you in your life.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
You crash. You're not gonna go anywhere. So you need to have a direction. You need to have a goal. Why you get up in the morning, what are you struggling towards, what it is, why are you happy to go to bed at night, and you need some rest to get up in the next morning and have that energy again. All of this has to have purpose. There has to be purpose. So this is what I try to do, is kindle a little bit of this light in my book and say to people in a casual way, you know, have a goal. Here's how you can do it. This is how I did it, you know. And then in a big, big goals, don't be afraid of big goals. You know, big goals are just as easy as do as little goals is, you know? And by the way, I know that every human being is afraid of failure, but you can overcome that, you know, by accepting failure. You know, we, in bodybuilding, we go and do a failure with our reps. So every single day when we train, we experience failure. We're not afraid of it. Because like the Muhammad Ali said, they say, hey. I used to say to him, I said, "When are you-- How many reps do you do in sit-ups?" He says, "I don't start counting until it starts hurting. I start failing. That's when I start counting." So that shows you all. I mean, in lifting, you can only know how much you lift if you're willing to fail.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So, you know, every, every-- Michael Jordan, when he talked about his five thousand shots that he missed in basketball and how many two hundred and eighty some games he missed in, in basketball and all of this stuff, that's what made me great. Well, wow, that's a, that's an eye-opener, you know, when you hear that. That's really, that's really powerful. The greatest basketball player talks about failure that made him great.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So people should look at that. They should start thinking about that. Don't start approaching everything with, "Oh, I'm afraid. What is if I fail? What is if he doesn't like it? What if I make a fool of myself?" Well, you know, it's people are afraid of speaking. Public speaking is the biggest fear that people have because they, they are worried that they may fail or sound stupid and stuff like that. Forget all that. Better get rid of all of this inner worry about failure, and you will be then free. And I'm not saying you will be able to get rid of it completely. We can never change a hundred percent, but you can change somewhat so that you're not as afraid anymore of failure, and that you're actually looking forward to that, and that you're saying, "Okay, I'm gonna go all out and do or fail." You know, that you approach it differently that the way you look at failure. And look, I've always pushed myself. What do you think when you run for governor?
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
I mean, it's, it would be the highest embarrassment if you would have lost, right? But I took the chance. I was not afraid of failure. I could see my vision very clearly. This is how I'm gonna sell to the California people what I'm going to do for Californians, and that's how I'm going to approach the governorship and blah, blah, blah. And you know, if they buy in, great. If they don't, then I lost. Then I move on with something else, but I'm not going to freeze now and say, "Oh, my God, but if I lose..." But then I would have never run in the first place-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
...if I would be afraid to run, right? So you never know how far it's gonna take you. So I think simple rules like that, I wanted to have those people take away those rules and, or for instance, giving back. As soon as you realize that you're not a self-made man, and you realize that we all were created by your parents, and that you were created by mentors, teachers, coaches, and many other people that none of us know, but you yourself know. I mean, those are the people that have created me. I mean, just alone, if I wouldn't have had Joe Weider to bring me over to America, how could I have come to America? So how can I say I was self-made? How could I have become governor if not five point eight million people voted for me? I mean, I've, I'm not a dictator. I was voted in through the democratic process. So Did I make myself governor? No. So I'm not a self-made man. So I have to recognize that, that my training, my money, everything comes from a lot of different people. And therefore, that means when you recognize that, that you now have the responsibility of going out and help others.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
There are so many people out there that need help. And it's like my father-in-law said, Sergeant Shriver, who was... Who created the Peace Corps, Head Start, Job Corps, and all of these great programs in the '60s. He said to a, a bunch of Yale students at a, at the graduation class, he said, "Tear down this mirror that you always look at yourself. Tear down this mirror, and you will be able to look beyond that mirror, and you will see the millions of people that need your help."
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
That's exactly right. As soon as we start for a minute looking at ourselves, then you will be able to look beyond yourself, and you see that there are people out there that need help. There are poor people out there that need help. There are fire victims right now out there that need your help. There are earthquake vics- victims out there. There are homeless people out there. There are war veterans out there. There are kids that come from poor backgrounds that are out there that need to learn how to Engli- how to speak English or how to write English, how to do math, and all of the stuff. There's immigrants that don't even speak English. So there's so many areas where you can be helpful that takes money or takes no money, just effort. So never, ever think it's all just about you. Someone helped you where you are today, so now you go out and help someone else. So this is another one of my lessons is just, you know, break that mirror in front of you.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
So these are the different lessons that I teach people that really had a profound impact on me and made me successful. And the no bullshit rules, and anyone can follow it. That's what it is.
- 1:15:10 – 1:16:58
Parting thoughts.
- TFTim Ferriss
So people can find the new book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life anywhere fine books are sold. They can go to beusefulbook.com. The newsletter can be found at arnoldspumpclub.com, and we'll link to all this in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast. Arnold, is there anything else that you would like to say? Any closing comments or other requests of the audience, suggestions, anything at all that you'd like to add before we come to a close?
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
No, no, I just wanted to say to the people, I want to thank them for having been such great supporters of mine. And, you know, without them, as I said earlier, I will be nothing. I mean, if it wouldn't have been for the bodybuilding fans as I grew up, they were cheering there and screaming, "Arnold, Arnold," and motivated me, I would be nothing. If it wouldn't have been for the movie fans that went to run to see Conan the Barbarian, made it the number one box office, that then gave me all the headlines, uh, I would have been nothing. The, all the Jim Camerons and the Ivan Reitmans and all of these people, and the people that are now following my newsletter, the Pump Club, and all of these people that are even interested in a book like, you know, Be Useful, and that go to my seminars and listen to my speeches, my motivational speeches. I just really love that I have had such an extraordinary following, and that some of my speeches have reached like 35 and a half, 6 billion people. That's really extraordinary. So I want to say thank you. Without them, I would be nothing. And thank you to America for giving me everything.
- TFTim Ferriss
Thank you, Arnold, for the time yet again.
- ASArnold Schwarzenegger
Absolutely. Thank you, Tim.
Episode duration: 1:17:19
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