The Daily Stoic - Arnold Schwarzenegger On Finding Ways To Be Useful

Episode Date: October 14, 2023

Ryan speaks with Arnold Schwarzenegger on how to be useful while we still have the time, the mental, physical and psychological benefits to nurturing the mind and body, keys moments during his bodybuilding career, running for governor and more..Arnold Schwarzenegger is an Austrian and American actor, businessman, filmmaker, former politician, and former professional bodybuilder best known for his roles in high-profile action movies. He served as the 38th governor of California from 2003 to 2011 and was among Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2004 and 2007.Be Useful: Seven Tools For Life is written with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s uniquely earnest, blunt, powerful voice. It takes readers on an inspirational tour through his toolkit for a meaningful life. Arnold shows us how to put those tools to work, in service of whatever fulfilling future we can dream up for ourselves. He brings his insights to vivid life with compelling personal stories, life-changing successes and life-threatening failures alike—some of them famous, some told here for the first time.🏋️ Sign up for his free daily fitness email: arnoldspumpclub.com✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello, I'm Hannah. And I'm Seruti. And we are the hosts of a Red Handed, a weekly true crime podcast. Every week on Red Handed, we yet stuck into the most talked about cases. But we also dig into those you might not have heard of, like the Nephiles Royal Massacre and the Nithory Child Sacrifices. Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behaviour. Find, download, and binge Red Handhanded wherever you listen to your podcasts. I know the police have been looking for me. But nothing can stop a father. We want to find her just as much as you do.

I doubt that very much. From doing what the law can't. And we have to do this the very way. You have to. I don't. Bosch Legacy watched the new season, now streaming exclusively on FreeV. I'm Rob Briden and welcome to my podcast, Briden and we are now in our third series. Among those still to come is some Michael Paling, the comedy duo Egg and Robbie Williams.

The list goes on so do sit back and enjoy Briden and on Amazon Music, Wondery Plus, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these St stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what

the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the daily stoic podcast. If you listen to the Sunday episode from recently, I told you this crazy week that I had where I was in LA and Ohai and then LA again and then Seattle doing a bunch of stuff. But the cornerstone of all that where we managed to squeeze in is the interview that I'm gonna bring you today where I got to interview the one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger

who has a great new book called Be Useful Seven Tools for Life. I obviously knew about this book for quite some time. I actually saw it in the proposal stage, and I thought it was a really cool project, and I was very excited about it. And I've known some folks on Arnold's team for a long time, as you'll hear in today's episode, and Arnold did me a solid about a decade ago when I was visiting Gratz, Austria, where he is from. So when I was visiting Gratz, Austria, where he is from, obviously as a native Californian Arnold was the governor for a good chunk of my childhood. So that was a unique experience. Obviously I grew up seeing his movies, just a fascinating guy, an embodiment of the American

dream in so many ways, an embodiment of both discipline and excess in some ways, right? Excess in terms of ambition and power, but also just a really inspiring story of what human determination and resilience and creativity and confidence, what a person can do. If you haven't heard that amazing Bill Burr joke that sort of encapsulates Arnold's life. I mean, it's funny, but it's also just almost unbelievable.

And when you lay it all out, it's one of those things. It doesn't happen very often when it does happen. America's kind of the only place that it does happen. If you're not familiar with Arnold, if you've been living under a rock somewhere, he's a bodybuilder and actor, a businessman, a philanthropist, best-selling author, politician who's the 38th governor of California, one of the most influential people in the world, including to Time Magazine more than once. And you might be surprised to hear that Arnold's also a big fan on the Stokes.

Like, there is a lot of stoicism in this book. Even the final thank you ends with this sentence. When I read Marcus Realist's Meditations, I was struck by the fact that the first book in what is basically a 2000 year old journey was nothing more than a list of people in Marcus's life who helped him or taught him something valuable. Talk about a powerful way to remind yourself that you aren't self-made. who helped him or taught him something valuable. Talk about a powerful way to remind yourself that you aren't self-made. So I was really excited to interview Arnold,

I interviewed him out of his office in Santa Monica. As it happened, Rich Roll was doing the interview right after me. I'm excited to listen to that interview. Also, I really enjoyed the book. I love his email. You can check that out at Arnold's PumpClub.com. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter at Swartzeninger on YouTube at Governor Swartzeninger. He's put out

some really great, very timely, very, I think, brave and important messages about some political and world events over the last couple of years. Also, I am heading to New York very soon to actually interview Arnold on stage at the 92nd Street Y also. So I'll try to bring you that interview. But in the meantime, here's Arnold Schwarzenegger and I talking about how to be useful and I think we're really going to like this one. I don't think you remember this, but we have a little Grots connection, which is maybe 10 years ago I was going there and I told him, and you connected me with Warner, and he took my wife and I out. He actually drove us to Slovenia. He found out my grandfather was from Slovenia,

who he drove us across the borders to Slovenia for dinner. It was a very, it was one of the more memorable nights that I had. It was quite an experience. It's the bed. He's not with us anymore. I know. I heard that.

That's too bad. And I found out while I was there, actually, my grandfather on my mother's I was there, actually my grandfather on my mother's side was there during the war in a refugee camp, which I didn't know about. You mean after the Second World War? Yeah, the Second World War. No, after the Second World War.

So he lived in what was then Yugoslavia, he was Slovenian. So he got sent as a refugee displaced person camp. He was there, and then I was reading about it, talking about being useful. They repatriated people after the war, and something like, they sent like, I don't know, 18,000 men back,

and almost all the men who were sent back were executed, but he got sent west instead. So somebody said, hey, you go this way and set it this way, and if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't be here. So the little decisions we made. Probably was the same relocation camp that our friend went to, that is the head of the Auschwitz Church Center, yeah. Yeah. Because he was also sent after he was born,

he was sent a relocation camp. Did you have to go to the celebration people with your dad? There was after the Hungarian Revolution. No. Yeah, there was 1956, so there was different. Yeah, there was no picnic after. It didn't just end. It never does.

No. It always keeps going on and on and on. But I mean, yeah, I mean, Russia, the former Soviet Union, kind of invaded Poland and Hungary in 1956. A lot of the refugees came over to Austria. My father was a police officer. He had been charged with the relocation camp there. He had us kids. We go there and just sort of soup.

And so we were kind of like all day long for days at this relocation camp serving soup and vegetables, some cheap food. Sure. But there were some sausages and stuff like that. But it was all kind of simple, simple food. And very hard work I remember for hours and hours, like, you know, 10, 12 hours and 7 soups and food.

When I was there, I drove over to see where the camp was. And of course, now it's like an apartment complex or something. We gloss over these things really quickly, but the sort of, the dark terrible things that human beings can do to each other are sort of always there beneath the surface. Oh, yeah.

And I thought that you're trip to Auschwitz and some of the things you've been talking about in that regard are very interesting. There's the sort of the undercurrent psychovirus that exists, that can affect human beings and has for thousands of years. Anti-Semitism, hatred, bigotry, and people get swept up in it. Yeah, that's why I think it's important, though, is to educate people and to talk about this issue. And to have the Simon Wiesendall Center, where they have a museum of tolerance.

Yes. So that young people can go and visit this museum and see the atrocities that were went on in the history. You know, if it is to black, if it's to Asians, if it is to the Jews, if it's to just so many people that have suffered because of it. And kids go through that museum and they see those images. And hopefully those images stick with them. Yes.

And they walk away and say, well, we should never go in that direction. Yeah. So the more we do that, the better it is, you know. So because it's not much to do just with education, it has to do with kind of like how do we control our instincts. Yes. You know, because human beings are like animals. The animals have tremendous prejudices. And so do we.

Otherwise, there will be many more species of us left. You know, we wiped them all out. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, everyone has those prejudice kind of come out in them. And the question is, how can you control it? Do you think that's like what really makes America so great? I mean, there's my favorite line from George Washington he was speaking at a synagogue after he was president

and he said, basically the promise of America is that every man should be able to sit next to his vine or under his fig tree and no one should make him afraid. You know, that you could say what you want, believe what you want, live how you want, that that's sort of, it's more than tolerance, because I think what he's saying is that it's incumbent on other people to

make sure that other people aren't intimidated or scared or persecuted or prayed upon, that sort of the institutions and the basic fundamental premises of the Bill of Rights and in the Constitution is about checking some of those parts of the human spirit. I think that this country has always had this as an ideal. It didn't always follow it.

Sure. Because of what I said, the prejudice comes out and how do you control it. I think when we look back of what we did to the Native Americans, it's embarrassing. Yes. Especially embarrassing if you're trying to preach to other countries today to be tolerant. In fact, we were not. Or even what we did to the buffalo. Exactly.

But I mean, it's like what we did to the blacks. And I just watched for the second time the documentary of Little Richard. And he was one of the greatest rock maraud musicians and when you see his upbringing and how he was hailed to sing and to perform and to play the piano and a lot of those seven clubs

But he was not allowed to eat there. Yeah, but he was not allowed to eat there. And he was not allowed to go to the bathroom there. So he says, what the fuck was that all about? Yeah. He says, like, how can people do that to other people? Yeah. You know, how can you, because someone has a different skin color, but he's a very hard-working person,

like Blacks were. And how can it then treat that person obviously like an animal? Like, I don't want you to sit with me. I don't want you to eat with me. I don't want you to go to the same bathroom, or even when I was already in America We visited this guy Otto Jones in

Deland Florida Who started the Nodless machines? For very famous exercise equipment or new revolutionary kind of a wheel that gives you progressive resistance. As you lift up the weight further and further, the more resistance there was, because that's when the muscle gets the strongest. So it was a genius guy. And he asked Franco and me, Franco is my little training partner who also eventually became Mr. Olympian, Mr. Universe, and was one of the world's strongest men in his weight category,

weight on 180 pounds, and they had lift 730 pounds, and stuff like that. He had us come down to test the machines, because they were not yet on a market. And we went down there and test the machine and stayed there with him for several days. And he took us out to, I remember, there was this malt place where we got this delicious malt drinks.

I think he wanted to just fatten us up a little bit and just say there was the machines that made us gain weight and all that stuff. But the word was interesting, was not the the malt, but it was interesting, we went in there and there was an a lower floor as we walked in the dead rest around there was to the right and a lower floor where you had to walk down four or five steps were the black sitting Just blacks. Yeah.

And up on top, where we walked in or whites. So I asked him, is it why is everyone so separated? Did they not get along? Not knowing that much. It just came to this country. I think a year ago or two years ago. And,

and he said, no, no, no, it's just the way it is here. He says, we don't like to sit with blacks since. It's just a tradition. And he wrote it off of search. I didn't pay much attention to it. I have to say that that's America. What do I know? I've met the first black person when it was 19.

He, you know, when I was went to London to the mr. Universe contest and there I was competing with black bodybuilders And so I didn't really know much about that history in order But then when I went home I was telling people they came back to LA I was telling people the story is it are you kidding me? They still have that because it was the South share And Cardiff funny was always more advanced, right? And they almost didn't believe me. But I saw that firsthand still in 1970, 1971. So just think about that.

So this is not that long ago. No, I mean, Ruby Bridges, right? She's like in her 60s. Yeah. I mean, Ruby Bridges, right? She's like in her 60s. You know? I think it is interesting, and we're getting too far afield. But there is this kind of fragility today where not only do people not know that, they don't want to know that, and they don't want their kids to know about those things, right? There's this kind of movement, I think, against.

They're like, why do we have to talk about these things? Why can't we talk about what's great or what's amazing? There's kind of a snowflake is in there where we don't want to look at the past because the path, there's some inherent indictment in what happened in the past. But that's the only way you can grow and change and not repeat those mistakes. Yeah, but I feel like I can talk about something great without talking about that. Because I can talk about something great like equality, the day. Yeah.

Let's forget it. Let's assume that you have a difficult time looking back. Yeah. I don't, because I learned from that. Yeah. But some people do. But then let's go and celebrate the day, equality. Sure.

Let's celebrate tolerance. Let's celebrate understanding each other and not being prejudiced and being inclusive. And they're not treating anyone different because of their race or their sexuality or female male. Whatever it is, it's just as long as we kind of celebrate the idea every human being has the same value. I think this is something great to talk about.

To me, it's very upbeat to talk about that. And I remember my governorship was about that. I said to myself, and all of the things that we usually talk about now have the power to do something about it. So that was great. I said to my team, I said, guys, maybe you think I have a little bit of hang up about all this stuff? I said, maybe I do. I that, but let's look at this. I said, you know, Republican, I'm a Republican.

I said, but Republicans, as we get this list of judges that are supposed to be appointed now, I said, the natural thing is that you guys are going to look for Republican judge. I said, but I'm not going to look for that Republican judge. I said, but I'm not gonna look for that. I said, here is what I'm looking for. I'm looking for to put in more women as judges in California than any other governor. And maybe it's not only just the tolerance side of me, the inclusive side, but also the competitive side.

Right? I mean, right, we made it a competition. I say, I want to have more judges, more women judges appointed. And I want to have more black judges, minority judges appointed. And I don't want you ever to look at what it is, what party that person comes from.

I say it becomes irrelevant, because California is a mixture of people. I'm representing Democrats and Republicans in decline to state independence and everybody. And so therefore that's what the way the judges should be picked. I said we should pick the most qualified person. And so they just looked at me kind of like wow what is that come from right and I said I said I see you don't understand I don't hate Democrats I don't hate black people I don't hate Jews I don't hate anybody I said to me they're all the same they're equal yes we have different ways of looking at life yes we have a different approach the way we go and go for being successful in all of those things

but we got to go and embrace them because only together, we are going to be the most powerful and stay the most powerful state. And I think nationally, we should do this ideally. I'm not in charge of the whole nation. I said, but that's what we should shoot for, is that everyone is on the same team. Because then we have a strong team. You know, rather than always splitting it in half,

I mean, the Democrats then charged the only big Democrats, even the Republicans then charged as only the only big Republicans. It's only half of the intellectual power and the will and everything, the potential of the country. So I was always against that. So to me, that was the right way to go. And I think we made some really great headway this way. And there was, of course, a lot in my party that disagreed with me.

Sure. And so you can imagine that I have people coming to my office that shit on me. The Democrats, because I said, no, we're not going to sign this bill because it's more spending. And we're not going to spend money. They don't have. So we're not going to sign this bill because it's more spending and you're not going to spend money. They don't have. So, we're not going to go and live in the deficit and in debt and all of that stuff. We're not going to do it. So, they were mad at me. And because of other philosophic differences. And then you were fighting with the Republicans because they say, how could you do that?

How could you have a chief of staff that's a woman? And a Democrat. And a lesbian. What the hell is going on here with you, Governor? I mean, you're really naive. I said, well, let's assume for a second, I'm naive. You know, I'm the first one to tell you, I'm a little bit naive. I say, I'm not a trained politician. I said, but that woman, that chief of staff, she's the best and the brightest that I've interviewed. I said, tell you that. So it becomes irrelevant, but part of she's from,

she knows what I'm trying to accomplish in California. And she's 100% behind me, and she's going to execute with my dream and my vision as of California. It doesn't matter if she's a lesbian, or if she was a broad-burning lesbian, all the stuff that you guys are claiming that she is, as it makes no difference to me.

So she is the best. And so they were fighting, how can you big judges did the black like this? How can you big judges that Democrats and they were up in arms? So I was fighting many times, both parties, and then many times we've worked together really well, you know, building the infrastructure

and doing the environmental stuff that we did and all of the stuff doing the redistricting reform was one of the things that both of the parties didn't like and fought me. And that's why we lost twice, but the third time we won and we got it through and we became kind of like the first place that really started picking an independent commission to throw the district lines, and I felt very proud of that.

I think it was right after Arizona. We were the first two states, and that said, I'm gonna say, wow, I did something that was a tradition in America for 200 some years. They have cherrymandering. Yeah. And I said, we threw it out. Yeah.

I guess it was a battle like hell. But I mean, so it's all about how do we create this equality? And that's what I was always shooting for. And I have to say that I just happened to be very fortunate because I grew up after the Second World War. There's still people were doing Nazi salutes in Austria and stuff like that. Even in a military camp where I was in the military,

I saw that. But at the same time, I had a friend who became a mentor, Freddie Gerstle, who was Jewish. time I had a friend who became a mentor, Freddie Gerstle, who was Jewish. But he never talked much about that. He just was a kind man. He was a political leader in Graz in my hometown that was interested in sports for the youth because he had a son.

And so he was interested in that. So he will give us money for the weightlifting club and he will bring us together and he will raise money to get trophies for our competitions, for our weightlifting competitions. And he was always very kind and he then in a very saddle way always snuck in this thing about equality and about brain power. Don't just train your muscles, just train your brain. He says, you know, when I grew up, you know, my father always said, you know, that we choose, and that's when I realized it was a Jew. He says, we were always taking everything from.

He says, but the only thing that we learned was that they can't take from us is our brain power, our intelligence. He says, that's why we try to always educate ourselves and our kids. And that's what you should do too. Just remember, you should just run around with the book, with the book of Plato on the U.M. and read every day, even if it's just a page. But just remember, the brain is just like the muscle. You know, you got to train it every day. It needs training, stimulation, you need to, you have to push it all the time, you have to be mentally in pain also,

just like physically you go for the pain period, to break through this pain period, to grow and to get stronger. You get only stronger if you break through the pain period also mentally. You have to sometimes suffer, you have to Also mentally, you have to sometimes suffer, you have to sometimes struggle, you have to sometimes fall. Then you get up again, you may cry. And so he was teaching me all this stuff. And to me, I think that it's such a profound impact. So my father's upbringing has a tremendous impact.

When he talked about, be useful. What do you do, Arnold earth for people around you? You're just training, you're just pumping up your biceps and looking in the mirror, looking at yourself. Are you kidding me? You should get this biceps from chopping wood and carrying wood in there for the older people. There are a lot of older people that need help.

And so he will always push me to be more useful and stuff. So those things that have are really profound impact, and that's why I think it's so important that we make our kids grow up with those lessons, and that those messages. And that's why I feel like not every kid will have that, where they preach to their home. And so therefore, I say to myself,

you know, I have a big voice out there. I mean, hell, you know, I have been a star in one way or the other since the time I was 18 years old and then one my first Mr. Europe junior competition and there were people screaming out there in the hall when I won. And then I went to London to the Mr. Universe contest and there was standing ovation with the age of 19 and the age of 20, I won Mr. Universe. So, and there were hundreds of people asking me outside for autographs. I didn't even know where the autograph was. This is stupid awards. I mean, I had no

idea. Why did they want me to write down on a piece of paper my name? I couldn't figure out. So it was not the common thing in Austria. So I didn't even know. So, but I mean, I feel like that from that point on, I gained an audience in bodybuilding, then in show business, then in the Polo L'Gurina, and then Paulas Yor the arena and on and on and on. And so I have to use that voice, that power, that platform, and in order to talk about those issues, and that's why I do videos every so often, not frequently, but every so often, something about the January 6th

and direction situation that we went through, this very dark moment in our history, and all about the prejudice that I have detected that is kind of gaining momentum in America and worldwide. So I talked about that, or about the Russian, you know, unprovoked attack under Ukraine. How, you know, I spoke out about that, and so I speak out about those things,

and try to teach our adults and our young kids that I think have a pretty good gauge of what is right and what is wrong, and if you had already admired me, then listen to me, because I was set in the right direction. Yeah. There's a Latin expression, Menzano and Corparezano, which basically means a strong mind and a strong body. It's exactly what the Freddie Girl has to say. Really? Exactly that, yes.

Absolutely. And I was looking at the Theodore Roosevelt bust out in your office, you know, the story, he's this young sort of genius kid, he's frail, and his father comes to him and he says, you've got a strong mind, but you haven't got a strong body. And he says, okay, dad, I'm going to make my body. And his dad builds in this gym on his back porch, which you can still see, the birthplace

of Theta Roosevelt there. And something that's on 21st or 20th Street Manhattan. And he makes his, he embraces what he calls the strenuous life and you need to have both, right? Because it's not just good ideas and you know, this sense of equality and fairness and principle that we're talking about, but then you've got to have the the literal physical power to do it and the energy and the the willpower to bring those ideas into effect, right? It's like you want to be useful,

but do you have the things that make you useful? That's ultimately where the rubber meets the road. Right, I mean, and, of course, what you say is absolutely correct, because I mean, how many presidents have boxing champions come into the White House and box with them? I mean, it's the crazy. Sure.

And that's how it's done. He was working out like three hours a day. He did that. And I think it's always, you see that when the mind and the body kind of, you know, when you find that kind of sweet spot where they both kind of work together. Yeah. You know, then you really have a big advantage. Because the mind is just like Freddie Gerstle was saying when I was a kid, it needs the same kind

of torture, it needs the same pain, it needs the same kind of a push and resistance. And the more adversity that you go through, the stronger you get as a character. The stronger your character becomes. And the stronger your will becomes and all of that stuff. So it's very clear. I believe in that very strongly. And I've always in a practice that.

One of the stoics said, we treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind. I think it's the idea that we're sort of cultivating this when we feel that resistance, when we feel that doubt, when our body says, no, you can't run two more miles or you can't do two more reps and you push through that. That's what you need, like when you're trying to pass redistricting and you fail the first time and you fail the second, like you need that part of yourself to pass redistricting and you fail the first time. And you fail the second, like, you need that part of yourself that has trained the muscle

that pushes past, no, or the first failure, or that it's hard. You have to cultivate that sort of meta muscle that pushes through hard stuff. Yeah, absolutely. I sometimes try to make it simpler. And what I'm talking about is that the rulers don't think. And so because I feel like a lot of people when they get up, the mind starts wondering. It's a natural

thing. We all do that overthinking. But if you make it the rule where you say, okay, there's certain things that I would do before I start thinking and that is, I'm going to work out for an hour. So now if you, the mind tells you, the day is okay, I mean, with the healthy Sunday, no one will know, I mean, it's just going to have some pancakes instead. And it's just the kind of reorganized you a little bit. You say, wait a minute, what did I just do? I thought. And I promised myself, I just do? I thought.

And I promised myself I'm not going to think. So it's the thinking that makes me want to go and change my mind. If I stopped thinking and throw it out and do exactly what I said out to do, which is to do first of all, when I work out. So that's my idea. Let's just go. Let's get on that bicycle. Let's basically down to the gym because as soon as you're bicycle,

everything starts feeling good. It's almost kind of like you start out the first mile with a black and white picture. And then I always said this picture turns more and more colorful. So the time you get to the gym and you do the first sit, at the first set, it's colorful. The gym is colorful, the characters around you are colorful. Everyone is working out and you get sucked into it and you start training harder and harder and all that stuff.

And then when you're basically home and you have breakfast, I mean, you feel really good. So this is always the same thing. It's a don't let your thinking get in the breakfast, I mean you feel really good. So this is always the same thing. It's a don't let you thinking get in the way that's what we thought people people get thrown off and you say don't think, we don't think, I thought that it should think. Yes, it's the right moment. Yes. You have to think of course in the right moment, but in the morning when you get up and you have time, do the work work before start thinking. Yes. You know, just that part of it, just go on your life cycle, if you have a stationary bike at home, if you don't go out and ride the bicycle, if you don't have a bicycle

and you're in the snow country, then you're just walking the deep snow and you get some mixes. We don't need much money in order to really make your body kind of go through some kind of pain and to just really push it a little bit, burn the calories, get the steps in there, work the heart and everything like this. And you will feel good. And that's the key thing. People should always know when you physically, if you feel good physically and you can do wonderful

things physically, then you feel mentally much better upon yourself. Yeah, and the morning you don't want to get sucked into the phone, you don't want to get sucked into turning on the TV, seeing what's happening on the news, getting moving, getting active. And I love that feeling right before the sweat starts. You know, like where you're breaking through some barrier, from non-activity, activity activity and then you know you've

you've already won the day. Go Sunreal. At least as a journalist that's what I've always believed. Sure, odd things happened in my childhood bedroom, but ultimately I shrugged it all off. That is, until a couple of years ago when I discovered that every subsequent argument of that house is convinced they've experienced something inexplicable too, including the most recent inhabitant who says she was visited at night by the ghost of a faceless woman. And it gets even stranger. It just so happens that the alleged ghost haunted my childhood room might just be my wife's great grandmother. It was murdered in the house next door by two gunshots to the face.

From Wondering and Pineapple Street Studios comes Ghost Story, a podcast about family secrets, overwhelming coincidence and the things that come back to haunt us. Follow Ghost Story on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus. Emily, do you remember when W Direction called it a day? I think you'll find there are still many people who can't talk about it. Well luckily, we can. A lot, because our new season of terribly famous is all about the first One Directioner

to go it alone. Zayn Malik. We'll take you on Zayn's journey from Shilad from Bradford to being in the world's biggest boy band and explore why, when he reached the top, he decided to walk away. Follow terribly famous wherever you get your podcasts. It's terribly famous. So that's, I think, I think that we feel better.

If you feel good physically, then you feel good mentally and psychologically, and if you feel good mentally, and if you feel good about yourself, because you've not done something, you look at the world quite differently. You know, you don't drive around in traffic angry. It spills over, all of a sudden,

I feel like so good that even if someone is in a wrong, and that drive home with my bicycle and someone runs in front of me and almost wipes me out. And they say, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you go ahead. Go across as, no, no, no, it's screen for you. No, no, no, you go ahead. I say, you know, and I said Jesus, I'm I don't think I would have been like that when I started the

pie cry. I'm trying to find the body. Exactly. It's like it's really interesting how we approach everything and how friendly we are, how happy we are, how good we feel about ourselves, and how this rubs off another people and so on. So that's why I always, because I'm addicted to exercising, you know, people always say, you have so much discipline out. I tell them, I said, you know, to be very honest with you, I don't have much discipline. I really don't.

I think I'm just addicted. You know, I'm just, I just got sucked into this world and I just can't do it without it. And that's that simple. So there's certain things that you know that feels good. You just can't do it without it. And it's that simple. So there's certain things that you know that it feels good. You just want to do it over and over again. And without ever asking about it, should I or should not? It doesn't take much discipline for me.

In some respects, it almost takes more discipline when you're like that. So let's say you're injured, you're not feeling well, you're working to go today's a rest day. Right. Or I have to be careful with my knee. Yeah. It almost takes more discipline. You have to be disciplined about your discipline. You know, you're absolutely right. I mean, I go through this right now. I had surgery last week on my elbow because I had a

a nerve that always then create not a creative numbness on my little finger, on my hand. And it was because of bone spurs and there was a muscle dead dead, it was kind of pressing against the nerve in order. So they had to relocate the nerve. But of course, what did they say? I don't exercise, don't go to the gym until you come back and you get the stitches taken out. So this morning, the stitches are,

so now I feel really good and happy that it can go back to the gym and do something. Yeah. Because it was really, I needed discipline to stay away from the gym. Yes. Yes. Well, the idea of temperance, right?

The middle ground, if you're so extra about something, you actually need the discipline to rain it in or you burn out, you hurt yourself, you're not responsible. that can be harder. Yes. So you talked in the book, well, I thought it was interesting when you're saying,

you see people in the gym and they're like, I just wanna get in shape and you say, but sort of for what or how, right? You're sort of forcing them to be specific. This idea of being useful, I think, how would you push people in that direction too, right? So maybe generally, there's very few people that don't want to be useful. We all, I think, inherently want to be useful. But how do we channel that? Or how does a person

find their reason or their canvas to be useful? Well, I think the first or the most important thing is what you just said, you know, to have a clear vision and a clear goal. Yeah. Because when you ask someone in a gym, okay, you want to be in shape, what is the reason why you want to be in shape? Because being in shape, it's just very broad, what does it mean? And how do you get motivated if you don't have a

specific goal. So I think at the end of this conversation with people didn't have to really start thinking about and some people say what a doctor told me that I'm now 55 years old. My cholesterol is high and my blood pressure is high and they thought instead of just going on drugs and prescribing me medication, I should try vigorous exercising every day for a little bit, not too long, but just every day something.

And so they do that. But I always tell them, I said, look, if there's a specific goal that you have, where you say, OK, by Christmas, I want to have 20 pounds less. Now you're there's a specific goal that you have where you say, okay, by Christmas, I want to have 20 pounds less. Now you're shooting for a specific goal and now you weigh yourself every day. Now you watch what you eat because you always know that you're stepping on this scale and you want the way less and less and less every day.

And by Christmas, you want to have 20 pounds less. So you can afford it with picking out out, right? Christmas time or whatever, because maybe you feel overweight or whatever. So when we said specific goals like that, or why sometimes talk about it then when I was a kid, 15 years old, I wanted to go the next year to the lake where I grew up. And I wanted to be more muscular and impress the girls.

And people say you were actually saying that? I said, no, I was not saying that to anybody. I said, but it was my goal. And I dealt with it. Sure. I said, I dealt with it and it motivated me to go into train every day and all of a sudden. I said, and it's of course a stupid motivation,

but it works. I said, so I'm telling people, I said, no matter how stupid your motivation is, it doesn't matter how silly it is, it doesn't matter, but pick a goal and then go after that goal, have a specific reason for it, because for everything, it gives us more motivation when we have a reason.

It's no different than a kid that is coming out of high school and he now goes to college and he wants to be a doctor. as a kid that is coming out of high school and he now goes to college and he wants to be a doctor. Well, that's a goal. Well, that's a big goal. And now all these classes that he would take will be specific classes that would get him to that goal, to make that goal a reality. There's so many that go to university,

just because they're here always this always the American way And I got to have a university have to have a degree and all this stuff But they don't know for what right so they go in there and what did it do? They go in the joint at the university to go and stay in some Flat house and they get drunk they eat junk food They gain weight and all this and they're drunk more than they're really studying and all this stuff So because they are aimlessly kind of like going through university for his and then they're finished and They don't earn more money because they haven't really shot that they study American history something that's

That they were not used lay down except if you become an educator of some sort, then you can use those things or say, college, study, or English to study. Yeah, we can use this, but that's used for something specifically. So I think it's always good if you say, I'm going to be a businessman. I want to start a real estate business.

And so therefore, all of this that you study is like you studied in a microeconomics and macroeconomics you study accounting, you get really good in math and in algebra and geometry and all of those kind of things and you really get good in writing business letters and in communicating and in marketing and the publicizing products and all of this stuff. So all of the stuff that is important to be a good businessman because no matter what business you're in, you have to be able to sell the market,

to communicate the product, whatever you're dealing with. So then you can take classes for that. So this is why it's more fun when we have a goal. And this is why I stressed this in my book about have a vision, have a clear goal like I had when I was 15 years old, I wanted to be the world champion in bodybuilding. I wanted to be another rich park and five years later after that dream and that vision that I had.

Five years later I was standing on that very same stage in London, where Reg Park, one is Mr. Universe Consisting 1951, 1958 and in 1965, he won three Mr. Universe titles and at the very same stage, I stood there in 1966 and then in 1967, I won the Mr. Universe title on that stage. So I saw firsthand how that vision drove me to the gym hours a day where the normal amateur bodybuilder didn't train three, four hours a day. They trained an hour and a half, but I did the weightlifting, I did the powerlifting, I did the bodybuilding, I did the training and torturing myself and going through this, I started winning competitions and junior, Mr. Europe, then Mr. Europe, by a spiltment of Europe and then second, Mr. Universe, then Mr. Universe, with the age of 20. So it was amazing. So now I knew, ah, this is what I have to do for the rest of my life. I have to have a very clear vision. And so then, of course, the vision expands.

You say, I want to be not just Miss Universe, I got to go and become the greatest bodybuilder of all times. So that becomes you new goal that year, I have to win that many Miss Universe titles as a red spark when I have to win as many Miss Olympia titles as Sergio Lever and Larry Scott won. And so I have to just go after those titles. And so eventually I became the greatest bodybuilder

of all times in 1975 after winning the sixth and 1980, the seventh Miss Olympia competition and the 13th World Bodybuilding Title. And so it was like, so, and me that same idea went into acting. Again, I had a very clear vision to become another clean beast with a child's bronze, something like this. So every one of my goals approached that way.

Well, it's when you have the goal, you have the motivation, which is key, but then something that's really interesting about your career. You also know what to say no to. That might be exciting or lucrative or interesting or standard, but it takes you further away from where you're going. So I think someone who has a strong idea of what they're trying to accomplish, a clear vision, as you call it, a strong sense of who they're trying to help or what they want to accomplish, then they also know how to pass on things that are coming their way. They know how to pass on distractions, they know how to pass on temptations, they also

know how to pass on doing the same thing how to pass on temptations, they also know how to pass on, you know, doing the same thing over and over again, because the next part of their vision actually requires them to go over here. You have to have that clarity. You're absolutely correct, because I remember, for instance, and I mentioned it also in my book

that I was in the middle of my bodybuilding career, winning one Miss Olympia Competition after the next, and being known as the bodybuilder with the business brain. Because I was going to San Amonaga City College, taking classes there. I was going to West Los Angeles College to take classes, business classes there. I was going to UCLA Extension courses because I couldn't go to one university because I was applying for the working permit and not for a student visa.

So I only was allowed to take two classes at one place. So I jumped around all over, but I was taking classes and I was getting really, and my thing was business. And I studied how to sell. So I said, I have to become a successful businessman in America and know how to do business here. So people came to me with business ideas a lot of times. I have to become a successful businessman in America and know how to do business here and all.

So people came to me with business ideas a lot of times, but they didn't really fall into the category of where I wanted to go, which is into show business. So I was offered by the Jack Lelain, a gymnasium empire here in California, to run and to manage the gymnasium chain and be the lot of money I think was like $200,000 a year which is imagine in the early seven in the mid seventies so there's a lot of money. So better say to myself okay I will make this money but now I would have to be in the business

eight hours ten hours a day and that would not give me the time to be able to go and take speech classes, accent removal classes, English classes, acting classes, all of the things that I and work with stunts and with stuntmen and all this, all the stuff that I needed to do to get into the direction where I wanted to go, which is to become a leading man. So I said, so therefore, I would derail myself by saying yes to this. Yes. Great offer. I would derail myself and possibly my dream to make like clean these with a million dollars, a movie. Because that was my dream. So Charles Branson cleaned these with and Marlon Brando.

They were getting a million dollars, a million dollars a movie. So that was like the number 10. So some say, for, you know, if there's three, that ladder isn't that busy. And it's not that crowded up there. I think there's room for another one. So I felt absolutely convinced.

I saw it very clearly for me to be a action hero. I had no idea how I'm gonna get there, but I knew this is where I'm gonna go. And therefore, this particular offer had to be turned down to become a manager of a gymnasium chain. And I turned it down. They thought it was crazy, but only then a few years later, when I did, you know, stay hungry, then I did pumping iron, then I did the chain man's food story, then I worked

with Kirk Douglas and with Anne Margaret in the villain. And then obviously I got this big offer to do Conan the Barbarian. And Conan the Barbarian was $250,000 with a sequel obligation to make a million dollars. So now I said, and I said, in 1977, I signed the deal for Conan to do a few Conan movies. And so I went back to my friend who offered me that and I said, you see? And he says, no, I don't use smart. I mean, I get it. I get it now. We have to say no to some things to say, yes, to other things. That's right. When we say yes to something, we realize we're also saying no to other things.

Yes, absolutely. And you notice it, like, it's, it's, we imagine when you're governor. I mean, how many things you have to say no to? Sure. I mean, you have your family. You have to work on all the different legislations that are coming you to your desk. You have to go out and do fundraising activities. You have to, you can paint literally all the time.

So, I mean, there's just so much work that you have to do. I mean, so that you really have to stay focused and disciplined and say, no, do a lot of things. So I had a question for you about this idea of having a strong, because you're talking about, not just about having a strong vision, but an ambitious vision, like bigger than anyone else is thinking. So I have this tattoo, ego is the enemy. So what's the tension between dreaming big, pushing for totally unrealistic, impossible things, and also being a delusional narcissist

or an egomaniac, right? How do you, what's the tension between ego and let's say confidence? Well, I think that you never know until you get there. You know, so to me, it became very clear that to me, I had a big ego, that ego had to be stroked all the time. And to me, I had big visions, and my visions became a reality. And it's not one of those things when you talk about the vision,

that you just visualize anything and therefore you can accomplish anything you know. It has to be totally kind of come from you from your heart and from your head. It cannot just be where you say, oh, I to be a rock and roll star that doesn't the old you know I was many times playing golf out there I remember when I said everyone was getting into golf in the 90s and

so they dragged me along and I said to myself I somehow cannot visualize myself as a great golf player. I could not visualize in a realistic way that I want to become a golf champion. It just didn't happen. It did not come in. I didn't have the motivation, the interest. So I went out there and did my golf and there was a shitty golf player and I just played because it was fun

Going out to a bunch of guys and sometimes we heard also women along with us That could handle all this nonsense guys talk and and people playing golf and just be at a great time End of story and I was a shitty golf player and then I've been I became governor I stopped playing golf because I didn then I became governor, I stopped playing golf because I didn't have the time because I had kids. And so, but so I think that to me, when I dreamt, for instance, to get into show business and to become another clean East with even though everyone in this town was discouraging me and saying saying to me, Jesus honored you a monster. You weigh 250 pounds of

solid muscles. What movie should we put you into? Are you crazy? I mean, it's Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman and Woody Allen. Those are the six simplest of the seventies. The sixties have passed, you know, I think if you would have been one-fifteen years ago, you could have done Hercules movies, but the time is over. It's a totally different person, so there is no way that you ever will become a leading man. Yes, we can get you to get parts like, you know, I can call my friends out there, they're shooting

Hogan's heroes right now. You can play a Nazi officer. So, yeah, if you want to just be in movies, we can make that dream of you become a reality. I said, no, my dream is not to be in movies. I said, my dream is very clear, a leading man. There's a shwotsnecker in this movie, just like Clint Eastwood and Charles Brownson said.

So, I see myself as that, well that's impossible. Bless your accent. Remember, when you studied the American history of moviemaking, you would see that no one ever became a star with an accent. It doesn't happen. I mean, they even looked funny when James Bond comes around and be the British accent, but they want to have people talk like John Wayne and clean these with those guys.

But not like you. I think the German accent works against you because you, it sounds to a lot of people scary. I mean, do a test one, then we can do a test one, and they did a test. They did a test and they said that the majority of people were scared of the accent. So I said to myself, well, we can overcome that.

It's about familiarity. So what I have to do is just go up and down the country, left and right up and down, East Coast, West Coast, wherever, and to radio interviews. They have people hear me and get familiar with my accent and with my way of talking. And so I found a way in my mind around that obstacle. And then they were talking also about the name.

They said, name, I cannot imagine. There, any billboard ever says, what's that? Doesn't even fit on any billboard. He says that's why actors came over here from Europe and they changed their names. You have to change your names. I say I don't want to change my name. But anyway, the bottom line was I stuck, I said to myself okay, I have my dream and I'm not going to listen to the naysayers. my dream and I'm not going to listen to the naysayers. We can't see tomorrow but we can hear it and it sounds like a wind farm powering homes across the country. We're bridging to a sustainable energy future working today to ensure tomorrow is

on and bridge life takes energy. Okay so if you had a time machine, how far in time would you need to go back to be a dominant basketball player of that year? I need to go to when Bob Coosie was playing. In the plumber days, 27-year-old Shay would give Bob Coosie the business. He's not guarding me. Hi, I'm Jason Gideon. And I'm Shay Serrano. And we are back. We have a new podcast from Wondering.

It's called Six Trophies. And that's the best. Each week, Shay and I are coming through all of the NBA storylines finding the best, most interesting, most compelling ones, and then handing out six pop culture theme trophies for six basketball-related activities. Trophies like the Dominic Toretto,

I live my life in a quarter mile at a time trophy, which is given to someone who made a short-term decision with no regard to future cons twins. Or the Christopher Nolan Tenet trophy, which is given to someone who made a short-term decision with no regard for future cons Twits. Or the Christopher Nolan Tennett trophy, which is given to someone who did something that we didn't understand. Catalina Wine Mixer trophy. Ooh, the Lauren Hill you might win some, but you just lost one trophy. Follow six trophies on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Equal to the six trophies ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. And it was just as if one of the incidences again, when I was in Austrian and I said I wanted to go to America, they said, I will never happen. It's a stupid idea. And then I said, I want to be a bodybuilding champion. It said, that's a stupid idea. I don't even want to be a soccer champion or a skiing champion or something that's more Austrian. So, everything was no-no. It's impossible. It's just to be the idea. And then when I said,

you know, I want to get into movies with you again, the same thing. So I said, so up until now, I've not listened to those nice ares. So I should not listen to those nice ares in Hollywood either. And I am here. I came over here because of muscle beach. And I came over here because of Hollywood. And I am here in a capital of entertainment and I'm going to use that capital of entertainment and I'm going to go all out and I'm going to do exactly that in bodybuilding. I'm going to work five hours a day and so it did all my my speech lessons and English lessons and acting lessons and all this stuff eventually the stuff started happening and I ended up you know, doing leading, playing leading characters with Conan

and then with Terminator. I mean, imagine with Conan, of course, John Millius, the director, said, if we wouldn't affect what's in the ego, we wouldn't affect the build one. Well, hell, I said, I said, this is unbelievable. Exactly what they said would be my, you know, liability became my assets. Yes. And then Jim Cameron, after we determined it and people asked him at the press conference, why do you think this movie is a hit?

He says, well, I tell you one thing, there's maybe many reasons to say, but one specific reason is the way I see it is, that's what's going to get talked like a machine. He says, I think talked like a machine. He says, I think has a lot to do with it, that you know, only look differently with his body, but he also talked differently than all of us. So it was more like different from all the human beings in the movie, he was a machine. And because of the way he talked like a machine,

I don't know if I should have taken this as a compliment or what, but the man in this case, maybe it was, but it just said that he said there was a big blast. So now all of this, now that the body was a blast, now the action was a blast. And then in the seven, late seven, seven, seven or eight years, this is that writing stories about actors now

with complicated names, keep their names, Gina Lola Brichida, kept a name, Shwotsniga, is keeping his name, and the list of all his names, keep their names, Gina Lola Brichida, kept a name, Schwarzniger, is keeping his name, and the list of all his names, the list of the keep their names, and don't switch it anymore like in the old days. So all of a sudden, all of those things, imagine what I had to fight against. I mean, I said that the Naysayers were like producers, directors, studio executives, managers, agents, everyone just said they were all the experts. And you know, I don't blame them really, to be honest with you because there was no one

that has ever done it, but that goes back to what Nelson Mantella said. Everything is always impossible until someone does it. So I did it and then since then, a lot of people with accents and movies and a lot of people with big bodies and movies, I broke the mold. Yeah, well, people have this idea, the law of attraction, the secret, they talk about manifesting, which is total bullshit, right?

You have the vision and then you have to get to work. You have to make it a reality. Just thinking about having the vision, yeah, if you don't believe you can do it, you're not gonna be able to do it. But just because you believe you can do it, that's not enough. You have to do the fucking work.

You have to do a lot of work. A lot of work, you're absolutely correct. There's just, there's no baby here. But I think that and why I mentioned in the book also that we are getting great lessons from sports. So sports is not just where you learn about camaraderie. It's sports is also where you learn about discipline where you learn about setting a vision for yourself. We learn about failures and not to be afraid of failure. You can't go and not play a game

because you're worried about that you may lose the game. I mean, there was so many times that I was in a weightlifting competition and I put on more weight on the bar than I've ever lifted before. And this was now in front of 1,000 people. And the risk was that I'm gonna fail or that I'm gonna make it.

If I make it, then I break my own record. It's great. If I fail, you know, it's nothing to be embarrassed about. And I tell you, the amount that's what happens in weightlifting. You fail. They give you still a greater process. They said this young kid, seven years old, he tried everything he had. And he was like struggling, but somehow he couldn't hold the weight all the way up there

for those three, four seconds and the judges go like this and give the down motion. And so they give you applause because everyone there knows and appreciates that you were willing to fail and you went all out. And that's how you know how far you can go. It's by being willing to fail. And look, I've always learned more from my failures.

And therefore, I was never afraid of failure. I remember when people came to me after I had the successful promotion of Terminator 3, which made you know, almost $500 million worldwide, back in 2003. They said, I mean, I don't know, do you have the biggest movie star? If you run for governor now and you lose, you look like a schmuck.

What's going on? Why would you do that? Why would you risk or that? And I said, I love challenges. The more risk it is, I said, it's up my alley. I said, when they say it's dangerous, that's when I get excited over that. And so this is exactly what I did. I went all out and look, the rest is history.

I became governor. It could have failed, but it's so what? You just get up again and then there were just maybe tried it again. In 2006, or were just gone back in the movies. It's not like I had no job. It's not like other politicians. There's nothing else going for themselves, right? So they have to run again, and they have to win again.

And that's why they're making all the decisions that they do just to win again because they have nothing the way else to go. You and I were both struck by the fact that Mark is really the most powerful man in the world. He's writing this private journal to himself, and he opens it with all the things that other people did for him, that he learned from them. It's this almost 10% of the book in meditations is basically gratitude,

sort of totally dispensing with the notion, which I know you hate, that he's a self-made man, that he's a product of all the influences, the mentors, the teachers, the ideas, and you really hate that idea that we got here from our own sheer will and strength and genius. We're a product of our environment and our influences and our families. So talk to me about that. Well, I think it's important always to mention

that we understand what people mean by that. They don't mean badly, they're not misinformed. What they mean is, when they say, your self-made man is that you were doing the work in the gym, that you were doing the struggling in Hollywood to go and take acting lessons and stunt lessons and act and remove lessons. And you worked on it and you believed in yourself. And you are the one that took the risk

and not to run for governorals. So I understand all that, but at the same time, we have to make sure that the people don't misunderstand what they mean. And the misunderstanding mean that I know that I have been a creation of hundreds of people, of thousands of people, and let's not forget the governorship. I was not put into power like Caesar.

I was voted by 5.8 million people that voted for me. They made me governor. So how can I say I'm self-made when 5.8 million people voted for me to become governor of the great state of California? Sure. So this is things you have to realize that in the, if I wouldn't have had the Kuwait manual in the beginning, beginning Mr Austria that came to me as a scrawny kid, 15-year-old kid and said, you can become Mr Austria. In a few years from now, if you go to the gym with me, I show you how to exercise. And he took me up to the trees at this lake where there was a branch sticking out, a thick branch where he jumped up in the chin-ups. He says, here, he's starting to right here. He says, I know you will do it, maybe two or three chin-ups if you're lucky. He says, but you work your way up to ten. And then you keep doing it and keep doing it.

And that's how you build your lats. That's how you get a wide back. He says, what he says is, when you do a lats spread, he says, he has to look like the curtains are closing. There's no light coming through between the arms. So he was having orders kind of dialogue. And so I was like, I was like, so charged up. Oh my god, he said, I could become Mr. Austria. So and he helped me with the training. And then this Friday, Gürstel, who got us the trophies and everything and organized the competitions. And then Joe Weeder, that brought me to America

and sent me the ill antique it and helped me with the apartment when I came over here, leased a car, Volkswagen, Beetle. So I have a car that drive around. Joe Gord did help me train in Gord gold gym and Vince Geron did help me train, Vince's gym, the best gyms in the world. And this is how it went on and on and on.

The clean east was the day that inspired me, that set down with me at Dan Tannas back in the 70s when I was still a bodybuilder and said, yeah, you can do it. And things like that. And it's like unbelievable. The amount of people that answered, yeah, you can do it. And it's like that's an unbelievable amount of people that were there helping me and pushing me. And even simple things, but I mean meaningful things like bodybuilders, when they came to America, that came to my empty apartment,

there was only a couch in there, in some chairs in the bed, the mattress, and they brought me pillowcases, and they brought me sheets, and they brought me silverware and plates, dishes, and all of these cups and all this stuff. One brought me a black and white TV with the antenna, I remember I had it for years, and one woman brought me a radio so that I could sit the alarm and wake up.

I still have that radio next to me on my end table today, 55 years later. So it just staggering the hospitality, the love, the inclusion that it felt when I came over here to America and how the gym itself became kind of a large family a place We are belonged kind of thing and do you think that's our when talking about being useful our obligation is to do that for other people to pay it forward You know, I mean, it's like you hit the nail and a head because that's exactly why we have to recognize that The only reason why we have to recognize that we are not self-made and that we are creations

by so many people, including our parents, is because then you automatically say to yourself, if you're at all sane, is then, okay, who am I helping? If I have a product of a lot of help, then who am I helping? And now, all of a sudden said that opens up a whole new can of worms. And this is what I think is the most important thing is that we all give something back to our community, that we give back to other people. There is maybe some one, like, for instance, today, when people come over from a foreign country, they ask me many times in the gym, can you write a letter for my lawyer

so that I can file this with immigration and orders? And if I see that they're really hard working and that they're really good, I will get them to let the in two seconds. And so there's certain things that you help them getting a job over here. Whatever it may be, I help people or go out

and they send them a self, when they're so, for instance, kids needed after school programs, I said to myself, I had my mother there in the afternoon when I came home from school, she said there with a ruler in the hand. And she would say, you do your homework before you go out of the house. Otherwise, I smack you with the ruler with the head. And there was a little bit of violence and I was up and red,

and father smacking us around. They resolved them and my mother and not that this was either command, but I mean, that's what it was. But there was someone there that made sure that they did my homework and made sure that if I have a question about math over about the language, the German or anything that the grammar that she would answer that, that she would help me with it. But I had to do all the work and get ready for the next day's school.

And then I always said, and you go around the country like I did in the early 90s promoting it, fitness in a public schools and for President Bush. You know, he appointed me to be the chairman of the president's council on fitness. And so I'd go around and I'd travel around through all 50 states. And as he always said, three of Galkani after, on kids standing around outside the school, and I found out that those kids are kind of have no adult supervision and they are getting into trouble because of that out there in the streets. And that's why law enforcement benedict research said this is the danger zone for kids

between three and six o'clock is the danger zone for kids. That's when they get involved with juvenile crime, with drugs, with alcohol, with gangs, teenage pregnancy and all of those things. And I said, oh my God, there's no one there. I had someone there. It was so helpful for me. So I started an after-school program movement. I started first in one school, then another school, then I started raising millions of dollars.

Then eventually we passed an initiative in California, Proposition 49, to get an extra $500 million for after-school programs in the schools in California and all of this stuff. And now, 30 some years later, they are spreading like wildfire, and we are raising, you know, tens of millions of dollars every year. So this is the kind of stuff that you do because you say this I was helped when I came to this country. So now I have to help. And to me it's kind of not even a question should I should not. I want to do it because it makes me

feel good that I can give something back to this great country. Yeah there's a idea in the Bible like you've been blessed so be a blessing. You know like you came to America my family came to America. We're all the recipients of all the sacrifices and courage and all the things that people before us did. So even if you had a rough childhood or rough life, even if you don't feel privileged, in fact you are, right? You come, you're this air to this tradition of sacrifice and selflessness and give somebody built these roads and these buildings and designed these institutions.

And so how do you pay that forward by helping keep them up, by creating new ones? And how do you give, how do you give people a hand up in the way that you were given a hand up, even if it was only a little bit. Absolutely, I think that this country became the greatest country in the world because people were to ask off. And in order to, it's like the body, right? You can have this great body, but if you want to keep that the greatest body, then you have to work yourself. And so the day we still have to work ourselves, it didn't stop. So when I come over here as an immigrant, and then 40 years ago, I became an American

citizen in 1983 and raised my hand. And I became American citizen. It was like the one of the greatest times in my life. And it was just fantastic. So I said to myself, I have to do everything that I can to keep American number one and to push people and give them confidence and tell them that this is still by far the greatest country because I travel all over the world and there's no one that comes to me and says, please Arnold, can you help me be the visa to go to Russia?

Please Arnold, can you help me to get a visa to the Middle East, somewhere there's a Middle Eastern country or there's some African country or there's Australia or anywhere else. It's only the America. Everyone in the, anywhere in the world I go, that's please can you help me get to America? And this is still the most sought-after country, the most wonderful country with the greatest opportunity is noted, but we have to work at it all the time if to push people to get rid of prejudice,

to stop fighting each other, to work together, and we have to also tell our youth that if you look for just comfort, that's not what makes you great, and that's not what makes this country great. You have to go through pain, and you have to go through hard work, and you have to go through some failures, and all of those kind of things, don't baby yourself, and don't just look for how I want to feel good today or I want to make him feel good or hear I feel good. No. We got to go through hardship in order to achieve those goals and to really be strong people inside strong with a strong will

and orders. And I think this is one of the reasons also why I wrote this book, be useful, is to kind of inspire people that they, I know you don't want to maybe be another me. And I, as you said, I have to add this crazy ego and a crazy big visions and all of this stuff, which I am the first one to admit. So I'm not saying that everyone should do follow the same path. What I'm saying is that everyone wants to be more successful. Everyone wants to go and achieve certain things

and feel good about themselves. And they don't have necessarily the tools to get them there. And how did they approach it? How did they start? And so what this book basically does is here, let me show you seven tools of mine to become more successful. And they would definitely help you become what's successful. When even some of those injustices we were talking about, those travesties or tragedies that human beings inflicted on each other, and even in the not-so-reason past, right, somebody, some group of people said, this isn't okay, and they did something about it, right? There's this sort of procession of torches, this series of marches where we move the ball forward.

But somebody did something about it, right? Somebody said, I think this can change, right? And that's another tradition that we hail from, right? Is somebody is always trying to be helpful or to write a wrong, to improve things or to stop doing something we shouldn't be doing? And so, sort of what side of that are you on? I think is another important question, right? It's like, are you someone who just looks at it

and goes, I don't like how things are. I hope somebody does something about it, or you the kind of person that says, I think I could be the person that does something about it. Well, I myself know that I'm a big motivator to people and I'm always the first one to be out there and to kind of like speak about those things that are very important. You can't speak about every issue, obviously. But like friends that give you an example of about the environment, I've found that

Benapikim Governor, that there are a lot of really great environmentalists that really mean well, but they're not really communicating that well. So it's one thing to be out there and to make a lot of noise, but we don't want them to waste their time with the noise because they are very passionate. And so what I did was I came in and I started doing some more research on it

and because I come from the background of selling, And so what I did was I came in and started doing some more research on it. And because I come from the background of selling, it's one of the chapters in the book of sell, sell, sell, sell, it's about communicating well and about selling well, about, you know, really rallying up the troops. And how do you do that? And so when they talk about, for instance, climate change, it does not really ring well with the majority of people because they don't know what it means. So what I did was, as they're telling them,

we got to talk about pollution. And because I don't want them to waste their time, I want everyone's voice to be heard, and not that people say, what the hell was he talking about? He was talking about climate change. What was climate is changing? And then for the last 20, 30 years they've been confused what that really means and so this is why we need to do a poll and in California we did polls

and it was like interesting when you said you know how much of you believe in climate change and there was like 37% said yes and then as as soon as he said, how much of you believe that the enemy is pollution? We got to get rid of pollution. There was like, over 50%. So it was clear that pollution was the magic burden. So this is how we got our loss passed in California. We had the American Lung Association help us to put out their commercials about how our children

in a central valley, almost they're never asthma. And they're getting really sick of asthma. And some of them are dying because of asthma. So we played those commercials and people really responded and we had them vote for our environmental progress, for our renewable energy, for our green building initiative, for reducing our greenhouse gases and our pollution by 25 percent. All of those

kind of issues we became the leaders in the United States and in the world. And so I now then continue on. People say, why are you post-governorship still out there promoting issues? And I said, well, I started the Schwarznecker Institute at USC because there are certain issues that don't stop. Certain problems don't stop from when I stop with the governorship. No, they continue. And so this is why I have the World Climate Conference and the Environmental Conference in Vienna every year, where we invite countries from all over the world to come in, and that's why I speak out about redistricting reform, still the day about health care reform, about immigration reform,

and about all of those issues that are after school programs and education, and so on, about all of those issues that are very important to me. Well, it's not enough. If you're trying to be useful just to be right or to be on the right side of things or to have a good cause You have to be able to convince and persuade and communicate you you call it cell cell cell right marketing

There's a big part of it But also just being able to to to communicate what is happening and why it matters and why anyone should care That is a huge part about being useful. I was reading about coming out of World War II. There wasn't a word for what happened. A guy invented the word genocide to describe the indiscriminate killing of whole races of people. And then because this guy, Lemkin, comes up with the word, Danny Petition's for a UN treaty against genocide. It starts really small, it starts with communication,

but once you can communicate and get people on board with an idea, then you can come up with policies and practices to do something about it. It's not enough to just go, this thing is bad. I don't like it. You have to be able to communicate and motivate. There's the most important thing. Look, I mean, every company in America spends millions and millions of dollars in giving

this money to add agencies to develop some kind of an ad, some kind of a promotion for their product, or be able to articulate, to find the right words for it. So it's a very, very, it's an art to communicate in a science exactly. And so this is why it is very importantly. We studied it and then go out and not waste our time, but communicate the right way and really be effective. All right. So as we wrap up, I was struck by something in the book. You talk about, you sort of reach this moment where you realize you're the same age your father was when he died.

And I imagine as you get older, you know, I just talked to two of my friends last week that both have terminal cancer and you get struck by the fact that we're not here forever. I wear the spring, it just says, Memento Mori. It's sort of a reminder of our mortality. Talk to me about that awareness. And to me, thinking about that, thinking that time is short, that we don't have forever, that's part of what motivates me to be useful,

because you go, I don't have forever, I don't know if I can get to this later. I wanna do what I can while I have the time. How do you think about that? Well, I mean, I've expressed it many times, you know, that I'm pissed off about the idea of dying. And I think because of that, I think it's very important that we don't stop the work

when I'm finished with the governorship. I don't want to stop the work when I'm finished with my life. It has to continue on. And so you a lot of the thinking then goes, okay, what mechanism do you have in place in order to continue on the promotion of the Arnold Classic Sports and Fitness

Festival all over the world so that you continue promoting health and fitness and body, the sport of bodybuilding that gave me so much. How do we continue on? I know that the movies would stay alive because they're going to sell those and play those, you know, now we're doing the other streaming services that are out there and networks and all of the stuff. So there's many ways so we don't have to I don't have to be concerned about that. But also, how do we continue on with the

environmental message so that the climate conference, the environmental conference in Vienna continues on, and all of those kind of things that the U.S. sees what's in the institute stands for, and that that institute continues on promoting the various different policies and so on. So the work continues on, and we have to make sure that we continue on with that message. That is, I think, the most important thing to me. But if you had to wrestle with the fact that, you know, you don't have forever to do it? No, I mean, I'm just like I said, I'm very upset about it. But I don't dwell on it every day. Yeah. Or think about it every day. It's just the fact. And I think that the more you have to lose

um it's just mine has been such a unbelievable dream life. Yeah. It's like unlike anything else. I mean, I've never thought that that's the way it's going to end up because you have certain dreams when you grow up, but then your dreams will grow. I did not know. I thought that after I did a bodybuilding and a show business man, I'm home free. But then I'm always getting hungry for public service. And to become a public servant to 40 million people in California, this was a new idea. You know, when the recall election was announced in California, and I felt like, well, you know, those yo-yo's up there

in Sacramento, I mean, there's a warehouse of experiences, but they've screwed up, you know, the state, so I can do better than that with less experience. So there was the idea. So you chump into that. Then, all of a sudden always that lead to you getting involved becoming passionate about the environment and about their education issues and the about redistricting issues and the fighting cherry-made. So one thing leads to the next. And because of all of that,

you start meeting interesting people all over the world because of the multi-dimensional kind of a situation. So always in your campaigning for special Olympics, for instance, I was the national coach, strength coach for special Olympics. So there I ended up being in Robin Island in South Africa with Nelson Mandela lighting the torch in his cell where he was captive for more than 20 years and then bringing it out into the courtyard of the prison and lighting the torch for the Special Nambians, the torch of hope because we felt that the prejudice towards people that they intellectually challenged

Was really no different than the prejudice towards blacks. That's how Nelson Mandela felt very strongly and why he was involved in that movement down The inside Africa and so you meet people like that you meet I sit there with the president Corbachev You know and and talk to him about policy about politics and the national politics, history, and all of those kind of things. And unbelievable, engaging man, and he invited me to Moscow, and I visited his institute there, and spent hours with him there in order to,

so he met all his people, you know, Muhammad Ali, I was friends with him, and he kind of inspired me to make myself the spokesperson for bodybuilding like he was in boxing and he says sports need personalities. And so I, you know, actually copied a lot of his ideas to promote the bodybuilding sport. And so, I mean, this is a life I met so many interesting people, two popes and all the president since I came to America since 1968. So it's an extraordinary life. You're always bumping up into new opportunities to be useful.

There's never, you never get used up because there's always something new that you didn't even know they needed help with or that there was a way to contribute. There's always more that a person can do. Yeah, absolutely. It's a, remember, you gotta stay hungry. That's what it's all about. Stay hungry. Well, Marcus Aurelis' line was, it's a shame for the mind to give up when the body is

still going. So as long as you're here, find a way to be useful. Yeah. And I like only writing about Marcus O'Reilly. I've one of your books, by the way. Really? Oh, that's incredible for me. Yeah, Daniel gave it to me for Christmas.

It was a year ago. Yeah. Yeah, fantastic. I think he's an, he counts as an honorary Austrian. He died in Vienna. Yes, but I mean, it's, he counts as an honorary Austrian, he died in Vienna. Yes, but the minute it's, to me, extraordinary to think about 2000 years later.

Yeah. We're still talking about him. Yes. I mean, think about that. Yeah. Because you wrote it down and what you wrote down was very smart and the whole idea of giving credit And what he wrote down was very smart. And the whole idea of giving credit to so many hundreds of people that he did in his writing is also brilliant. And I have to say that I copied that idea from him,

because I always thank people that helped me. But to wrap it up like he did, to just dedicate this, to all these people that helped him and to mention the names, I wanted to do the same thing in my book, that's what it did. When his life was about paying it for it, I mean, he talks in meditation more than 80 times he mentions the idea of serving the common good. Yeah. So he's this guy who's a product of all this benefit

is the head of this enormous empire. And he's going like, I didn't make this. I didn't invent this. My job is to make it work for people. Yeah. That's the journey we're all trying to be on. So you're on to something really good for a long time, or any of you?

Well, that's very cool for me here. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I'm in here. Thank you. Absolutely. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it.

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