failures make us learn failures make you stronger pain makes you stronger everyone in the world knows Arnold Schwarzenegger Arnold Schwarzenegger has been an aister and a governor one of the most famous human beings on Earth for most of his life you've entered your mind that's what it feels like if you don't know where you want to go and who you want to be you eventually just float
around and you eventually crash I promise the people that they're number one but I promised my wife that they're going to be number one so that's the Dilemma before before we jump into this episode I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier healthier and more healed all I want you to do is click on the Subscribe button I
love your support it's incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started I can't wait to go on this journey with you thank you so much for subscribing it means the world to me the bestselling author and host the number one Health and Wellness podcast on purpose with J shett I feel like we've entered your mind that's what it feels like when you
enter this room like all these aspects of yourself I was I was wondering what's your earliest childhood memory that you think defines the person you are today I heard somewhere you mentioned your father made you earn your breakfast and I was thinking what does that feel like what does that mean you know I I I really don't know exactly what it was that gave me the drive or gave me the
ability to visualize my goals and all that but I think it was a combination of things of growing up after the second world war in 1947 I was born and to grow up with no food mid of a starvation and uh famine and uh you know my mother going around what they call hamstering which means begging uh various different Farmers for food so she had food for the
children so all of that I think had an impact uh and a strict upbringing my father was very strict you know we were hit many times and punished for not doing the things the way they thought we should do things we had to earn breakfast like you said you know we had to do push-ups and sit-ups and compete uh knee bends and all this stuff running around the the house uh in order to be
allowed to have breakfast so I think all of that contributed you know and and also I think having the military around the British military that was because they occupied that area of Austria they came always around with their tanks and with their big trucks and everything and I think that gave me the fascination of uh you know becoming a tank driver myself and I've went into the Austrian
army ever since then I have had a fascination with big cars big trucks with tanks and stuff like that and I now have the tank that I drove in the military I now have over here in Los Angeles and it's at the Melody Ranch where they have a lot of very different military vehicles and they do the upkeep and they drive it like once a month and especially with after school kids that
staying in school in the afternoons and so so we have a lot of fun with that do you still drive it yeah yeah I drive it every month yeah absolutely yeah yeah okay yeah I really enjoy it but that's why I have Hummers you know the big military trucks and and cars and SUVs and uh the the ashkash and all this it's a certain craziness that never leaves you you know you didn't know boys and
their toys yeah absolutely did you said somewhere as well that your you felt like your father was maybe struggling with some post-traumatic stress disorder like he had that energy that kind of came through onto you guys well you know my father was a very complicated guy obviously um I never really got to know him that well you know by the time I left it was like I was 18 years old I
went in the military then I moved to Munich then I moved from Munich to America so it really was not home I wish the day I could have a conversation with him because I'm much smarter now I'm much more interested in various different issues like that would make someone tick would make someone you know happy and suffer whatever so in those days we didn't talk about any of that
you know so it's it's but he was complicated because he was a victim of the second world war meaning that he was dragged in the war became a a soldier a Nazi officer you know was shattered in in in Stalingrad or Leningrad I should say and and he was you know buried on the rubble of of buildings that collapsed on top of him for three days and then he had back
surgeries and then he was shipped back home to Austria and that actually probably what saved him because he got out of Russia uh just on time before the whole thing collapsed wow and so it it it created a certain kind of a thing he had malaria so he was suffering from malaria he was suffering from shubal moving around in his body he was depressed obviously that they lost the
war in the first place so that must have had an impact on all this man because everyone around me when I grew up was kind of drinking and so the people only drink when they're really unhappy you know or you drink a glass of wine M like sometimes to but not to get drunk per se say like they did so there was a lot of drinking going on a lot of violence going on hitting the kids not just my
dad hitting me or my brother but the neighbor hit his kids and the other neighbor hit I me as a matter of fact a regular kind of a parent teachers day will be when the parents come into the classroom they will go up to the teacher they talk for a few minutes and then they go go to the kid in the classroom and smack them but every parent was it was just the wildest kind of a thing it
would be great for comedy today I think you know because now I have to laugh about it because people all kind of like laughing about it because we knew like when my dad came in you know he then had this look you know first you talk to then all a sudden was this this look towards me then you would just come over and boom we smack you then we walk out and
then some old lady would come in with a with a walking canee and she was the grandmother of one of the kids that was sitting next to me and she would go to the teacher then she would walk over with her cane and she take a cane and snack the kid over the head with a cane and so this was normal W so you know so that's what I'm saying it's it was such
a a a different way of upbringing then maybe you had or that the kids have today or that my kids had in know way there was always love and affection for them yes there was discipline but it was all done in a measured way and not with hitting and stuff like that so it's I but I think all of this had an impact yeah on my uh the way of view the world and my drive to get out of there out of
Austria and to come to America and to get into bodybuilding and all those kind of things what was the most intense part of your involvement in the military what was the most intense experience you had there obviously there was this experience at home and at school as you just said but I think that um the military even though when I went through it it was really
tough but I have to say that when I look back at it I recommend it very strongly for any any young man or woman as far as that goes to go through that because you learn how to be tough you get up at 5: in the morning you run for an hour then you do your basic training you know crawling on all fours and with a gun in your hand and shooting and learning how to drive motorcycles and cars and trucks
and tanks you learn about leadership but you also learn simple things like how to iron your shirt how to sew on buttons uh how to iron your your pants how to brush your shoes how to clean your shoes clean belt bucklet and ERS so you become kind of self-sufficient and it gives you I think a certain amount of confidence that I don't need to be babied by anybody I can take care I can
cook which you learned there in the Basic Foods uh as a we made scrambled eggs on top of the tank because the back of the motor would be so hot so we just put the eggs on top and just scrambled it there and ate it off of the tank dirty as it was right so so but I mean so you feel kind of like I can handle food I can handle ironing my own stuff I can handle washing my own stuff I don't
need anybody to do those kind of you know stupid Jews I can do it myself and I feel good doing it myself so there's a lot of things like that did you learn in the Army it just gives you a certain base where you don't get afraid of anything you feel like I've gone through all kinds of hell now with the military you know they make sure of that and so I think that's really terrific but I
remember there were times that were really tough like for instance if you make a mistake they will have you open up the hatch that is underneath your seat and where the driver's seat is of the tank and you open up that hatch and it falls out and then they have you crawl out of that hole and then drive then crawl under the tank in a mud and with your uniform on and
everything and then you have you have to climb up the back of the tank up to theer down theer back to your driver's seat and then out that hole again and they do that like 50 times so by the time you do it it's like hours later and you you literally collapse you're so exhausted for more stuff so there's punishments like that that were really really tough so I would not wish that on
anybody to be honest with you I mean I could handle it but I think I can I could handle it because I was 18 years old and you know you're very very tough when you're 18 you can handle just about anything you know you have the endurance and the strength and I was I was in the middle of my weightlifting and bodybuilding career so I was also strong but it was strong will also so to me it
was all kind of it was good but it was tough yeah what was your first I know that you've talked about how like you wanted to get out of Austria you wanted to get away but what was your first glimpse of America like what was your first experience of the United States that you had the first experience was I was competing in Florida in Miami so to me Miami was the first experience
really arriving in in New York changing planes and then flying to Miami I came from London to New York and then from New York to Miami that to me was the first experience you know the highrises the beautiful hotels the water uh the boats everyone had a boat there of Jesus can you believe that I mean everyone they have an apartment on the uh the at The Canal at the Waterway and
then they have a boat and they were just all cruising around we were invited with bodybuilders that were competing in the competition we were invited on boat rides there was this one body builder that had a boat for like 10 people so we were going around and we saw how much fun they had you know how well people lived how happy they were to me that was like a really interesting experience
unlike the experience when I came to California because I felt like okay I'm coming to California and I'm going to see all the things that made me want to come here Muscle Beach but the Muscle Beach by that time was closed you know they closed it in the 60s and uh so there was no Muscle Beach per se then Gold's Gym was not as big as I thought it's going to be
the buildings when you look around out here we in Venice right now it's there still the day very low buildings compared to the highrises in New York so I thought that there would be highrises here also Los Angeles highrises and then when I when my friends took me to Hollywood they tried to convince me this is Hollywood I mean look at this and I looked around and that just
couldn't see anything right so I thought there would be Studios left and right of Hollywood Boulevard there would be Studios there would be Paramount Studios there would be Sony and then there will be you know uh Colombia Disney and Warner Brothers and all of the studios will be lined up left and right with hotels and luxury and all and I go down to Hollywood boulevad it was like a
bunch of homeless people running around and Weirdos and drug addicts and hippies and that's what I saw and that's in tourists you know so I said myself this is Hollywood they said well you you to understand this is daytime at night it really lights up then they say well why don't you bring me here at night when it really lights up so and they took me at night and it was also very disappointing
there was a few lights and a few Billboards but you know I just I came from London right so I've been at that point I've been several times to London because I was competing in bodybuilding in London and I started my bodybuilding career there so I saw ply square and I saw lights I mean I saw action it was like staggering that really blew me away yeah you know and then driving out this
double decker buses and the and the transportation with the Subway or the tube whatever they they call underground whatever they call it in England and and all this to me the airport the he airport all that really blew me away but when I came to America when I came to Los Angeles I had a vision like it would be like that but it wasn't and so I was very very disappointed in the beginning
until I got used to it and until I understood that this is earthquake country that you don't build highrises you know because they would collapse later on as time went on they figured out the the technology to put them on rollers uh or major tires or something like so that it moves so they don't collapse but I mean I I learned to understand all of that later on but the
first thing was a shock to me in a negative way but then when I got used to Los Angeles and then I got used to the gym uh and used to the members and the kindness of the American people and the sweetness of the bodybuilders you know that would invite me on Thanksgiving when I didn't even know what Thanksgiving was yeah and they would invite me a stranger like me to
their home for Thanksgiving dinner or they would come and show up at my apartment with silverware because I didn't have any yeah with dishes with uh blankets pillowcases bed sheets and I don't remember this one girl gave me like a a radio a a wooden radio for my anti table next to the bed which I still have next to my bed today wow so you know because I wanted to keep that because it was
like it was it symbolizes whenever I look at that radio it symbolizes the generosity of the American people and how I was kind of like included when I moved over here and all of that so it was there was a lot of interesting lessons that I've learned right away when they came over here you know the difference between cultures and all that between austrians and Germans and
British and uh the Americans and all that yeah I think a lot of what you just said about first coming to Hollywood I think it's very common when people go to Hollywood Boulevard and have a very glamorous view of what it might be but it but it isn't and what you were reminding me of just now is just this idea of how everyone has like dreams and visions of what something might be and
then when you experience it you get a sense of how you view it through your own eyes and for me though what I'm what I'm fascinated by is who was your who is your first ever bodybuilding coach and do you remember your first ever tournament how did it go yeah no I've there was a fellow by the name of qu manul who was Mr Austria now you have to imagine when you're like 14 years old
like I was and 15 a Mr AA was like oh it's a big star yeah he came out to that Lake where I grew up it was like a lake where there was on weekends like 3 4,000 people around that Lake lying in the grass and uh on blankets and then swimming in that Lake and it it was kind of a muddy kind of a lake and he came out there and he looked like God he was very good friends with the
swimming coach the guy that kind of took care of everything there the lake and they were working out and they were inviting me to work out with them so to me there was kind of the first experience where someone kind of dragged me in and inspired me and I said oh my God can you imagine looking like that and he if he wanted it or not happened to be very good because he said to me says
well in five years you could look like me and I was saying I was visualizing right away oh my God can you believe that if I could look like that and I Mr Austria you know that was like major and I just felt like this is almost kind of my my new dad he was 32 years old and he became kind of like a mentor he invited me then first of all he invited I realized that they invited always this
athletes out there do that like shot Buddhas and Travelin throwers and weightlifters and boxers bodybuilders I mean all kinds of athlet they all work out together and have a good time and we kids were kind of like hanging out with them every so often we will work out with them so we got so I got my real early inspiration that way and then I went down to the club to the
weightlifting Club I started working out and start really become religious about it it was like this was my new life and I started having visions very clear visions of being a Mr Austria then there were pictures of the Mr Europe contest so I visualized myself being in the Mr Europe contest and winning and then I saw pictures of re Park which is a British bodybuilder who then
subsequently later on moved to South Africa married the South African woman by the name of Maran and they created a family in South Africa so that what became kind of my idol and I saw pictures of him winning Mr Universe in London and so that was my new vision so I started really creating through this guys a vision and but that that Vision was so vivid so
clear that I felt like all I had to do now is just follow through with the work so let me now find out what needs to be done and so I I read about re Park how did he train he drained like four or five hours a day and uh he didn't s so many sets so many reps and these are the exercises he did did the bench press the incline PR the the curl the shoulders presses and the this and that and I just
wrote everything down and I started following his routine and I was absolutely convinced that I will be another Rich Park and so that's how I really developed my first rule that I always talk about to success is you got to have a very Clear Vision yes of where you want to go because if you don't have that you're just floating around and so you know I was very fortunate that I
created that Vision I was very fortunate that there was not the site kind of things going on we didn't have a phone in our house we didn't have a television in our house oh at that time there were no iPhones there were no iPads there was no computer there was just really you had all the Time in the World to thank M and to really just sit quietly and to just
visualize and I always say that I feel sorry for kids today that are spending hours and hours on that iPhone or on iPad or computer and they don't give themselves that chance to just settle back and to just figure out what do they want to do or who do they want to be and uh so this is why I think that made that kind of the rule number one is you know visualize now always compared to that
you can have the best airplane in the world uh with the most advanced pilot but if he doesn't know where to go he just going to fly around and all it crashes and that's what happens to you in life if you don't know where you want to go and what who you want to be you eventually just float around and you eventually crash and uh that's why a lot of people are unhappy yeah they or they
take drugs or the drink or the suicide riness I think a lot of it has to do because people really don't have as much of a purpose and the mission and the vision and all of the things the things that drove me from the time I was like 15 years old it was very clear which direction I want to go yeah I love that you start the book with that rule of have a Clear Vision because when you
hear about your childhood it's not easy it's tough it's rough it's harsh there's so many internal challenges at home there's external challenges there's limitations that you're in a country that's obviously just survived a World War it almost looks like there is no space to have Vision that's right like someone could argue that yeah Arnold like I mean how are you having a vision in this
space I think what's really interesting is sometimes we feel helpless because of where we're born where we're from our parenting structure our Sur ings some people struggle to have a vision because they say well how can I have a vision I'm look where I am and then some other people they can't have a vision because when they see someone like reg park or
Mr Austria in your example what they see is oh Envy I wish I had that you know like oh why does he have that or maybe you know I should have that so I think we live in these two worlds where we either feel helpless or sometimes we feel envious and egotistical about Visions how did you you allow yourself or how did you develop that ability that even though around you there wasn't that
much success there was more stress but you saw Mr Austrian were able to do that have you ever figured out what that was compared to everyone else you grew up around I just can tell you I was very unhappy yeah I was unhappy with the reality of what was around me you know the tough parents and the lack of food and other had Stakes we didn't have the
money for that Asic we never ate meat during the week now the day they would say oh this is really good because you were vegan as a kid but it was more for because of a lack of money uh so we didn't have anything so everywhere I looked so I think to me the only way really was in order to be happy is to create my own world and to visualize you know that's why people sometimes read a
lot because they want to escape into another story or the day they watch movies to go and to see another to escape into another story and all stuff for me that wasn't available in the first movie I was saw was like when it was like nine or 10 years old was not a common thing in the village where I grew up to go to movies and I remember there was this collapsible kind of a seat I
just fell right down on a on on a floor because I had never even heard of a collapse was you have to fold it down so I folded it down then waited a little bit and then of course it went back up again and I went right down on the the floor so because of that world that negative world I had to kind of create my own world so I was just always daydreaming of wonderful things so it
was I developed that art and it put a smile on my face yeah so clearly when I then saw uh Mr Austria Mr Universe and I saw this guys and so photographs of it and read about it in the magazines I created my vision and I saw in that Vision myself being up on that stage and I saw myself you know people screaming around me uh and screaming ah Lord ah no and and all this crazy stuff it was all
insane crazy stuff uh stuff that I never shared in those days with anybody because if they would have put me in a mental institution right so I mean so I was just I just remember that I was sitting in a classroom in school I was like 13 years old 14 years old the teacher will be where you are now in front of me teaching and I would just slowly look off to the side out the
window I saw the screen trees and then all a sudden I said seeing things and I had a smile it's just was wonderful stuff that I saw and all of a sudden I had a chalk landed on my forehead so the teacher threw a chalk at me kind of saying hey I'm here I'm getting paid to teach you to teach this class of 30 why are you're looking out the window now I couldn't even articulate that this what you're
teaching here doesn't really blow up my skirt it it's like it's not like kind of something that I'm interested in but I'm is what I just saw when I looked out there and I saw myself on that stage in London at the Mr Universe contest you know and so things like that so so I think that with me visualizing became a normal thing and I never really knew that I had really a
very special ability to visualize and to connect the dots to say to myself well if I can see it then it must be a reality and I can make it a reality so for me the vision became a reality so it was only then a matter of following through with the work to get there and this is why in the book yes one of the things I talk about is work your ass off because every single time when I had a
vision about anything yeah I had to work man ass off but it was pleasure yeah see that is the great thing when you go to work and you know exactly why you're working then it becomes funh a challenge it's entertaining sometimes and um when you read that 78% of the American people hate their jobs now think about that I mean that must be so depressing that
you go let's say you in working some car plant and you do like you know kind of the same work putting a window into a car over and over you know 50 times a day every day all year long for 30 years I mean it it's tough and so this is why it's so important that we really have a Clear Vision so that you know where to go and that wherever it is if it is to become a great autome mechanic or if it
is to become a great teacher or politician or a high-tech engineer whatever it is but have a vision and then you go after that and you shoot for that because now every step of the way is going to be great you know when when you pick uh a doctor say I want to be a doctor I want to be a surgeon a kid says to himself at the age of 15 well from that point on he knows yeah all the
classes he has to take already in high school and then when he goes to college he knows which university to go what kind of classes is to take and then how long would it take him and all this stuff so there is a reason for going to school rather than oh my parents told me that I have to go to college and you just go to fulfill this application but
there's no goal yeah that's what happens to a majority of of kids today don't have the goal and that's why they end up being one of the 78% that are unhappy with their jobs and they wish they could change jobs but but then it's too late because now you've created a family and you have to pay for you know your rent for the apartment and you have to put food on the table you have to provide
money for the kids and for your wife and for the family and all this stuff so it's really tough so that's why so many people are really always looking for an answer or searching for an answer how can I improve my life how can I make it little bit better and all this stuff and this is why I did the book you it be useful I'm glad that you put it in that order though because I think for
everyone who's listening and watching a lot of people will say I do work hard I'm working my ass off I'm working my socks off I'm like doing everything I can but I think what's really important is that in the book you start with have a Clear Vision yeah and I agree I think there are a lot of people who are working really really hard and it's almost like if that hard work was
channeled toward a Clear Vision as you say then that hard work pays off right because otherwise a lot of people just working hard getting stressed putting on pressure but there isn't that Vision have you found what was the greatest sacrifice you ever made in your life do you think and what was the reward that you gained from it what was the biggest sacrifice that is really the
question is is it really a sacrifice because you love it exactly to me it's also a real question is the word dis because I tell you I felt many times that I'm not a disciplined person but people always insist and say oh it must take so much discipline every day to get up and every day you were in a gym at 7 in the morning and you worked at the 9:30 in the morning and then you
went to college after that and then you went this and this and you worked on construction I was like looking forward to getting up in the morning and looking forward driving to the gym gym and working out 2 and a half hours and then going down to the beach and taking a run in a deep sand and uh getting some cardio work done in order of I said I was looking forward to it it was not
like oh my God I have to do another workout yes you do that when for instance sometimes people go to the gym and the doctor says you know you should go to the gym and you should work out because otherwise you know I see some problems coming up high cholesterol and body fat and this and that and you're going to go and wipe out you know 10 years younger than you want
to if there's ever the right time to wipe out but I mean in any case so that person you can see in the gym is there and they just they do their reps and they do their sets and they're not really into it you can see there's no life in the eyes you know what I'm saying where there like they really they grab the weight and they just do that sets and they get the pump and they feel
good they put the weights down and get the next heavier weight and they do the set into that's really fun but that person is kind of like a vegetable in a way they just cruise around in the gym they sit on the life cycle and they just pedal away and when you say to them sister why do you work out they have no answer then eventually they say well to be honest you do the doctor told me that
I should get in shape that's better for my health to bring my blood pressure down and my cholesterol down and my body fat down and all so they're not really so I say to them always I said you know what you do is you should just pick a goal that you can chase they would say like what I say what how much do you weigh mhm I'm weighing 190 lbs and I want to I want to lower my body fat body weight I said
well why don't you pick a goal like you want to go down to 170 and it and is now March and by August when you go to the beach you're gonna have a Slimmer waste less body fat and you look leaner and you can be proud of your body as it pick that go oh that's a good idea I say write it down and then write down the sets you have to do to get you there and the amount of
reps you have to do and the amount of life cycle that you have to run and regular bicycle and running that you have to do right all of this down and then you mark it off every day you mark it off that's what I did to me that was really the that feedback that I see a line being crossed that means one was set was done it was a satisfying kind of a thing the line was crossed off the
next line was crossed off and so I tell people that and then they just say oh my God this is yeah I'm going to do that that is such a great idea then they come back to me like a few months later and they said this worked it was unbelievable it worked it was fantastic and it really gave me a purpose see so that's what it's it's why it's so important they have a purpose when they
do things they have a Clear Vision where they do things because then you don't have to look at it kind of like I have to be really disciplined to do that or I have to make certain sacrifices to do that because then it just drags you in that direction and you just do the work and know so that's what I think is always that but clearly there were sacrifices like let me just give
you one example what do you think it's like when you go and you run for governor and you promise the people that you are going to be my number one priority now you win now you have to do the work but now we come home and your kids are crying on the dinner table when you come home and daddy didn't come to my recital on Monday daddy you didn't come to my
football practice on Tuesday daddy you promised me did you come into the school and you take me to school you didn't this week so that is devastating when the kids are crying and complaining and you say to yourself you know I promised the people that they're number one but I also promised my family I promised my wife when we had the first child that they're
going to be number one so that's a dilemma now you're in a dilemma and now you have to make certain sacrifices and I had to make certain sacrifices when it comes to spending time with my family where my wife wife had to pick up the slacks and she had to do the extra work so there were sacrifices made that were painful sometimes when you see your kids crying that's painful and then you know
it's your fault but that's the situation you're in and you put yourself in this situation you had a choice to run for governor or not to run for governor right if I would have continued with my movie business those kids were in heaven because they were in a movie in my makeup trailer they were watching me getting made up as the Terminator uh or for any of those kind of movies they
were in my motor home and they were doing their homework in the afternoon there they brought their friends with them so that was fun now all of a sudden they go up to Sacramento and everyone is running around with a suit and with a tie and they come to me and says Dad what is this what did you do why are you having this job they were like 11 12 years old and they said why
do you have this job now I said everyone has a suit in the high and everyone looks really serious and they all attack you they say bad things about you I say what this the way it's politics I say as soon as you run first you have like a 80% popularity and then as soon as you run this your popularity goes down to 50% because 50% of the other side uh the other party so you run as a republican
say 50% of the Democrats they hate you or they don't like you and then that the Republicans like you but they don't anyone like you because says yeah he's too too socially liberal whatever so so so my campaign manager always say this is arold 20% of the people hate their mother so don't worry about someone hating you it's just the way it is in politics you know so anyway so this is
so you have to make sacrifices like that imagine a sacrifice you have to take when you come to this country I mean you know what it's like you leave everything behind my friends mhm my parents my relatives everything that was around me that was kind of like a sure thing mhm I had a job after the military that they could go to the continue on the job that
they did as a Salesman I had all of this they left all this for uncertainty because there was no certainty Coming to America it was Joe weer that said I'm going to help you find your apartment I find your car yes there was some people that helped a lot he's the one that gave me the airine ticket to come to America in order stuff joa is the publisher of the muscle magazines he has passed away
in the in the meantime but I mean he was like the guru of bodybuilding he created bodybuilding the Federation was created by his brother Ben weer and Joe had the endless amount of magazines and uh Distribution Company for weight equipment for food supplements and all that so he brought me here so there was some help like this but I mean I I walked away from all this Comfort to
come to America so yet there were major major sacrifices like that but I really never looked at it in that way because I just said to myself I want to go to America I want to go and be there and work my way up to become the greatest bodybuilder of all times and that's you know we are talking about one of the other rules is in in my book which is that to shoot for big goals yeah never
think small is just as much energy or as little energy as shooting for little goal you know it's just as much hassle when you a little go like say if I would say I want to be Mr Austria well that's as much working out than working out for Mr Europe or Mr Universe so I mean you might as well just continue on and just say okay all I have to do now the
difference really is that you have to become real professional you have to know how to pose you have to have the right tan you have to take the right food supplements you have to eat the right food you have to really find tune you have to get the definition it's not just the size of the body so the higher up you go the more complicated it gets the win and so but I said to myself to
me to shoot for the goal of being a world champion is just as easiest shooting for goal of being Mr Austria being the Austrian Champion so I just went all out and not only to to win the World Championships in bodybuilding but to go beyond reg Park who won at that point three Mr Universe titles to go beyond that and to say I want to actually become the greatest bodybuilder
of all time all times that that was that that my my goal and so that's why I had to come to America where there is Muscle Beach where there's Gold Gym where all the Champions work out together where there's Joe weeder that can be helpful and publish you and put you on the cover of his magazines and off so to do the promotion the campaign the training the marketing of bodybuilding and all that
so I to me this was really the only way to go is to come to Los Angeles and on top of it Los Angeles is known for Hollywood mhm and this is my next career so I always say to myself the with re Park I saw him in Hercules movies so can you believe that that this guy won Mr Universe three times and then he was disovered in Rome in chinita and they saw him there and they
said oh my God you are Hercules Hercules you're going to send you to acting classes into acting school and you're going to play Hercules and then Steve Reeves did the same thing who was another Mr Universe from 1940 no 1950 yeah Steve re 1950 R Park 1951 so both of them became Hercules then there was many other bodybuilders that became that did Hercules movies all those
Gladiator movies and muscle movies and stuff like that in the 60s said would became very famous but I mean I said myself if R Park could get in the movies maybe when I go to America and I become the world's greatest bodybuilder then they would ask me to go into movies and so this is was the idea so to me it was natural oh there's Hollywood in Los Angeles there's Muscle Beach in Los Angeles
there's G Jim in Los Angeles there's chaa here this is perfect I have to go there that was the reason why I went here did you ever have a plan B I never believed in Plan B uh because I felt kind of like one of the rules we have in the in my book is never listen to the naysayers yeah you know to me I always felt kind of like every single dream of mine of course I have to say they were
outrageous dreams so people said this this stupid yeah what is the matter with you that would never happen I mean your dream is to go go to America what do you think they're waiting for you over there I mean there have plenty of people over there they have over 300 million population they don't need anymore and so that was the kind of saying you see you would never make get to America and
they don't need you so no impossible when they said I want to be a world champion in bodybuilding it was impossible when I said I want to get into the movies that was impossible so it was always impossible so I felt that we can go and defend ourselves from that and just not listen to the naysayers but if I start having a plan B then all of a sudden I'm becoming in a
way a say it to myself wow yeah true so because that means now that I'm saying well maybe this isn't working out and if it's not working out we should have a plan B so to me this is the most dangerous of all of the naysayers is me saying no and it's impossible maybe to myself MH so therefore I felt the best way of handling that is is not to have a safety net and not to have a plan b m M
that I'm at risk and therefore I have to be at all times on the edge M and the 10 so I don't fall where I would need a safety net yeah this is the way I dealt with that issue mhm never have a plan B always go for go all out with my plan and really put 100% of effort into it in order to really achieve it and and I just always believed in my goals I mean
I remember when I ran for governor and and people said you're crazy I mean you know this great Davis is going to take you out and then if he doesn't boost the m is the lieutenant governor these are all seasoned politicians you don't know anything about politics and blah blah blah why don't you run first for mayor and why don't you do this no I was very clear with my vision I could see myself
as the governor because I felt that the people in Cali were very upset at the regular politicians I mean they were always talking about what they know and how smart they are and how they're going to fix things in the meantime we had a $30 billion deficit in the meantime we had blackouts in the meantime they were handing out driver's license to illegal immigrants
what they call undocumented immigrants and everything that the people were against and the people didn't like Indian gaming tribes were gambling and having gambling casinos but not paying taxes so they were mad about that so I would just tell people if I become governor I would change all that and the rookus compensation costs for businesses in California I will cut that in half
that's why so many businesses left California because of the cost of doing business so I said I would cut it in half and so this is exactly people bought in because I was talking believable I mean there was I could put my hand in the fire for the people to do the things that I promised those things will be done and I said I would do most of those things before breakfast the
first day when I'm in office so that always sounded good so in any case so but the people bought in and I remember that when President Bush and uh this guys called me from the White House and they said you want the president to come out to campaign for you I said no no no no no I said because then it becomes kind of a political thing but the Republicans are helping each other and
then great Davis is going to have out you know Bill Clinton and Al go and John kry and you know all of those guys and that's exactly what happened he had all those people come out campaign for him and I told all of my guys no don't come out because I wanted to be the David and not the Goliath I want to be the underdog and kind of say look this is just between me and the voters so
that was my vision not a a political strategy Vision but I mean that was my vision I said I have to be the person that is by himself that is kind of crawling up there and that is communicating with the voters I don't need someone to speak for me or anything like that yes you have you uh communications director and all this stuff but I didn't need to have President Bush come out and speak for me
I didn't have to have the vice president come out to speak for or anything like this I wanted this to between me and the thing and it worked people figured it out that I'm out there that I'm promising them and they bought into it and and and they won and so this is why it is so important that did you have really a 100 per belief and not having to go and say
my plan B if this doesn't work is I'm going to go back to movies well that will unfold anyway you know so but let's first go all out and not have a plan B this is the thing and so I've never had a plan B yeah no really really great clarity again of just determination that there's no other options and and I like what you said or what really connected
with me at least is this idea of how you can become your own naysay right that having a plan B is you talking yourself out of why you should go all in or or you're already putting it on on um kind of shaky grounds the goal yeah you're already setting you already say well if what wait a minute if you say if that means there's a possibility in your mind this could fail and that is a dangerous
road to go yeah I think I agree where where did you go when a few moments ago you were talking about how the kids were upset when you're governor obviously public gets upset when someone's in a position of power you've got all these people who rely on you personally and professionally and you even said to yourself like I couldn't really talk about it you can't really no one can
really understand that what did you do at that time where did you go for connection and understanding and even getting to talk to yourself at that time well you just have to find um you know a compromise so so what you then do is you just say okay I'm going to go and spend an extra day at home so because it was the choice being in Los Angeles a lot of days or to be in
Sacramento so I spent four days a week in Sacramento and three days a week in Los Angeles and I decided then to spend another day in Los Angeles and to go to this school recital or to go to some kind of a practice sessions of uh you know my kid playing football or baseball or something like that and to go to those things so to figure out a way and it didn't take anything away from my
public service but it gave a little bit more time FaceTime for the kids and you know it really is absolutely crucial for the kids not just to see their mom coming to school but they need their dad also you know and so that's exactly what they did and I totally understood I talked to my wife about it but like I said on the end she was really the one that was uh the
PowerHouse in the family because she spent I would say 80% of the time with the kids and I did 20% because I was stuck in Sacramento and even though she worked also as first lady and she was in Sacramento but uh she spent much more time with the kids and luckily when you have a good partner then you can do a lot of those things Alona couldn't have done it yeah definitely and you you
mentioned I think documentary too that if there was an Oscars for divorces then you should get one because of how even in that circumstance you both have found a way to let the kindness be even the way you're speaking about the family today because it's it's kind of the most important thing is it's one thing if you suffer through it it's another thing if your wife
suffers through it but the kids are really totally innocent bystanders right so we had to kind my wife and I very good working together so the kids don't really feel a bump in the road and that things are smooth for them and uh again it's important I mean I saw it very clearly that it can be done and it we did it and we were very happy with with the outcome we very very proud of our
kids I mean they're extraordinary yeah I had the fortune of interviewing Katherine probably a couple of years ago when her book came out yeah yeah so I got to have some interaction with her and Mar and I've had several interactions too and Catherine is a carbon copy of Maria and Maria is a carbon copy of Unice Unice is a carbon copy of Rose Kennedy so this is how it
goes down I mean it's like they're like clones they're exactly you know exactly what you get from them I mean it's like uh Catherine I mean I'm so proud of her of what a woman she has become and so is with Christina with my other daughter and and the boys it's just it's a lot of fun I never thought that having kids would be that much fun I said Miss because I only in the beginning I always
thought about you know the work that it would take you know to take them to school and to go to the recital and the practices and to teach them and to have to swimming coach over and you know you have to just be part of everything you have to teach them teach them te you know from just swimming to running to football to water skiing snow skiing uh you you know you have to just be on top
of everything and also um having animals because one of the most important things with kids is if you have the space that is if you're in a little tiny apartment then maybe a cat is good but I mean normally it's kind of like good when you have dogs or when you have like we have a miniature pony we had horses a donkey in know Lulu the manager donkey we had
pigs now I have a p again even the kids are not there anymore it never stops but I mean so because the kids grow up with these animals and you teach them how to take care of them this is extremely important because they have to have a sense of responsibility you can't just say oh I would like to have a rabbit or I would like to have a pig yeah but you take care of it so that's what they've
learned yeah one of the lessons in your book is sell sell sell and we just talked about it now when you were talking about almost selling yourself to become governor there's a certain promotion marketing approach to galvanizing people to get behind you and I think the word sales and selling has a lot of a lot of people have a negative connotation or a difficulty with selling
because it almost feels like there has to be something fake about it I've always found that if you're proud of what you're selling if you really believe in it then it's easier to to sell it but generally people have a challenge with like the word sell but you say one of your lessons is sell sell sell so walk us through how you were able to I mean obviously even all your
all the movies the franchises you've created it requires promotion it requires selling and of course they were highly entertaining but tell us what you learned about how to sell effectively but also authentically first of all I think you're totally right yeah that the word selling sometimes comes off sleazy so that's why I can call it promotion or communicating or whatever you call it
and the point of it is that you can have the best product in the world but if no one knows about it what's the point of the product MH I mean I would like I'd like to know uh for instance if there is someone out there that does a heart surgery or valve replacement without having to have open heart surgery yeah but if I don't know I would just go to the hospital and say I want to have open
heart surgery and I want to get the valve replaced but if I know because they promoted it well I can go now and call that expert and then go so so this is why I think it's it's it's so important so to me I learned the art of selling way back when I was 15 years old when I was in trade school and when I was working for this lumber yard kind of construction company
hardware store it was like aan combination of things we were taught how to sell uh the merchandise and then sometimes we were able to follow the guy that is the boss and he one time said to M Arnold why don't you help me here and he would talk uh to the customer and I realized quickly that there was something odd going on that all a sudden his attention focused on the wife
because his couple they wanted to have some you know tiles for the bathroom and for the kitchen and he first talked to him and how much money does he want to spend and all Stu what colors or then all of a sudden he was like he ended up only talking to the woman so he says so what did you learn I said well I learned that you were really very clear about all the advantages and disadvantages of
the various different tiles and the various different colors that be he says yeah yeah that's that that's right but it's one dimension but what else I don't know it says did you see how I shifted and my attention went from the husband to the wife I said yeah yeah what was that all about and he says well I realized that he had really no interest in the tiles what color should be what
type real tiles or fake tiles or or or what it was her vision and it was her desire to have new tiles M and he just went along with it because he's the husband he's the provider of the family he makes the money she didn't make the money uh but she had a very clear vision of what she wanted so I shifted my focus because I realized that she is the customer not
him and you got to go and be able to reach the customer and this is why I started talking to her more it was then he just out of courtesy said him so what do you think should I deliver it on Thursday says yeah whenever he would just always say whatever and she says Friday is better because Friday my husband is at home in the afternoon so he can help me carrying all this stuff up to the second
floor and blah so she was much more precise so that's why he spent most of his time with that so those are the things that I've learned when I was selling and how important it is to actually let the people know that you have this product I was I went right after that a few years later I went to Munich and I after the military served there as a trainer in a bodybuilding gym and we
had like I remember 280 members and there was another gym in Munich that had 500 members and that guy his name was Reinhard molana he was Mr Europe and I was at this point not Mr Europe yet that was Junior Mr Europe but not Mr Europe net yet and that didn't compete in any other International competitions so I was training really hard I said myself if I could go to the Mr Universe contest
and I compete and I do really well I could maybe out to him and so this what I did I trained really hard for months and then in September was the Mr Universe end of September Mr Universe contest and I happened to play second which they call run up yes so this was my score at that point was to be in the top six because I was 19 years old here was second place winner so when I came
back from London to Munich I ran around on a construction site with just a baiting Su on like a lunatic and everyone was dressed up in their suits and everything and they said what is this guy doing that was walking around on the construction site and greeting people in order stuff hoping that some press will show up because there's this crazy guy running around in
the cold weather with just a ba little bathing suit and true enough newspaper showed up a photographer showed up and they asked me afterward why are you running around like that and I said well I want to make sure that my gymnasium Universal gym is in a newspaper I said that's okay well let's take a good shot when don't you take this saw over there and you help this
guy with the construction set doing some cutting of the wood and stuff and then we would take we would create some pictures that are really funny and they put it in the newspaper the next day it says Schwarzenegger just came back from Mr Universe was run up in the Mr Universe contest which makes him the biggest title holder in Germany wow so I made it clear that they know that not
that the Mr Europe is bigger or but the second in the Mr Universe is the biggest title holder so so that was like I was now that story was in the paper and we had within no time we had beaten him with the gymn gymnasium membership and had over 500 and his was low and he I remember him calling some I worked out myself in his gym because we worked out
together because it's much better when you have a good training partner that is a champion himself and we were laughing about it so then just to show you how important promotion is so then he started secretly posting posters all over the city on construction sites know smana gym we train you you become a champion more energy healthier body this this and that and all this stuff so when
I saw the posters I said I'm going to go and create posters myself for the gym so we created posters and then we went I followed him with the car and he was going at 10:00 at night on front Friday putting the posters up there and then after you put the poster up with the glue he then left and then I put my poster on top of his wet glue because I came right after him I didn't wait until
it drives went after him and glued my post on top of him and so this was kind of like the poster War amongst the gym owners it was hilarious but it was all it was all about selling memberships because I knew the my salary comes and is getting paid for from those monies that are coming in from the members and so I wanted to be able to buy food supplements I wanted to be able to buy
myself good food and the the trips to those various different competitions in order so it was very important that our membership goes up that we are very successful but it's all about selling and so when I came to America there was in my blood now selling and and and communicating and promoting so when I did my I remember my book promotion on of the education of a
bodybuilder Simon and chst to wanted to have it you sell 100,000 copies mhm so I said well I want to have it on the bestseller list I don't no bodybuilding magazine was ever on the bestseller list forget about that I said well I said let's give it a shot how many cities do we go and promote the book and he says well here's six cities I I suggest and so I said to him I said why don't we go
to 30 cities you're crazy so he was laughing but then I put together a schedule and for 30 cities in 30 days and I was crisscrossing America I was going from 90 degree temperature in Miami up to Minnesota that was like you know below zero so it was literally like 100 degree temperature differences in the same day so this is how much I crisscrossed this country and it was
absolutely fantastic we w a bestseller list we sold you know 250,000 hard covers or whatever it was and it was like a total smash as a bodybuilding and fitness book wow and so this is again over and over again I've seen that not just the will power to succeed but to be able to sell and to communicate and to be out and to actually talk about it you know uh I think it's important to let
people know you don't have to force the issue into the cell where you talk about all the time buy my book and buy this and buy this this is the only way you're going to stay healthy and all this no you don't have to do that you're just in an indirect way but the key thing is that when people walk away from the interview that they know about it and this is also very important like for
instance when when um we were doing Johnny Carson show you know I was learning at that time about bridging you know where you bridge from a specific subject that someone asks you to then what you want to talk about it's it's an art you know so my friend was vice president of Nationwide Insurance and he told me about it he said that he has taken many seminars about you know
promotion because Insurance business is very important that you promote and did you communicate and publicize and all this and so I asked him about it and he told me he says well bridging is one of the most important things so he taught me about that and of course I was on Johnny Carson show mhm promoting Conan the bararan just to give you an example
and johy Caron say say so Anor this is really unbelievable he says how long you been working out when did you start and why did you start working out so I said to myself okay if I answer this question in a thoral away even would to sell one ticket to go to see Conan yeah yeah so I said I got to go and Bridge and so what I did was I answered very briefly because you have to otherwi
stupid if you talk about something else but I would say Johnny it's a very good question to say it was 15 but I tell you at 15 I did not know that one time it is absolutely essential to have this kind of a body it say imagine Conan the Barbarian the way Frank fretta painted Conan the Barbarian with the muscles and with the determination and all this
stuff and there was was no one around to do this character that's why they've never filmed Conan I said now here I come Mr Universe body and now I do count the Barbarian and it is now believable because people going to see me handle the sword and killing all these people I said it's believable because they see the muscles so I said nothing my wildest dreams with 15 did I think that one day
those muscles would be so important in the movies and stuff like that and so I sold now I answer this question start with 15 but i s Conan the Barbarian you know the muscles and the fight scenes and you then would add on and said there was this one scene with the camel and I punched out the camel and blah so then just spice it up and so this is what you know selling and communicating is all
about I was very fortunate that my head was in that so much because when I was governor that is the most important thing to communicate to the people because otherwise how do you get their vote yeah right so you need the people you need to go and say Here's why we need infrastructure we need to rebuild our roads we need to build extra freeways extra highways extra tunnels and bridges
and on ramps and off ramps I say why because you want to go do your kids school and watch them play football you don't want to be late two hours I see how many people get stuck in traffic everyone will be raising their hands they say well let's eliminate it let's terminate this problem let's build more roads vote Yes and proposition one a so I explained it to them not just talking
about infrastructure which politicians normally do but people don't know what infrastructure is I cannot expect them to know what infrastructure is is it the electric lines the power lines is it the plumbing is it the sewage is it the building freeways is it building highspeed rail what is infrastructure well all of this is infrastructure but so now you have to explain it to people
by saying do you ever get stuck in traffic of course everyone does so then you say well let's build more freeways let's go and vote for this so they don't get stuck in traffic so then they know ah it moves the traffic faster because we get stuck in traffic so this is why communicating communicating communicating selling selling selling this what it's about oh those are great
stories great examples yeah I love those I hope everyone who's listen and watching can latch on and get some insights for their own challenges those those are great and I love that you're going all the way from Governor through to the gym and the run the story of you running around in your swimsuit is brilliant what's the uh there was one story actually that aligns with that
selling point that Will Smith tells of meeting you and he said that he walked into a room and it was you Sylvester Stallone and John Claude vanam and you were the three that inspired him to go International so he said that when he spoke to you three you all said to him that the market in the USA is huge but until you become a global Superstar you're not really a superstar right and
so in the same way as you were saying you were going around the 30 cities of the US you've done a lot of world touring as well for the movies well I explained to him that when I got in the movies and talking about Conan the Barbarian was my first big International Movie again the studio said we're going to send you to Khan to the film festivals then
we're going to go and send you to London and maybe to Rome and definitely to Japan so I said well why are we only going to four places they said well this is where the big markets are Germany but the Germans always come to England when we do the Press Chun gets in England so the Germans are taken care of then we have the Japanese we go to Japan and uh you're going to do a big
promotion there and then then America those are the three big markets so I said okay if this are the three big markets I said when I look at the globe today I say I see so many other potential markets I say you don't want to build those yeah you don't want to create those so I told Will Smith I said the story I said I told them I said I'm going to go to France I'm going to go to
England to Germany to Holland to Finland to Sweden to Norway I want to go all over the place I want to go to the Middle East I want to go to Africa I want to go to Australia I want to go all over the place I said they said you're nuts I said so because I was thinking about two things one is to promote the movie and the other one is I have to promote myself because most people know
me as a bodybuilder not as an actor so this is a good opportunity for me to go around the world for the next month and to promote myself as well I now I'm doing movies yeah and this is my first big movie is you know is Conan the Barbarian so it was like a great opportunity so I told him that I said so I slowly started building an international market and the studios
were extremely pleased because every one of my movies started to get bigger and bigger internationally so it used to be that one3 was in the National box office and 2/3 was domestic then with me it started going to be 50/50 so 50% domestic 50% International and eventually it became 1/3 domestic and 2/3 International so imagine how much more money that it
added because of that and so this was a tremendous power so I said to him I said don't ever assume that everyone would know about the movie I say you got to go there you got to show your face the people the journalists like to shake your hand they like to sit down on a round table with all of their mics sticking out the the 10 leading radio program s of that country they sit there
all day on the table you're the the 11th person that sits there and now you're telling them stories about the movie I said and they go back to the radio station I have an exclusive interview with Will Smith and he he's coming out with this movie it is hot he looks fantastic great actor and all I say hey how can it hurt but do it just promote yourself internationally and go from
country to Country and he said thank you for this really great advice because if the studio would have said it to me I would have just said but they just want to use me yeah but you saying it I buy in I believe it and he has been thankful ever since because of that yeah yeah it's great advice it's great advice but it's it's it's it's you know you got to always let people know that uh there's
nothing sleazy about the marketing and there so many actors always feel like it's beneath them to go out and sell the movie and I tell them I said look no matter what you do if you're a painter and you paint great paintings or if you're a musician and you want to promote of album or if you're a movie actor and you promote your movie I said you have to do
that because it's the only way people will know about it the more you do and the better you do it and to actually say the right things about the movie that is snap it it really makes people curious want to go see that's what it's all about it's an art by itself not just the acting is is an art but the selling is an art as well yeah what I love about what you're saying it's you know for me
as well I only moved to LA 5 years ago and I feel like I can be quite audacious and you know driven as well and so when I'm listening to you what I always find it's interesting because the most successful people in the world they have this audacity in that they already see it as reality and everyone else because it's so audacious people are trying to
catch up or they can't really see it they can't figure it out and you almost have to have that trust that you know where it can go and how big it can get having actually achieved all your goals becoming the biggest bodybuilder of all time going further becoming this huge movie star you know you just said that you had to go to educate people at one point that you even were a movie star I
think you've been good at redefining yourself and re-educating people about who you are from bodybuilding to movies to obviously governor of California how does it feel to have lived out so many of your visions that you saw so clearly as that young man in Austria how does that actually feel well to be honest with you I always say to people I would never switch my life with anyone's life
no matter who it is because I think that I am the most privileged person in the world I mean it's like to to be able to to live this this many types of lives to live the life of an athlete of an amateur of a professional to really get the inside scoop because when you get the inside scoop of one profession of one uh sport you pretty much because you hang out
with the top football players with Joe nameth nor those guys in the 70s I mean and with George foran and Muhammad Ali so you get to know really the inside of all sports basically and uh I think to learn everything about sports to then learn everything about entertainment to be now with the greatest of the greatest I mean imagine that I still met people like Frank Sinatra and uh Bob
Hope uh Sammy Davis Jr Dean Martin and all of those guys the guy that trained me in comedy was Bill Milton Burl and you know all this oldtime guys Jimmy Stewart I mean the list goes on Lucille Ball the list goes on and on and on to meet all these people to work with them to do photo shoots with them to go to parties with them to be at dinner with them at charity event events with them I
mean it's really staggering to have this kind of experience and then to travel around the world and to meet all this political leaders from guav and the you know every president in the United States from Ronald Reagan to Jimmy Carter to George Bush and everybody the list goes on and on on Clinton and all those guys uh all the way Nixon I mean everyone I met and talk to and hung out
with and learned from Mandela um so this is like I mean who has the privilege to do that and to travel around the Middle East and to do the things that people say he can't do like to go from an Arab country to Israel or from Israel to I hop back and forth all over the place from Iraq to Jordan to Israel uh to Kuwait I mean everywhere and uh you know visiting the
American soldiers over there and uh to be there I mean it's it's staggering this kind of life and then to go into the political Arena and then to figure out what makes really a city or a state or a country run and tick and what kind of players do you need and how do you negotiate uh with all of those people and how do you bring Democrats and Republicans together and how do you come
up with your own vision of how things should work because very quickly you know I was a hardcore Republican but very quickly I realized that that's not where the action is the action is not with one party that America is Democrats and Republicans the declin to State Independence together and so that's the team and as a team together we can do great things but if you start splitting
the team you start falling apart it's like any football team or basketball team so I say myself the action is I know bringing them together don't insult the Democrats don't insult anybody bring them together and let's be a public servant rather than a party servant and so that was my new theme I was so proud of myself maybe 5,000 other politicians
have talked about this but I mean Obama said there's a blue State no red State there only the United States but there's a bogus lines really I mean it sounds good but I mean the reality is different so you really have to show leadership quality and you really have to kind of make an effort to bring both of them together and to be not afraid to say to the Democrats as a republican I need
your help M but together we can solve this problem I cannot do a lone Healthcare reform as a republican I need the Democrats I need everybody you know and so this is the kind of things or building infrastructure doing anything in this state it was our best work we did together so I cannot give any party a credit I have to give the credit to the politicians and to the people and
the people really enjoy that when Democrats and Republicans got together and campaigned together for propositions to vote for the certain propositions and all of stuff so I think so I was very very privileged to be able to do all those things and to have millions of people listen to you and vote for you and that of course goes to another chapter and another subject in a book
which is you know give something back to the community you know because we are not self-made people and I talk about this at Great length in the book is it you know people so many times call me a self-made man I know what you're talking about but I always want to make clear at the same time I'm not a self-made man I was created by my mother and my father I was created by my teachers by my coaches
by my bodybuilding Champions that they were my my idols and Joe weer they brought me to America Eric Morris who was my acting coach Chuck Nicholson that recommended this acting coach so all of the people had it's the tremendous amount my wife did help me in every step of the way you know with the kids my kids were really helpful in my career so I am a product of all of that and so I
think it's important that when we recognize that we have gotten the help that we therefore give help back so that's why you have to ask yourself the question okay now if everyone helped me to be where I am how can IA go out and help whom who can I help what can I help them with and uh I talk about it in a book that my father-in-law sergeant shria had this great line at the
University speech at the Yale where he said don't look always in a mirror don't look at yourself you know destroy that mirror you will be able to look beyond that mirror and then you will see the millions of people that need your help and so this is what it's all about is to not just look at yourself or be self-c consumed yes you can be but don't forget ever that there's a lot of people out
there that need your help and even though when people say well what can I do I'm a nobody I don't have any money that's bogus it's an excuse right off the top that I don't want to do anything because when you see um Hawaii burning down to the ground there's a lot of things that everyone can do but just taking some food and bringing it to those poor folks bringing
some clothing going out and going to some fundraising and bring a few dollars to them whatever it is you can do something or to go into some inner city school and to help with an after school program and to help kids learn how to read especially since you know in America now we have so many students that uh where English is a second language M you know to help them to
learn English and all the stuff so there's endless amount of things I just always felt that I have to be all out I remember when Rudy juliani called me when he was mayor of New York he said oh my God you know that buildings came down we creating a twin tower fund can you send a million dollars I said yeah you got it tomorrow in two seconds I didn't even think about it you know so that's
what you do when when we need needed masks uh when Co broke out and Los Angeles the hospitals didn't have any masks so I immediately put in a million dollars towards a fund that we put together uh to to to raise $8 million and then to get masks uh from all over the world and especially from Asian countries and so we can supply them with masks and gowns uh and with gloves and
with ventilators and stuff like that there was a company called flexport that was was within days got us the masks even though the government said there are no masks around we can't get any mask so you know this are things like that or doesn't matter if it's a earthquake if this that you go out and you reach out and that's why I'm involved in after school programs that's
why I was involved in Special Olympics and being a trainer and a coach for special Olympians to help them with winning medals and uh becoming Champions and all the stuff so that's what life is all about to to receive and to give M well said Arnold well said and uh yeah definitely more notes in the book for anyone who wants to dive into some of those stories but Arnold we end every
episode with a final five so these are a Fast Five where you have to answer each question in one word or one sentence maximum so these are your final five the first question is what is the best advice you've ever heard or received believe in yourself second question what is the worst advice you've ever heard or received it can be done good answer question number three you've mastered so
many things in your life what are you currently trying to master bring all of my talents together into one the show business fitness and politics all into one and make that be my new kind of a vision and drive to help the world wow what okay I'm going to scrap the final what ises that look like that's fascinating what does that look like right now in your mind as you develop it
you can use more than one sentence I want to be out there and help with environmental issues because I learned about that during my governorship I want to be out there and help with Healthcare issues with uh aging issues with Fitness issues uh with entertaining issues and because it's important to entertain people so all of those kind of things so
I have the Schwarzenegger Institute uh where we deal with a lot of those various different issues and policies to make it a better world and I have my environmental conference in Vienna every year where the world comes together 80 90 countries come together and we talk about the environment and how to make this a fossil fuel free world and reduce pollution so we don't have 7 million
people die every year because of pollution beautiful I can't can't wait to see the impact you have in that space uh question number four has two parts to it what is your biggest personal success and what is your big personal failure well I think that my biggest personal success is uh to be able to do the things that they wanted to do that they visualize them and turn them into
reality and I think my biggest failure obviously is my marriage uh thing that from a personal point of view and from a professional point of view I've had many movies go in the toilet I've lost bodybuilding competitions and powerlifting competitions and all that stuff so I had my plenty of failures It's always important to bring that up because people should know that you
never will be able to go through life without failures failures make us learn uh failures make you stronger pain makes you stronger so I think all of that is good yeah let's let's address both of those because it's so true like on the outside like you said people can say so privileged you met the presidents you did this you did that you've you know all the wins you know when I'm looking
around this room like everything's iconic you know n nothing's unrecognizable across the whole world it's it's all recognizable but the did you ever feel the pressure when things started to go well of like God the next movie's got to be bigger and the next movie's got to be bigger did you feel that or did you just kind of you were just loving it so much
that you just kept building and if it went wrong that it didn't hurt you that much um you know I never really felt uh that much pressure probably about anything to be honest with you because I knew what I wanted and uh I never really fell for this thing of what the people expect me to do so I just I create my vision and when everyone says it's impossible I go
after it with vengeance it's like I go all out 100% and it gives me joy and it is what is great about it is that every time that you accomplish something really big you see and become aware of other things that are new challenges that didn't even think about yes I mean did I ever think about that I will fight for the environment no but because of the governorship you know this it's like the
thing I talk about in the book about Hillary he climbs Mount Everest and he's up there and obvious say he sees another pig to be climbed right and he that's the next one so there's the same thing I go and win the governorship I go in there I start working on the governor and all the different policies and I'm meeting all these scientists and experts and talk they talk about you know how
many people diarrhea because of pollution and we can do something about it and that dive into that it's a new Peak oh my God no one has really explored that forget the 19% of Renewables we have to have 50% Renewables forget about you know reducing greenhouse gases by 5% we have to reduce it by 25% and we have to do it by 2020 and so you set big goals so this
is the new Peak that you're climbing and you go all out for that then when you get there then you see another peig beyond that so this is what is um fun yeah and this makes my life Rich yeah you know that is always something new and different and I I I I I tell you that um I also learn when I for instance listen to you because you come from a totally different world right so this
you have a different spin on things so when I listener this oh that's interesting way of looking at it and so I think we have to learn from one another and so I think that you and I we have a lot in common anyway because otherwise you wouldn't be sitting here yeah right I mean to think about it you it's not just that I want to be having one of the most popular
podcasts but you have to be a curious son of a to go and to be really good in what you do yeah and this is what I noticed about your podcast you're really curious a Natural Curiosity thank you and I think that is but you have to have it you have to have curiosity it shows in your eyes it shows in everything when you ask the question and all this you know it's like when you see journalists
which I hate you know they have like a piece of paper and they say okay very interesting says now let me ask you another question um you want them said this is and then how do you feel that they is they read it off the paper MH and then when you answer they don't even look at you in the eyes they look at the paper for the next question right so I did didn't detect any of that from you I
mean every question came without looking at anything because you're curious and so I think I just wanted to mention that thank you thank you AR I appreciate that and it means a lot coming from you and I am curious because I grew up as a fan who didn't so that's one thing but I think I'm even more curious because you chose to write a book about being useful
and lessons and I think that that world is what I gravitate towards because I think learning from the greats is all we have and I think when we ignore to learn from the greats that's when we make we have to make our own mistakes for no reason we can avoid so many so no I am very curious about you and I think you're also a fantastic Storyteller so that helps you get into so much detail
and so many examples and everything so it's it's brilliant thank you I tell you it was really fun doing this book because I really had to to kind of drill down and think about a lot of the things that comes natural for me you know to tell stories about because you each one of the rules you want to be able even the sub rules and the Sub sub rules you want to be able to tie it to a story so
the people can relate to like I was talking about infrastructure you can talk to people about infrastructure all you want they can't relate to it but soon as you tired to getting stuck in traffic making it to the recital in the school and you come late an hour because of the traffic and all this then they can relate to that and the same is with with any of the rules you know I kind of
uh had fun doing it it was sometimes frustrating because you want to do you know 10 rules the publisher then says no you can only do seven because this book can should only have 20 68 pages rather than 350 pages and all of this crazy stuff you goes through but it was a really really great process and never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I will occupy this face at all and it
really happened just totally coincidentally where more and more people you know when you when you finished with the governorship I was asked to do public speaking engagements like ex presidents and stuff like that and so I'm traveling around I think one time someone said can you pump up our crowd we have like a thousand you know real estate people uh we want you to to
just pump them up so you do a little bit of success story yeah and always sudden it took go like wildfire everyone one of the public speaking engagements they've had since then they want to go and have me talk about success the rules to success and all of that stuff so it's like something I didn't even think about because I always was a motivator you know if it's the Special Olympics or for
after school programs or to be just my buddies around in the gym that became my training partners because I always have this kind of energy right come on let's do a set you can do another set but wait a you stopping with 10 reps give me five more reps let it pain let it give pain you know you just pump pump pump so I have this energy so never thought that
this would be used then for seminars and eventually for a book like this it's like it's like crazy no it's life takes you yeah it's fantastic it's it's beautiful to see it through your eyes and through your lands and for us all to dream as well and I have one final question for you and actually before I ask it when you said we have a lot in common that there's so many different
parallels that I'll tell you later because when I was listening to you I've very different life but so many similar lessons I've picked up along the way and I think as humans that's what brings us together we may not have the same life story we don't grow up in the same places we don't have the same parents but you pick up the same messages from
the world and the same lessons from the world right so the fifth and final question I want to ask you is if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow what would it be oh that's an interesting question maybe to get off fossil fuels that we have to use Alternative Energy if it is nuclear with producing energy itself if it is for cars electric or hydrogen I
just feel like if we have 7 million people die because of pollution I think by having a law like that and eventually make it stick I think that we could save those lives mhm and this is like unlik more than any of the wars that have fought and any of the other disasters or anything like this is like so many people die because of delution so I mean that's that's huge one thing yes so I
mean you know then probably tomorrow morning I call you and say I have another lock great that's a great answer we've never had that one though we've never had that answer so it's a brilliant answer but you've been doing so much work in I feel like you've been doing so much work in the plant-based space you know with the documentaries on Game Changers like climate change now
you're talking about like it seems like this has been like an immersion for you well you know we know it's a crazy here's another crazy one yeah go it's all my life is so insane I believe it but I mean it's like I'm working with this guy Jim Cameron I do Terminator One MH we become friends we ride the motorcycle together we hang out together and then he does you know germinator 2
and he does other movies in the Titanic and Avatar and all yeah but he is an environmentalist but when we determinated I never knew that and he never talked about it so then I I become governor and now he goes and he says to me he says I want to make to make you aware of that the power companies are still resisting the reverse metering say reverse metering what the hell are you
talking about he says well it's the thing you know when you produce energy from solar and you produce too much you want to put it back on a grid mhm that's reverse metering and you get credit for it w so I walk away and I said how does Jim Cameron knows know about reverse metering about that subject you know of course it's very clear because he's a a genius right and he just is with techn
know and stuff like that is unbeatable yeah so but sure enough I go into the office the next day in the governor's office and said look guys I want to talk a little bit about reverse metering oh I'm so glad you bring this up because power companies are fighting us tooth and nail they don't want to do reverse meering but we want to pass a law so we telling the legislators to
send us a bill so that you can sign it and blah blah blah so this just gives you an example of what impact Jim Cameron had on me with issues that has Way Way Beyond you know movies and stuff like that then he goes and he says to me I said to him I said my doctor said to me he says I should get off meat and they should only have once a week meat and he
says well hello where have you been I mean I've been vegan for five years so I said what and he I've been being for five years I haven't been any meat for five years you don't need me to have and he goes crazy now right and he says so we're doing a documentary right now on thing you know on on eating plant-based food so all of a sudden he's the expert now I sit down with him and
he's telling me for hours about you know plant-based food and how he can combine and create the right amino acids to create the right protein and over how he can get strong and here's and now he lists the name of the athletes boxers wrestlers weightlifters UFC fighters everything that are on plantbased food think about that so now I got into it and I was part of this documentary right
and now I like maybe once a week meat so I would say 70% at least I cut down my meat intake for health reasons and it happens to be also for environmental reasons MH as he explained as Arnold what do you think where most of the pollution comes from more than from Transportation comes from breathing life stock says are you kidding me he says no read up on it he says I send you some stuff so I'm
reading up on it sh enough 28% of the pollution comes from breeding livestock so he says if people wouldn't need meat he says and wouldn't have the animals being kind of like uh the wholeseller kind of like the the the the vegetable protein goes into the animal then they eat it in their chest then you eat the animal you still get the the the you know the plant-based food but through
the animal now is is it's it's we can do better than that let's cut out the meat it's just amazing how I get exposed do various different things in my life and make me passionate about ways that I couldn't even ever have planned you know those kind of relationships and this kind of knowledge you could never plan on yeah and do you also have a meditation practice is that
right I I used to in the 70s there was a time when I got out of bodybuilding and into Show Business and there was all kinds of things happening in the mid-70s so I was doing my last year of competition uh in 1975 in South Africa Mr Olympia so I was training for that I was finishing off my movie stay hungry with Barbara erson and Sally Fields and Jeff Bridges you know doing that and I
was at the same time going full plast in the show business taking acting classes and investing my money in real estate so I was no matter which way I was turning I was like scrambling and at that point I did not know much about how to isolate and just concentrate on one thing at the time so I'm hanging out with this guy this skinny rat down on the beach he's a a transcendental meditation teacher
mhm but he never talked about it so I said I said yeah I feel frantic I mean it's like everything is so a little bit overwhelming for me I'm doing this movie I'm shooting the documentary pumping out I'm going to the competition I'm finishing off stay hungry I'm trying to do real estate and become a millionaire I'm all over the place he says now let me talk to you a little bit
very calmly talk to me about it and he says why don't you come up to Westwood and take some Transcendental Meditation he says I cannot be your teacher even though I'm a teacher I said you're a teacher trans yeah he said but I cannot be a teacher is our rules but when you have friendship and stuff if there's someone else who is but don't worry I said you be the right guy so I
go up there and I do the I learn now about meditation and as I got into it I was then doing meditation like for months wow throughout the summer that hectic summer and when the summer was over it wasn't that hectic anymore so what I learned from meditation was you know how to kind of like first of all rejuvenate the mind and to kind of disconnect the mind but also what I
learned was how to focus on one thing at the time and to just look at that with no peripheral vision so that nothing comes in soft this and then don't think about anything else and then go over here and solve this and then self this because he he said you can never do all of it in one time anyway MH and the soon as you single out things it becomes much
more approachable and much more doable MH he said to me I remember he said when you drive down and Venice boardwalk with you bike he says you will look sometimes on this busy day and it will be all packed he says it would look like you would not be able to go through this crowd because you're looking at the whole shot the whole portwalk all the way down a mile Venice so it's overwhelming he
says but if you go now with your bike slowly you negotiate around the people and all a sudden you will find spaces where you can go where you don't bump into anybody and always say and all a sudden you're on the end of it and it was totally durable because he took like one person at a time kind of like bicycling around he says and that's the way it is with everything he says if you
just look at it one thing at a time you'll be able to solve any problem and that's why it says you see people like the Pope that has obviously his daily routine the big daily routine but those guys they get up at 5:00 in the morning they work out for an hour and a half very calmly get dead out of the way then they read newspapers like Po Pope CH Paul I remember he told me he
read newspapers in six different languages so they read the newspapers then they get that done and they going and take a shower then they go and have the first meeting so this is how they step by step they approach the the day and he says the people that get done the most you can load them up with even more responsibilities because they're very organized and very systematic in their
approach and so I've learned that so now I've never really been that franic again yeah but if I would become Fric I would go right back into the meditation because I know now how to do it that's fantastic hon know everyone who's been listening or watching the book is called be useful seven tools for life uh you can grab it right now we're going to put
the link in the comments and the caption so that you can order it right away as you can tell Arnold's a phenomenal Storyteller inside of it a lessons stories and one of the things I definitely have in common with Arnold that I appreciate about him is how simple the ideas how easy they are to digest they're not complicated and you know you don't have to learn something
new you can actually just sit there take them in listen and all of a sudden you start going wait a minute it maybe is that easy maybe it is that simple and I think that's something that we desperately need in today's world so Arnold I thank you for putting all your lessons into a book for us I thank you for telling so many Amazing Stories and I signed 17,000 copies wow Pages P because now
they they send you the pages you know so I'm getting these boxes with pages each box was a th pages and I said to myself wait a minute now you know first was like 14,000 for the American company and then there was another 3 and a half thousand or 4,000 for the for the Bri they going to be in book stores yes what what they do is I think that the first
of the books are all signed yes so now people would when they order pre-order they will we sign books I think that was the idea so in the old days that you would go to the bookstore and you would sign all the books yourself and then you sit there for hours and hours and after an hour you sign a 100 books right because you have to open up the book and it's all slow now it's this pages so I
was just like signing signing signing I was for three months I was signing and signing and signing yeah I mean think about it I mean 177,000 yeah I can relate it's crazy yeah it's crazy I never thought that have to do that many signatures I love it well it's available now make sure you tag me and Arnold on any social media platforms you're using whether it's Tik Tok Instagram X or
wherever you are I'd love to see what resonated with you what's stuck with you keep sharing those posts across social media because I love seeing what is going to stay with you what you're going to practice what are you going to try what are you going to implement in your life from this episode that will help you become happier healthier or more healed thank you again hanold thank you thank you