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It’s safe to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger has accomplished a lot in his time on the planet.
But now — after winning the Mr. Universe title four times and Mr. Olympia title seven times, achieving huge success as a leading man in Hollywood, and serving two terms as the 38th governor of California — the septuagenarian superstar can add “Life Coach” to his resumé.
In “Be Useful: Seven Tools For Life” (Penguin), Schwarzenegger reveals the key rules, traits, and philosophies that have helped him on his path to happiness and show just how readers too can learn from his experience.
“These tools have always worked. They will always work,” he writes. “I think of them like elements of a blueprint or a road map to a happy, successful, useful life — whatever that means for you.”
The title was inspired by the words of wisdom offered by his late father, Gustav, who, whenever the young Arnold sought his counsel invariably replied: “Be useful, Arnold.”
“It is the best piece of advice my father gave me, advice that stuck in my brain and never left,” he writes. “I wrote this book to honor those words and pay forward his advice.”
At times, when Schwarzenegger reflects on his life growing up in a small rural village in Austria or on the painful break-up of his marriage in 2011, it can be extremely personal, but for the most part, the advice is as blunt and as no-nonsense as you would expect from a bodybuilding legend and all-action movie hero.
The chapter titles speak volumes.
In “Work Your Ass Off,” he writes there’s no substitute for putting in the time.
“Work works. That’s the bottom line. No matter what you do. No matter who you are.”
In “Shut Your Mouth, Open Your Mind,” meanwhile, he reveals just how the lost art of listening has been to the success he has enjoyed and how some of the world’s prominent people, like Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, have influenced his take on life.
“Work works. That’s the bottom line. No matter what you do. No matter who you are.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger“My friends like to call me Forrest Gump because I’ve met every President since Lyndon Johnson,” he writes. “Unlike Forrest, I didn’t find myself in the same room as these great historical figures by accident, I met them because I was famous.
“I asked for advice. And then I listened.”
Schwarzenegger believes that maintaining a genuine interest in those around you is imperative not just to happy and healthy relationships with friends and family — but also to keeping your own goals and ambitions on track.
“Curiosity is the first thing that dies within someone who was raised to think the world is what it is and there’s nothing they can do about it,” he writes.
“The world needs more sponges.”
“Be Useful” is also about confronting reality and escaping your comfort zone, as Schwarzenegger explains.
“What do you see when you look in the mirror?” he asks.
“Most people hate looking in the mirror. It’s too uncomfortable. Too scary. Because the person in the mirror is often a stranger who looks nothing like the person they see when they close their eyes and picture the person they want to be.”
Genuine satisfaction, meanwhile, can only even come from giving back, he maintains, a process that will make you “happier in ways you could never have anticipated.”
It doesn’t have to be money or philanthropic work.
Indeed, Schwarzenegger explains he can get joy from showing “some old geezer in the gym” how to work out correctly or giving advice to “a seventeen-year-old who wants to start his own roofing business.”
“I am not asking you to be Robin Hood or Mother Teresa,” he writes.
“I am only asking you to do for others what you are able to do … to be useful as often as you can.
“In every case, giving more will get you more.”
Crucial too is the issue of taking risks — and just what to do in the event it doesn’t pay off.
In each of Schwarzenegger’s three distinct careers — bodybuilding, acting, and politics — he was, he says, always being appraised and always at the mercy of a judge, an audience, or the voters.
“[But] If I lost or failed, I didn’t complain,” he writes. “Instead I used it as a learning experience… to get better and smarter and to come back stronger the next time.”
“Besides, what do you have to lose?”
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