Be Useful: Arnold’s Seven Tools for Life (Heroic +1 #1,676)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a fascinating human being. Unless you've been in seclusion in the Himalayas for the last 50 or so years, you know who Arnold Schwarzenegger is. The young Arnold dominated the bodybuilding world. Then he became a leading man in Hollywood before serving eight years as California's 38th governor. In his new book, he tells us about the seven tools we need to use in to create a life of deep meaning and purpose and to, in short, as per the title of the book, be useful. Now. I watched Arnold's inspiring documentary on Netflix, linked to it in the plus one. So when I saw he released this book, I immediately got it, read it and loved it. I highly recommend it. Check out the notes and of course get a copy of the book as well. Today we're going to chat about Arnold's number one tool for a good life called have a clear Vision. In the first chapter, Arnold goes off about how incredibly clearly he could see himself achieving success at each of his significant phases of his life. And he tells us, I quote, before I go any further, I recognize that this sounds like a lot of woo woo manifestation mumbo jumbo, like the Secret and all those Law of Attraction books being peddled by, ahem, artists. This isn't that. I'm not saying that if you visualize what you want, then it will come true. Hell no. You have to plan and work and learn and fail and work and fail some more. That's just life. Those are the rules. Then he continues by saying, what I am saying is that if you want your vision to stick, if you want to increase the chances of success looking exactly like you hoped it would when you first figured out what you wanted your life to look like, then you need to get crystal clear on that vision and tattoo it to the inside of your eyelids. You need to see it. End quote. As you may know, Arnold is renowned for the power of his vision. In fact, George Leonard actually quotes him in his classic book Mastery, where he says, all I know is that the first step is to create the vision. Because when you see the vision there, the beautiful vision, that creates the want, power. For example, my wanting to be Mr. Universe came about because I saw myself so clearly being up there on stage and winning. Now, in his book, Arnold tells us about how clearly he saw himself becoming Mr. Universe, then how clearly he saw himself as a Hollywood star, then how clearly he saw himself sitting at his desk as the governor of California. And I love the way Arnold makes it very clear that we're not talking about woo woo secret nonsense where we think that if we stare at our vision board long enough will somehow manifest everything we've ever dreamt of. Arnold's Wisdom and Success is essentially the concrete expression of Gabriel Oettingen's scientific wisdom in rethinking positive thinking. Check out those notes for what remains one of my all time favorite books. As Professor Oettingen says, based on two decades of research findings replicated across a variety of research participants, contexts and methods, you would be ill advised to indulge in dreams about achieving your goals and then assume you're well on your path to success. Life just doesn't work that way. Her recommendation echoes Arnold's Start with a clear vision, then rub it up against reality. You have to plan and work and learn and fail and work and fail some more. That's just life. Those are the rules. So what's your vision and what's your plan to make it a reality? Get that today. P.S. although I didn't tattoo my eyelids ouch. With my ultimate vision, I did. As you know, if you've been following along, tattoo my left forearm. Every single morning, multiple times a day, I look down and say to myself, hero, I see a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by the year 2,051. Day one all in. Let's go.