Be Useful

I spent about six hours with Arnold Schwarzenegger this week. Not in Venice Beach, not in a gym, not in Sacramento. Just me, his book, and his voice.

And I have to say: if you pick this one up, go for the audiobook. Arnold reads it himself, accent and all. At one point he says: “I’m recording in my little home studio. If you hear my little pig, Schnelly, going oink oink oink, just bear with me.” I literally laughed out loud. That’s when I realized this wasn’t just a book — it was more like sitting across from him while he told stories. The audiobook also has extra bits that the e-book doesn’t. It feels like a chat.

The Core Idea

The book is structured around seven tools for life. They’re simple, sometimes common sense, but that’s the point. He doesn’t try to reinvent philosophy — he just tells you what worked for him.

The seven tools are:

1. Have a Clear Vision – You need to see where you’re going before you get there.

2. Never Think Small – Don’t play safe, think big.

3. Work Your Ass Off – He literally trained five hours a day for fifteen years. That work ethic followed him into acting and politics.

4. Sell, Sell, Sell – Learn how to sell yourself, your ideas, your work.

5. Shift Gears – Life will force you to change. Bodybuilder → Actor → Governor → Philanthropist.

6. Shut Your Mouth, Open Your Mind – Listen, ask questions, stay curious. Knowledge is fuel.

7. Break Your Mirrors – Stop obsessing over yourself. Be useful to others.

What Stuck With Me

As a bodybuilder myself, I was curious if he’d share secrets. Training hacks, routines, something. But this isn’t really a bodybuilding manual. It’s part memoir, part self-help, part storytelling.

Still, I picked up some gems:

• Failure as progress. In the gym, your muscles grow when they fail. Arnold takes that metaphor everywhere: fail, fail, fail until you grow.

• Pain as temporary. During Conan the Barbarian, he tore himself up — bleeding forearms, wild dogs, forty stitches in his back. The director told him: “Pain is temporary. This film will be permanent.” Arnold believed it. He leaned into pain as the price of growth.

• Hard work transferred. When he quit bodybuilding, those five daily training hours didn’t disappear. He poured them into acting classes, speech lessons, even practicing gun stunts until his knuckles bled for Terminator 2. Later, he turned those hours into politics, studying briefing books like a foreign exchange student cramming for exams.

The Person Behind the Muscles

There are also glimpses of his personal life.
His childhood in Austria.
A mother he loved deeply.
A father who sometimes drank and hit, but whom he doesn’t condemn. Arnold frames even hardship through positivity. That was interesting to me — how someone can take pain, even family pain, and redirect it into strength.

He’s also very clear that he’s not a “self-made man.” He repeats it: he had help everywhere. Mentors, training partners, teachers, directors, voters. His success, he insists, is shared. That humility surprised me.

Who This Book Is For

If you’re looking for the secret formula to build biceps like Arnold, this isn’t it. What you’ll find is mindset, not macros. Lessons that can apply whether you’re starting a business, raising a family, or trying to lift a personal best.

The tools are simple enough to dismiss. Have a vision. Work hard. Help others. But I think that’s what makes them stick. He doesn’t overcomplicate. He doesn’t try to be a philosopher. He just tells stories, adds a few quotes, and says: here’s what worked for me.

My Takeaway

I respect Arnold. I see why he’s a role model for many. He reinvented himself multiple times, leaned into pain, and kept showing up. But I don’t put him on a pedestal. I don’t need to. His life proves something obvious but easy to forget: success isn’t about being the smartest or the strongest. It’s about showing up, failing forward, working harder than most, and finding ways to be useful to others.

That last point hit me hardest. Help. Give back. That’s how you stay relevant, that’s how you leave a legacy.