Page 15 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

him for our newspaper’s Sunday magazine.

I, too, had no idea who he was or who he was going to become. I agreed to
spend the day with him because I had to—it was an assignment. And although I
took to it with an uninspired attitude, it was one I’d never forget.

Perhaps the most memorable part of that day with Schwarzenegger occurred
when we took an hour for lunch. I had my reporter’s notebook out and was
asking questions for the story while we ate. At one point I casually asked him,
“Now that you have retired from bodybuilding, what are you going to do next?”

With a voice as calm as if he were telling me about some mundane travel
plans, he said, “I’m going to be the number-one box-office star in all of
Hollywood.”

Mind you, this was not the slim, aerobic Arnold we know today. This man
was pumped up and huge. And so, for my own physical sense of well-being, I
tried to appear as though I found his goal reasonable.

I tried not to show my shock and amusement at his plan. After all, his first
attempt at movies didn’t promise much. And his Austrian accent and awkward,
monstrous build didn’t suggest instant acceptance by movie audiences. I finally
managed to match his calm demeanor, and I asked him just how he planned to
become Hollywood’s top star.

“It’s the same process I used in bodybuilding,” he explained. “What you do
is create a vision of who you want to be, and then live into that picture as if it
were already true.”

It sounded ridiculously simple. Too simple to mean anything. But I wrote it
down. And I never forgot it.

I’ll never forget the moment when some entertainment TV show was saying
that box office receipts from his second Terminator movie had made him the
most popular box office draw in the world.

Over the years I’ve used Arnold’s idea of creating a vision as a motivational
tool. I’ve also elaborated on it in my corporate training seminars. I invite people
to notice that Arnold said that you create a vision. He did not say that you wait
until you receive a vision. You create one. In other words, you make it up. A
major part of living a life of self-motivation is having something to wake up for
in the morning—something that you are “up to” in life so that you will stay
hungry.