Four Key Themes Of Success From The Arnold Netflix Docuseries

Everyone loves Arnold Schwarzenegger, even those who hate him come to love him. “Arnold”, a 3 part docuseries on the life of one of the greatest achievers ever known has finally been released on Netflix. Naturally, I sat and watched it like the good fan I am – and amongst the story telling I found some great advice. Some people are familiar with his rules for success and while these are evident in the series there are a few key teachings from the great one that shouldn’t be ignored.

Self Belief Is The Key, But It Alone Is Not Enough

Arnold is very clear on this point – if you don’t believe in yourself no one else will. If you can’t envisage yourself on the top of the mountain, you’ll never make it. He reminisces about his younger years and emphasises throughout the first part of the docuseries that he could always see himself somewhere else, doing bigger and better things. As he grows, so does his ambition. After entering his first contests and achieving some success this reinforces his belief in himself which provides him the confidence to make the hard decisions such as moving to Germany to work at a gym instead of completing his mandatory military service for Austria.

Throughout the series Arnold addresses various failures and road blocks in his career, but he continually refers back to his unwavering belief that he will be on top and no one will stop him. Self belief got Arnold far, but without the environment he created for himself with his close friends and the willingness to take risks like moving far away from home in pursuit of his goals he would never have achieved anything more than a humble village fitness guy back in Austria.

If you don’t have the willingness to back yourself and make the moves that need to be made, you’ll stay where you are. Self confidence helps, but in the absence of these other things it will only get you so far!

Be Useful

Arnolds father passed this gem on to him from an early age. In everything you do, be useful. This makes a lot of sense when you think about it, no one is going to care what you do or feel positively about you if nothing you do is of any use to anyone else.

This spurred him on to various charity endeavors, running for office in California and implementing landmark environmental legislation that changed the course of the United States environmental trajectory. President Obama later used his policy as a benchmark for his own climate policies. Amazing stuff from a guy who generally refused to play party politics and governed how he saw fit.

Examining how he reacts to other topics you can also see it makes him uncomfortable when things are not useful. Arnold uses the term “schmäh” which roughly translates to “bullshit” in English to describe the shallow lifestyles and images of a lot of Hollywood personas, how he brags about himself and how he and his family is written about in gossip articles.

They’re not useful, so he dismisses them as such – and you should too, in favour of being useful. People value people and things of use – if you can’t produce anything useful with your time then no one will value you, not even yourself. If you’re struggling with self belief, try being useful in something and you’ll also start to believe the same.

Surround Yourself With Like Minded People

There is a body of evidence that suggests that the people who we spend our time with determine up to 95% of our success or failure. Arnold was one of those people who didn’t pick sides, he saw who the players in the game were and aligned himself with them one way or another. He did this by setting himself up as the best, but also situating himself to meet them.

He sought out the people in his local area who were into fitness and bodybuilding and learned from them. He trained, worked and lived at the top gym knowing that it would provide him with the connections and resources he needed to succeed. He left Europe to seek out better competition with Joe Weider and only looked back to bring Franco Columbu across to train with him (no one could train with him like Franco could, he was the perfect training partner).

Ingratiating himself with Weider made him bigger than he could ever have been had he sided with the “other” Mr. Universe competition (at the time there were two, this was how the Mr. Olympia was born). The magazine covers, merchandise and advice he received gave him the foundation to set himself up for success beyond his competitive years.

Today everything is about teams and groups based on a commonality and many of those groups despise anyone who doesn’t agree with them. It’s ultimately a negative landscape which makes it hard to find a group of like minded people who push you in a positive direction. In the bodybuilding world picking the wrong federation can mean the difference between getting a pro card, endorsements and doing what you love or being forced to work 9-5 in a job you dislike to compete casually.

I’m not saying suck up to people in positions of power, that’s gross, but if you don’t have people in your corner you’re just one person swimming upstream. Picking the right people to be part of that corner makes all the difference in your goals. When aligned with usefulness and self belief helps make you a more magnetic person, which other people find an attractive quality as well.

Ignore The Naysayers

I left this to last because Arnold has said this for years. There’s merch with this saying on it, posters, the works. After you watch the series on Netflix you really get a feel for how many times he’s flat out ignored people and done what he wanted to do because of the above mentioned points. Whether it’s 100% accurate or not, before making almost every big decision in his life he’s just flat out ignored those who said he shouldn’t do it because he believed he could do it, those around him would support him and he’d achieved his objectives.

He skipped out on mandatory military service to compete in a bodybuilding competition. He spoke out about bodybuilding when it was kind of a circus freak sport. He changed roles in movies to suit his perspective on them and even installed people from politically opposite ideologies in his government because he thought they were the best choices. THE MAN LITERALLY DOES WHATEVER HE WANTS!

What about the rest of us though? When someone tells us not to do something it’s probably for a logical reason right? Probably, but a lot of people don’t want you to do something because they’re probably too scared to do it themselves. Most people’s reaction to you isn’t a protective one, it’s a “don’t rock the boat” one because they don’t want to be associated with you if the shit hits the fan because you did it. They’ll probably be the ones saying “I told you so” if it does, but if you surround yourself with the people you need then you’ll only have support for your choices and a tight circle to help you in times of crisis where self belief can falter and your usefulness may be lower than it has been due to the setback.

The naysayers will always be naysayers but you will always have your convictions!

To Conclude

The series and the person, Arnold, demonstrates that where there is a will there is a way. He’s a cultural icon for a reason and always will be. If you haven’t seen the series yet I recommend you do, it’s just as insightful and revealing as The Last Dance was with Jordan.

Believe in yourself, be useful, find like minded people and ignore the haters – if you can do these 4 things you’ll live a good life, make a difference to those you encounter and you might just leave your own children with your own iconic legacy.