Transcription
Well, I think that my biggest personal success is, uh, to be able to do the things that I wanted to do, that to visualize them and turn them into reality. That is really the question is, is it really a sacrifice to me? Is also a real question. Is the word discipline? Because I tell you, I felt many times that I'm not a disciplined person. People always insist and say, "Oh, it must take so much discipline every day to get up, and every day you were in a gym at 7:00 in the morning, and you worked at 9:30 in the morning, and then you went to college after that, and then you went this and this, and you worked in construction." I was like, looking forward to getting up in the morning and looking forward to driving to the gym and working out two and a half hours, and then going down to the beach and taking a run in the deep sand, and, uh, getting some cardio work done and all. I say, I was looking forward to it. It was not like, "Oh my god, I have to do another workout."
Yes, you do that when, for instance, sometimes people go to the gym and the doctor says, "You know, you should go to the gym and you should work out because otherwise, you know, I see some problems coming up, high cholesterol and body fat and this, and that, and you're going to go and wipe out, you know, 10 years younger than you want to, if there's ever the right time to wipe out." But I mean, in any case, so that person you can see in the gym is there, and they're just, they do their reps and they do their sets, and they're not really into it. You can see there's not life in their eyes. You know what I'm saying? Where it's like they really, they grab the weight and they do their sets and they get the pump and they feel good and they put the weights down and get the next heavy weight and they do the set. And so that's really fun. But that person is kind of like a vegetable in a way. They just cruise around in the gym. They sit on the life cycle and they just pedal away. And when you say to them, "So, why do you work out?" They have no answer.
To be honest with you, the doctor told me that I should get in shape, that's better for my health, to bring my blood pressure down and my cholesterol down and my body fat down and all that. So, they're not really. So, I say to them always, I said, "You know what you should do is you should just pick a goal that you can chase." They would say like, "What?" I said, "Well, how much do you weigh?" I'm weighing 190 lbs. And I want to. Why don't you pick a goal like you want to go down to 170? And it's now March, and by August, when you go to the beach, you're going to have a slimmer waist, less body fat, and you look leaner, and you can be proud of your body. And they'll pick that, go, "Oh, that's a good idea." They say, "Write it down." And then write down the sets you have to do to get you there, and the amount of reps you have to do, and the amount of life cycle that you have to run, and regular bicycle and running that you have to do. Write all of this down, and then you mark it off every day. You mark it off. That's what I did to me. It was really that, that feedback that I see a line being crossed that means one was set was done. It was a satisfying kind of a thing. The line was crossed off, the next line was crossed off. And so I tell people that, and then they just say, "Oh my god, this is, yeah, I'm going to do that. That is such a great idea." Then they come back to me like a few months later and they said, "This worked. It was unbelievable. It worked. It was fantastic, and it really gave me a purpose."
See, so that's what it's, it's why it's so important to have a purpose when you do things, have a clear vision when you do things, because then you don't have to look at it kind of like, "I have to be really disciplined to do that," or "I have to make certain sacrifices to do that," because then it just drags you into that direction, and you just do the work, you know. So that's what I think is always that. But clearly, there were sacrifices. I was unhappy with the reality of what was around me, you know, the tough parents and the lack of food and others had stakes. We didn't have the money for that. As a matter of fact, we never ate meat during the week. Now today, they would say, "Oh, this is really good." Because he were vegan as a kid, but it was more of a because of a lack of money. So everywhere I looked. So I think to me, the only way really was, in order to be happy, is to create my own world and to visualize.
You know, that's why people sometimes read a lot because they want to escape into another story, or they watch movies to go and to see another, to escape into another story, and all this stuff. For me, that wasn't available in the first movie. I was always like, when I was like 9 or 10 years old. So it was not the common thing in the village where I grew up to go to movies. Because of that world, that negative world, I had to kind of create my own world. So I was just always daydreaming of wonderful things. So it was, I developed that art, and it put a smile on my face. So clearly, when I then saw, uh, Mr. Austria, Mr. Universe, and I saw these guys and saw photographs of it, and I read about it in the magazines, I created my vision, and I saw in that vision myself being up on that stage, and I saw myself, you know, people screaming around me, um, and screaming Arnold, Arnold, and and all this crazy stuff. It was all insane, crazy stuff. Uh, stuff that I never shared in those days with anybody because they, they would have put me in a mental institution. Right.
So I mean, so I was just, I just remember that I was sitting in a classroom in school. I was like 13 years old, 14 years old. The teacher would be where you are now, in front of me teaching, and I would just slowly look off to the side, out the window. I saw these green trees, and then all of a sudden, I start seeing things. I felt like all I had to do now is just follow through with the work. So let me now find out what needs to be done. And so I, I read about Re Park. How did he train? He trained like four or five hours a day. And, uh, he did so many sets, so many reps. These are the exercises he did. Did the bench press, the incline press, the the curl, the shoulders presses, and the this and that. And I just wrote everything down, and I started following his routine. And I was absolutely convinced that I will be another Rich Park.
And so that's how I really developed my first rule that I always talk about to success is, you got to have a very clear vision of where you want to go, because if you don't have that, you're just floating around. And so, you know, I was very fortunate that I created that vision. I was very fortunate that there was not the side kind of things going on. We didn't have a phone in our house. We didn't have a television in our house. Or at that time, there were no iPhones. There were no iPads. There was no computer. There was just really, you had all the time in the world to think and to really just sit quietly and to just visualize. And I always say that I feel sorry for kids today that are spending hours and hours on that iPhone or an an iPad or computer, and they don't give themselves that chance to just settle back and to just figure out what do they want to do, or who do they want to be.
And, uh, so this is why I think that I made that kind of the rule number one is, you know, visualize. And I always compare it to that, you can have the best airplane in the world, uh, with the most advanced pilot, but if he does not know where to go, it's just going to fly around until it crashes. And that's what happens to you in life. If you don't know where you want to go and who you want to be, you eventually just float around and you eventually, eventually crash. And, uh, that's why a lot of people are unhappy. They, or they take drugs, or they drink, or the suicide rates. I think a lot of it has to do because people really don't have as much of a purpose and the mission and the vision, and all of the things, the things that drove me from the time I was like 15 years old. It was very clear which direction I want to go. And that, of course, goes to another chapter and another subject in a book, which is, you know, give something back to the community.
You know, because we are not self-made people. You know, I talk about this at great length in the book, as it, you know, people so many times call me a self-made man. I know what you're talking about, but I always wanted to make clear at the same time, I'm not a self-made man. I was created by my mother and my father. I was created by my teachers, by my coaches, by my bodybuilding champions that they were my my idols, and Joe Weider that brought me to America. Eric Morris, who was my acting coach. Chuck Nicholson, that recommended this acting coach. So all of these people had a tremendous amount. My wife did help me in every step of the way, you know, with the kids. My kids were really helpful in my career. So I am a product of all of that. And so I think it's important that when we recognize that we have gotten the help, that we therefore give help back. So that's why you have to ask yourself the question, okay, now, if everyone helped me to be where I am, how can I now go out and help whom? Who can I help? What can I help them with?
Well, you just have to find, uh, you know, compromise. So what you then do is you just say, "Okay, I'm going to go and spend an extra day at home." So, and I decided then to spend another day in Los Angeles and to go to those school recital, or to go to some kind of a practice sessions of, uh, you know, my kid playing football or baseball, or something like that, and to go to those things. To to figure out a way, and it didn't take anything away from my public service, but it gave a little bit more time, FaceTime for the kids. And, you know, it really is absolutely crucial for the kids, not just to see their mom coming to school, but they need their dad more. So, you know, and so that's exactly what they did. And I totally understood. I talked to my wife about it, but like I said, uh, an aunt, she was really the one, M, that was, uh, the powerhouse in the family because she spent, I would say 80% of the time with the kids, and I did 20%. Because I was stuck in Sacramento, and even though she worked also as first lady, and she was in Sacramento, but, uh, she spent much more time with the kids. And luckily, when you have a good partner, then you can do a lot of those things. Alone, I couldn't have done it.
The military. Even though when I went through it, it was really tough, but I have to say that when I look back at it, I recommend it very strongly for any any young man or woman, as far as that goes, to go through that because you learn how to be tough. You get up at 5 in the morning. You run for an hour. Then you do your basic training. You know, crawling on all fours and with a gun in your hand and shooting, and learning how to drive motorcycles and cars and trucks and tanks. You learn about leadership, but you also learn simple things like how to iron your shirt, how to sew on buttons, uh, how to iron your your pants, how to brush your shoes, how to clean your shoes, clean belt buckles and all. So, it become kind of self-sufficient, and it gives you, I think, a certain amount of confidence that I don't need to be babyed by anybody. I can take care. I can cook, which you learned there, the basic foods. Uh, as a matter of fact, we made scrambled eggs on top of the tank because the back of the motor would be so hot. Wow. So we just put the eggs on top and just scrambled it there and ate it off of the tank, dirty as it was. Right. So, but I mean, so you feel kind of, look, I can handle food. I can handle ironing my own stuff. I can handle washing my own stuff. I don't need anybody to do those kind of, you know, stupid chores. So I can do it myself, and I feel good doing it myself. So there's a lot of things like that that you learn in the army. It just gives you a certain base where you don't get afraid of anything. You feel like, I've gone through all kinds of hell now with the military. You know, they make sure of that. And so I think that's that's really terrific.
But I remember there were times that were really tough. Like for instance, if you make a mistake, they will have you open up the hatch that is underneath your seat, and where the driver's seat is of the tank, and you open up that hatch, and it falls out. And then they have you crawl out of that hole, and then drive, then crawl under the tank in a mud, and, uh, with your uniform on and everything. And then you have, you have to climb up the back of the tank, up the the turn, down the turn, back to your driver's seat, and then out that hole again. And they do that like 50 times. So by the time you do it, it's like hours later, and you, you literally collapse. You're so exhausted from all this stuff. So there's punishments like that that were really, really tough. So I would not wish that on anybody, to be honest with you. I mean, I could handle it, but I think I can, I could handle it because I was 18 years old, and you know, you're very, very tough when you're 18. You can handle just about anything. You know, you have the endurance and the strength, and I was, I was in the middle of my weightlifting and bodybuilding career. So, I was also strong, but it was strong-willed also. So, to me, it was all kind of, it was good, but it was tough.
What is the best advice you've ever heard or received? Believe in yourself. Second question. What is the worst advice you've ever heard or received? It can't be done. You've mastered so many things in your life. What are you currently trying to master? Bring all of my talents together into one. The show business, fitness, and politics all into one, and make that be my new kind of vision and drive to help the world.