Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Mr. Olympia, Conan, Terminator, and Governor of California, delivers one of the best motivational speeches you will ever hear.
00:06The first rule of success is to have a vision.
00:10You see, if you don't have a vision of where you go and if you don't have a goal where you go,
00:15you drift around and you never end up anywhere.
00:19I mean, as you know, I was born in 1947 in Austria after the Second World War.
00:24So I was very fortunate that I stumbled onto my vision.
00:30And I didn't really like Austria when I grew up.
00:34I couldn't wait to get out of there.
00:36I couldn't see myself becoming a farmer or a worker in a factory or anything like that.
00:44Even though my parents wanted me to stay there and have a normal life.
00:49But that was their vision, not mine.
00:52My vision was totally different.
00:53I felt that I was born for something special, for something unique, for something big.
00:58Then one day I went to school.
01:00I remember I was 11 years old.
01:03And they showed a documentary about America.
01:07There they showed in this documentary the huge skyscrapers, the high rises, the huge bridges, the six lane freeways.
01:17And all of this stuff, and I said to myself, that's where I want to be.
01:23I don't want to be around here with these little farmhouses and these little buildings.
01:27I want to be in America.
01:29One day after school, I walked by a store in Graz.
01:32So I went inside and I looked around and then I saw a magazine.
01:37I saw a bodybuilding magazine that had Reg Park on the cover.
01:42Reg Park was then a three-time Mr. Universe.
01:45And I saw him on the big screen as Hercules.
01:49I read that and I said to myself, wow, this is the blueprint for my life.
01:55This is exactly what I want to do.
01:57I want to become a bodybuilding champion just like Reg Park.
02:02I want to get into movies just like Reg Park.
02:05And I want to make millions of dollars and be rich and famous just like Reg Park.
02:11Do you know how great it felt that I knew where I was going?
02:16Imagine the majority of people don't know where they're going.
02:20I knew where I was going.
02:22That I'm going to become this bodybuilding champion just like him.
02:25So it was just a question of how do you do it?
02:29I was so relieved.
02:31Because when you have a goal, when you have a vision, everything becomes easy.
02:36So people always ask me when they saw me in the gym in the pumping iron days.
02:41They say, why is it that you're working out so hard?
02:45Five hours a day, six hours a day, and you have always a smile on your face.
02:49And I told people all the time, I said, because to me, I'm shooting for a goal.
02:56In front of me is the Mr. Universe title.
02:59So every rep that I do gets me closer to accomplishing that goal, to make this goal, this vision turn into reality.
03:06Every single set that I do, every repetition, every weight that I lift would get me a step closer to turn this goal into reality.
03:17So I couldn't wait to do another 500 pound squat.
03:21I couldn't wait to do another 500 pound bench press.
03:24I couldn't wait to do another 2,000 reps of sit-ups.
03:27I couldn't wait for the next exercise.
03:30With the age of 20, I went to London and I won the Mr. Universe contest as the youngest Mr. Universe ever.
03:37And it was because I had a goal.
03:42So let me tell you something, visualizing a goal and going after it makes it fun.
03:48You've got to have a purpose, no matter what you do in life.
03:51You've got to have a purpose.
03:5774% hate their job in America.
04:02Now this is not much different when you come to Europe.
04:05The majority of people don't like what they're doing.
04:09Because they're really not doing it because they didn't have a goal and they followed this goal.
04:14They just aimlessly drift around and then all of a sudden there's a job opening so they get their job.
04:19Because you have to work.
04:21But then when you work, it's a chore.
04:23It's work.
04:26It's not fun.
04:28So if you think about only a quarter of the people really enjoy what they're doing in life.
04:33That is unbelievable if you think about it.
04:36So I felt so blessed that I knew what I was doing.
04:39It's like a medical student that studies and knows he wants to become a doctor.
04:44You know where to go.
04:45And the same thing is also in politics.
04:49I remember that in politics I had a very clear vision.
04:54That I will be the leader of California.
04:57That's as far as I could go because I was not born in America so I could not run for president.
05:01So being the governor of the fifth largest state, I should say the largest state, the fifth largest economy in the world, was for me really the ultimate title, the ultimate accomplishment in politics.
05:17So even though people came up to me and said, why don't you go and run for something smaller, you're never going to make it.
05:25I ran for governor and then two months later I became governor of the state of California.
05:29Again, because I had a very clear vision what I'm going to do with California.
05:39So that's rule number one, have a vision.
05:43Rule number two is don't listen to the naysayers.
05:48Don't listen to the naysayers.
05:50Everything I ever did, the thing that I heard out of people's mouth was, that's impossible.
06:02That can't be done.
06:04Or no.
06:06That is exactly what I heard and of course I proved to the people that it can't be done.
06:11So whenever someone said to me, it can't be done, I heard, it can be done.
06:17When they said no, I heard yes.
06:21And when they said it's impossible, I heard, it is possible.
06:26I'm a strong believer of what Nelson Mandela said.
06:30That everything is always impossible until someone does it.
06:35Well, I'm going to be the one, I said to myself, I'm going to do it and I'm going to show it to them.
06:40Maybe it has never been done before.
06:42That's perfectly fine with me.
06:43But I'm going to do it.
06:46And I did not listen to the naysayers.
06:49It's all about the hard work that you put in.
06:53I said to myself, in bodybuilding I worked out five, six hours a day.
06:58I'm going to do the same thing now for acting.
07:00And of course I went to college to study English.
07:07I studied the accent removal, acting classes and all of this stuff all day long.
07:17I worked and I worked and I worked.
07:18And within a short period of time I made one movie called Hercules in New York.
07:25Which of course went right into the toilet.
07:28But it didn't discourage me.
07:31I still had the same vision.
07:33And then all of a sudden I did Streets of San Francisco.
07:36I did Stay Hungry and Pumping Iron and The Villain.
07:42And then all of a sudden I was asked by Dino De Laurentiis and the Universal Studio to star in Conan the Barbarian.
07:49And after I did Conan the Barbarian, the director at the press conference said to the press, the director was John Milius.
08:02He said to the press, if we wouldn't have had Arnold, we would have had to build one.
08:07So think about that.
08:09The very body that they said can never be sold because the time is wrong.
08:19A few years later, I'm doing Conan the Barbarian and it was the number one hit at the box office when he came out.
08:27In the summer of 82.
08:29Think about that.
08:30And the director says, if we wouldn't have had his body, we would have had to build one.
08:34So all of a sudden, my body became an asset, not a liability.
08:41And the same thing was with Terminator.
08:42After we were finished filming Terminator, Jim Cameron said to the press,
08:47if Arnold wouldn't have had that accent and talked like a machine, I think the movie wouldn't have worked.
08:54So think about that.
08:56The body and the accent that they attacked was an asset.
09:00But I didn't listen to those losers.
09:05I didn't listen to them at all.
09:08This is just the reality of it is, is that you cannot listen to the naysayers.
09:12So this is a very important lesson for all of you.
09:16So when someone says, no, this is a stupid idea.
09:19You in your mind, you don't have to say it, but in your mind, just say this is a you.
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