Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

To me Gorbachev is a hero, at the same level as Nelson Mandela, who overcame the anger and despair of twenty-seven years in prison. When given the power to shake the world, both of them chose to build rather than destroy.

9. Take care of your body and your mind. Some of the earliest advice that stuck in my head was Fredi Gerstl channeling Plato. “The Greeks started the Olympics, but they also gave us the great philosophers,” he would say. “You have to build the ultimate physical machine but also the ultimate of the mind.” Focusing on the body was no problem for me, and later on, I became really curious to develop my mind. I realized that the mind is a muscle and we should train it too. So I was determined to train my brain and get smart. I became like a sponge, absorbing everything around me. The world became my university, I developed such a need to learn and read and take it all in.

For people who are successful with their intelligence, the opposite applies. They need to exercise the body every day. Clint Eastwood exercises even when he’s directing and starring in a movie. Dmitri Medvedev worked endless hours when he was president of Russia, but he had a gym at home and worked out two hours each day. If world leaders have time to work out, so do you.

Many years after hearing it from Fredi Gerstl, I heard the same idea of balance from the Pope. I visited the Vatican with Maria and her parents in 1983 for a private audience with John Paul II. Sarge was talking spiritual talk because he was an expert in that. Eunice asked the Holy Father about what kids should do to become better people and he said, “Just pray. Just pray.”

I talked to him about his workouts. Just before we went, I’d read a magazine story that described how athletic the pope was and what good shape he was in. To him, besides religion, life was about taking care of both your mind and your body. So we talked about that. He was known for getting up at five in the morning and reading newspapers in six different languages and doing two hundred push-ups and three hundred sit-ups, all before breakfast and before his workday began. He was a skier too, and he skied even after he became pope.

And he was already in his sixties, twenty-seven years older than me. I said to myself, “If that guy can do it, I’ve got to get up even earlier!”

10. Stay hungry. Be hungry for success, hungry to make your mark, hungry to be seen and to be heard and to have an effect. And as you move up and become successful, make sure also to be hungry for helping others.

Don’t rest on your laurels. Too many former athletes spend their lives talking about how great they were twenty years ago. But someone like Ted Turner goes from running his father’s outdoor advertising business to founding CNN, to organizing the Goodwill Games, to raising bison and supplying bison meat, to having forty-seven honorary degrees. That’s what I call staying hungry. Bono starts as a musician, then buys others’ music, then works to combat AIDS and to create jobs. Anthony Quinn was not happy just being a movie star. He wanted to do more. He became a painter whose canvases sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Donald Trump turned his inheritance into a fortune ten times as big, then had a network TV show. Sarge traveled the world till he died, always hungry for new projects.

So many accomplished people just coast. They wish they could still be somebody and not just talk about the past. There is much more to life than being the greatest at one thing. We learn so much when we’re successful, so why not use what you’ve learned, use your connections and do more with them?

My father always told me, “Be useful. Do something.” He was right. If you have a talent or skill that makes you happy, use it to improve your neighborhood. And if you feel a desire to do more, then go all out. You’ll have plenty of time to rest when you’re in the grave. Live a risky life and a spicy life and like Eleanor Roosevelt said, every day do something that scares you.

We should all stay hungry!

MEMOIRS ARE ABOUT LOOKINGback, but I’ve lived my life by the opposite principle. So when people over the past two decades asked me to write a memoir, I always answered, “At home I have a hundred photo albums starting with my childhood in Austria, and I never look at them. I’d rather do another project or make another movie and learn from looking forward!”

Digging up and piecing together memories proved to be as difficult as I imagined, and yet what made the work unexpectedly enjoyable was the help I got from others. I found myself swapping stories with old friends from the worlds of bodybuilding, business, sports, Hollywood, and politics—a large cast of characters, too many people to name here. I’m grateful to all of them for helping me re-create the past and for making it immediate and friendly.

I want to thank first my coauthor, Peter Petre. Books like this require a collaborative partner with not just writing skill but also endurance, tact, judgment, and a great sense of humor, and Peter has them all.

My friend and close colleague of many decades Paul Wachter was generous in sharing recollections and editorial suggestions and providing practical acumen. Danny DeVito, Ivan Reitman, and Sylvester Stallone added funny Hollywood stories (Sly added Planet Hollywood stories also). Susan Kennedy, from 2005 to 2010 my gubernatorial chief of staff, gave us the benefit of her encyclopedic knowledge of my time in office. Her master’s thesis, an inside analysis of turning around my governorship in late 2005 and 2006, was of great use. Albert Busek in Munich, one of my oldest friends and the first journalist ever to single me out, provided advice and photos. Bonnie Reiss contributed her recollections and notes to the accounts of my governorship and of the environmental and after-school movements. Steve Schmidt, Terry Tamminen, Matt Bettenhausen, and Daniel Zingale also helped reconstruct aspects of my governorship. Fredi and Heidi Gerstl, Franco Columbu, and Jim Lorimer reminded me of shared experiences from our lifelong friendships.

Because my life has been extraordinarily well covered by the media, we had the benefit of almost fifty years of books, magazine and newspaper stories, interviews, videos, photos, illustrations, and cartoons about me documenting my careers in the muscle world, the movie world, the business world, and the world of politics and public service. Three people were key in organizing these troves of material: my executive assistants Lynn Marks and Shelley Klipp and my archivist Barbara Shane. Lynn and Barbara, with help from my former assistant Beth Eckstein, also tackled the massive challenge of transcribing hundreds of hours of recorded conversations between Peter and me as well as other interviews conducted for this book. Rebecca Lombino and Chris Fillo supervised logistical and legal support.

Peter’s wife, Ann Banks, speeded our writing by selecting and refining the research. His literary agent, Kathy Robbins, did excellent work getting this project launched.

Joe Mathews, who covered Sacramento for the Los Angeles Times and whose book The People’s Machine details my first term in the statehouse, gave generously of his time and wisdom to help shape the political chapters of Total Recall .