More wisdom from Conan and Terminator.

Schwarzie took his Mr.Olympia contest seriously. Actually, his only serious opponent was a Cuban bodybuilder named Sergio Silva, who was in a league of his own. So Schwarzie did his homework to shake the competition and reach the first step of the podium.

My preparation for going up against Sergio didn't stop at the gym. I bought a movie projector. I assembled a whole collection of his performances in competition, and I watched those films at home again and again. Sergio really did have a stunning physique, but I realized that he had been using the same posing routine for several years. This was knowledge I could use to plan for the final one-on-one pose-off at Mr.Olympia. I memorized his moves in the order in which he hit them, and I got ready for each one with three poses of my own. I rehearsed this and vizualized it over and over: "When he hits this, I will do this and this, and this!" My goal was to overwhelm every move Sergio made.

Write down your goals

I heard last year that the golfer Rory McIlroy used to write his goals on the back of a plane ticket every single year, classify it and forget about it. So, it was no surprise to see that Schwarzie had the exact same instinct in order to plan for his career.

I always wrote down my goals. It wasn't just sufficient to tell myself something like "My New Year's resolution is to lose twenty pounds and learn better English and read a little bit more." No. That was only a start. Now I had to make it very specific so that all those fine intentions were not floating around. [...] It might seem like I was handcuffing myself by setting such specific goals, but it was actually just the opposite: I found it liberating. Knowing exactly where I wanted to end up freed me totally to improvise how to get there.

Don't overthink about the future risks

What you probably don't know about Schwarzie is that he was actually millionaire in dollars long before his first role in Conan! And neither because of bodybuilding! It was all due to shrewd and daring real estate deals he made in America. Some of these deals were so daring that a friend of his was just aghast about his risk-taking.

Problems were all he could see. It could be terrible. Tenants would make noise. What if somebody came home drunk? What if somebody slipped, and got sued? You know what America is like with the lawsuits! and blah blah blah. I caught myself listening. "Artie, you almost just scared me now." I laughed. "Don't tell me any more of this information. I walk into a problem and then figure out what the problem really is. Don't tell me ahead of time." Often, it's easier to make a decision when you don't know as much, because then you can't overthink. If you know too much, it can freeze you. The whole deal looks like a minefield.

Previous entry: https://steemit.com/life/@herverisson/life-lessons-from-arnold-schwarzenegger-s-autobiography 

Sources: https://www.amazon.fr/Total-Recall-Arnold-SCHWARZENEGGER/dp/2266240617