Alexandersmap

    Tag: Arnold Schwarzenegger

    • The Beauty in Useful

      “Why is art beautiful? Because it is useless. Why is life ugly? Because it is all aims and purposes and intentions…. The beauty of ruins? The fact that they were no longer of any use. The sweetness of the past? Being able to remember it, because to remember the past is to make it the present again, and the past is not and cannot be the present — the absurd, my love, the absurd.” — Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

      “My father said to me, ‘Be useful.’ Useful not only to yourself, but useful to your neighborhood, your country, the world. It entails everything.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger, from Men’s Health

      If art is beautiful because it’s useless, does that same criteria apply to a lifetime? What make life beautiful anyway? Is it spontaneity and happenstance or structure and purpose? Doesn’t a lifetime require a bit of both?

      When we systematize our lives we are adding routines that sustain us and increase our effectiveness. Routines don’t have to mean our lives are routine. If a purposeful and intentional life is an ugly life to Pessoa, I would argue it shines a light on our lives, making them more beautiful. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all. A painter may find rigid conformity to accepted rules ugly and confining, while an architect or structural engineer finds great beauty in the very same rule.

      We are, each of us, mere memories in the making. What will make our lives beautiful is largely up to us, and it may inspire others. Usefulness is a ripple across time and space. It magnifies our presence into something tangible. Whether we swim in a small pond or a vast ocean, we make a ripple. Done well, a lifetime can be quite beautiful indeed. And isn’t our lifetime our most essential work of art?

    • Be Yourself

      “What is the point of being on this Earth if you are going to be like everyone else?” — Arnold Schwarzenegger

      We’re all unique, yet so much of our time is dedicated to fitting in with the pack. We instinctively know the pack helps us survive, but we often chafe at the limitations of it. This is the ongoing dilemma of humanity: to be yourself or to be a part of things. As with everything, balance is the key.

      Still the call of the wild persists. We can be so much more than the average (and who wants to be average?) if we just push the boundaries a bit more. To test not just our limits, but the limits of the social construct we’ve immersed ourselves in. Yet we can never ignore the power of family and friends to pull us back in, for the better or worse, depending on the box we reside in. To believe that it doesn’t influence how far we go is delusional. The trick is to find creative ways to step out of that box. When that doesn’t work, immersing ourselves in a new social construct offers the freedom we require.

      My daughter has a friend who moved from another country to go to college in the United States. While attending college, that person decided to transition from a he to a she. In their home country they’d be murdered for such audacity as being gay, let alone transitioning. In this new social construct, she’s building a life for herself in the relative safety of California. If I got any pronouns wrong there, forgive me, for I came from a social construct that is still trying to sort it all out in our own heads. That’s not a form of resistance, that’s simply trying to learn the new game. Akin to an American watching a cricket game and trying to figure it all out.

      The point is, just be yourself, whatever that is for you. Most of us will catch up eventually. The world doesn’t turn on a dime, after all. There’s a lot of momentum forcing us to stay in line. People get spun up easily over change, and the fervor from the familiar voices (family, friends, church and state) can be compelling for people who otherwise might be more open to acceptance. Most people just want to believe the same stories they were brought up with are true. To hear otherwise is to challenge the core of who we are. Knowing this, we ought to tread lightly on their identities. Change can be hard for everyone.

      Just as we work to change ourselves incrementally with good habits, systems and routines, so it is with the world we live in. Steady progress wins in the end. We become what we consistently work towards becoming. Go be yourself. I’ll do the same. Let’s meet somewhere in the middle.

    • Routines

      “You need to create a routine. Motivation only gets someone going for a little while, a routine lasts forever. Write down three things you’ll do each day. Start small. Walk, only eat real food, stretch. Mark them off every day, no matter what. After a month, make the goals bigger.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger

      I’m a morning person, and do my best work early. For this reason I try to jamb as much as possible into the first couple of hours of my day. The rest of the day usually takes care of itself at that point, but the important but not urgent stuff is already checked off. For me, that means writing, reading in earnest, some form of exercise and a review of my priorities for the day and week.

      Some days are upside down, and all the important things you wanted to start with are nagging at you to finish with. It’s very easy to let things slip until tomorrow when you’re tired and ready to turn your brain off for the evening. This is where maintaining streaks becomes the savior. Some things simply cannot slip. Like writing and reading and a nod at fitness and picking up a word or two of French. We are what we repeatedly do, and all that that represents.

      There’s nothing more satisfying than following through on the things you promised yourself you’d follow through on. Every day offers us an opportunity to improve or slide backwards. As we reach the evening hours feeling a bit tired and worn, we get to tell that backwards slide, “not today”.

    • Leaning Towards High Agency

      “When you’re told that something is impossible, is that the end of the conversation, or does that start a second dialogue in your mind, how to get around whoever it is that’s just told you that you can’t do something? So, how am I going to get past this bouncer who told me that I can’t come into this nightclub? How am I going to start a business when my credit is terrible and I have no experience? You’re constantly looking for what is possible in a kind of MacGyverish sort of way. And that’s your approach to the world.” – Eric Weinstein on The Tim Ferriss Show

      I was brought up to follow the rules. Thinking that adults knew something in this world, I would follow rules of behavior and take no as the answer. Fall in line, do your part, don’t question things… passive, low agency characteristics.

      But I also grew up bending the rules ever so slightly in my favor, or breaking them outright. At four taking my three year old sister for a walk to visit my grandparents a mile or so away across a busy road? Let’s do it. At eleven or twelve taking my dad’s Playboy magazines and trading them with the neighbor’s dad for his Penthouse magazines and charge money for the other kids to read the articles? Seemed okay to me.

      But somewhere along the way you slip into the workforce and pick up obligations. Maybe you enter middle management and start following the HR playbook. And slowly, over time, you become passive and decidedly low agency. You become… sheepish. But somewhere inside you that inner maverick chafes at the wool coat. And then you listen to a guy like Eric Weinstein talk about high agency, you hear the example of the main character on The Martian finding a way. And you understand.

      “It’s important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable.” – Sarah Blakely, Spanx

      We generally accept things the way they are. But what if we questioned things a bit more? What if we tried a different way to do the thing that didn’t work the first or second time? What if we developed higher agency within ourselves to set our lives in the direction we want it to go? To be more Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sara Blakely or Elon Musk or Steve Jobs in our own careers? In our own lives?

      “Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.” – Elon Musk

      I think it starts with where we are right now in our lives. Living through a pandemic in our own way with Zoom or Teams, a laptop and a mobile phone at the ready. We’re all dealing with restrictions on travel and social distancing, some with a much harder hand to play than others, but as the stoics would tell us, we must play the cards we’re dealt anyway. And what do we do next?

      “What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

      While we were complaining about shortages of toilet paper there were thousands of people figuring out a vaccine to make this problem go away. Right now, there are people building companies, writing the next great novel, inventing things or doing critical research that will outlive us all. The next big thing, created in the same time of COVID that you and I are living through. So what are we doing with our time? How are we going to work through whatever it is that isn’t working and finding a way through? A way to finally get it right?

      “There is an awful lot of fails before you get it right.” – Elizabeth Isabella, Scripted Fragrance, an Etsy business featured on CBS Sunday Morning

      I heard the Eric Weinstein interview on Tim Ferriss a few years ago now. I had the High Agency dogma reinforced in a George Mack Twitter thread a while back now too. In general I’ve leaned into higher agency in my own life. But still have a lot of fails before I get it right. Don’t we all? Keep trying.

      “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” – Steve Jobs

      We might not ever get to a point where we’re mentioned in the same list as Schwarzenegger or Jobs or Blakely or Musk, but then again, maybe we will. But only if we pivot more, find a way forward or through, and shake off the passive. Time marches on. Will we?