The extreme mindset of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger by David Senra

The extreme mindset of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger:

1. You are a winner, Arnold. I wrote this down and put it where I would see it. I repeated it a dozen times a day.

2. My drive was unusual, I talked differently than my friends; I was hungrier for success than anyone I knew.

3. I had this insatiable drive to get there sooner. Whereas most people were satisfied to train two or three times a week, I quickly escalated my program to six workouts a week.

4. I’d always been impressed by stories of greatness and power. Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon were names I knew and remembered. I wanted to do something special, to be recognized as the best.

5. I was literally addicted.

6. I didn’t care what I had to go through to get it.

7. My mind was totally locked into working out and I was annoyed if anything took me away from it.

8. My weight room was not heated, so naturally in cold weather it was freezing. I didn’t care. I trained without heat, even on days when the temperature went below zero.

9. I had a photographer take pictures at least once a month. I studied each shot with a magnifying glass.

10. I sacrificed a lot of things most bodybuilders didn’t want to give up. I just didn’t care, I wanted to win more than anything. And whatever it took to do it, I did.

11. Every day I hear someone say, “I’m too fat. I need to lose twenty-five pounds, but I can’t. I never seem to improve.” I’d hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak.

12. I listened only to my inner voice, my instincts.

13. People’s ideas were small. There was too much contentment, too much acceptance of things as they’d always been.

14. My own thinking was tuned in to only one thing: becoming Mr. Universe. In my own mind, I was Mr. Universe; I had this absolutely clear vision of myself up on the dais with the trophy. It was only a matter of time before the whole world would be able to see it too. And it made no difference to me how much I had to struggle to get there.

15. Once I was over the initial disappointment of losing, I began trying to understand exactly why I had lost. I tried to be honest, to analyze it fairly. I still had some serious weaknesses. For me, that was a real turning point.

16. I was relying on one thing. What I had more than anyone else was drive. I was hungrier than anybody. I wanted it so badly it hurt. I knew there could be no one else in the world who wanted this title as much as I did.

17. I had thought perhaps he had some special exercises, but that wasn’t true. He concentrated on the standard exercises. That was his “secret” —concentration.

18. I started training in an area where there were no distractions.

19. I had lists and charts of the things I needed to concentrate on pasted all over. I looked at them every day before I began working out. It became a twenty-four-hour-a-day job; I had to think about it all the time.

20. I continued doing precisely what I knew I needed to do. In my mind, there was only one possibility for me and that was to go to the top, to be the best.

21. I remember certain people trying to put negative thoughts into my mind, trying to persuade me to slow down. But I had found the thing to which I wanted to devote my total energies and there was no stopping me.

22. They weren’t mentally prepared for intensive championship training; they weren’t thinking about it. I knew the secret: Concentrate while you’re training. Do not allow other thoughts to enter your mind.

23. When I went to the gym I got rid of every alien thought in my mind.

24. I wanted to create an empire.