Be Useful Quotes

“You have 24 hours. Use them.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“The author of Lord of the Flies was rejected by publishers 21 times. J. K. Rowling’s original Harry Potter book was rejected 12 times.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“You need to be able to see what you want to achieve before you do it, not as you do it. That’s the difference.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven tools for life

“First of all, rest is for babies and relaxation is for retired people.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“The only difference between them and us, between me and you, between any two people, is the clarity of the picture we have for our future, the strength of our plan to get there, and whether or not we have accepted that the choice to make that vision a reality is ours and ours alone.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven tools for life

“The beauty of pain, not only is it temporary...is it tells you when you begin to give enough of yourself in pursuit of your dreams. If the work hasn't hurt or cost you anything, or at least made you uncomfortable, then I'm sorry to be the one to tell you but you're not working hard enough, or sacrificing all that you could to be all you can be.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“But more importantly, I have a rule: no complaining about a situation unless you’re prepared to do something to make it better. If you see a problem and you don’t come to the table with a potential solution, I don’t want to hear your whining about how bad it is. It couldn’t be that bad if it hasn’t motivated you to try to fix it.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“If you can choose joy over jealousy, happiness over hate, love over resentment, positivity over negativity, then you have the tools to make the best of any situation, even one that feels like failure.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“Going for a walk, going to the gym, reading, riding your bike, taking a Jacuzzi, I don’t care what you do. If you are stuck, if you are struggling to figure out a clear vision for the life you want, then all I care about is that you make little goals for yourself to start building momentum and that you create time and space every day to think, to daydream, to look around, to be present in the world, to let inspiration and ideas in. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, at least give it a chance to find you.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven tools for life

“In German, we have a saying: Wenn schon, denn schon. Roughly translated, it means “If you’re going to do something, DO IT. Go all out.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“First, create little goals for yourself. Don’t worry about the big, broad stuff for now. Focus on making improvements and banking achievements one day at a time.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“Not merely bear what is necessary . . . but love it.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“We can’t change those stories, but we can choose where we go from there.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“No man is more unhappy,” the Stoic philosopher Seneca said, “than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“I owe a lot to my upbringing. I was made for it and made by it. I wouldn’t be who I am today without each one of those experiences. The Stoics have a term for this: amor fati. Love of fate. “Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to,” the great Stoic philosopher and former slave Epictetus said. “Rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens. Then you will be happy.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“Learn from your mistakes and say "I'll be back”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“This life isn't a dress rehearsal, it's not a practice or a training session, it's the real thing. It's the only one you have.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“Life isn't just the high points or the big moments... it's also those stretches of time in between. Life happens as much in the transitions as it does in the poses.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“I’m sure your story is complicated too. I bet growing up was more difficult than the people around you think it was. We can’t change those stories, but we can choose where we go from there.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“Use it or lose it is the rule with ripe fruit, political goodwill, media attention, coupons, economic opportunity, space to pass on the highway, all sorts of things. But most importantly, it’s true of the knowledge you soak up over your lifetime. If you don’t regularly flex your mind like a muscle and put your knowledge to work, it will eventually lose its power.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven tools for life

“But that is not the purpose of good advice. It’s not to tell you what to build, it’s to show you how to build and why it matters.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“They involve knowing where you want to go and how you’re going to get there, as well as having the willingness to do the work and the ability to communicate to the people you care about that the journey you want to bring them on is worth the effort. They include the capacity to shift gears when the journey hits a roadblock, and the ability to keep an open mind and learn from your surroundings to find new ways through. And most important of all, once you get where you’re trying to go, they demand that you acknowledge all the help you had along the way and that you give back accordingly.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“That is what a clear vision gives you: a way to decipher whether a decision is good or bad for you, based on whether it gets you closer or further away from where you want your life to go. Does the picture you have in your mind of your ideal future get blurrier or sharper because of this thing you’re about to do? The happiest and most successful people in the world do everything in their power to avoid bad decisions that confuse matters and drag them away from their goals. Instead, they focus on making choices that bring clarity to their vision and bring them closer to achieving it. It doesn’t matter if they’re considering a small thing or a huge thing, the decision-making process is always the same. The only difference between them and us, between me and you, between any two people, is the clarity of the picture we have for our future, the strength of our plan to get there, and whether or not we have accepted that the choice to make that vision a reality is ours and ours alone.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“Once you’ve developed a rhythm with those little daily goals, create weekly and then monthly goals. Instead of zooming in from a broad place, build out your life from this small beginning and let your vision open up in front of you from there. As it does, and the sense of uselessness starts to loosen its grip, that’s when you take the second step: put the machines away and create space and time in your life, however small or short in the beginning, for inspiration to find its way in and for the discovery process to happen.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“Take someone like the chemist who invented the lubricant spray WD-40. The full name of WD-40 is “Water Displacement, 40th Formula.” It was called that in the chemist’s lab book because his previous thirty-nine versions of the formula failed. He learned from each one of those failures and nailed it on the fortieth try.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“Thomas Edison is legendary for learning from his failures. So much so that he refused to even call them failures. In the 1890s, for example, Edison and his team were trying to develop a nickel-iron battery. Over the course of about six months, they created more than nine thousand prototypes that all failed. When one of his assistants commented that it was a shame they hadn’t produced any promising results, Edison said, “Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work.” This was how Edison looked at the world—as a scientist, an inventor, and a businessman. It was this kind of positive mindset, this sort of brilliant reframing of failure, that led Edison to the invention of the lightbulb barely a decade earlier and to the thousand other patents issued to him by the time he died.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“As you think about this thing you want to do, or the mark you want to make in this world, remember that your job is neither to avoid failure nor to seek it out. Your job is to bust your ass in pursuit of your vision—yours and nobody else’s—and to embrace the failure that is bound to come.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“In fact, I relish the challenge of haivng to climb back up. It's the struggle that makes success, when you achieve it, taste so sweet.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“If you can’t find what you’re looking for, at least give it a chance to find you.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

“It's just not an excuse to give less of yourself. Regardless of the size of your dream, if you don't push yourself, if you don't give it your all, if you don't cut the legs off your sweatpants when the situation calls for it, then you're only letting yourself down.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life