What’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book Be Useful about? How can you make an impact on your own life and others?
To live up to your potential, you need a direction to strive for while honing your abilities and pushing yourself to your limits. In Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Be Useful, he lays out his principles for achieving success and making an impact, first by defining your ambitions and then using your achievements to better the lives of others.
Read below is an overview and takeaways from Be Useful.
Overview of Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger
For each of us to live up to our full potential, we need to give ourselves a direction—an ideal that we strive for by honing our abilities and pushing ourselves to our limits and beyond. Though at first we may define success in terms of ambition and material gain, Arnold Schwarzenegger suggests an alternative path—one that’s ultimately focused on service, contribution, and lifting up the people around you. By being useful to others, he argues, you’ll find deeper satisfaction, build stronger relationships, and lead a more purposeful life.
In Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Be Useful, published in 2023, he lays out his principles for meaningful success and making a positive impact on the world, first by defining your personal ambitions and then using your achievements as tools to help better the lives of others. Schwarzenegger brings a unique perspective from his multifaceted career as a world-renowned bodybuilder, movie star, and former governor of the state of California. His guiding principle—“be useful”—is a piece of life-defining advice Schwarzenegger received from his father. His book contains many such anecdotes, which he uses to frame his motivational guide for anyone seeking to reorient their priorities and harness their potential.
Define Your Goals
It’s hard to get anywhere in life if you don’t know where you want to go. Schwarzenegger argues that clearly defining your major aspirations is key to aligning your decisions and your goals. A concrete picture of the future you want will lay out the steps you need to follow for success. Schwarzenegger suggests that your childhood dreams often hint at what aspirations you should follow, but if you’re unsure what you’re striving for, setting small goals can also spark your motivation.
Schwarzenegger says that having a clear vision of your goals is crucial to steering your life toward the right path. Just as athletes visualize success to fuel their progress, you need to imagine, in vivid detail, what your desired future looks like. This mental image will clarify what decisions you should make to bring your aspirations closer, as well as create a benchmark against which you can measure your progress. Keep in mind, though, that even if circumstances dictate that you have to redefine success or change direction, that’s all right. After all, the experiences and lessons gained on your journey are just as valuable as reaching your destination.
To choose what you want your future to look like, you can start by revisiting your childhood dreams. Schwarzenegger writes that your early aspirations often reveal your genuine passions, giving you a starting point that you can refine and expand upon. However, don’t get stuck on minute details in the early stages of sculpting your dream. Instead, maintain a broad perspective to capture the overall image of what you aim to achieve. Your dream is unique—its only boundaries are those that outline the necessary steps to take to make it come true. As your aspirations solidify over time, you’ll hone in on specific aspects of what success means to you, which will let you establish a plan to achieve it.
Turning Dreams Into Reality
Schwarzenegger uses his life story to show how your dreams can guide you, though your aspirations will change over time. From an early age, Schwarzenegger, who was born in Austria, knew that he wanted to come to America, which he saw as a land of opportunity, though he couldn’t imagine exactly how far that opportunity would take him. At first, he imagined himself standing triumphant on a bodybuilding stage, which he saw as a springboard to a Hollywood film set as a leading actor, just like other strongmen he’d watched in the movies. But once he’d made his initial dreams real, Schwarzenegger didn’t stop there. He envisioned taking on more nuanced roles to show his range as a performer. Ultimately, his dream evolved into using the influence he’d garnered to make a positive impact. At every step, Schwarzenegger could see the next mountain he wanted to climb.
Unveiling a life-defining dream might take time, and that’s perfectly OK. Setting and meeting goals—no matter how small—might be the spark you need to break free from an aimless life. Schwarzenegger suggests that if you find it hard to define your ambitions, consider building them from scratch by setting short-term goals to enhance a skill or improve an aspect of your life. Once you achieve your low-level goals, you can gradually move toward bigger objectives, through which you may uncover your passions. Keep in mind that even if finding a purpose in life is hard, it’s better than feeling adrift and disconnected with nothing meaningful to drive you.
Selling Your Dream
As important as it is to motivate yourself and define the ambitions that drive you, the time will come when you have to rely on other people’s help to move forward. Therefore, a key step to achieving your dream is learning how to sell it to others. You do this to win over supporters, but you need to understand your field so you can identify your potential backers. Just as important is convincing yourself that your dream is something you can make real while also learning to ignore naysayers—or, better yet, prove them wrong.
If you’re going to achieve your dream, and especially if doing so depends on other people, then Schwarzenegger says you have to learn how to sell it. In this context, “selling” means you should present your dream in a way that encourages others to view it in a positive light so that they’ll be inclined to support you. For instance, if your dream is to be a successful performing musician, you have to sell your dream to your potential bandmates, the owners of the venues you’d like to perform at, and the people you’d like to attend your show—and that’s only just to get started.
Therefore, find out who your potential backers are. They could range from financial institutions to the people closest to you in life and on whom you might depend for support. To identify these “customers,” Schwarzenegger writes that you must educate yourself about your field and what success within it demands. Avoid guessing which people or organizations might back you—instead, invest time and conduct thorough research. Pay attention to how other people react when you share your aspirations, and use those reactions as cues on how to pitch them the idea of your dream. And never shy away from being true to yourself when sharing your dreams. Your authenticity will resonate with people better than any façade.
Own Your Sales Pitch
Schwarzenegger learned about the need for salesmanship when he first arrived in America and was shocked by the lack of public perception around his beloved sport of bodybuilding. Rather than complain, Schwarzenegger took the public’s ignorance as a challenge and made himself bodybuilding’s ambassador to the masses, highlighting the discipline and artistry of his craft. Slowly but surely, Arnold recast bodybuilding as something aspirational rather than a niche sport to be ridiculed, as it often was by the media in the 1970s. By framing his passion so positively, he built a legion of fans and supporters who helped take the sport mainstream.
When it comes to your personal aspirations, the most important person to convince is yourself. This is why Schwarzenegger insists that having a well-defined mental image of your goal is crucial. Sharing this dream with others not only helps you refine your “sales pitch”; it also publicly commits you to fulfill it, fueling your determination and giving you a sense of accountability. Also, instead of framing your dream as a distant possibility, talk about it as an ongoing reality. For instance, don’t say that you want to write a novel—instead, tell people you’re writing a novel. This shift will make your aspirations more real, which will further inspire you to take steps toward them and follow through on all the hard work that entails.
Silence the Doubters
Schwarzenegger warns that you’ll encounter cynics who doubt your ability to accomplish your goals. Their skepticism, often rooted in their own unrealized ambitions, might undermine your confidence if you let it. Therefore, your options are to disregard their negativity or use it as motivation to prove them wrong. Especially if people underestimate you because some aspect of your story is unique—such as if you’re the first person in your family to go to college—you can stun them with your unwavering dedication and maybe even win them over to your side. Proving people wrong can be its own form of “selling.”
Adopt a Positive Mindset
To sell yourself and others on the idea of your dream, you have to truly believe it without giving in to negativity. Schwarzenegger’s story shows that adopting a positive mindset, viewing hardships as opportunities, and managing time efficiently are powerful tools for achieving your dreams.
The road to achieving your dream is full of challenges, which is why Schwarzenegger insists that you shift toward a positive mindset. You’re bound to encounter obstacles, but it’s beneficial, if not essential, to view your struggles as opportunities to develop your skills. We all tend to focus on the negative—an instinctive remnant from our ancestors who were primarily concerned with survival. However, this instinct is less useful if we want progress instead of mere survival. Adopting an optimistic outlook helps you engage constructively with your circumstances, so next time you feel like complaining about life’s difficulties—don’t. Instead, verbalize the potential positives that might emerge from those hardships.
For most people, a life-threatening medical scare like Schwarzenegger’s botched 2018 heart surgery would be a cause for despair. But Schwarzenegger recalls that after his initial wave of fear and frustration, the shock wore off and his mind shifted into its familiar “I can do this” mode. Schwarzenegger zeroed in on his next goal—making a full recovery, no matter how difficult the road ahead. He viewed his health crisis as merely another challenge to overcome, and the setback became a spark to reignite his drive to overcome whatever challenge was before him. He achieved all his recovery goals and went right back into making action movies.
Use Your Time Wisely
Just as you need to reframe your circumstances, Schwarzenegger says it’s equally important to shift your mindset toward time. Rather than lamenting how little time you have, critically evaluate how you’re spending it. If you identify and repurpose wasted time, you can significantly increase your productivity. You can surely allocate an hour or two every day toward your aspirations—even if it means sacrificing some “down time.” Ask yourself, “What’s genuinely more important?” If your goals truly matter, you’ll have to carve out the necessary time to pursue them. If the overall time frame to fulfill your ambitions seems too intimidating at first, then break your goals down into smaller tasks that require less time commitment.
Confront Challenges and Open Your Mind
Learning to manage your time and how you frame things can help dispel the unhelpful belief that life is just something that happens to you. Life provides a myriad of circumstances—both positive and negative—and the way you choose to respond significantly shapes your personal journey. Schwarzenegger explains that you need to see failure as nothing more than a call for more improvement, which you can facilitate by always keeping your mind open to new knowledge and actively being curious about the world and people around you.
Not everything in life is under your control, but how you react certainly is—whether to a setback, a problem, or even an unexpected stroke of luck. Schwarzenegger suggests that bemoaning your past or current problems wastes time that could be spent chasing your dreams. To reclaim this lost time and learn from your hardships, you need to pause and shift your thinking to an optimistic view. Even failure doesn’t mean you’ve been wasting your efforts—instead, consider it a teaching moment on your journey. Schwarzenegger mentions weightlifting as a sport in which failure is used to measure progress every day. It’s only when a weightlifter pushes her muscles until they fail that she knows she’s putting in enough effort.
Just as pushing yourself is key to physical fitness, it’s vital for mental acuity as well. Schwarzenegger writes that your learning must extend beyond the confines of traditional education and carry on throughout your life. You can and should gain whatever knowledge you can from anyone, anywhere, and in any way. Real-world experiences—taking action, solving problems, pushing your boundaries and, yes, even failing—offer invaluable lessons that you can’t learn in a controlled academic setting. Remember that knowledge functions like a muscle—you have to apply it or you risk losing it. But if you actively maintain and make use of what you learn, you can significantly improve both your life and the world around you.
Always Be Curious
Curiosity is key to lifelong learning. Schwarzenegger says that being curious transforms the people around you into potential teachers and attracts those who recognize your eagerness to learn. Don’t hesitate to inquire about others’ experiences and their fields of expertise; people are often glad to share their knowledge if you adopt a humble approach. Asking “how” and “why” questions is particularly helpful when it comes to retaining what other people teach you, as they help you make connections with other things you’ve learned, leading to deeper understanding. Through continuous learning, your grasp of the world expands, and with it, your control of your life’s circumstances, easing your path to achieving your dreams.
Schwarzenegger writes that throughout his various careers in bodybuilding, movies, and politics, he’s never stopped being a student. His hunger to keep learning propelled his growth at every stage of his life. By viewing himself as a perpetual student, he learned valuable lessons from every available teacher who crossed his path. Even when working out in a gym—an arena in which he’s an undisputed master—he’ll still approach his fellow weightlifters to inquire about any exercises they’re doing that he’s unfamiliar with. As governor of California, he was surrounded by policy experts whom he questioned incessantly so he could understand every angle of the complex issues he faced.
Do the Work
Once you’ve clearly defined your ambitions and embraced the mindset that you can achieve them, it’s only the transformative power of hard work that can shape you into your best self. Schwarzenegger’s perspective underscores that work isn’t simply a means to an end, but is integral to taking pride in your accomplishments, and that while it’s demanding, it’s necessary for making real progress. Furthermore, making the most of the work you put in requires showing commitment and adhering to high standards.
Schwarzenegger extols the value of working hard, which he says is about more than just reaching your immediate goals. Hard work is the engine that drives you to appreciate any achievement, no matter how small. Imagine climbing a mountain without having to struggle—would you value your accomplishment as much as if you fought for every inch you gained reaching the summit? Probably not. The truth is that struggle itself gives value to what you’ve accomplished. Moreover, hard work prepares and perfects your skills for when it counts, molding you into an expert who performs at your best regardless of the situation.
Don’t look for immediate results or an easy payoff when working toward your goals. Schwarzenegger writes that you should never expect hard work to be exciting or comfortable, because it won’t be. Hard work requires tremendous effort and a lot of repetition that at times will feel grueling and monotonous. But remember: That very discomfort you feel indicates that you’re making progress because it shows that you’re pushing beyond your comfort zone, improving your skills, and making them second nature—ready to serve when they’re needed the most.
Commit to the Work
When working toward your dreams, you have to commit wholeheartedly. Half-baked efforts won’t yield the results you want, and it may make the difference between realizing your dream and falling short. However, Schwarzenegger suggests that wholehearted commitment goes beyond merely giving your best effort—it also means not holding back on the scale of your ambitions. In other words, dream big! Then if you fail to reach your grand ambitions, you’ll likely achieve success to some smaller degree. Don’t do yourself the disservice of setting small targets, and if you’ve charted a course toward a particular dream, resist the temptation to give yourself a backup plan—such thinking can only undermine progress toward your primary goal.
Schwarzenegger writes that hard work in practice and preparation is only half of what you need. The other side of wholehearted commitment is to carry through on what you start to the end. He illustrates this by recounting when, as California’s governor, he made sure emergency response agencies rigorously practiced their wildfire protocols. When actual fires ravaged the state, he rolled up his sleeves and continued to work, identifying where the existing plans fell short and adapting them to fill in the gaps. Going through the motions in practice would mean nothing if Schwarzenegger didn’t bring the same commitment he devoted to his prior careers—a refusal to settle for anything less than an all-out effort from himself and his team.
Lift Others With Your Efforts
Schwarzenegger’s discussion of his governorship shows that success doesn’t ride on the shoulders of one person. All of our accomplishments are collective endeavors built upon mutual aid and support. Schwarzenegger emphasizes that we should reciprocate the help we receive from those around us by uplifting others whenever possible. This selfless benevolence is a force that elevates both you and society at large. Dispelling competitive notions of success, Schwarzenegger depicts life as a cooperative game where everyone benefits from mutual assistance.
Schwarzenegger is clear that “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is nonsense. Any success you achieve doesn’t happen by itself. Every step forward is made possible by someone else’s teaching or guidance. Achieving our dreams is a collective process that not only shapes one person’s future but also sets the stage for the accomplishments of others. Even if your past was tough or unpleasant, it shaped you into a survivor, which in itself is instrumental for success. This interconnected nature of accomplishment underscores why we should reciprocate the efforts of those who helped us succeed by lifting others up when we’re able.
The Highest Accomplishment—Helping Others
Helping others isn’t only morally rewarding—it elevates you and society around you. Schwarzenegger insists that life isn’t a game where one person’s success means someone else’s loss. In fact, it’s quite the opposite—when you extend help to others whether in your career, your friends and family circle, or even just as part of a hobby you’re engaged in, it creates a positive feedback cycle that benefits everyone involved. If you find yourself struggling with how to help others, simply start with small gestures of kindness. You might be surprised to discover how much value and assistance you can offer—be it through sharing your skills or simply dedicating time to help a stranger in need.
Schwarzenegger learned the joy of helping others when he began working with the Special Olympics. There, he witnessed the courage and perseverance of the disabled athletes who competed, especially considering the hurdles these individuals overcame daily. When Schwarzenegger took time to coach them through basic weightlifting routines, he saw their initial trepidation melt away as they tapped into new reserves of strength. Schwarzenegger says he discovered that helping people unlock their potential represents the truest measure of success. Working to inspire the Special Olympians taught him that real greatness lies in our power to elevate society itself through acts of selfless compassion.
In conclusion, Schwarzenegger states that by reflecting on how other people have helped you and repeating those acts of kindness for someone else, you can make a significant difference in the world while at the same time turbocharging your personal growth.
