On May 15th 2009, Arnold Schwarzenegger was awarded a doctorate in Humane Letters by USC. As part of his commencement address he gave one of the greatest speeches you will ever likely to hear.
During this 25 min speech, he highlighted how he became successful and how he became the person he is today through these six principles.
Over these next 6 weeks we are going to pay homage to this speech by looking at each principle in detail, in the off chance you didn’t fully appreciate what he was saying or in case you needed reminded.
1 Trust yourself
Quite simply, if you don’t trust yourself, who will? At the end of the day you don’t need anyone, anyone, to co-sign your dreams. You have to work out what you want in this world. What is it that makes you happy? What kind of person do you want to be?
And here in lies the tricky part. You will have people around you who try to tell you what you are going to do with your life. Society will try to get you to conform, to live a life like everyone else. It will take discipline and focus to drown out these voices.
Arnold said he was lucky in that he didn’t have as many distractions as we do when he was growing up. There was no social media, mobile phones or internet. This allowed him to spend time on himself and realise what he wanted to be, and how he wanted to get there. His goal was quite simple; to go to America and dominate.
These days, too many people are walking around, aimless. They don’t know why they are doing what they are doing. They have no appreciation for the process. They don’t dedicate themselves. They spend too much time on Facebook and Twitter. They don’t make time to sit down and evaluate themselves, and look at the journey they are currently on and re affirm their beliefs.
So spend some time thinking about who you want to be, and what you want to accomplish. Once you have done that simply Believe in Yourself. If you have that belief then you will reach those goals because you will have no time for excuses.
Arnold wanted to go to America, be a bodybuilding Champion and dominate. Safe to say he accomplished those goals.
He didn't need anyone else to believe in him, so why do you?
P
During this 25 min speech, he highlighted how he became successful and how he became the person he is today through these six principles.
Over these next 6 weeks we are going to pay homage to this speech by looking at each principle in detail, in the off chance you didn’t fully appreciate what he was saying or in case you needed reminded.
1 Trust yourself
Quite simply, if you don’t trust yourself, who will? At the end of the day you don’t need anyone, anyone, to co-sign your dreams. You have to work out what you want in this world. What is it that makes you happy? What kind of person do you want to be?
And here in lies the tricky part. You will have people around you who try to tell you what you are going to do with your life. Society will try to get you to conform, to live a life like everyone else. It will take discipline and focus to drown out these voices.
Arnold said he was lucky in that he didn’t have as many distractions as we do when he was growing up. There was no social media, mobile phones or internet. This allowed him to spend time on himself and realise what he wanted to be, and how he wanted to get there. His goal was quite simple; to go to America and dominate.
These days, too many people are walking around, aimless. They don’t know why they are doing what they are doing. They have no appreciation for the process. They don’t dedicate themselves. They spend too much time on Facebook and Twitter. They don’t make time to sit down and evaluate themselves, and look at the journey they are currently on and re affirm their beliefs.
So spend some time thinking about who you want to be, and what you want to accomplish. Once you have done that simply Believe in Yourself. If you have that belief then you will reach those goals because you will have no time for excuses.
Arnold wanted to go to America, be a bodybuilding Champion and dominate. Safe to say he accomplished those goals.
He didn't need anyone else to believe in him, so why do you?
P