Episode 030 - The Wisdom of Arnie: From Terminator to Motivator

Hear the Thesis

The Thursday Thesis  - 12/01/2017

“The Wisdom of.... Arnie!!??"

It seems that everybody’s favourite robo-assassin had six simple rules to pass out to students of The University of Southern California in his gubernatorial address. They are so good, I decided to share them with you, along with a few thoughts of my own

Here are Arnie’s Rules of Life, in bold type.

• Trust Yourself. 

Who do YOU want to be?
If you don’t trust yourself, why should anybody else trust you?
Be true to yourself and don’t try to be what someone else wants you to be.
Remember that we come into the world alone, and we die alone – you will answer only to yourself.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy we can imagine is to have lived as others wanted us to, and to have never discovered what we were really for, because we didn’t trust ourselves.

• Break the Rules.

If you live by the rules, you’ll die by them.
The Rules always restrict the debate and limit the “acceptable” outcomes.
It naturally follows that progress depends upon somebody breaking the rules, of rejecting the conventional wisdom, and opening up new pathways to the future.

• Don’t be afraid to fail.

Accept the risks and get it done.
If you risk nothing, you risk everything.
Yes, there is risk in change, but without the willingness to take the necessary risk, you and your life will never change.

• Don’t listen to the naysayers.

Curiously, telling other people of your daring plans and soaring ambitions invariably brings down a deluge of pessimism. Suddenly, it seems that everyone is an expert on why it can’t work.
Whether they are trying to protect you from risk or folly, or whether you make them feel as though they may have missed something importane is anybody’s guess, but they do seem to try to shut down any chance of progress.

• Work your butt off.

Leave no stone unturned – remeber that if you are goofing-off, someone else is working.
You can’t climb the mountain of success whilst your hands are in your pockets.

In later years, people will tell you that you are so lucky to have done so well – some will even demand that you must share your good fortune.
Good Fortune, my arse!
Whilst you were up until the small hours, or working 7 days a week on your dreams, where were they?
They weren’t doing what it took to achieve what you have, and what they want a piece of, so you were just lucky and it’s not fair?
Don’t make me laugh.

You have to work hard enough to not have to work hard,; and you must be so good that you make it look easy.

• Give Something back. 

Give back some of your bounty, your learning and your passion, as seeds for the future and future generations.
The word here is “Give”, not “Have extracted from you”.
Share your passion, wisdom, insight, vision, and ideas. When you share an idea with one person, you double its worth. If you can share it with a classroom, perhaps you can multiply it by thirty times, but if you can give it to the World, whay value could you add to the World?

Best of all, you still have the idea to use, the wisdom to draw upon, long after you have given it away.
 
 
Sadly though, Arnie will most likely be remembered for saying "I'll be back" than for his wise words and Rules of Life.

Until next week - I'm not going to say it....

© Neil Cowmeadow 2017
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Neil@cowtownguitars.net