04 Hard Work and Determination Pays Off (Excerpt)

Arnold Schwarzenegger's Speech at Tsinghua University, 2005

After two or three years of discipline and determination and working out hard, I actually changed my body, and I changed my strength. And that told me something, that if I could change my body that much, then I could also change anything else. I could change my habits, my intelligence, my attitude, my mind, my future, my life. And this is exactly what I’ve done. I think that lesson applies to people, and it also applies to countries. You can change, China can change, everyone in the world can change.

I remember the first time I went to the United States and I was competing in the World Championships in Bodybuilding. I lost and I was devastated. I felt like a loser, a major loser. I cried, as a matter of fact, because I felt like I disappointed my friends and I disappointed myself. But the next day I got my act together, I shifted gears, and I said, “I’m going to learn from that lesson.” And from then on, I continued. My career took off, and everything that I wanted to do I accomplished. First it was to become a champion in bodybuilding. Later on I became a movie star, then I became the governor of the great state of California, of the sixth largest economy in the world.

All of this happened because of my dreams, even though other people told me that those dreams were bogus and they were crazy, but I held onto my dreams. In Hollywood, they said, “You will never make it. You have a German accent. No one in Hollywood has ever made it with a German accent. Yeah, maybe you can play some Nazi roles or something like that, but you cannot become a leading star with an accent. Plus your body, you’re overdeveloped, you have all these muscles. They did Hercules movies 20 years ago, that’s outdated. And your name, Schwarzenegger, it will never fit on a movie poster. Forget it, you will never make it. Go back to body building.”

Well, the rest is history. After Terminator 3, I became the highest paid movie star in Hollywood. And, let me tell you something, it continued on. Even when I ran for governor people said, “Arnold, you will never become governor of California. What do you know about government?” Well, I continued campaigning. I listened to my dreams, and the rest also is history. I became governor. So always it just carried me on, those dreams. So bodybuilding gave me the confidence, movies gave me the money, and public service and being a governor gave me a purpose larger than myself.