Arnold Schwarzenegger has lived many lives. He's been a champion bodybuilder, a Hollywood superstar and a successful politician.
In his new self-help book, "Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life," the 76-year-old says that he shares a common trait with other greats of their fields that helped them all achieve success: a vision for the future.
Indeed, Schwarzenegger says that having a vision of what you want is a key first step towards achieving your goals.
"It can begin by looking back in time and thinking very broadly about the things you used to love," Schwarzenegger writes. "Your obsessions are a clue to your earliest vision for yourself, if only you had paid attention to them in the beginning."
In his own case, Schwarzenegger says his initial vision was simply "of America."
Growing up in Austria in the 1950s and 60s, he says "it seemed like everywhere I turned in those days I was seeing the most amazing things about America," ranging from pictures of highways and the Golden Gate Bridge to talk shows filmed in New York City.
Though he didn't yet know how he would do it, he had a clear goal of coming to the United States.
Your obsessions are a clue to your earliest vision for yourself, if only you had paid attention to them in the beginning.Arnold Schwarzenegger
To emphasize his point, the "Terminator" star highlighted a number of giants of their fields, all of whom began pursuing the thing that made them famous when they were little: golfer Tiger Woods, tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams and director Steven Spielberg.
In the case of the Williams sister, Schwarzenegger writes that their father exposed all five of the Williams siblings to tennis when they were young, but "it was only Venus and Serena who showed passion for the sport."
Woods, encouraged by his father, was making TV appearances as a small child to demonstrate how skilled he was with a golf club.
Spielberg, meanwhile, received a camera as a gift when he was a child. The camera, which he used to earn Boy Scout badges and make home movies, "gave him his first bit of direction," Schwarzenegger says.
"It wasn't being rich and famous or working with glamorous movie stars. Those more specific ambitions would all come later," he writes. "In the beginning his vision was simply to make movies. It was big and broad, like it was for Tiger (golf), Venus and Serena (tennis), and me (America)."
Schwarzenegger says that having a broad vision early on isn't just normal: "for most of us, it's necessary."
"Anything more detailed gets too complicated too quickly, and you get ahead of yourself," he says. " Having a broad vision gives you an easy, more accessible place to start from when it comes to figuring out where and how to zoom in."
His own path to America involved entering the world of competitive bodybuilding after learning about another working class bodybuilder who became a movie star. But depending on your goals, it could involve anything ranging from a new career to a chance in scenery.
"Maybe it involves a hobby that you want to turn into a lifestyle or a cause that you want to make your life's mission," he says. "There really isn't a wrong answer as long as it sharpens the focus of your vision and makes the steps you need to achieve it more clear-cut."
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