"We either make ourselves miserable,
or we make ourselves strong.
The amount of work is the same."
~Carlos Castaneda
A lot of people ask me (quite often) to re-tell the story of how I
came to know Arnold Schwarzenegger. So I will!
Arnold was not yet famous in 1976 when he and I had lunch together at the Doubletree Inn in Tucson, Arizona. Not one person in the restaurant recognized him.
He was in town publicizing the movie Stay Hungry, a box-office disappointment he had just made with Jeff Bridges and Sally Field. I was a sports columnist for the Tucson Citizen at the time, and my assignment was to spend a full day, one-on-one, with Arnold and write a feature story about him for our newspaper's Sunday magazine.
I, too, had no idea who he was, or who he was going to become. I agreed to spend the day with him because I had to-it was an assignment. And although I took to with an uninspired attitude, it was one I'd never forget.
Perhaps the most memorable part of that day with Schwarzenegger occurred when we took an hour for lunch. I had my reporter's notebook out and was asking questions for the story while we ate. At one point I casually asked him, "Now that you have retired from bodybuilding, what are you going to do next?"
And with a voice as calm as if he were telling me about some mundane travel plans, he said, "I'm going to be the number-one box-office star in all of Hollywood."
I tried not to show my shock and amusement at his plan. After all, his first attempt at movies didn't promise much. And his Austrian accent and awkward monstrous build didn't suggest instant acceptance by movie audiences. I finally managed to match his calm demeanor, and I asked him just how he planned to become Hollywood's top star.
Mind you, this was not the slim, aerobic Arnold we know today. This man was pumped up and huge. And so for my own physical sense of well-being, I tried to appear to find his goal reasonable.
"It's the same process I used in bodybuilding," he explained. "What you do is create a vision of who you want to be, and then live into that picture as if it were already true."
It sounded ridiculously simple. Too simple to mean anything. But I wrote it down. And I never forgot it.
I'll never forget the moment when some entertainment TV show was saying that box office receipts from his second Terminator movie had made him the most popular box office draw in the world. Was he psychic? Or was there something to his formula?
Over the years I've used Arnold's idea of creating a vision as a motivational tool. I've also elaborated on it in my corporate training seminars. I invite people to notice that Arnold said that you "CREATE a vision." He did not say that you wait until you RECEIVE a vision. You create one. In other words, you make it up.
A major part of living a fearless life is having something to wake up for in the morning---something that you are "up to" in life so that you will stay hungry. The vision can be created right now---better now than later. You can always change it if you want, but don't live a moment longer without one.
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Terry Hill and I were in his Greenwich Village apartment a few weeks ago finishing up our work on the book TWO GUYS READ JANE AUSTEN. It is the third in the series that started with the critically acclaimed Two Guys Read Moby Dick followed by the morbidly ridiculous Two Guys Read The Obituaries.
When we were in high school Terry and I double-dated. As boys we played on sports teams together. He was at shortstop, while I played third. Our teams were difficult for other teams to beat. We once sang as a folk duo in a bar. We've been whaling, delivered newspapers together, given toasts at each other's weddings and now it has come to this … reading Jane Austen. What was there left to do?
And for me, I'd made it through sixty some years without reading Austen at all and so I thought I was pretty much home free. What guy, really, wants to read Jane Austen?
I mean, Moby-Dick was one thing. A manly adventure, containing no women at all! Reading and writing about the tall tale of courage and madness on the high seas would be fun - and indeed it was. Two Guys Read Moby-Dick got such a surprisingly enthusiastic response that we decided to do more books this way. The fun was just beginning.
Then came death. Or, rather, the obituaries. Terry was an avid obituary reader, often clipping them and sending them to me over the years, especially when the deceased was someone from the world of music, sports or literature. These have been shared interests of ours since we first became friends in 1955. For the obits book we read the obituaries every day for a year and commented on them. We explored the meaning of life and death … in our way. Deep stuff, as you can imagine.
And now our third book, the most dangerous territory yet, the world of Jane Austen. Do real men really read Jane Austen? We were fearless in the face of that question.
Even though I had a degree in English, I somehow managed to navigate through a lot of authors in college without reading Jane. No I was not a misogynist. Don't lump me in with them. I wasn't a guy like Pat Robertson who once said, "The key in terms of mental ability is chess. There's never been a woman Grand Master chess player. Once you get one, then I'll buy some of the feminism." (I would hand that lip-moving, mouth-breathing charlatan cathode-ray minister a copy of Emily Dickinson so he would indeed be in the presence of a true chess master. But I get ahead of myself.)
Before this assignment - reading Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park - my only exposure to Jane Austen had been through film. There were so many good movies based on her books, movies like Sense and Sensibility and the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice of the BBC and even the funny movie Clueless which was based on Jane Austen's book, Emma. Such good movies! But that was enough Jane for me. I had no desire whatsoever to read what I assumed was chick lit that had simply translated entertainingly into chick flicks.
So when Terry's wife Miranda and my wife Kathy both suggested that Jane Austen be the subject of our next book I thought it would be a hilarious romp of mockery. Like me and Terry sitting on the couch with beer and chips yelling funny comments at the stupid love scenes before switching back to the Michigan-Ohio State game. I was locked and loaded, ready to fire even more ridicule than he and I fired at Moby-Dick.
So now we have two grown men in their early sixties (sixty is the new thirty, remember) reading Jane Austen together! It sounds like something an army psychological warfare unit would turn to if waterboarding were outlawed. As a way to break a man. Break him down and surrender his manhood forever.
In a recent writer's workshop delivered in Mexico, Terry quoted J.D. Salinger who said only two questions should be asked of a writer after he'd written something - "Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?"
Those are questions Jane Austen would have to answer for me. And in the book that follows you'll witness the rather amusing spectacle of my encountering something I certainly had not expected.
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""I'm standing up, applauding while typing, a feat inspired by just finishing Two Guys Read Moby-Dick. I was reluctant to start it... the topic did seem a tad unusual... but I ended up being reluctant to finish, wanting it to go on and on. I wish I could go out and buy many more "Two Guys" books. I think they have a wonderful franchise started. The idea is just funky enough and the writing is dazzling, charming and witty."
- Dale Dauten, King Features Syndicate
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