Arnold's Spirit of Success

We've talked before about motivation, and how it's possible to see motivation as a skill to be practiced rather than a rather vague emotion. We've also talked about the requirement for lots of reps towards expertise. And likewise, we've talked about the 9S model of the athlete, where Spirit is one of those key skills of an athlete - that quality of mind that helps keep going - with gusto - on things that are moving us towards what we want to achieve, and that the best athletes have this skill (among the others) in spades.

In this recent Arnold clip on youtube, Schwarzenegger  talks about his model of success across his three careers of bodybuilding, acting and politics: figuring out that you want to be a champ and "doing whatever it takes" to get there. While that sentiment may feel a little dubious, the thing that Arnie reiterates is that the Mind is more important than the Body in achieving these goals. And that the same template that worked for success in body building - finding out what it takes to be great and doing it - was applied to both his acting and his political careers.  That's a lot of spirit.

One of the other notes i find compelling here? The notion of joy in doing what he's doing "in the gym for five hours a day" - one hour of which was dedicated to posing, another to flexibility, by the way. Lots of reps in all aspects of performance. It's cool to see that the best of the best work hard AND have fun doing it.

Thanks to Mike T Nelson of extreme human performance for pointing out this vid.

Happy Friday - and now, back to proposal writing, jazzed by Arnie.