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The Unexpected Spirituality of Arnold Schwarzenegger

The Unexpected Spirituality of Arnold Schwarzenegger

Last updated on: August 23, 2024 at 9:48 am by Tom Rapsas

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The Unexpected Spirituality of Arnold Schwarzenegger 2024-08-23T09:48:17-06:00 Tom Rapsas

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Is Arnold Schwarzenegger religious? 2020 photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

What’s longtime action movie star and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger doing in a spirituality column? Let me explain. For the past year or two, I’ve been receiving the daily Arnold’s Pump Club newsletter written by him and a couple of cohorts. You might think it’s all about weightlifting. It’s not. In fact, I find it’s often spiritual in nature.

To me, spirituality is about connecting with something greater than our selves—which Arnold tries to help his readers do on a regular basis. He genuinely wants us to become better people, body, mind and soul. A more accurate description of what he does might be found in the Pump Club logo, where the words “Lift Up The World” appear.

Like me, Schwarzenegger grew up in the Catholic Church, and in a 2021 interview he spoke about his faith. In his words: “I grew up Catholic, I went to church, went to Catholic school. And from those days I remember a phrase that is relevant today: A servant’s heart. It means serving something larger than yourself.”

To serve others, Arnold shares his hard-earned wisdom covering topics like exercise, diet, health, and sleep, as well as how we might find more satisfaction in life. These life tips have culminated in an eBook titled 77 Lessons at 77 you can get for free here. In the book’s preface, he explains:

I put together these 77 lessons from my 77 years to help you learn and dream a little more and offer suggestions that will support you in living a better life.

For this story, I’ve cut the list of seventy-seven lessons down to seven of my favorites. The words below have been lightly edited and are shorter than the passages found in the book.

7 Life Tips at Age 77

There is nothing more comfortable than sitting on the couch watching some great TV. But nobody ever changed their life or changed the world from their couch.
Be curious. Read books. Read magazines. Watch documentaries. Find a subject that gets you going and dive in as deep as you can. If your vision isn’t clear, curiosity is your best bet. Even when it becomes clear, never stop learning.
Show up—for yourself, for others, just show up. The biggest difference between successful people and everyone else is that when they fall, successful people get up over and over again and just keep showing up. Giving up has killed more dreams than failure ever will.
Many people overestimate the risk of failure and let their fear hold them back. In most cases, if you really assess the risk, you’ll see that your fear is overblown. If the furthest you can fall is your current status quo, what are you afraid of?
The world isn’t as broken as social media makes it seem. Imagine going to a gym, or a bar, or church, and hearing people talk like that. You’d say, “Enough already — stop whining.” But that’s normal on social media! Get out there in the real world as often as you can. Talk to real people, not avatars. You will not find joy on social media.
One thing you learn as you get older is that none of us will get to live forever. The older you get, the more death you see. Parents, siblings, friends, mentors. It can seem cruel that the reward for living a long life is outliving so many people that made your life what it is. But I’ve always found comfort in realizing that none of the people who die are gone. I don’t think we ever lose the people who pass away. They stay with us every day, in our memories, but also in the way they shaped our lives.
No matter who you are, someone helped you or laid the groundwork for you along the way. Once you accept that, you can see the tremendous responsibility that comes with it. You have a duty to help the next generation.

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