As the ugly spectacle of January 6, 2021, unfurled around them, many people felt paralyzed by the chaos. Not Arnold Schwarzenegger. As he writes in his slightly inexplicable new self-help book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life, he knew that one thing—and one thing alone—could help him process the endless mania of that day: his Jacuzzi.
“There’s something about the hot water and the steam, about the hum of the jets and the rush of the bubbles,” he writes of his Jacuzzi. “It’s where I do some of my best thinking.” And, submerged in his hot tub that evening, Schwarzenegger formed a response in his mind. “I could see myself sitting behind my desk,” he explains, “with the sword from Conan the Barbarian in my hands.”
Written down, this sounds absurd—a fading action star reacting to political violence thousands of miles away by arming himself with a movie prop from his glory days. And yet, when he did actually come to address the world—from his desk, with his sword, just as promised—his response managed to be startlingly clearheaded. Schwarzenegger didn’t berate or chastise anyone. He calmly told the story of his father, a former Sturmabteilung member (the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party) and part of a postwar generation of “broken men drinking away the guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history.” His point being how quickly democracy can wither and die unless people work to preserve it. Unless people are willing to—wait for it—be useful.
“I could see myself sitting behind my desk,” he explains, “with the sword from Conan the Barbarian in my hands.”
You would be right to put money on this speech doubling as the promotional campaign for this book. It marked the start of what Schwarzenegger calls his “fourth act.” He had already been the world’s greatest bodybuilder, the world’s highest-paid actor, and the leader of the world’s sixth-largest economy. How on earth does anyone follow that? Schwarzenegger’s plan, obviously, was to become “a self-help guy.” The seeds of the idea were sown in this year’s Netflix documentary series Arnold, which set out to reinforce the notion of Schwarzenegger as a self-made miracle.
Over the course of seven chapters, Be Useful sets out the steps that Schwarzenegger took to get everything he wanted from life: “Have a clear vision,” “Never think small,” “Work your ass off,” “Sell, sell, sell,” “Shift gears,” “Shut your mouth, open your mind,” and “Break your mirrors.” That last one is a metaphor, by the way. Earlier this year, Schwarzenegger was photographed for The Hollywood Reporter, standing in front of a mural of himself, while wearing a T-shirt of himself, to accompany an article that references the eight-foot bronze statue of himself Schwarzenegger keeps next to his pool. None of this suggests that the man has much of a problem with his own reflection.
As a self-help guide, Be Useful works best when it functions as a direct address to its readers, in that these sections read like an exasperated lecture from a dad who can’t understand why his kids are all such layabouts. “Don’t be a lazy fuck,” he growls at one point, a sentiment he soon refines with a far more muted “Rest is for babies and relaxation is for elderly people.” Schwarzenegger recently revealed that when one of his children failed to make their bed in the morning, he reacted by hurling their entire mattress out the window and into the swimming pool. He may have softened of late, into the sort of person who lets miniature ponies roam around inside his house, but still. You really don’t want to make Dad angry.
However, Be Useful is more than just a lecture. It is also an opportunity for Schwarzenegger to tell his life story. Cloaking a memoir in self-help is a very neat trick. Had this been a straight autobiography, then it would have required some level of basic introspection. It would have meant that, at one point or another, Schwarzenegger would have had to plumb the uglier depths of his personality. His divorce from Maria Shriver. The secret son he had with his housekeeper. The numerous historical allegations of groping and sexual harassment.
But by offering everything through a shiny lens of self-improvement, Schwarzenegger gets to ignore all this. In this retelling of his life, Schwarzenegger admits to making just two mistakes. (I counted.) The first was calling a special election as governor of California in 2005, in which he failed to communicate his ideas and suffered a heavy loss. The second was the behavior that broke up his family. Reading about the latter would have provided incredible insight into the man, except he’s in no mood to dwell here. “All of you know the story,” he shrugs. “If you don’t, you’ve heard of Google.”
These omissions leave Schwarzenegger with more room to focus on his victories, of which there are many. Some of these are big (like his response to the 2007 California wildfires), and some are small (his monomaniacal determination to make his calves look good), but almost all of them involve him proving people wrong.
When one of his children failed to make their bed in the morning, he reacted by hurling their entire mattress out the window and into the swimming pool.
Indeed, the “needless to say, I had the last laugh” tone of his anecdotes becomes a little grating after a while. People told him he’d never make it as an actor. They told him to change his name. They offered him bit parts as Nazis. They laughed when he revealed his political ambitions. Again and again, despite occasional lip service to the people around him, the core message is that Schwarzenegger got where he is today by listening only to Schwarzenegger. Tellingly, the acknowledgments section fails to mention a single other person who was involved in this book.
That said, you can’t deny that the man knows his audience. This is a book for lost and directionless young men, and God knows they need a positive role model right now. This book, which espouses thinking big, working hard, and giving back as the key to a successful life, may well end up as their bible. After all, if an Austrian lunk with a name like a dropped Scrabble board can beef up, marry a Kennedy, and play a robot in a bunch of films, then maybe you can, too.
Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life, by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is available now from Penguin Press
Stuart Heritage is a Kent, U.K.–based Writer at Large at AIR MAIL and the author of Bedtime Stories for Worried Liberals