Two Boomerangs
Yesterday, the stars aligned as it was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 77th birthday. I’m reminded of another athletic actor: Michael Chan Wai-Man. He belongs to a gang whose nickname is Double Seven because their official name is 14K. As it turns out, the Chinese word for double looks like a pair of sevens i.e. 孖. Michael was born in the seventh month of the year but on the tenth day. Regardless, he likes the number seven so much that he appeared in seven films which were released in 1977. Alas, Michael turned 77 in the equally symmetrical 2020. As for the cover of the X-shaped radio galaxy, I’m reminded of a rock band called L7. What truly unites Arnold and Michael is that they have worked with Jackie Chan. Other than that, I felt compelled to write this article because July 30 was when Arnold posted a 26 page exclusive for his fan club. The PDF document was titled 77 Lessons at 77. I don’t want to post all of them in full, so here is an abbreviation of what Arnold typed…
1) You have to see it before you can achieve it.
2) Put down your phone.
3) If you don’t see your vision right away, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you.
4) Find a subject that gets you going and dive in as deep as you can.
5) Decide who — not what — you want to be.
6) Don’t worry about your motivation sounding silly.
7) Make sure you know the why behind your next move.
8) Spend some time giving back.
9) None of us make it alone.
10) Your vision will grow and change throughout your life.
11) The joy is the work that gets you there.
12) You might think you only do reps in the gym, but repetitions are the key to life.
13) Discomfort isn’t a sign to stop, it’s a sign to keep going.
14) If you can make discomfort your friend, you will find that most limits you’ve placed on yourself or others have placed on you are totally fake.
15) Start small.
16) Nobody ever changed their life or changed the world from their couch.
17) Train your mind and your body.
18) If you want to help others, find common ground.
19) Failure is a crucial part of success.
20) If you don’t love failure, how can you love success?
21) If the furthest you can fall is your current status quo, what are you afraid of?
22) Your mind will also exaggerate the embarrassment of failure.
23) Ignore the naysayers.
24) Do the work to prove them wrong.
25) Learning to overcome yourself is much more important than learning to overcome anyone else.
26) There are times for thinking, and there are times to be a machine. I start every day like a machine.
27) Create an hour or two every day where you don’t need an ounce of brainpower and everything happens on autopilot.
28) Think of life like a play, and it will ease your mind when you’re challenged or when someone stands in your way.
29) I love feeling my emotions.
30) Don’t bottle anything up.
31) Tell people what they mean to you now.
32) 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.
33) Do it now.
34) Treat the world as your laboratory and your work as an experiment.
35) If you’re only talking to people who agree with you, you’re missing out on at least 50% of the brainpower available.
36) Don’t fall for the “Yes Man” trap.
37) Do a “murder board” before your big decisions.
38) I believe that getting the little things right is the low-hanging fruit, and if you don’t do it, you risk getting sloppy and taking shortcuts when it really does matter.
39) Trying to control something we can’t will only make all of us stressed out, and that won’t help anybody.
40) Focus on what you can control.
41) Approximately 95% of your results will come from a basic foundation of training and good food.
42) Stop your research. It’s how you procrastinate.
43) Don’t let perfect be the enemy of progress.
44) Giving up has killed more dreams than failure ever will.
45) Don’t start things you don’t finish.
46) Don’t do half-reps.
47) There is no magic pill.
48) The only shortcut is doing something the right way the first time so that you don’t waste any time on the shortcuts.
49) No matter what you do in life, you need to learn to sell.
50) People tell me, “Arnold, I’m a teacher, I don’t need to sell anything.” You need to sell those students on why they should listen to you.
51) The first step in sales isn’t talking. It’s listening.
52) Speak to their heart first, not their mind.
53) I love that old adage that God gave us two ears and one mouth, so we should listen twice as much as we talk.
54) People can sense when you want to listen, and it makes them want to share.
55) Learn to change gears.
56) Learn to adapt.
57) Self-talk gets me through hard times.
58) Develop a sense of humor. When I wanted to get into Hollywood, I became friends with a very famous comedian, Milton Berle. I asked him to help me with comedy. Milton would write jokes for me, and then he would critique my timing.
59) Develop a sense of humor about yourself, too.
60) Don’t waste any of your energy being negative to yourself.
61) But be brutally honest with yourself.
62) If you ever feel stuck, pick three small things you can focus on. Make them so small it’s impossible for you to fail.
63) Slowly grow your goals.
64) If you started in January with 5-minute workouts and added 5 minutes each month, by June, you’d be training a half hour a day.
65) Harness the power of small wins.
66) You need momentum, not motivation.
67) You need patience.
68) Find joy, not happiness. Joy, to me, is having a sense of purpose. It’s what gives meaning to life.
69) We don’t have to be alike to inspire each other.
70) You will not find joy on social media.
71) On those days when you feel really hopeless about the world, just go and do something for someone else. Buy a sandwich for a homeless person.
72) When you feel down, a quick walk can always get your brain moving.
73) The more you do for yourself, the more you can help others.
74) If you feel lost, depressed, or anxious, get the help you need.
75) You need a purpose, a reason to live.
76) Leave the world better than you found it.
77) Go look around.
Back to Michael Chan Wai-Man’s relationship with all things seven, Alexander Fu Sheng died on the seventh day of the seventh month in 1983. The significance is that writer/director Wong Jing decided to name a character after Michael’s Cantonese name (Chen Hui-Min) for one of Alex’s final incomplete films - Wits of the Brats (1984). The above sword fight between Michael and Alex took place in Sun Chung’s My Rebellious Son (1982).