Image caption: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Illustration: Inc; Photo: Getty Images
How to get true happiness – accomplish things, not by pleasure, Arnold Schwarzenegger says
Arnold Schwarzenegger Says a Happy Life Boils Down to These 4 Words. Psychology Agrees With Him
Schwarzenegger’s four-word life motto sounds simple, but psychologists insist it encapsulates a lot of research-backed wisdom.
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“It’s wild if you think about it, how many people are unhappy. How many people are angry,” Arnold Schwarzenegger remarked on a recent podcast.
Look around at social media, politics, or the news and you’re likely to agree with the bodybuilding champ-turned-movie star-turned-governor of California. But not Arnie. ”I was always happy,” he continued.
Whether he was lifting weights for five hours a day or trying to hack a path through the thicket of California politics, Schwarzenegger claims he was consistently happy. What allowed him to maintain a positive outlook despite personal setbacks and tough jobs? In his book Be Useful, Schwarzenegger boils down his philosophy to just four words.
You might think a simple mantra is too flimsy a thing to be actually meaningful in the face of real-life struggle. But according to top psychologists, the Governator actually manages to capture profound truths about human flourishing in one quick motto.
Visiting Arnold Schwarzenegger’s birthplace
Several years ago I had a friend who was temporarily living in Graz, Austria, for work. Graz is, famously, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hometown, so when I went to visit her we took a light-hearted trip to visit his birthplace, now a modest museum (with an immodestly sized sculpture of Arnie mid-bicep curl out front).
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We had a grand old time viewing Schwarzenegger’s childhood bedroom (with vintage bodybuilding pics stuck to the walls) and laughed our way through a video of his top advice. At the time, it struck both of us as the stuff of bland inspirational office posters. As a fun day trip, I recommend the museum highly, but as a source of valuable life advice, I wasn’t much impressed.
Which is why I didn’t rush to my local bookstore when Scharzenegger published Be Useful back in 2023. Just more bland affirmations like those we’d giggled at in Graz, I thought. But recently, I stumbled across a thoughtful Psychology Today article by Maynooth University psychologist Jon Gruda.
In the book, Schwarzenegger reveals his four-word life mantra. Gruda insists it’s far more profound and science-backed than it first appears.
“Stay busy. Be useful.”
“These four words have been a guiding star for Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Gruda writes of Schwarzeegger’s mantra, which became “deeply ingrained during his formative years” and “spurred him on a lifelong journey of continuous growth.”
“It encapsulates an essential component of our human experience — a sense of purpose,” he continues, insisting that “psychological research has repeatedly emphasized the relationship between a sense of purpose and well-being. Having a purpose or meaningful goal to work toward can act as a counterforce against depressive symptoms and a catalyst for happiness.”
Is Gruda right that “Stay busy. Be useful” is more than a cheerful slogan?
A Harvard psychologist and a Nobel laureate agree
Yes, says Harvard happiness researcher Arthur Brooks. In a recent Big Think video, Brooks unpacked one of the biggest misconceptions about happiness, namely that it’s just an emotion. Sure, you can feel grumpy or upbeat. But Brooks insists these feelings are just a sign of whether you are experiencing happiness or a lack thereof. Real happiness itself an emotion, but something deeper.
“I’ve looked at data on millions of individuals who have the highest levels of well-being, and they all have three elements in common in their lives: Enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning,” Brooks says.
The late Nobel laureate and psychologist Daniel Kahneman agrees. On the podcast of economist Tyler Cowen, he explained that people may think they want happiness in the form of pleasurable experiences like chocolate cake and beach vacations, but what really brings people peace and well-being is having and accomplishing goals. Which, like Schwarzenegger’s multihour workouts, often involves discomfort and struggle.
“I don’t think that people maximize happiness,” Kahneman claims. “They actually want to maximize their satisfaction with themselves and with their lives.”
Being useful and busy boosts our mental health in other ways too. When we’re facing tough times, research shows that being of service to others (which provides a sense of meaning and satisfaction) gives us more of a resilience boost than treating yourself to pleasures and indulgences.
“We assume that self-care looks like a nice bubble bath — or even hedonistic pursuits, selfish pursuits,” Yale psychologist Laurie Santos explained in the New York Times. “But the data suggests that the right way to treat ourselves would be to do nice things for other people.”
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What’s that got to do with Schwarzenegger’s mantra?
Boiled down, all these eminent psychologists insist that real happiness isn’t the presence of pleasure or the absence of pain. That’s certainly one ingredient — no one thinks pointless suffering is positive. But what humans crave even more is a sense of purpose and accomplishment.
Happiness, in other words, is purpose fulfilled. And that’s exactly what Schwarzenegger’s cheerfully simple mantra reminds us. “Stay busy. Be useful” points us toward satisfaction through service.
As I discovered in Graz, it’s easy to dismiss these four words as the earnest but shallow motto of an adorably lunkheaded bodybuilder. But Arnold Schwarzenegger’s impressive career proves he’s much more than muscles and good vibes. Science suggests his four-word mantra is deeper than it first appears too.
As Gruda writes, “having a purpose serves as psychological armor, shielding us from life’s adversities and offering tranquility in tumultuous times.”
There are plenty of ways to chase meaning (here’s one exercise to try). But Schwarzenegger’s mantra is one of the simplest places to start.
Source: Inc.com