Arnold on Small Wins

 10/6/2025

I have talks by Arnold and Denzell in Course Content.  Arnold has a daily motivation post, here is  today's.  He is right. I returned to UT Austin to study for the CPA exam spring 1975. On the first 2.5 hour exam in cpa review class, the class average was 35, I made a 48. One third of the class dropped. It was enough to keep me going, I passed all three parts I took that May and the fourth in November, just like Arnold says, practice is what it is all about. 

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Arnold’s Corner  Monday Motivation: One Win at a Time

There’s only one rule this week: celebrate a win.

It doesn’t have to be big. In fact, it can be so small that no one else would even notice.

Maybe you finally slept seven hours. Maybe you skipped the elevator and took the stairs. Maybe you told yourself you’d show up at the gym — and you actually did.

It can seem tiny to you. But I want you to celebrate a win.

Because people have this habit of looking at other people’s success — like mine, for example — and imagining it all happened at once.

They see the highlight reel, not the grind.

They see the trophy, not the training.

They see the movie premiere, not the years of acting classes and accent removal classes.

That is never true.

When I became the youngest Mr. Universe ever, people said, “Arnold, you’re an overnight success.”

What they didn’t see was five years of training with the weightlifting and powerlifting team in Austria. They didn’t see me breaking into the gym under the stadium in Graz because it was locked on Sundays. They didn’t see me losing the year before and studying why I lost.

They didn’t see me dragging my body out of bed every morning because I had a vision, and I refused to let it die.

Every little session, every rep, every plate I loaded added up. Every “tiny” win built the foundation for the moment that looked “sudden” to the world.

❝   When you notice your wins, something amazing happens. You start wanting more of them. You realize you can keep a promise to yourself. You realize progress is possible, and that’s the spark that keeps the fire burning.

The same thing happened in my movie career.

People looked at Conan the Barbarian and said, “That guy came out of nowhere. The Austrian bodybuilder turned into a movie star overnight.”

But I retired from bodybuilding five years before I ever started filming Conan.

Five years of acting classes. Five years of repeating tongue-twisters like “A fine wine grows on the vine” to tame my accent. Five years of TV roles so small they didn’t even list my name in the credits. Five years of studying, failing, and trying again.

It didn’t happen overnight.It happened over every night that I went to bed knowing I’d taken one step closer.

This is what people forget.

Most people who start working out, eating better, or trying to change their lives eventually quit. It’s not because they’re lazy; it’s because they expect it to happen too fast.

They think: If I don’t see results in a few weeks, it’s not working.

But change isn’t fast. It’s steady. It’s often so slow you don’t even notice it.

Some statistics suggest that up to 90 percent of people who lose weight quickly gain it all back. Why? Because they were chasing a finish line instead of building a lifestyle.

You don’t rush your way to strength. You build it slowly.

A pound lost in a week might feel small. But a pound a week for a year is 52 pounds. For two years, that’s more than 100 pounds.

That’s a transformation that starts with one tiny win.

And it’s not just about the scale. It’s about consistency.

You build your strength one rep at a time. You build your discipline one promise kept at a time. You build your confidence one small victory at a time.

Every single success story you admire — mine, yours, anyone’s — is really just a long string of small wins.

So here’s your challenge: every week, look for one win.

Write it down. Tell someone about it. Celebrate it.

When you notice your wins, something amazing happens. You start wanting more of them. You realize you can keep a promise to yourself. You realize progress is possible, and that’s the spark that keeps the fire burning.

It’s easy to miss this when your head is down, grinding through the day-to-day. When you’re tired, when life piles on, when the work feels endless.

But that’s when this mindset matters most.

Lift your eyes up. Take a breath. Look back at how far you’ve already come.

If you’ve made one better choice this week than last week, that’s a win. If you’ve kept going when you wanted to quit, that’s a win. If you’ve failed and decided to try again, that’s a huge win.

Keep stacking them.

Week after week. Month after month. Year after year.

At first, the wins seem small. But after a while, you start to look back and realize: you built something huge. You built momentum. You built strength. You built a version of yourself that no one can take away.

That’s the secret.