Interpreting Success: Insights from Schwarzenegger and Plitt

Success is a very personalized term. It can be defined in many different ways and like itself there are also many ways to achieve it. Success is a term that everyone has a different opinion on but one thing remains the same: we all want to be successful. We all want to be good at the things we desire most. Two great activists for the cause of success are Arnold Schwarzenegger and Greg Plitt. Both are men who demand great respect. Not only for being at the top of their classes but for also going beyond that and topping many of the ranks for things they are passionate about. Their success not only was noticed but radiated into the minds of people and children everywhere inspiring them to be great. Though they may have their differences both men

have inspired many to be great.

First, there is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He is a man of great stature. A bodybuilder, an actor and the governor of California. He has proven time and time again that to be the best, it takes hard work. This is a lot of what he bases his USC Commencement Address on. In the speech itself he focuses on what he likes to call “Dr. Schwarzenegger’s six rules of success. These rules include: 1) Trust yourself, 2) Break some rules, 3) Don’t be afraid to fail, 4) Ignore the naysayers, 5) Work like hell, 6) Give something back. His first rule is to believe in yourself. He says no matter what your parents, your teachers, your role models or whatever anyone else says, you need to believe in your own vision. His second rule is fairly ironic. He uses humor by saying that rule number two is to break the rules. All people in this world do the exact same thing so he believes you must break them. You must be an outlier. The people who get remembered in the future are never the ones who played it safe. It is always the people who are a little bit crazy who get noticed, the people who are

a little bit different. Rule three states that you must never be afraid to fail. This is something that is a lot easier said than done. Most people will say that they are not afraid to fail so Schwarzenegger takes this into account and plays on it so that the audience will understand how to go actually through with it. He says that one must give everything a chance no matter how miniscule it is to their life. If you do not try there is no way that you will get what you want. If you do then anything can happen. Never be afraid because everyone fails. He lets on in his speech that he, not only the greatest bodybuilder at the time but maybe of all time, has failed a numerous of times. He uses his own faults to show that to be the best, there are times where a person has to fail. It humanized him to where people realize that even they can strive for greatness with the right amount of work put in. His fourth rule is to ignore the naysayers. Every day in life there are people who put down others, people who try to stop those working for greatness to achieve their goals. Schwarzenegger says to be successful, one must push past these people and only focus on the positives. Naysayers are there only as obstacles to build who one is supposed to become. They serve as walls, only for you to climb over or break down and nothing else and Arnold makes this very clear. He then goes on to state his most important rule. Rule number five states that you must work your butt off. A statement that every person with a goal holds dear. To be the best one has to do things that others cannot and will not. Schwarzenegger said it best when he made his comparison of a champion and a runner up. He stated that when the runner up went out and partied on the weekend the champion was training. It is a comparison that allows the audience to relate because there is more than likely that one has encountered both of these people in their lives. It shows how every second counts. That in the end, it is the one who never gave up that wins, not just the naturally gifted. And now for Schwarzenegger’s final rule. Rule six says that no matter what one does in life, they must give back. To be at the top, there are many stepping stones along the way. There must be a payback as a form of respect to those who have helped one reach success. Do something that helps the causes that people are passionate about. By making this his final rule, Schwarzenegger helps build a relationship with the audience as someone who is just as respectable as they are successful. His tone here was light and humorous yet had a call to action behind it. He did a great job giving the audience belief in themselves to do better. A true leader of the people.

Now onto another great spokesperson for success, Greg Plitt.

Plitt lived a fast lifestyle and was envied by most. He was an army ranger at one of the highest rankings, an actor, a fitness model, and a top physique competitor. His motto for success was somewhat a condensed version of Schwarzenegger’s; you must work hard and never give up to become successful. In his “Own Your Success”, he goes in to a passionate plea to the people watching, just hoping to inspire his audience to be better. He says to never give up over and over to really make the audience understand that to win, they must fail. He goes to give several examples of how several different people do things. How a champion does things and how a runner up does things. He talks about how the hours a runner up spends partying, the hours the runner up slept in, the hours the runner up spends on nothing can add up. He also talks about what champions do in those hours. The hours where the runner up has given up for the day are the same hours that the champion spends in pursuit of their goals. Those are the extra hours that the champion spends training, spends reading or spends improving themselves. He says that it is how you hold yourself in the small things in life is how you build the person you are. Two of his standout examples from the speech include one about washing a car and one about dusting a home. In his example about washing a car, Plitt starts his example by stating how you’ve just spent hours washing the

car. He says that you’ve just put away all of your hoses, soap, cloths and sponges away when you notice a spot you missed. He then asks if you pull everything back out and finish the job or if you just scrub it away and say good enough. He pulls in the audience by using a flight sense of fear all the while pushing for them to do better for themselves. It is the same in his other example of how when dusting do you dust around objects or pick them up and do the job right. Plitt uses the method of putting conviction within the audience somewhat like guilt but with more self-motivation. His tone throughout the speech is very persuasive due to his drive and passion.

Both Schwarzenegger and Plitt were great at giving motivational speeches. Schwarzenegger’s USC Commencement Address and Plitt’s “Your Own Success” speech spoke on the same topic, with a lot of the same key points. They both said to trust yourself, both said to never be afraid to fail, and both said to never give up. But there were key differences in the reactions of the audiences. While I personally believe that Plitt has the better of the two speeches, there are many more who would say the contrary. Plitt’s tone throughout all of his speeches give so much power and energy to the audience. It is easy to tell that Plitt puts his heart into what he speaks about. Although this is the same case for Schwarzenegger’s passion for the things he does, it cannot be said about his speech. Although moderately lengthier, Schwarzenegger’s speech seemed more rehearsed. He just lacked the fire that Plitt had. Schwarzenegger’s speech style is rather like wisdom being passed down while Plitt’s is like a general preparing you for battle. You can continue to see this in several other speeches by the two men.

Another great speech delivered by Schwarzenegger was his “Who do you want to be in life”. In it he gave his life story. He spoke of ow he was born in Austria and how his dreams were to be different. He said everyone there told him that he shouldn’t bodybuild, and that he should cycle instead if he wanted to be the best. But he said no and followed his dreams to become one of the greatest bodybuilders in the world. After that he decided he wanted to do something else so he pursued acting even though everyone said that he couldn’t do it. He kept taking roles and more roles until he finally landed his first big production of Conan: The Barbarian. He then spoke of how one of his lines became one of the most famous phrases that ever came from films. The iconic “I’ll be back” was his. In this speech the audience sees him more as a great leader with stories of great adventures to tell. He has done so much that his mere presence for the speech hushed the crowd in awe. His best metaphor from this speech is that “You can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets.” A phrase that helps the audience understand that even though Schwarzenegger did all of these great things, he is just a man. A man who proved that hard work can get you anything you want.

Now in the last speech, Plitt goes deeper into the roots of success and how to be successful. In his “Face Your Fears”, he talks about how success is defined through fear. He speaks of how fear is someone’s own manifestation. Fear is not just something that one creates but only they can destroy, it is self-imposed and intangible. Here, he really drives into the audience. He says that everything they aren’t is because of them giving them a reason to get out and do the things that will help them. He reiterates over and over about how winners show up. They face their fears by repeatedly taking it on. Getting knocked down over and over, just to get back up. He shows how fear is just energy that is transferred and this give the audience hope. He says that fear is transferred into confidence once one realizes they can overcome the obstacles blocking their way. Plitt’s tone throughout once again held the audience at the edge, ready to follow his every move.

Both Schwarzenegger and Plitt are incredible speakers and very devoted to their work. You can see this in all four of the speeches as the men poured out the wisdom of how they became successful. Schwarzenegger had his wise, more scholastic tone, while Plitt had a more rushed powerful tone. Plitt had a conviction in the way he spoke to the audience. Schwarzenegger was more of a storyteller. Each of the men had his own way of doing things. A bodybuilder and a physique model, both with the drive to accomplish everything they saw fit in life, now sharing their knowledge. Both men will go down in history as two of the finest role-models the world has seen.