While anti-bullying posters are seen in schools and colleges around the world now, the unethical practice isn’t completely eradicated. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was growing up in Austria, teasing and bullying were far more rampant. In the Q&A section of Schwarzenegger’s latest newsletter, a dad was concerned about his son’s well-being, after the latter was teased for his height. He reached out to the bodybuilding legend, who shared his own stories of struggle when growing up in Graz.

Despite being 6’2″ tall and weighing 235 lbs now, the 7X Mr. Olympia wasn’t always the big, giant hunk that people know him as. While he says he wasn’t explicitly bullied, he was teased, laughed at, and constantly demotivated by people in his life.

All the criticism Arnold Schwarzenegger faced from others

In Schwarzenegger’s newsletter ‘Arnold’s Pump Club’, a concerned father reached out to him asking, “How do you deal with bullies?… Despite being physically large, I’m guessing some powerful people have tried to push you around over the years in one way or another”. Schwarzenegger initially didn’t have a clear-cut answer, but he decided to share his own experience. He wrote, “I don’t know if I would say I’ve been bullied, but I’ve definitely been laughed at many times during my life”.

“I am used to being the bu** of the joke”, said Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger went to school in Graz, a city in Austria. Being teased by kids there, Schwarzenegger said, “I was made fun of by the kids in Graz… for being a country boy”. His countryside upbringing soon became fodder for entertainment for the city kids. His foray into bodybuilding wasn’t smooth either. He wrote, “People who didn’t understand bodybuilding laughed at me”. Bodybuilding was fairly new among the masses when Schwarzenegger stepped onto the stage.

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But even after finding success in bodybuilding, his troubles didn’t end. Schwarzenegger wrote, “When I told agents and studio executives I wanted to be a leading man in the movies, they laughed at me, too”. His initial backlash into entering movies was due to his heavy accent. He even took accent removal classes to find success in movies. Later on, when he moved into politics, Schwarzenegger wasn’t spared there either.

Schwarzenegger’s methods for overcoming his critiques and finding success

“It was a joke to a lot of people and they said it was like a circus”, Schwarzenegger wrote about when he wanted to run for the Governor of California. But none of this deterred him from doing what he wanted to do, and achieving what he wanted to achieve. Schwarzenegger believes that it didn’t bother him for three reasons.

“One, someone underestimating you is a superpower”, he wrote. It gave him an opportunity to prove them wrong every time. “Two, they only mock you because they’re thinking of you”. He soon realized that people’s insecurities are making them comment on him. It has nothing to do with him. “And three, because my life has had naysayers at every single turn, I’ve learned it doesn’t matter what people say about me”. While Schwarzenegger hasn’t been able to control them, he has instead worked on himself and improved himself every time. Eventually, the negativity fades away in front of success. This might just help concerned parents out there, help their children deal with bullies.

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