Arnold Schwarzenegger has had his fair share of struggles while building himself up and has shared plenty of stories to inspire this generation. But the version he gave Howard Stern carries an edge most retellings skip.

Many years before Schwarzenegger was Mr. Olympia in his teens, he was in Munich, broke and barely getting by, and the owner of the gym he trained at made a pass at him. Schwarzenegger turned him down. The owner kicked him out.

"I had no money, and went to a strange place, Munich," Schwarzenegger told Stern, recalling how the gym owner "wanted to start a relationship and I said no. So he threw me out."

Schwarzenegger told Stern, "I had to, you know, find another place. And so it was like there were all of those obstacles, but it was okay because I knew I could handle myself."

Stern further asked him whether the incident could have driven him away from the sport entirely.

"There was absolutely nothing that could have chased me away from bodybuilding. I was so determined. I had such a clear vision of myself becoming the world champion in bodybuilding.

"And that's exactly what happened when I was 20 years old, and I won the first Mr. Universe competition," said Schwarzenegger.

He became the youngest man ever to do it. The setback didn't define his story.

"What does not kill you will make you strong," he told Stern, the way the old line flatly sums up a pattern that's defined nearly everything he's done since.

Do you think Schwarzenegger's mindset on obstacles is something more people could actually apply, or is it easier said than lived?

Arnold Schwarzenegger Explains to Howard Stern Where His Mental Toughness Actually Came From

Howard Stern then asked Arnold Schwarzenegger a million-dollar question, where does that kind of mental toughness even come from?

Schwarzenegger gave a good nod, traced that answer back to his childhood, and told Stern how his situation helped him develop that mindset.

"It was after the Second World War. It was miserable," Schwarzenegger said of growing up in Thal.

"There was uh, you know, starvation. Uh, there were people who were angry because they had just lost the war, and there was the frustration, alcoholism, and all of those things. So it was a tough life, but I was determined, I'm going to get out of there, no matter what it takes"

Telling his parents that he was leaving for America to become the world's number one bodybuilder before he'd proven it to anyone, including himself, his parents thought that he was mentally ill.

Schwarzenegger's mother even went to their house doctor many times and complained to him.

Does a childhood that difficult explain the drive, or do you think Schwarzenegger would have been just as relentless either way?

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Written by

Proma Chatterjee

Edited by

Ashvinkumar Patil