Arnold Schwarzenegger (@Schwarzenegger)

I was a bricklayer. It was how I paid the bills when I first moved to America. Even the biggest title in bodybuilding, Mr. Olympia, only paid a thousand dollars back then.  It makes me proud that in March, the winner of our Arnold Classic and our Arnold Classic UK took home more than a million dollars. He can focus on bodybuilding. But in our day, that wasn’t an option. Some guys were teachers. Some sold insurance. Franco and I laid bricks. We put an ad in the paper and sold ourselves as European craftsmen. We figured if people heard the accents, they would picture old-world masonry instead of two bodybuilders with a wheelbarrow.  It worked.  The phone rang. And then we had to go out and actually do the job, which was the part nobody could fake. Luckily, Franco knew what he was doing. The work was simple. Mix the mortar. Set the brick. Tap it level. Scrape the edge. Then do it again. And again. Nobody claps for you. There is no crowd, no music, no trophy. There is just the next brick sitting there waiting for you. You can still find some of the walls we built in Venice. That’s where my lesson today comes from. One brick doesn’t look like anything. Ten bricks don’t look like anything. A hundred bricks, you’re starting to see something, but it doesn’t impress anyone. You just keep laying bricks until the job is done. And you know what happens after four or five hours on a wall? You are so damn tired, or you feel so great that you stop measuring. You are not standing back every ten minutes asking how far from finished it is. You are covered in mortar, your hands are raw, you’re schvitzing, and you are happy. The work took the question away from you. That is the part nobody tells you about hard work: It doesn’t just build the wall. It terminates the voice that keeps asking when the wall will be done.

There was no adventure too big for Charles Gaines. He climbed mountains, trekked across ice, fished, and hunted on almost every continent, writing about every adventure in a way that captured people’s hearts and minds. He was interested in everything - and his interest was contagious. I’m lucky that he was always looking for new frontiers, because that’s how he found me and our niche sport of bodybuilding. That’s how the book and the movie Pumping Iron launched me into the mainstream - he wrote that book and then worked relentlessly on the documentary and introduced bodybuilding to millions and millions of people. It’s how I broke into Hollywood with my first big role in Stay Hungry - a movie Charles also wrote. Most importantly, it’s how I became lifelong friends with Charles. You hear me say it over and over: I’m not a self-made man. Today, I honor the amazing life of one of the people who helped make me who I am. Charles left us today, but he’s not gone. I can still hear his voice. “Hey Oak!” - always followed by some unbelievable insight or philosophy, always giving us the greatest gift: making us think. No, he isn’t gone. He lives on in his unbelievable family, and I n all of the lives he touched. He’s just off on his next adventure.

Judge Arnold here! That's right, I'm starring in my own video game called Courtroom Chaos. You can play it on @amazonluna, and I’ll be your judge! Come behind the scenes with me to see the fun I had with the team on set capturing audio and shooting the trailer.    Play Now: