'I Never Felt the Need to Tell Anyone What I Was Doing'

He didn’t know where he was, but the artwork quickly caught his eye.

Movie posters and murals from films like “The Terminator” and “Kindergarten Cop” were plastered on the walls, and props were prominently displayed.

When Adam Bornstein reached the third floor of the building, though, the mystery of the location he’d been led to quickly became apparent.

“Governor of the State of California,” read a seal on a large brown door.

Bornstein had been led by a pal to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office — and that afternoon began a friendship and a partnership that continues to this day.

Bornstein is considered a top fitness and health expert who’s since worked with LeBron James and Lindsey Vonn, among others. He’s also served as an editor at “Men’s Health” and penned six books, including the recently-released “You Can’t Screw This Up.”

The Daily Coach caught up with him to discuss how childhood adversity shaped his life outlook, navigating career uncertainty, and the importance of “not being an a--hole.”

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Adam, thanks a lot for doing this. Know you grew up in Chicago. Tell us a little about your childhood and some key lessons from it.

My dad was cut from the cloth of his father. My grandfather was very much about earning everything you do. He grew up poor, my father grew up poor. Both ended up having a good amount of success later in life, but so much of my understanding of the universe was you have and own nothing until you earn it.

I ended up growing up pretty well off, but nothing was given to me. I didn’t love it at the time, but it ended up serving me. If I wanted to get something, I had to earn it and work very hard for it.

You had some pretty significant health issues as a kid. How did those impact you and how did you mentally navigate that period?

It’s almost comical looking back on it now, but my freshman year of high school, I broke my back, which was quite challenging. My sophomore year, as I was recovering, I get this undiagnosed inflammatory disorder, which is something I’ve now battled for almost 30 years. I got these really high fevers — like 104 degrees — and no one knew what they were. Everyone thought I had cancer. I was seeing an oncologist. I was terribly sick. I could have fevers for up to 80 days in a row with no known trigger. Nothing would break it.

I recover from the broken back, from the fever, and then I break my back again. This time it was two bones. I had two bulging disks, all this damage. You’re 16 or 17 years old and it’s just, “What in the world is going on?”

All the doctors were like, “You’ve broken your back twice, you have stenosis in the spine… you can’t play sports or do this or that.” But I didn’t want to settle for that, and neither did my parents. They kept searching for doctors until they found one who was willing to say, “Your future doesn’t need to be this bleak.” He was the doctor for the Bulls and Blackhawks and Bears…

That began a two-year journey of rebuilding my body, and in that process, I became fascinated with what the human body could do and the idea of fitness and nutrition. It became a hobby, but it took me many years before I realized it could be a career and I could write about this and inform people.

How did that period influence your life outlook?

You hope difficult situations won’t hit you, but in life, it finds us at some point. I always say, “Evidence equals confidence.” There was evidence that I could overcome difficult things, and later on in life when more difficult times would hit, I was confident I could overcome them again.

All I did was not doubt myself, work hard and, as the cliché goes, “trust the process.” But trusting the process is really trusting yourself and betting on yourself until things get better.

I’ve been journaling since I was 16 years old every single morning. I’ve had this repeating dream where my father comes to me and sees me in some form of being lazy, sitting on the coach, not doing my homework. My dad’s repeated speech has been, “The moment you take your life for granted is the moment life will pass you by or the moment others will pass you by or opportunity will pass you by.”

I think an internal sense of belief is something I was taught at a really young age, and belief only comes through work, and work only comes through patience, and patience is going to be hard. I think what’s hard for a lot of people I know is you put in the work, but you don’t necessarily see the results.

We think we’re going to see them, but it’s rarely instant. More like, you put in the work and it sucks, and you put in more work, and it still sucks. I think expectation is a difficult and beautiful thing. If you shift your expectation on what an outcome can be, when that outcome isn’t what you want, it doesn’t necessarily sting as bad.

You end up going to the University of Colorado. What were you thinking you might want to do for a career at that point?

When I went to school, I did psychology and exercise science. I’d already gone through my broken back and the human body fascinated me, but I didn’t think I could have a career in anything to do with fitness or nutrition.

I liked writing. I had journaled every morning from a young age because it helped me make sense of the world and my broken back and my sickness. Because of this exploration of thoughts and feelings, psychology felt like such a natural fit. I thought I was going to be a therapist, then I thought I’d be an academic and researcher. I got a job right out of school working at the university teaching courses and working in the lab.

It was an amazing set up, but one day, I just had this epiphany when I was working in the social psychology lab. There was a big breakthrough in this study we were working on, and I see all these people and the main researchers high-fiving, all excited. I was thinking, “This is awesome, but why don’t I feel this way?”

I was 22 and thinking if I’m not that excited at this age, what am I going to do at 32, 42? So what excited me? Writing. I realized that’s what made me happy, no matter what I was writing about. Sports made me happy, too, so I thought I’d be a sports writer. I was prepared to be broke and work in rural North Dakota and write about high school sports. My friends all thought, “What are you doing?” I was like, “I’m just not happy.”

You go to grad school and eventually begin working at Men’s Health and Livestrong.com. How did the relationship with Arnold Schwarzenegger come about and what do you think the larger lessons of it are?

The real answer is it came about by not being an a--hole. For a while, I lived in Santa Monica. I was training in a gym called Iron, by all accounts living a pretty good life.

There was a gentleman there who very respectfully would ask me a lot of questions. He said it looked like I knew what I was doing, and he wanted pointers. Gyms are intimidating, scary places, and asking questions is difficult to do. Dude to dude, guys want to act like we have everything figured out. In reality, none of us have anything figured out.

We would strike up all these conversations and have a gym friendship, and I wanted to reward his curiosity with time and support and clarity because health is important to people. I’m helping this guy, Daniel, all this time. He said, “One day we should grab lunch. Come meet me at my office.”

Well, Daniel happens to be the chief of staff for Arnold Schwarzenegger. I had no idea… He gave me an opportunity to meet Arnold and work with him on a wide variety of projects. Early on, there was no attention paid toward them. A lot of times, I wasn’t even being paid for things. He just wanted to know if I wanted to be a part of helping out — and I did.

I think I just earned his respect and trust. I never felt the need to tell anyone what I was doing. There was no social flex. I kept it to myself because I was just proud to do it. It didn’t need to be about who knew what I did. He knew, and he was proud. That’s always been my focus.

If you understand who you’re trying to serve and you serve them well, that’s the job. It shouldn’t be to toot your own horn.

You mention not being an a—hole. What does that look like for you?

I have life rules. It’s rule No. 1 for me. It’s so basic, but we can all forget it. We all get rushed, have difficult days. If someone is doing something or being rude to you, who knows what they’re going through? Am I going to make their day better by being an a--hole to them? Is that going to make me feel better even if they’re not being the best to me?

Rule No. 2 for me is, “Don’t be greedy.” It doesn’t mean you don’t want to be successful or make a lot of money or get more, but I do think, often times, greed can blind.

Q&A Resources

Adam Bornstein ― Website | Book: You Can’t Screw This Up | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube