Are You Lit? Matthew McConaughey | Rich Roll Podcast

hey everybody welcome to the podcast if there was anyone who does not need an introduction today it's today's guest matthew mcconaughey everybody knows who this guy is he was an absolute delight uh this is an incredible conversation he was so generous and warm and open i'm so excited for you to hear it before we get into it please hit that subscribe button hit that notification bell and pick up matthew's new book green lights it's an incredible read it will not disappoint and neither does this conversation so without further ado this is me and matthew mcconaughey all right all right all right [Music] thank you so much for doing this you ready to rock let's roll so our point of introduction or inflection was our mutual friend dan buettner who pleasantly uh introduced us and we were meant to go on this backpacking trip in utah like this ultralight backpacking trip that got cancelled because of covid so i was i was looking forward to meeting you in person but that's gonna have to wait for another day well our good man dan is a good curator of uh of people with with like the challenging minds you know you know my nickname is gh no what does that mean generally uh heroic and i don't mean just sometimes i mean from four dimensions and 360 view whichever view you want to take he's generally heroic where did you first meet him i met him um we were over i think in uh in europe at a at a got a google weekend a google getaway he was one of the speakers and uh he was the uh first speaker i believe and of the day of that so said day and what he had to say i remember listening to him just going that guy's got the greatest job in the world yeah he goes around studying longevity and happiness and people and culture and so i chased him down um and made sure i got his eyeliner and shook his hand and met him and talked to him about some things and uh he continued uh uh to call me bradley cooper and then i think you know kind of went up and flirted with my wife and called her mrs cooper that sounds like dan she's still generally heroic and now he's rehabbing his rehabilitation did you see his latest fall i did i did i'm gonna go up and and visit him up in santa barbara in a week or so i told him i said a pothole in the middle of the street in minnesota it just doesn't fit the meter of a generally heroic dan button wreck for all the stuff that that guy has done riding his bike across saudi arabia and everything for him to get knocked down that way but amen happens to the best of us but i reached out to him and i was like what should i ask matthew that is you know mainly not googleable and he said some people think that matthew is is heroic in a lot of areas acting fatherhood ambassadorship scholarship others think he's just generally heroic yeah comments so my so my boomerang came back yeah oh that's all him he's he's the purely gh one um he just he calls me many nicknames one of them professor i think because i'm a professor of ut um no he's the generally heroic one uh more so than me so your question being what how am i generally heroic or how do you respond to that can you take that compliment how does that land for you um well i've always i've enjoyed trying to entertain what the definition of a hero is all through through life i mean you know you've got the uh what's always been said as they talk about you know are men and women who go off to defend to defend the country or the true heroes and then you say there's heroes every day that that do good deeds i don't know if that's heroic um i'll say this on on on any kind of heroism whatever your definition is whatever anyone's definition is um when i got fame and success and started a uh um a foundation that we have it just keep living the map school foundation that's doing very well i didn't i chose to do that now whether that's heroic i don't think it's heroic but what i'm leaning into is this some people say it's a responsibility once you have success you it's your responsibility i don't think that's true i think it's a personal choice just it's like uh um you know every day the choices we make uh uh i think should be very selfish i don't think we make good choices for anybody unless it's personal so i don't i don't know about the heroic i wouldn't i would consider myself a a hero um i'm i've been fortunate to to and had an innate ability and work my backside off to be at least pretty damn good at some things still got some things in the debit section uh i will say this my favorite job in the world has been a father i don't know being a good father is a heroic job he's just being a good father so i don't know i don't know what to do with the hero comment coming back from right maybe it all depends on how you define it how broadly or how strictly i suppose but more a conversation around you know how to be a man of character i suppose man of character yeah we can talk about that until all all day long you know and even that is not a responsibility but a choice you know the only thing i ever knew i wanted to be was to be a father in my life and then i've also learned now that okay well just because you helped make a child doesn't mean you're you did the work of a father father's is fatherhood is a verb um as in life is a verb these character choices we make uh choices we make every day are our you know compounded assets for our future or not um i am i have been blessed with a long view of of life of realizing early on that in investments in ourselves today can tee up roi and our future can buy us green lights in our future the choices we make today are compounding assets of our future and can tie us up for success since the title of the book green lights i know i know for a fact we can engineer green lights in our life i also know for a fact that i've been damn fortunate had some just on my lap but choices of character are long-term choices that deal with delayed gratification yeah i remember something that dan told me a while back which was when he was when he was early in his career and thinking about what he wanted to do and who he wanted to be he was spending time working for george plimpton at the paris review and he would go to these fancy you know upper east side uh parties with all these mucky mucks and george although he was respected wasn't necessarily a man of means but he had made this decision to live this life of adventure and when they would go to these parties all these people would gravitate around george because he was the one with the stories and that's what made dan inspired to live the kind of amazing life of adventure that that he's lived and i see a lot of that in you i mean we're going to talk about the book but these pivots that you've made the wanderlust that kind of infuses your life and these moments where you know by dint of a wet dream or some kind of epiphany that you would have or being stuck you would always know this is the time where i need to kind of um do my walk about so i'm interested in how that kind of plays into the fabric of of your life and how you prioritize it well look i think you know those hints angels of truth are around us all the time it's just we don't always notice them you know they're there but we don't notice them and it's understandable but a high frequency life man a lot of noise coming in on all of us so i have learned early on to listen to that spider sense in me that says you need to go get away mcconaughey you need to go spend some time with yourself open up the autobahn between your head and your heart because right now it's a bit of a one-way gravel you know dirt road for you and you know your heart your heart and your mind aren't really uh in sync as much in sync as they should be and then questioning what matters i've always questioned since i was 14 one of the things with writing the book my diary entries when i was 14 were about this similar or about similar topics that i'm still interested in today at 50. i've had a pretty good threshold for when i do get that spider sense to say oh you need to get out of here mcconaughey you need to leave what you're in so you can get outside and have a clear view you need to leave where you are right now and find out what what do i find out when i go away uh memory catches up oh demarcations between events that maybe i was handling and i'm good at handling events uh just being being in the middle of it going press you know let's do this pile it on me i'll be a horse i'll get through it but i didn't notice what had happened to me like for instance when i got famous i didn't notice what that was until i got the hell out of dodge and went on a 22 day walk about with myself in peru then i was like oh that's what happened oh that's what that event or circumstance or run in with that person was about because they were all on top of each other at the time i wasn't able to separate things that were going on too much frequency um so i have gone away many times on my own i've learned to enjoy the solitude not necessarily enjoying my company in the solitude which usually the first 12 days i do not enjoy my company i'm shaking demons off my back feeling regret lost confused trying to figure stuff out and usually around day 12 or day 13 i'll have a breakthrough um and it's usually it's that breakthrough where all right come on hey since you're the only guy i'm stuck with and i can't get rid of which is each of us for ourselves what are we going to forgive and what are we going to say i'm not not putting up with anymore figure those two out shake hands with myself and wake up the next morning and then those trips are wonderful then i'm present then i'm singing a song then wisdom's landing on me then i'm hearing those angels and those butterflies of truth that land and you go bam this is on me i'm hearing it now how do i personalize it this truth and ask myself and answer the question why it's coming to me how do i preserve it have the patience to preserve it and then when i leave those trips the big fun challenge is how do i take that truth the solitary truth back into the masses back into the stadium of life and ride that bull that rodeo of life and remember trust that this truth that crossed me that found me while i was in solitude is true now then and forever wherever i am right that's the hard part it's it it strikes me as almost this uh impulse for self-preservation or self-defense like there's it takes a certain level of awareness as an individual to recognize those moments even if they're visited upon all of us and you're somebody you know the fact that you've been journaling consistently from you know way back from an early age tells me that you're an introspective person by nature i'm not sure where that came from maybe you have an answer to that but then you go on these adventures that are about self-defense self-preservation reinvention reflection and then the trick the hard part is bringing it back and not letting it evaporate but but taking you know having being able to distill whatever wisdom comes to you about the experience itself but more importantly what you learn about your own self and then trying to exude that to imbue it and live your life in accordance in accordance yes and again you're right that the initial reaction to leave and go into solitude is a defense mechanism is a survival mechanism is a whoa whoa whoa i'm i'm not feeling grounded here uh mentally spiritually uh so i need to i don't know what the answer is but i just know i got to get out of here where i can hear myself think i know i got to get out of here where i can be in a place where i can receive some of the truth um then yeah that fun challenge of bringing it back and yes not let it be stripped away which it eventually does and it gets tripped away but even better sometimes bring it back and play offense with it like go i'm not just coming back going like can i hold on to it i want to put it into action uh i want i want to you know it's why i'm such a slow reader if i read you know one of my favorite writings is emerson's essay on self-reliant well i mean that take that that that essay which is about 20 pages long took me two years to read because it's good though the first paragraph i'm like whoa i got to take that and see if i can apply that in life and see what the reverb of life is back to me if i'm looking through that lens which takes me a couple of months before i can come back and read the next paragraph that's the fun stuff i like to read or the fun things that wisdom will come to me in solitude that i want to take back into society and you're right it strips away you look up and you go oh i'm falling back into some old habits i forgot that i gotta go calibrate i gotta go back to school i gotta go break a sweat i need to go away again i need to go revisit my diary and look at what i was doing when i was satisfied when i was successful when i was happy with myself my relationships were good when i did have that autobond between the mind and the heart and because i'm in a rut again so i need to go back and i found clues in my diaries of when i was happy as to what i was doing oh who was i hanging out with what was i drinking where was i going how much sleep was i getting oh i see now in my life i'm in this bit of a rut i'm complacent with some of those things i'm doing some things that are that are not feeding myself and so i need to go back so some of those diaries have been good little maps for me to go back and dissect when i felt successful and happy rather than just go dissect failures which is more of our our habits i think do you find it more difficult to pull the trigger or pull the rip cord and and and you know split when things are going well or when things are challenging like as you progress through life and you have more responsibilities and more abundance in your life it's gotta be harder to say i'm gonna i'm gonna walk away from this and go try something else it's different when you're all of whatever you were 23 24 and you were living in an airstream yeah and having three children and a general life family makes that a little harder too um but yeah more difficult when things are going well because i don't know about you but me when things are going well i inevitably feel like oh well this is the mean this is how it's supposed to be this is how it is i've got it figured out this way there's no reason for it ever to dip below this which of course it always does um and then i gotta go off again but i have uh you know part of the inspiration for going away to go write this book was a bit was was that i needed a trip away and not only my wife knew i needed it yeah she gave me a kick in the backside and she'll come to me and tell me you need to get out of here for a while go off you know go off don't come and then i'll call you know and she'll like don't even call of course what's that mean of course i'm calling now right much quicker than if she said make sure you call because i don't like to be told what to do um but i'll go away and like with this she goes don't come back to you got something however long that takes we're good i got the kiddos here go it was a gift she gave me um i was able to go away on these walkabouts without having to look over my shoulder and go ugh am i building a debit right now because when i go back am i going to have to do a whole lot of extra work to catch back up for what i miss she's never been uh someone who made me feel like okay well now you've been away now you need to double up on all your duties it was always like she pushes me out the door and she did with this book that's uh that's amazing you definitely married the right one for that yeah well the this as the story goes and i don't know how much of this is apocryphal versus true you you took off with your journals you went to the desert for something like 52 days i read somewhere that that uh you did it without electricity but then in the book you at the end of the book you kind of you were in a a couple different places right like i'm envisioning you with a typewriter like if you don't have electricity how are you writing this book well i started off with that election the first 12 days with that electricity um and i took a generator so i could plug in my laptop um and that was just you know i wanted to go someplace where i didn't email i shut down my account i want to go somewhere with no phone signal to where only you know 6 p.m each night there's a certain hill about a half a mile away that i would hike to the top and make the call to check on the family and that was it other than that no incoming calls no incoming emails no outgoing i needed to be stripped out of the necessities to go say how can i best go off solitude with me and me of my last 50 years um without any outside invitations and so that was the first 12 days and i must say i went into it it was intimidating number one to go i thought looking back at 50 years of my life i was going to be embarrassed i thought there were things i knew there were things i'm going to be ashamed about there were places i was going to go you arrogant little prick what were you thinking um and what happened is most of the things that i thought i would be embarrassed about i ended up laughing at most of the things i thought i'd be ashamed about i'd ended up forgiving myself or or noticed i already had forgiven myself for and the parts where i was arrogant i laughed at but was also like well good on you for thinking you knew it all at that point because following those points in my diaries where i would be so self-confident and all-knowing i always very soon stepped in [ __ ] in my life going based off like i am i i absolutely know it and i was happy that at least i had the confidence to think i had it all figured out and then as life dealt me cards found out i didn't um i went away thinking that these diaries are going to be much more academic and i remember the first four days sort of trying to force it into an academia mind and all of a sudden i stopped and i remember i stopped when i said look all right you haven't even looked at these things just read each page and see what it is see what it lends itself to be and let's just stack up see if some categories show up and what happened after about 10 days was i had these seven stacks it was a stack full of stories it was a stack full of people stacked full of places a stack full of prescribes a stack full of poems prayers and a whole bunch of bumper stickers so those were my categories and then i said okay we have some semblance here some structure of something now what is all this and that was actually that what i just ripped off was my original title hmm stories people places prescribes points prayers and a whole bunch of bumper stickers not a bad title but i then said now let's read through all these and see if something another central theme or column reveals itself and that's where the title green lights came from um i noticed uh that there were successes in my life that engineered i noticed there were successes that i got just playing good fortune and landed in my lap i noticed that in certain ways red and yellow lights in my life crisis and hardships i immediately i believed while i was in them that there was a lesson to be learned in a green light asset within them not knowing when i would it would be revealed to me but trusting just to stick with it stick with the hardship endure it and there's a le there's a there's a green light in it i noticed that some things that i thought like my father passing how could that be a green light that's an absolute red light well i keep reading my diaries ten years later i'm understanding how the values and incentive that he taught me i wouldn't have enacted them in my own life if he'd have still been alive because i would have relied on him being there to have my back so his passing away actually gave me a kick in the backside to look the world in the eye and have more courage to go chase down who i want to be and be myself so some of the some of the hardships that i had revealed green light some of the hardships of that i suppose have not revealed their green lights yet and may not reveal themselves and they may only reveal themselves to my great grandkids i don't know but eventually the theme of the book is that all the red and yellows do eventually turn green and i believe that yeah so the narrative always comes back to this idea of green lights and i mean first of all i should say like i i finished the book this morning i i loved it to echo what our other mutual friend ryan holiday said i think he said something like i knew it was going to be a good book i didn't know it was going to be this good like you did an amazing job with this book it has this really um you know very mcconaughey-esque touch to it like it's it's your book through and through but it also reminded me of kind of the beat poets it has that type of aesthetic and it's this kind of patchwork of you know stories from your life in a relatively traditional kind of memoir narrative but interspersed with your poetry and always with these kind of life lessons and takeaways that are just unbelievably wise and i would look at these and i would i would wonder like how old was he when he wrote this stuff i mean when you went back and looked at your journals were you surprised at the wisdom of some of the things that you said when you were younger was there anything that stuck out that you didn't expect um obviously the earlier diary entries were whys why what where when hows it was the questions there was a question mark after everything so i was always seeking the questions as i evolved and got older i started to answer some of those questions and could sum them up in a wisdom bomb or an aphorism or a bumper sticker right but it didn't lead to any fewer questions my questions evolved i think but as i said earlier what i was looking what i was at the questions i was asking at 14 about existence and who am i and what's what matters and what's life about how the world works who am i in this world i still question those but to interrupt you quickly there it is unusual for a 14 year old to be asking those kinds of questions so i'm curious like where do you think that comes from in you i don't know you know i don't know how to answer that because we weren't raised as a very introspective family we always have our prayer and gratitude as a family we were raised as consistent extroverts i mean like i wasn't allowed to watch tv or read because my mom would say why read about or watch somebody do something that you can go do yourself get outside uh-huh as always go go to do it go experience it so you know i don't know where my my family my mom wasn't really a writer my dad wasn't um i mean i was always though early on the inquisitor of the family the interrogator the one who wasn't satisfied with mom and dad just going because we said so i'll go well let's get underneath this that's why i was going to be a lawyer i was they were like dude you matthew the youngest one you debate things and question things to the nth degree and it's exhausting at times so i was always sort of wanting to get to the underbelly of the meaning of things um at a very early age i don't know where that came from but that's just kind of i think always been who i am um yeah in reading about growing up with your dad i mean i i just i was thinking most people who have had an experience like that would be you know doing a lot of therapy and harboring a lot of resentments but you really have a lot of peace around it and a lot of love a lot of honor a lot of love that's the word you know i i um if you look at the stories and i open up with a wild story about a monumental fight that my mom and dad had which got bloody but ended up with him making love on the floor uh-huh i always when people ask me about the love of my family or the love that i have my parents had for me and that my mom and dad had for each other i always have told these stories of discipline that also that involves some form of violence or corporal punishment and i'm on this book tour i've been wondering why because when i tell you this story you see me light up and people go like on paper i've got my hand over my mouth going oh my gosh call child protection services and yes matthew mccain you must have been in therapy since then to deal with this trauma and i'm like no so when i tell the story though people get very you see the humanity and the love that i have for them and i think the reason i tell those stories is because they were the biggest test to defeat the bubble of love that we were surrounded with but they never had a chance of beating it and so i tell those stories because there's like a lightning rod of like oh this is trauma oh this is violent oh this is a problem oh this is where it all falls apart but it actually never had a chance i mean my mom and dad divorced twice married three times the two divorces are that lightning rod trying to puncture that bubble of love ended in three marriages got married more than they got us getting punished i earned every time everything i got punished for and i look back and i go well you got your first butt whooping for not answering to your name you're second for saying i can't you're third for saying i hate you to your brother and your fourth for lying well i'm gonna go back and do the math that's four pretty doggone good reasons to get your butt whooped always answered to your name know you're having trouble doing something instead of that you can't do it don't hate and don't lie i mean like there were values instilled in those and every time i did it i remember not the butt whooping but the value that i don't say that word c-a-n-t you know i don't i don't hate um i do go no it's not matt's matthew you know i do my best to tell the truth and not lie you know so those are good those were good lessons that were ingrained in us and i think that's why i tell those as love stories even though like i say on paper you agree or disagree with the form of punishment that's what was being instilled in me and that's what i took from it even then you know when my mom taught me to swim and threw me in the river and here we come on a waterfall that if i go off that i'm not gonna die but i'm gonna i'm gonna break a bone or two and she walks along the bank with her arms crossed going swim swim swim when i finally put my head down and saw that waterfall coming and swam to the bank i was scared but i wasn't mad i was immediately proud and and like you know in shock but was immediately proud because i was like mama's right she was right it was time for me to swim yeah there's there's so many lessons in that it's an extreme example of something that i think has been eroded in our culture in this time of you know participation trophies where you know we're coddling our kids to such an extent that we're depriving them of you know some of those rough and tumble moments where they get their knees skinned so that they can learn these lessons you know i don't know about the extreme of your your examples but at least letting kids fail and fall and get into trouble and figure out you know where their compass lies let them go negotiate i mean i agree with you i think in some in some ways we we can and do deprive our children of understanding how to go negotiate a situation i i've been looking at like this it's like a tree limb a child's not afraid of heights until they fall well before they've fallen it's like all right see them on that tree and you go they fell from there i mean it's gonna hurt but i'm not gonna you know have to go to the hospital i think i'll let them keep climbing there you know let them go negotiate that and maybe they make it or maybe they fall well then it gets up higher and they're certainly going man if they fell from there this could be really really painful i think now's the time to go hey hey come on down a little bit you know what i mean it's like what level limb do we let them go out and then we should i think a lot of society raise the level of that limb a little bit to let our kids go yeah you're going to get bumped and bruised there buddy you're going to skin the knees go ahead and wear those knees out in your jeans and or fall from that limb and go yep you see that happens yeah if you don't pay attention so i yeah i would say i'm not you know i don't think we should say the the level of the the height of the limb that my parents sort of let us walk out on needs to be the mean for everybody but there was great value in those in those lessons and we never were abused we never were injured it hurt blood was drawn but we were never injured there's a difference between hurt and injury and we were never you know so and we were never abused and again the love was never in question and being reared in the kind of shadow of this outlaw logic there was a fair amount of acting out on your part but it was kind of healthy teenager stuff like you weren't taking it too you know to such an extent that you were getting into big time trouble no i number one i was pretty good with getting away with stuff because i had two older brothers who as they say paved a wide highway for me um and you know my brothers would jack with me because they were like you little mama's boy the golden boy and i remind them well i got away with stuff better than y'all did too because i learned that at the same time i was you know a bit of a hell raiser but it was all sort of good what it wasn't it wasn't too gnarly of stuff i mean i you know i never really got into drugs i didn't harm other people i got away with some things that you know wouldn't be prescriptive for everyone to get away with but i also say this and someone asked me the other day do you believe uh you know you were you were raised as i see in the book matthew with a certain amount of fear of your father and mother you still believe in the value of that and my answer is yeah so how do you translate that as a parent to three kids now yeah well differently than my mom and dad did yeah i would think so i don't choose to and i'm not judging how they did it um again yeah i write about this in the book my parents also their reasoning trust me i went to them before and said would you please ground me and they were like no i go why and i go because that would be taking your time away from you and your time is valuable now bend over we're going to get this over with and then it's over glad that happened that way that's not how i choose to raise my children right now um i'm trying to camilla aren't trying to teach our kids values we do talk we do not say because i said so as much as my parents did or most of our parents probably did we do try to explain things we try to uh um you know we had an instance the other night you know the youngest one was was was getting sleepy and popped off and and you know disrespected his mother just by like walking away from the middle thing like now look i'm tired camille's tired it's a late night we've been out all day with the kids what do you want to do you kind of want to let it slide and just go to bed and let them go to sleep no no we're building a debit we've got to gather up the energy and sit down with our son and go do you understand why that's not allowable this is your mother all right she works her butt off we work our butt off to give you a house to give you a meal to raise you and nudge you to be the young man that you can be and you have to have respect and what you just did was disrespectful and if you're disrespecting her you're disrespecting yourself and you do not have the right to talk to your mother like that it's a hell of a lot easier for your mom and i to let it slide and just let you go to bed with that punk move you just pulled but we're going to stay up and we're going to handle this right now until you understand why that's disrespectful why it's mean and why it's ugly and why you're out of line and why if you continue to do that the days will just not be as fun for you um and it took a while it was a very stubborn son that i was talking to went on for over an hour and a half and finally he understood it and the fact that we gave that amount of time to say no you're not going to bed yet no we're not going to bed until you get it i mean yeah just sitting there spending the time and your child going like geez mom and dad are still here an hour and a half later and they're not letting me off the hook okay i get it so and then you know the challenge becomes how do you have them how can they remember that so they don't become repeat offenders so quick you know right after yeah he'll remember that and i think you know what you said earlier about asking your mom to please ground you like the child wants those boundaries and they know that you're coming to them from a place of love even if it's hard and concerning well on the fear thing again i know that there's a lot of things i was faced with temptation to a lot of things grow up growing up that i knew i shouldn't do that i did not do for fear of the consequences so fear definitely kept me from doing things because i'm like i measured it wait a minute if we go egg that car and do that and man and pop find out about that oh my gosh that's going to be hell okay no risk reward i'm out you know there's just certain things that said it's not it's not worth it and i had certain friends that didn't have the consequences to deal with that i would have had to deal with that did go do it and got away with all kinds of stuff and some of them didn't ever really uh uh some of them turned out to be you know uh crappy dudes but there was also like you're it was almost like your dad wanted you to do some of these things as long as you told him the truth it wasn't the offense that offended him it was you lying about it like as long as you were honest with him and you got away with it it was almost an attaboy from him in a way and that was part of the initiation of mandate he wouldn't let us know that what you just said but that is what he was looking for so there's a story in there about me stealing a pizza one night with but with the buddy of mine bud junker and the i got home my dad's on the phone with mr felker the father of the guy that i was out with and we stole the pizza walked out on the pizza from pizza hut and you know you get older you come home and you've stolen a pizza and your dad goes did you pay for that pizza you should know right now that he knows you didn't i mean but of course at that age i'm like well no i mean i think so dad i mean we we well the girl had recognized bud called his dad and said hey it was my table they walked out on the pizza and my dad was just looking for me to go yeah we stole the pizza and he'd have gone gosh damn me son i've stolen a lot of pizzas in my life listen next time get away with it better but thank you for telling me what you did now gosh damn it get your ass in bed right watch it well i didn't i groveled i defended myself i tried to weasel my way out of it he gave me three four chances to tell him yes and i dug myself such a hole that i'm shivering there with the damn p spot in my genes and fright not from him but at my own cowardice right and i remember i finally asked gave me one last chance just tell me did you know you were going to steal that pizza and i went with no sir and he basically backhanded me and i crumbled to the floor in the corner not from the backhand but because my lactic acid coward hypocritical legs were numb under me from being such a weasel and not being able to just admit yes i did and that's what broke his heart and i was scared because i saw i was breaking my dad's heart right in front of me because all he wanted me to do is what you said just tell me son just tell me the truth don't lie to me about stealing a damn pizza man it's not about to steal the pizza it's about owning up to what you did and telling your father the truth and that i remember the tears on my face were seeing my dad heartbroken and heartbroken and knowing that i let him down well it's just one of many rites of passage that he puts you through and the book is you know makes it very clear how important these rites of passage are in your you know evolution as a human being so much so that it seems to me that these um walkabout adventures that you go on later are your way of creating additional rites of passage when you know we live in a culture where we're bereft of those like most people don't grow up with any kind of meaningful rights of passage and that's something that we're hardwired to need we have to test ourselves or we need to be tested by somebody else and if we're not getting that we have to put ourselves in that position yes need resistance to find structure to create form and you know for me later in life i get successful i'm famous you know too many options could make a tyrant of any of us and when the world's saying yes well that's where the devil lives and all the yes is not the nose and i needed to go wait a minute is this what really matters i have that line in the book but when you can ask yourself if you want to before you do well when you're getting all these things for the first time in your life and everything the world's a big green light and everything's yes i wanted to go away and see wait a minute are these green lights that are plugged into a battery or are they eternal you know solar powered green lights well i'm getting a lot of them that i was like oh these are all kind of plugged into a battery they're they're impermanent they're just kind of for now they're they're they're kind of a fad they're not really think they're stops not stays and so i need to go away create that resistance put myself into discomfort go without things sort of fast um from not just food or drink but fast from attention fast from fame fast from uh all the yeses that are coming to to me in the world and get some discernment again as i said earlier let my memory catch up who the heck am i what really matters what i give at them about what was that moment is that a real moment or was that just part of the was i just part of the machine you know and so to disseminate and have and and discriminate make some choices for myself again that's why i needed those walkabouts and still do right i mean when you're you talk about you're kind of hitting your stride you're making bank you're in all these movies you move into the chateau you're wearing leather pants you're hitting the clock it's all it's all happening i mean most people would just ride that out and just more more and more when am i going to get the house up in the hills and just continue to double down for as long as you know the industry would allow them to do so until you're 27 years old that seems to be the going age of all the uh the great rock and rollers they make it to 27 and then they go yeah and they all all at the chateau too [Laughter] god bless the chateau boy they they promote a little bit of mischief thank goodness and i gave myself some license there i said you know what i'm going to test this out i'm going to test out my threshold of hedonism i'm going to i don't want to be harmful i don't want to be mean i don't i don't want to be you know mean anyone else or myself at the same time i'm gonna give myself a saturday night pov for for some time and i did it for a couple of years um and then i just noticed that okay this feels revolutionary not evolutionary this feels like a stop not a stay this indulgence an option to indulge is not i'm not really feeling an ascension in my life i'm cool with where it is i'm not griping about it i'm enjoying it and i'd be silly if i didn't but i'm not really feeling a build an ascension in my life and i want to feel build um so i decided to get out of there and go away so i knew at that time it was that that was a stop and not a stay i also you know during that time at the end of that time really started to question my belief in in god and stuff and so i remember saying you know okay you're a believer but why and is your belief is your sense of belief matthew your fatalistic sense of belief that it's all fake is it is is that it you using that as an excuse almost in ways in your life to let yourself off the hook and i remember going well let's just put two hands on the wheel of self-determination here and let's be our own judge and jury matthew and let's call it out and not rely on hey you know you know what if you know it's all been written and so i went through a very i would call it an agnostic time and as i said in the book it wasn't as much of a time where i disbelieve god it was a time where i said you need to hold yourself more accountable matt you need to have both hands on your wheel where you're going because you're letting yourself slide on just about a lot of stuff and i want to go test that out i want to hold you i want to hold you more accountable matthew so i want to hold myself more accountable and um went through a couple of years of that it was a very good exercise and my relationship with god i believe my belief is that god was smiling and going yeah good honor way to grab a hold of the wheel because i didn't because yeah you do have free will and and and i don't i and it didn't make me think that anything's going to change after this life but it did make me say hey while i'm in it remember that i've got freedom of choice and hold myself more responsible for my choices well let's let's dig a little bit deeper into the the faith conversation um because i think that that that green lights really is a spiritual book i mean just on the subject of green lights itself there's this idea that you can catch them by virtue of skill intent endurance resilience discipline hard work all of these things but the flip side of that coin is this idea that you talked about earlier like engineering them and that's about frequency that's about intuition fate like you just said it's about finding your way into the zone and it's about how you comport yourself in the world so you become a magnet for good things as opposed to somebody who's chasing them yeah um look i say in there in the book i'm pretty sure the world can at times i'm pretty sure the world's conspiring to make me happy uh and then what i mean by that is someone asked me this the other day what do you what do you your measures of trust where they come from and how do you and how do you have that with people here in my answer which i never answered before until i was asked that was i come into this conversation just meeting you and you have 100 of my trust until you disprove me until you give me reason to distrust i give everybody i have a utmost respect and reverence for for people and believe in the goodness of people and that no one's out to try and harm me now i'm not foolish my eyes are open i could listen to your questions and maybe i hear you going oh i think rich is trying to weasel in here and trying to do something that's not really true but until then i'm going no 100 100 trust until you prove me other until you prove it otherwise um i have learned and do believe in this relationship responsibility and freedom the responsibility of freedom and the freedom and responsibility of the choices we make today that compound assets in our future they you can t yourself up for more green lights with the choices we make today meaning if i don't like cheat and steel if i choose not to now i think it's a very selfish act not to like cheating still and someone will go wait a minute it's a selfish act too like cheating still because you get what you want right now yeah is that really selfish though i don't think so because if you do that for the rest of your life everywhere you go you got to look over your shoulder to make sure no one's there in the room that you like cheating stole from so when you're looking over your shoulder you're not spending your time you're spending their time and you're not present so you're stressed so you really didn't you really wasn't a selfish act you bought debits and yellow lights in your future not the freedom of green lights i'm trying to live a life where i don't leave crumbs and don't have to look over my shoulder i don't owe anybody money you know i don't want to i've i haven't been perfect but for what i've screwed up on hopefully i've gone apologize i made amends and probably still have more to make that i don't know but i'm trying to make choices where each i'm teeing myself up for tomorrow morning at the very basic level here's here's a basic green light put coffee in your coffee filter the night before so when you get up the neck tomorrow morning groggy all you gotta do is push the damn button because it's hard to make a coffee when you hadn't had your coffee sometimes and when you don't put the coffee in the filter you get up the next one like why didn't i team myself up for this why wouldn't i kind of my future self here well there's choices we make every day to be kind and cool to our future selves and the honey hole of those choices i think which is what i'm chasing is where are the where can we make the choices where what we want is actually what we need and what we need is actually what we want that seems to be the honey hole of heaven on earth right there where what's good for us selfishly is also what's good for the most amount of people that's that's where it's really that's the ultimate spot i believe right that i haven't got to but i'm still chasing it's not dissimilar from 12 steps i'm i'm in recovery for a long time and and so much of the steps are about like putting through putting a person through a program that allows them to you know make amends for their past behavior redress their character defects so that you can emerge and navigate the world looking people in the eye telling the truth not being afraid of what's you know your wife's gonna find in your jeans pockets when she's doing the laundry or you know just being able to like live um congruent like where your actions are in alignment with your values and you don't have to look over you know your shoulder or worry about like when that lie is going to catch up to you yeah i've heard that i've never never been in or don't really know the 12 steps i've known some people that are in them and really enjoy the conversations where we found a synonymous sort of approach and view on things um look man i it's hard to remember a lie it is it is it's work man and it's not fun work to try and make up and go to every situation going oh wait a minute who all's involved is there anyone screwed over here what's the situation jeez oh man it's stressful yeah and and me i'm a fan of stress and people that go no stress i'm like what are you talking about you're alive it's a toxic stress that you carry yeah it's not the right kind life's hard enough with that creating extra work for ourselves that's not constructive if we're just running around trying to play defense to cover up our past mistakes we're busting our ass dealing with stuff then something that's not constructive or affirmatively moving forward we're going to run into enough hill uphill battles without having to deal with you know sins of our past or or things or contracts we broke in our past man try not to gather up too many of them and you've got more energy to handle the ones that you the the real battles that are in front of us anyway yeah yeah uh the other idea that you keep circling back to in the book is this idea of relativity and i'm not sure i totally grasp where you're coming from with that but it keeps it keeps coming up in bold typeface throughout the book yes so the tool theory that's come to me is this when faced with the inevitable get relative now when do we deem a situation inevitable that's already a relative question let's take covid right now inevitable it's here don't deny it don't sit here every day getting all excited about maybe tomorrow it's gone because it won't be gone tomorrow so how do i get relative with this okay well for me instant for instance uh um you know you can persist through a situation you can pivot or you can raise the white flag and say i give to fight another day well we're in covet so let's not raise the flag and say we're going to fight another day because we're all in it now can i persist through this doing living and expecting everything that i was before covered yeah i could do that but i don't see the the the net gain in that because i think it's going to be around here for a while so i got to pivot all right so what i mean by pivot get relative with this situation the inevitable code with that rent all right i'm forced to be at home more i'm quarantining don't like that i don't like that but all right let me start look at the upside here uh i'm doing some more inventory on myself i'm spending more time with my kids i'm cooking more with my family in the kitchen i got my mom with us so the kids are around their grandmother more than they ever were and she's 88 so that's a good thing um maybe spend some more time writing right now um i'm starting to try to find the assets the green lights in this red light that written that's how i'm choosing to get relative with it that's a choice that we can make with every situation once we deem it inevitable now if we endure if you if you if you deem an outcome of something you want if you say well it's an it's inevitable like i i i can't get it if you say that too soon we're a quitter but if you say it too late we're acting out the definition of insanity trying to bang our head on while trying to get a different outcome by doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over so we have to measure those things for ourselves when do we deem a situation level an outcome inevitable for us or or by getting it or not getting it and then how do we get relative with it sometimes i need to back off being so persistent resilient and say i have to reapproach this the way i'm looking at this i got to dance up in a different step i got to throw myself off balance and reapproach this circumstance in my life this question this crossroads um there's that's a that's an art there that we're all trying to i think work out is when to deem something inevitable and then once we do how do we get relative with it um is that a little confusing no i got it i mean it reminds me of of the serenity prayer which is sort of very much you know god grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change the courage to change the things i can and the wisdom to know the difference like it kind of boils down to that but i'm wondering like does this come is this a muscle that you've flexed for so long that it comes naturally to you or is there like a daily practice is gratitude a reflex or is that something that you have to cultivate for yourself good question um look i didn't come you know it was going back and looking at the 50 years of my life in the 36 years of diaries that revealed that understanding when faced with the inevitable get relative it wasn't something that i'd written down or thought over and opined over in the past and then tried to practice um look as far as gratitude i will you know i was raised on you know if you come into breakfast in a bad mood mom said get your ass back in your bedroom and don't come out here till you see the rose in the vase and said the dust on the table i was raised on oh you're griping about not having any shoes that right oh yeah you think you got it so bad well let me introduce you to the kid with no feet whoa [ __ ] okay uh talk about relativity um we were raised on being thankful that the sun came up another day and that better be enough for you to be happy today that better be enough for you to stand tall because that wasn't a guarantee so what are you going to do with it we were raised on drop down to rock bottom and be thankful for things that we take for granted every day so has that triggered me through life to maybe see and be have thanks for certain things that maybe i should just expect sure probably yeah um at the same time you know uh i've got a pretty i've had a pretty good threshold for taking the context of a situation pretty early in in circumstance and going all right what's my risk reward here how do i get what i want here and is what i want really what i need all right what's the long term long money roi on the choice i make here am i doing something uh being eccentric for eccentricity's sake oh yeah well there's nothing really constructive about that that's kind of not worth [ __ ] that's a fad uh that's not gonna last what's a lasting choice that i can make here that's going to be good for me and good for the whole situation uh that i could sleep well with it's not going to wake me up in the middle of the night going ah why'd you do that well i'm not going to wake up tomorrow morning and go regret it or think it was a one-off flash in the pan trying to make choices that are gonna have long money um ones that are gonna last one that are gonna gonna um feed my good wolf instead of my bad wolf you know what i mean um so a lot of it i think has been instinct and then i'm just now trying to put it into words into a theory that i can go oh remember that you can apply that is that situation inevitable when do you deem it such and how do you get relative with it so it was a way of just almost academically intellectualizing something that maybe has been an instinct for me that i noticed in looking at my diaries and how i got out of situations and turned some red lights into some green lights so it's not a function of every day i get up and at this time this is when i sit down and journal and i actively try to you know make a gratitude list or anything like that it's not it's it's a more ephemeral kind of thing no it's more of a i'm not a it's more of a uh um you know i like to say this way you know i've been working on this for about four years now no audition it's live you're in the movie it's all happening life is the movie you wake up it's all the record button is always on it's always on so when inspired do it we don't have to preparation preparation what well it's live go now do it quit talking about it i mean work it out a lot of times being live is preparing i'm a big preparer for roles and work and preparing for things but trying to look at is like i mean i've also had times my life where i sat there and prepared prepared prepare prepare prepared looked up and three years later i'm like you never got in the game you're still preparing dude what are you doing go go what are you so afraid of failing hop in the game of life you know or so so yeah it's more of a uh it's more of been an instinct that i'm just now sort of defining one of the things that you say in the book that that is really stuck with me i mean i highlighted a bunch of stuff but this is the one that really stood out to me the most is this idea of being less impressed and more involved yes i love that and it's so concisely put and it's profound because it applies to so many things like less impressed with yourself less impressed with other people not trying to chase other people's ideas of what you should could need to be trying to find your moral center and the way to the path to that is to immerse yourself to to give of yourself in service to others but to be involved in your community to you know engage with the world in you know a deeper way and engage with yourself in a deeper way i mean if i have a reverence for you rich right now oh my god [ __ ] i i got kind of dude do you know how long about want to talk to you man i just think you're like that you i'm fighting it right now dude i'm so happy to be talking to you and it's like i the people pleaser in me is what i'm trying to keep at bay so i can just be present and involved in this conversation well if you succumb to that and you were going to go people please you wouldn't be if you were overly impressed with me you wouldn't be involved in this conversation to the extent that you can be just like if i had that reference for you tuna that you were above mortality for me i couldn't actually be giving my true self to you in this conversation because i'm removed from it so if i have a reference i noticed it was soon after my father died when this came to me fame money people that i was like wow uh my dad's passing gave me the gift to go no all mortal things better look at them at eye level at the same time the underbelly of that is all the things you're patronizing mcconaughey and looking down on and condescending and sloughing off is not worthy rose up to eye level and the world was flat i could see wider further and more clearly and i stood up straighter i was a half inch taller and looked at me and go welcome to the rodeo buddy time to get get on the bull you know quit relying on dad to make sure he's got your back if you fall off that was part of being so it happens you know and so how do i do that how do we do that with full respect i have full respect for you you can have full respect for me but now we can still be involved in the conversation because if one person is on the pedestal above humanity and mortality you can't be involved with it and it's not even fair to that person it happens in relationships you'll see somebody in a relationship and i've been in them where a female thinks i'm superman and i think she's wonder woman well that relationship ain't gonna go too far right because we're both holding each other on an unlivable expectation of a pedestal neither one of us can live up to it and we're neither one of us are really involved with each other humanly because we have such reverence for the other projections um so i don't mean any lack of respect and i don't have less respect actually more respect but respect is a more mortal understanding to iraq you and i can engage but if i have too much of a reverence for you or anyone else i can't really be involved with them and they can't be involved with me mm-hmm so if the if the if the tables turn so that's what that lesson press more involved is um you know it's a bit of the you know the eye in the sky when you're in the when they're in the palm and the hand of god or the cradle of when you when you think you've got it uh all figured out go to that google map pov and look at this little bitty dot on this spinning planet called earth and this whole thousands of years that the tans of time move and you notice how meaningless you are and we look at it we go oh geez none of it matters which is a very liberating feeling oh good takes the pressure off geez none of it matters but at that same time what has happened to me is i've gone oh and that's exactly why it all matters oh here we go now we're on the bull now we're riding you know just when i saw how little i mattered is is usually when it's come to me how much it all matters well there's a humility in that right and i think humility is hard to come by for for everybody in certain times throughout their life but you know for somebody who kind of exists in the world at this strange uh you know level of stratosphere um how do you like the connection to that kind of humility so that you can be involved in the world i mean is that you always seem to carry yourself with that and you've never not had that and i have to imagine that part of that is because you've made this choice to you know be in the world in a certain way whether it's you know at the rv park or you know on the amazon or you know wrestling in africa with that like that keeps you grounded and level-headed about you know who you are and where you where you sit you know in the grand scheme of everything yeah well also some of those experiences i've had have been better than fiction for me you know what i mean some of those stories i'm like oh geez if hollywood wrote this no one would believe it you know so they were more extraordinary in ways to me at the time um you know humility that's a that's been a word that i've wrestled with all my life because for so long i had the wrong definition of it humility to be humbled humility we all say have humility but no one likes to be humiliated oh wait a minute what's the nexus of that word how can i be humble but still confident how can i be humble but still have identity it wasn't until a few years ago and i think this definition came i think it's jordan peterson um the definition of humility which i i do purchase which is it's admitting you have more learn um and that definition i lose no confidence or lose no identity in but i'm very quick to go yep i got more to learn now if i can call that humility and go into the world every day going i know i have more to learn i can move confidently with that humility and be humble but boy my early definitions of humility in my mind were almost arrogant false modesty oh no no no no that don't i don't know you know and i remember this i'm gonna tell you that this was a i've harked back to this moment in high school there's a girl renis sherman and i remember i showed up to school one day i was a junior and she was a friend she was a friend of mine we never dated she was just a friend she goes she's coming she goes you know what matthew mcconaughey you are a handsome man and i went oh come on no no renee's telling that and she grabbed my hand sternly and look at me and she goes don't you dare give me that i don't no no no no no she because you know what you need to do when someone gives you a compliment like that that's true i go what she goes say thank you and i remember going oh oh wow oh okay and it hit me but i didn't learn really how to live and understand humility it was always almost a regressive field it's like the word vulnerability i'm still wrestling with what that word means um and how to feel still feel empowered in that part of what i've come up with that that it helps me understand that my relationship with the word humility and vulnerability is that like i know i want to be in the know i love being in the know but i'm still learning to be in the know is also knowing what you don't know i want to know what i don't know so that's another version of understanding the definition of humility for me that it feels like it empowers me but still has me be humble well a close cousin of that those ideas humility vulnerability is is authenticity and you know your arc and your journey is very much one of you know trying to get closer to who the authentic matthew is at least that's what i got out of the book um and i think a really powerful kind of illustrious illustrative example of that is the macona sense itself can we talk about that a little bit sure because it's such an epic pivot you know which is another theme in your book um i don't know if this is a spoiler but you you uh admit in the book that you're the one who actually came up with that word yes which i would not have thought so that's that's being vulnerable to admit that you're the one who who who crafted that and then like that's the one piece of the book that my wife's telling yeah did you really need to put that in there i'm gonna sound so arrogant i was like no i thought it was great i'm like i'm admitting it you know i admitted it it was look i felt i was aware enough at the time that i've running a few uh on a run of a few films that were that had their you know relative hits and and made their mark and i was getting some you know adulation and people people in the interviews were going man you're really on a great run here really on a great and it came to me that this term like you're on this great run you're on the street running and i was in i think tell your ride or one of those film festivals and i said being a lover of bumper stickers and slogans i was like i gotta give this like an album i gotta give this like a title of an album here you know this sounds this little movement i'm on that people were saying i'm on so i was like mcconaughson's i said well i can't come forward and say yeah i call it the because but in this interview and i thought about it just at the moment the guy went on the interview was going yeah and you've been on this run whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa you've been i was like yeah i was talking to a reporter the other day and he actually called it a mcconnaissance and he goes a mcconaughey yeah he goes oh that's great i love it my connoisseurs you like that i'm like yeah i mean shoot he said it sounded like comes off the tongue pretty easy sounds pretty cool to say i'm with it well he wrote that and then it picked out people started calling it mcconaugh science and i just kind of went with it and so then in the book i decided to say you know what i'm the one who planted that seed i love that i think that's hilarious man but what's what's amazing about it everybody knows the story they know the movies you were doing and then the movies you ultimately ended up doing um but that period i what i didn't realize was how much intention and mindfulness went into making that pivot that it wasn't um first of all it went on longer than i thought and then also that it was very much planned like if i can't do things that interest me that intrigue me as an artist and as a human being like i'm gonna i'm gonna opt out purposefully and be willing to suffer the consequences of not making any income and having your wife you know by your side for that period of time now you know you had it's not like you couldn't put food on the table but still it's scary you know in hollywood to suddenly say i'm not going to do that are you going to be obsolete will you ever work again and you went through you know a really extended period of time where it wasn't clear that you were ever gonna make your way back no it wasn't and i didn't know how long the sort of sabbatical drought would go on and i shed many a tear on my wife's shoulder uh one with what i what i was getting from my career what i wasn't getting for my career um i was rolling with rom-coms at the time i was rom-com mcconaughey shirtless on the beach and i looked that in the eye and still do and go you damn right i was and those rom-coms paid rent for those houses that i had on the beach where i went shirts guilty fact i remember seeing you on the beach one time in mount i think you were renting a house with lance for a period of time yeah yeah i remember that i was running down the beach and i saw you guys out there yes indeed um so but i looked at my life and i remember i just had a newborn camilla and i just had levi and so the one thing i knew i always wanted to be is a father now come true and my life was full man my life was so vital i would had had i had more rage i had more joy i had more happiness i laughed louder i cried harder it was just my life the ceiling in the basement of my emotions were full in my life but my work was like uh another rom-com i love doing these but oh there's a new script i think i could do that tomorrow morning i think i could wake up and do that and i was like well that's not bad but geez i want i sure would like to do some work that scares me in the right way that makes me go i'm not sure what i'm going to do with this role but this is going to be an experience and i wasn't getting those roles so yes i couldn't the roles i wanted to do were not being offered so because i couldn't do what i wanted to do i stopped doing what i was doing and i remember i called my money mentor how to do with my money you've invested well okay good because i'm about to take off work and i don't know when i'll get work again call my agent i talked to camilla about it and she said she repeated my dad's words to me you know okay if we're gonna do this don't half-ass it we're gonna you're gonna do it so i said no more homecomings well nothing came in nothing was offered except rom-coms for the first six months after that and i have that you know how puritanical was i i had that great little story about getting an 8 million offer for a rom-com and reading it and going it's a good script but no thank you then they came back and offered me 10 million dollars i said no thank you then they offered 12.5 million dollars and i said ellipsis ellipsis ellipsis no thank you then they came back at 14.5 you know what i said let me read that script again i mean i read that again and you know what it was better written than the original one that a million dollar offer it was had more angles i saw more opportunities i saw more ways i could make it work it mind you it was the exact same words as the original script but that offer it was a better written script but i said no and then that sort of seemed to get the signal across hollywood he's not bluffing he's really not doing any rom-coms or action comedies right now so what came in for the next year nothing nothing i mean i checked in with my agent every couple weeks but it was basically like nothing your persona not persona non grata nothing's coming in for you now we're 20 min 20 months into the sabbatical i'm in texas you haven't seen me in a rom-com you haven't seen me share this on the beach everything that you expected to see me in that i would sort of pigeonholed me into only being that and not considered for other roles 20 months into that all of a sudden what i think happened is some producers and directors in hollywood went you know be an interesting to cast for this role in killer joe paperboy mud magic mike true detective dallas buyers club you know would be an interesting choice a novel choice mcconaughey but i would not have been a novel choice for those things 20 months earlier right so the way i look at it is that was an unbranding time for me again back to process of elimination i couldn't do what i wanted to do so i just said i had to eliminate what i didn't want to do anymore and i unbranded for 20 months no one knew where i was and i wasn't also i also was not in your household or on your tv screen in your theater being what you had expected me to be and so all of a sudden i became a new good idea right and um that was a yeah that was a sacrifice and i didn't know when that damn thing was going to end or if it was and i entertained different career paths i entertained getting out of the entertainment industry all together i thought i might go be a fourth grade teacher i thought i might be a a high school football coach uh wow you did seriously you really d that's that's hard to believe you really were doing that yeah wow i i thought i might get back into law um i i considered you know being an orchestral conductor um well there's a couple lessons in that i mean one is uh back to this idea of of magnetizing the green light like ultimately and and the second being you know saying no in order to get the yes right like you had to do there was this palette cleanser that hollywood had to endure to get to the point where suddenly you were a good idea when you weren't before and that required you to say no i mean i don't know how many people you know have the gumption to say no to 15 million dollars to do a movie for a couple months ultimately it pays off and it shows the power of that but it takes a lot of fortitude and conviction to commit to something like that and faith and belief to foresee that at some point it's going to pay off yeah well you look at the australian story when i was an exchange student for a year uh i couldn't even believe that story it's all true have you have you gotten back in touch with that family yeah every time i do australian press they usually show up on screen my god and you know that year you know before i went on that year the rotary club who sponsored me wanted me to sign the contract to say i won't come home until the full year's done and i said no what do you want me to sign that for i'm going for a year and they go no that's what everybody says but you're going to get homesick you want to want to come home and i said no you know what i'll shake your hand on it but i'm not signing that thing well they agreed on a handshake and i agreed on a handshake well trust me you read that year there are many times i had full good reason to get the hell out of dodge and come back home but i was like no man i'm in this i've got to finish it out there's something in this for me there's a green light in this hardship experience that i'm going through this insanity i'm going through there's a reason for it so stick with it don't pull the parachute well same thing with uh um you know this the sabbatical of of not working once i was in it i was like i'm not going i'm not i'm in i almost gained more confidence as i went going no this is getting gnarlier but every day you're not getting it's getting oh you're in it now mcconaughey this is this is this is upside down and backwards stick with it there's really something good going to come at us so when those jobs did come that i wanted to do i was ferocious on those things i i mean i my fangs were long and i chewed them up and went hardcore into them um so yeah it was by saying no um and i have you know there's great prudence and sticking through sticking with resistance you know i mean look let's talk about this with this time we're in i wish code was gone tomorrow which would have never been here so i want to preface this next thing i say with that but as a people individuals in a society is there value in it to ourselves even though we will have more tragedies and even losses of life is there more will we have a greater value and understanding of a green light in the future if we're in it for longer because we paid the penance longer because we were stripped to our necessities longer because we went through this resistance longer and we were pulling our hair out of our head so when we come out of it we don't just snap back to right where we were before because we're us humans are tricky man we we we can say we go through change we intellectually talk about it but boy we go right back to old habits like that even bad habits we go back to them and so unless it's the consequences are enough or they unrest or the disruption and goes on long enough for us to go no my floor has literally been moved i am changing my priorities about what i value in life because of this hardship it has to go on things we we're we're sort of our muscle memory switches goes right back to where we used to be pretty quickly unless it's a long enough penance to pay you can't be the phoenix unless you burn you got to burn first you gotta burn god and it's got to be in in like it's got to burn you got to look down and you got to find it's a lot of times we have to be scarred not like ooh that was hot and not like oh it left a little black mark like oh [ __ ] no i got a scar that's their flight from getting burned oh well now i'm really making the change i mean we're we're we're uh uh what's the word uh we're hard headed like that you know what i mean as people we again we intellectualize that oh these things change but very quickly quickly we revert right back to our old habits even if they're bad ones unless the penance has gone on for a long enough time yeah there's always opportunities in these in these setbacks and in this moment of forced repose you know amongst the economic challenges and everything that so many people are enduring right now there's the general discomfort of being still with oneself that's so difficult right like this mirror is up in front of us and it's forcing us to reckon with how we're living our lives because we can't move right now we have to be in that discomfort and it's debilitating for a lot of people but if you can open your aperture to it there's so much to be learned from that and you don't have to go to the amazon we're stuck at home on zoom but we have that opportunity open your aperture too we are in a forced winter right now and many of us including me needed to take one ourselves anyway well now it's taking agai we all got the permit we're all on it we got our forced winter it's forced time to be introspective time to do inventory whether you want to or not strip down the necessities what do we got how do i navigate who am i oh i can't go anywhere well what's one of our you know part of pulling the parachute is well i need to go out i'm going out going out to dinner we're gonna go come on let's go get together okay it's there's some prudence and being forced with ourselves and hopefully we're taking enough of us can take the opportunity that's there in that to evolve yeah yeah how do you feel about this you know later chapter in the reconnaissance of you becoming like this guru you know this person of wisdom that i don't know when it began maybe it began when you gave that commencement speech but at some point you kind of went from matthew the actor into somebody who you know was was basically imparting life lessons to the world like how do you think about that or how do you feel about that was that intentional or is it just a byproduct of of who you are i think it started off more of a byproduct and then has gained some intention along the way um you know to go back to that uh it's live we're all on the show the recording the camera's always recording you know and uh and to say ask myself are you making legacy choices for yourself right now mcconaughey are you living in a way live that is useful for yourself and others um look i'll say this i go back to university of texas and i had an idea for this script to screen class as a professor but in my mind i'm still like i'm talking to students i feel like i was there the other day but then i start sharing things with them and they're going like whoa that's awesome thank you for telling me that i'm like oh that wasn't obvious and i'm like no we didn't know that and so i started to go wait a minute you got 28 years of experience of acting and being on sets matthew oh geez that's right add that up you do have some experience that may be innate to you now that is novel to a student so you do have something to share some experience to share that maybe someone else didn't have um i you know dip sharing this this book has got quite a few tools in it for how to find our frequency individually and hopefully as a collective we're going through a time right now great distrust we don't know what to believe in you don't just trust others you all of a sudden you look up you don't trust yourself and that little revolution can go back and forth well now i don't trust myself now i really don't trust you uh now i don't believe in myself now i don't don't believe in anything and those are dead end streets uh ultimately so how do we rebuild some trust i think it's through values i think values are bipartisan non-denominational i think those are the solid stepping stones that we need to each look in the mirror and ask ourselves so we can be better out on a daily basis and that'll be incremental steps out of this time into hopefully a more evolved state that we can get out of and help us look back at 2020 as an actual red banner year of recreation and recreation and and a new beginning um i try to share what i know i also try to show what i don't know i share questions a lot um people for instance come to me a lot about oh they love the fouchy dr fauci interview i did right i didn't reveal anything novel in that i like everybody was just saying like can i get a bullet point sheet on the tudos and the not to do's and can you just say them for me real clearly because there's no consensus here man and can you see me not that not the long version and just a short yes no do this don't do that and so i just went on a rapid fire with him and didn't ask questions that had not been brought up they just hadn't been sort of for a lot of people hadn't been brought up in a succinct way so i said you know do i have a platform where maybe someone else already knows that information but maybe i got a platform where someone else is going to hear it maybe listen to me in a way they wouldn't listen to someone else or maybe they didn't hear right yeah well let's go have those conversations um the minister of culture work i'm doing right now is a lot based on that and that's me you know saying i'm stepping into playing my favorite character that's me saying go play you in the character of you and like the things that wake you up at two in the morning that i've been writing down in my diary since i was 14. it's always about culture about how do we get along what's our individual responsibilities how do we get to freedom how are we responsible for freedom and how does freedom have its responsibilities what should i expect of you what should you expect of me can we have a social contract here as humans you know because right now our social contracts are broke right um where are my person why why are they broke well partially maybe i broke my own social contract maybe i've let myself slide on things and to go out and act like i have a social contract with you i'm just acting like one and not being one well wait a minute i'm not gonna let that pass i gotta be one i need to be one that voluntary obligation we need to make voluntary pledges with ourselves so what we expect of ourselves so we can expect it from others and if we get that reciprocity going then enough of us do that then we collectively make change the other idea is this we gotta remember we're never gonna arrive there's not a destination i don't you know i it's it's it's like our lives and say america the langston hughes point america yet that's what should we we should be chasing yet we never get there with the social the cultural revolution we're going we're not going to get to perfect justice but if we can make an incremental ascension forward that's it stay in the race commit to the chase and with ourselves can we just keep chasing our better selves a little bit and now we're going to screw up a long way can america just keep we're an aspiration our lives are an aspiration america is an aspiration it's a chasing of yet um and i think that's what we ultimately are is is individuals we're all should be we all should be chasing ourselves what more fun wild adventurous thing to chase in your life than yourself well there's a there's an unbridled optimism to that that's infectious and that i love uh and i don't want to take up too much of your time we can we can end it on this you know i can't let you go without digging a little bit more deeply into kind of where we're at in this american experiment right now we're headed into an election we are extremely divided communities families individuals are having difficulty finding common ground being able to even effectively communicate and there is this um you know layer of of whether it's fake news or misinformation that's confusing people and driving us apart and i have this sense of us fracturing and i'm trying to figure out how to get my hands around it how i can communicate with my brothers and my sisters how i can be more empathetic like how can we look to what unites us to our commonalities which are so much more robust than the details that might divide us on paper or on social media but i find myself concerned about what i'm seeing and where we're heading so how do we how do we write the ship matthew great question solve this problem for me and for us oh wow yeah right um you know so i met earlier yeah it is times of great distrust uh and others in ourselves our social contracts are broken our personal contracts are broken we don't have expectations of ourselves or others right now the private sector down to the individual has more power than ever we can't trust our leadership politics is a broken business uh what do we want people wanting security well we're all individuals wait a minute what's where's the collective uh it's a we gotta we gotta all this is being politicized along the way the body counts are being added up for which side of the which side of the aisle wants to win that's the only numbers each side it's counting um we got an election year are we gonna have a civil war man can we just get to january 2021 which is a symbolic day but nothing more than a symbolic day do we have a 10-year restoration do we have a 20-year restoration i don't know how long it'll go what can we rely on uh empathy one thing a little amnesty right now it's a tough time for everybody i don't know how to make a collective change i don't know how to make an overall systemic change or a law i don't think people want to be legislated like that i think it again comes down to each one of us need to look in the mirror and go how can i be a little bit better what can i do a little bit better alright be great i want to be perfect there is no best i can be a little bit better how can be a little more fair how can i understand that my brother and sister are also hurting maybe in more in different ways than i am how can i have a conversation without a condemnation how can i have more patience to take a breath and listen and let someone who hasn't been heard speak more loudly than maybe they need to but but hear them how do we make this time not just a flash in the pan uh how do how do we be honest with the choices we make for ourselves selfishly are also the best choices for the most amount of people and then there's not any specific recipe for that but take that into consideration when we make our choices for ourselves um again responsibility and freedom we're gonna have to build our way out of this time we're gonna have to break a damn sweat for a while and i think we have to have that long view that feeling like this is going to go on for a while now how can we make that a part of our daily instincts of how we go about our lives how do we treat ourselves how do we treat our loved ones how do we treat our employees how do we treat people we work with how do we treat what we're building and what are we are we just for profit or are we for purpose as well uh what's our purpose i'm not interested in politics i'm interested in some purpose though politics is a broken business i don't know who to trust so that's what i mean by the private sector down to the individual you have more power right now to define your future than ever um because you actually don't have anywhere anyone else up there no institutions to rely on for that guidance so understand it man some of us are going what the hell man give me a map i don't know what to trust in i don't know what's a consensus here um some of us are going to do well right now because we can just keep our head above water just try and make it through this time it's going to pass we're going to be moving forward we are not turning the page yet though when the time comes to turn the page on covid when the time comes to turn the page on the cultural revolution the only way it's going to work is that the collective all of us every color everyone you've got code if you don't every color of skin do it together to some form or fashion i think you know as much as we are a nation of individuals and love our individualism we are failing at any sort of collective responsibility we have failed with the mask of seeing that as a civic duty instead of a damn don't you tell me what to do [ __ ] it's it's the wrong kind of selfish it's actually not a selfish move to to to fight those fights there is a responsibility that we can choose to take for and with each other and ourselves and those two are not exclusive my hunch is that lies and values my hunch is it lies in responsibility accountability risk-taking sense of humor uh the list goes on and on and on that we can just be a little kinder a little more fair a little more empathetic a little more understanding a little more forgiving also holding on accountability no no this isn't gonna be a free ride i'm not in for a world kumbaya no we gotta it's gonna take work and the greatest thing about america is when america is working right is if you're willing to work at something and educate yourself and go after something you more so than anywhere else should have the opportunity to achieve that but not without the work and the education and the hustle to go do it so you know i'd say this man start off with trying to create more green lights for yourself and others and see where those two meet and see that actually being selfless is actually a very selfish act creating more for others is actually very selfish for yourself as well and make sure you're trying to make sure your selfish choices for yourself also light the way for more people as well boom beautifully put thank you man that was incredible i appreciate your time today i enjoyed it super fun man thank you uh the book is incredible green lights available everywhere october 20 is the day that's right october 20th this year um you've been attacking this thing like it's the release of a blockbuster movie like all you you've been out there man like this is going big and wide i can tell already well that's i'm approaching it look this is the most truest permanent extension of me that i've ever been a part of and to whatever extent i'm i'm i'm honored with that and and i and i want to it's it's it's the first time you know if i look at like a movie which i have i wrote it i directed it i edited it you know what i mean i i did it yeah so i'm not acting in someone else's script being directed by someone else so it's the truest permanent extension of me that i've ever put out and that's scary and fun and all those things and yes i had to have my chin strap on and my mouth guard in while i was writing it but [Laughter] well you did an incredible job i i love the book i read it in like just two sittings um it's super enjoyable and i think it's gonna a lot i think it's really it's gonna help a lot of people too it's gonna help a lot of people i i hope so that'd be great cool um all right hope to meet you in person one day but until then uh best of luck with everything yeah at some point hopefully we'll we'll go do that trip with dan good deal thanks dude i appreciate it man best of luck right on peace [Music] you

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 61,297

Rating: 4.9294624 out of 5

Keywords: rich roll, rich roll podcast, self-improvement podcasts, education podcasts, health podcasts, wellness podcasts, fitness podcasts, spirituality podcasts, mindfulness podcasts, mindset podcast, matthew mcconaughey, rich roll matthew mcconaughey, greenlights matthew mcconaughey, mcconaissance, mcconaughey speech, mcconaughey motivational, mcconaughey best moments, mcconaughey wisdom, matthew mcconaughey wisdom

Id: TVX-k8x2Nzs

Length: 93min 31sec (5611 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 26 2020