- I've done my best work when we wrap and I'm like, "Okay, see
y'all tomorrow morning." And they're like, "No, that's it. We wrapped. The show is over." You're like, "Oh, really? Oh, wow." Stay in the zone, in the process, and I've found that more
results will come your way. (exciting music)
- I think you gotta have a dream.
- "The School of Greatness." - Really.
- Yeah. - [Ellen] Please welcome Lewis Howes. - Welcome back, everyone,
to The School of Greatness. I'm so excited. We have the iconic Matthew
McConaughey in the house. My man, thank you so much for being here. - How we doing, Lewis?
Good to be here, bud. - Man, I've read your
book, man, and it was hard. I'll tell you what, I'm dyslexic, so it's hard for me to get
into a book and finish a book, but the way you tell stories
is truly captivating. Congrats on this book. So inspiring. There was a point in the book where you said that your
first exchange student family asked you to call them Mom
and Pop, I think it was- - Yes.
- Mom and Dad. And you said "No," which was a, I guess, challenging moment where
you had to kinda stand up for what you wanted, but
why do you feel like values are so important for you?
(bell rings) And what did that lesson and that moment, kinda standing up for your
values against authority of a place that had you welcomed in, feeding you, housing you,
how did you learn on that? - Well, let me answer the... I'll come back to what I
think values overall mean and how they've helped
me to get to where I am and go where I think we
all hopefully need to go. But that story was, I was in Australia for a year. Two weeks out of high
school, I went over there. And for the first time, I was all alone, I was in a foreign place. I was forced into great introspection, existential questions of who, what, where, when and why and how. I didn't have a crutch.
It didn't have my car. I didn't have a girlfriend.
I didn't have a job. I didn't have money. I
didn't have my parents. I didn't have friends. And I was lost and trying to find a bit of a compass and an anchor. Some odd things were going on for me in my relationships
with some people there, where I was questioning my own sanity, and I was kinda going
along with everything. That moment where I was asked
to call someone Mom and Pop was a seminal moment because,
in my chaotic life, (chuckles) in my anarchic brain that I
was living in at the time, that was the first bit of
real clarity that I was like, "No, that is not open for discussion." All these other odd things
that have been happening to me, I'd been tallying up to, oh, it must be a cultural difference. It must be a cultural difference. This was something that I went, "Culture my backside, man. I don't care, place, time, whatever, that's not negotiable for me." So I said, "No," and it was very clear. And it gave me clarity,
it gave me some identity, and it was just an obvious thing to deny, that I could never call someone. - [Lewis] Right. - I mean, look, the values
are inherent in that, but that helped me, that
really helped with my sanity, to have that sort of, something that was so clear to
me that was black and white. I needed that at that time in my life. It's hard to find those
things in life, in general. How many times do we call a
compromise a shade of gray, when actually the right kinda compromise is the eye of great light and truth? At the same time, we need, we feel like we need, as humans, something to grab a hold of,
something to grasp a hold of. It can be very good for us; it can also be very dangerous for us. Look at what's happening
now in our nation. The divide is people
running to the extremes because they need something to hold on to to have an identity, to feel
like they have a purpose, to have a foot on the ground in these chaotic times we're in. But the values of family, what that means, the values of loyalty, the
values of accountability, responsibility, the
responsibility of freedom, the freedom of responsibility, fairness, those are things that I was raised on that I've found that are
never gonna go outta style. And I actually think we
could all double-down on them personally and as a society now. - For sure. You talked about identity. Is there a moment in your
life, after that moment, where you lost your identity, where you felt like I'm
losing the grasp of who I am? I know you talk about in the book of looking yourself in the mirror a lot and asking that question of,
are you happy with what you see in the mirror when you look in your eyes? Was there ever points
where you lost it fully and you had to kind of reframe- - I've never lost it fully. I've never lost it fully. I have a pretty good threshold and a pretty good quick trigger for if I'm not feeling fully myself, I need to go remedy it. Which may be taking a
walkabout with myself with a backpack for 22
days to Peru or Africa, or meditating or praying or going and sitting still for awhile, or going back to what I
know I can rely on, family, and sitting there and clearing my head about all this other ambitions
that I may have in my head. I've never lost it fully. If anything, it's been
a nice, I would say, a good trait of mine, that
my trigger is very quick for if I'm starting to feel imbalanced or lack of identity, not
understanding exactly who I am. My feet are maybe not on the ground. Maybe my head and my heart
and my spirit and my loins are not aligned. I always like to say,
let's have an Autobahn. When we're really rocking,
we have an Autobahn between our head and our
heart and our spirit. - Just boom. - You know what I mean?
- Yeah. - Sometimes, that gets
blocked and you start going, "Wait, it feels like a two-lane highway, or, man, that's tying us
down to a one-lane blacktop. I need to take a minute. (chuckles) I gotta sit back and clean it out and widen up the lanes here
and get aligned again." Thankfully, I've had a
pretty good short trigger and threshold for realizing
when I'm feeling like, oh, I'm headed that way and I need to do something about it. So never fully lost my identity but have calibrated and had to recalibrate and had many, many walkabouts to go check back in with
myself, let memory catch up, and have a Socratic
dialogue with McConaughey, and end up forgiving
stuff and then saying, "Enough's enough with this other stuff. You're the only person that
I'm stuck with, McConaughey, so we better figure out how to get along." - You gotta have good
company with yourself. What's the thing that's been
the hardest for you to forgive? - Ooh. That's a good one. I can forgive others much
easier than I forgive myself. And I don't know if that's-
- So the thing with you that's been the hardest to let go of. - Thing for me. Um... (exhaling) You know, there's no deep dark crimes in my closet. There's no real violence where I've
really hurt someone. I've got times where I've been ugly, and I did not know or realize at the time, especially the life that I
live now in the last 25 years, that my words, coming
from me with my platform and somebody's perception of me, can come at you in bold print
and from a large megaphone and can mean more. Things that may tickle me, I've
noticed, can bruise others. And I've bruised some people along the way and didn't notice it until after and didn't notice the
impact it had on them. I'm like, "What, really?
Oh, I thought that was... Oh." So I've done that and I've tried to... I haven't swept everything
up and made full amends yet. I'm happy to say I think
it's a pretty short list. It's not a long list. But I've done that, and I
have some guilt over that and I still have some
amends to make with that. - Really? So you feel like you
haven't fully forgiven, let go or (indistinct)- - I need to make amends. I think I've let go but I
don't think I can fully let go until I make amends with them. - Ah, you've forgiven yourself for what you did or how you communicated, but you haven't-
- Yeah. - said, "Hey, that wasn't cool." - But my intent, and we
have to watch this, I think, a lot in life, is what we mean to say and what's actually being received, there can be a gap between that. - [Lewis] Absolutely. - I mean, I'm all for intent. I think I write about this in the book. The words are momentary; the
intent is what's momentous. And I think we could have some
more amnesty and forgiveness used on this, the way
we're attacking words and the value we're
giving words these days. But there's times that my
intent's been misconstrued. There's times it's... Look at it. It happens all
the time in a doggone email. If someone puts an exclamation mark, if you're having a stressful morning, you think they're yelling at you, but if you're not having
a stressful morning, you think that, oh yeah,
they're really happy. So you don't get the... Do you need the emoji to
let you know how I'm feeling or what I really mean by it? Some of it can, you can miss the intent, or hit someone at a bad time, and they don't receive
it how you meant to. So I've got some amends to make
with some people in my past. And I procrastinated some of that because I know they're gonna be, I feel they're going to be long, long, drawn-out conversations. I may be wrong. They may
be like three minutes. The person may go, "Oh,
dude, I forgave you that a long time ago. I forgave you that. We're good." - Isn't there a chapter in
your book about taking hills? - [Matthew] Yeah. - Climbing hills? - [Matthew] Yeah. - Would that be a hill for you to climb, which is like doing the hard thing and addressing the thing
that's gonna take a long time or it's not gonna be uncomfortable? - Well, there's climbing
hills and there's also, it's about handling the nos or the crisises in life. If we handle the nos, they're
actually more important than even handling the yeses sometimes. Meaning, I've always tried to practice... If I get offered a script, say, for a movie,
and I form a relationship with associate director or producer, and then it comes to time, I've got five scripts
maybe I'm working on, I'm formed a relationship,
walking down the line, forward, with, say, three, four,
five different directors, and gotten to know them,
had a drink with them, had a meal with them,
talk to them on the phone, know about the family, and there comes a time when
I'm gonna have to say no to two out of those three
or four out of those five. - [Lewis] Wow. - Well, it's very easy to tell
my agent to go (splutters). Just let them know. But I've tried to practice,
I'll let them know either in person or by a phone call. And those calls are hard because each one of
those directors thought I was gonna be a yes, right? So, while those calls were hard, when I hung up the phone with
them, I gained more respect. They respected me more for
making the hard no call. And I notice that more and
more, we realized that might... People are big boys and girls. They kinda understand when they're told no or when someone's turned down. It's part of it. And if we realize that even
if we ask the question, 50% of the answer could be a no, no matter how well this is going. And that's inherent in the request. The answer could be yes or no. When we handle our nos personally by making that personal
call or doing it in person, I've found that that's been an additive in compounding assets in my future. - Yeah, I think we also gain confidence and belief in ourself that we can take on challenging
things in the future, and we have more pride in like,
hey, I did the hard thing. It's kinda like this self-reward of like, wow, okay, I believe in
myself, I can do this. I don't need to always pass
everything off to someone else. - No, no. I mean, that chapter
about taking the hill, it's also about not creating false drama when it's not needed. And I see a lot of people do that, and I've fallen and been
susceptible to it as well. The drama's gonna come.
Real drama's gonna come. Someone's gonna get sick, alright? Someone's gonna get hurt. We're gonna really screw up
and then have to handle it. Or the world's... COVID's gonna come. Something's gonna come that's real. So don't look for the false
drama when it's not there. And people have a habit of it.
I've done it before myself. That's sort of the inverse of take the hill and climb the hill is there's an art to running downhill, which I write about in the book. When things are going well, don't trip yourself and face plant because it's going too good. (chuckles) Don't get nervous. Oh, my gosh, this is going so good. No, embrace it, and stay in stride because the uphill will
be there in a minute (laughing) and you'll
have to break a sweat and it'll be hard again. - Yeah. How did you not self-sabotage? When you were just getting hit after hit and opportunity after opportunity and you were going downhill, how do you not do that,
where you self-sabotage? And what do you recommend for other people so they don't do it when the
opportunities are coming? - Great, great topic. Because I have tripped myself
running downhill before. I have face-planted, broke my nose to proverbially make sure I felt. It's like, you don't
need to feel that hard, you know what I mean? We don't need to draw blood, McConaughey, just to make sure we can feel. So there's been times I
have not been graceful when I was running downhill. But I shook hands with
the fact that, okay, obviously, it means you
give a damn, McConaughey. Obviously, it means you're trying to read through the mendacities of life. You're trying to get down
to the common denominator about what really matters to you. You're trying to understand all this affluence and
things coming to you that you never had
yesterday that now you have, and you want 80 hours in a day but they're still only giving 24. I gotta get some discernment in here. For me, I've had the ability and I have taken what I call
fuga mundi, a walkabout. I have taken those solo trips with myself. I have, what we talked about
earlier in the conversation, gone to a place where I
could hear myself think, where I could get my head
and my heart aligned. In those times of great affluence, sometimes, it's all heady. And I have a piece in the book about, when you can, ask yourself
if you want to before you do. Well, in times of great influence, we have a lot of I-can in front of us. - Lots of opportunity. - And too many options can
make a tyrant out of anybody. So it's a very heady thing. Sometimes, the best times when it's like, okay, this all makes sense in my head but I don't really feel
it inside my spirit, I don't know if it's really me, if it's really good for me, if this is gonna turn me on and feed me. But geez, I mean, I've
never had the option before. It sounds awesome. I mean, yes! Well, that's not a bad thing to do, but we gotta check in on
that because you can look up and the tank can be on reserve, when you look in the
rear-view mirror and go, "Whoa, I over-leveraged myself with things that did not feed me and pay me back." So we need to take that
time to go check in. And it can be a hairy, hairy time, man. Because the answers don't
come quickly, sometimes. And when they don't come and you're shaking monkeys off your back and you're not enjoying your own company and none of it makes sense
and it's all confusing and you looking over
there and you wanna go, well, you wanna go to
entertainment or communication or you wanna pick up the phone
or you wanna drink earlier or one of those things
that come up to mask that, you gotta try to hold back and say, "No, I'm gonna sit in this discomfort. This is a prudent penance I am taking to get to know myself
and listen to myself." There's prudence in it. - Why do you think so many
people try to resist discomfort when so many great things
come from being in discomfort? Why do we resist it? - I mean, look, we all
like pleasure over pain. But I think what we forget sometimes is that there's a greater
pleasure that can come with going through a pain. I mean, you can have little pleasures. I mean,
(audio stuttering) see some people that just
glide through life forever. Woo-hoo. Those people are not really
ambitious, though, I find. They're not really on the
chasing down a better self or chasing down a higher existence or chasing down different truths. And it's admirable. It's fine. If you can be the
kingdom, your own castle, and that's the world you live in and that's just how
you walk and go, bravo. As long as you're not
harming other people. But if you go through resistance and you choose resistance
at the right times and you go through it, you have greater, more evolved pleasure
on the other side of it. - [Lewis] So true. - Responsibility and freedom, that relationship is really
at the core of a lot of this. - [Lewis] That's true. - There's responsibility through freedom and freedom in the responsibility. And the responsibility is the hard work. You know? The freedom's the Saturday.
The freedom's what we want. The responsibility is what we need. Where you go through what you need, when what we want actually is what we need and what we need is actually what we want, that's the honey hole where,
hey, I look as good as I feel and I feel as good as I look. ♪ Ta-da! ♪ Where we're selfish and
selfless at the same time. I know what I'm chasing. - When we take responsibility
and we have structure, which you've talked about
also, and kind of have those, not limits but you have some
structure and some boundaries, you can really be flexible and
free within those boundaries. Which I think is powerful. But if we have no responsibility
and no boundaries, it's hard to really create that freedom. - There's no form. It's anarchy. I mean, let's go all the
way down to the basics. Gravity. Without gravity, there's
no form, you know? Without gravity, there'd
just being chaos and anarchy. Some people do it the other way. I call this version, what
you were talking about, conservative or liberal-lite. Meaning, what are the
rules of the situation? Let me get my structure,
let me check my sandbox and make sure there's no
glass and sharp objects in it, so I can, once I've checked all that, now I can blow in the wind and do backflips naked in my sandbox, or now I can get on my 16-lane highway that I've checked out,
I've seen it's clean, and I can swerve all through those lanes. Some people go the other way. They jump off the cliff and say, "I'll figure it out on the way down." That's also (indistinct). It's not how I've found
it works for me but... - It sounds like values are
really important to you, identity and responsibility
are important to you. - [Matthew] (chuckles) Yup. - Why do you think it's so hard
for the younger generation, the millennials, why
is it so hard for them to find their identity,
take responsibility, and develop values? And what advice would
you have for the youth on how to find all three? - Yeah. Look, I'm gonna go back
to a version of saying, "Too many options can make
a tyrant of any of us." This view the world that a lot of our young
people are living in, we're all connected but
nobody's with each other. Their world is massive. They have more outreach
than any of us ever have. But they're more isolated
than ever before. So it's inevitable, human nature. Me, I'm betting you, I feel sound with myself
and my spirit feels good, I got three children and a wife, but even I'll have a different reaction if you give me a thumbs-up on
my comment or a thumbs-down. - Even you, the great Matthew McConaughey. - Even if it's just: Well, wait. What was that about? You know? Was that a constructive criticism or do you just not like me? Were you gonna put a thumbs-down anyway? Or what was the thumbs-up
about? It can affect you. So a lot of our youth
is living in that world where their emotional feelings about themselves and their own identity is based off your reaction,
strangers' reactions, some of them which may not have even read or cared about what you
were actually putting out and didn't care about the intent. That can affect you. So I think there's a responsibility
to that world that we, to whatever extent the
millennials live in it, they need to edit and
govern back themselves with what they allow themselves to be out there, how
proverbially naked they are, it's like I'm sharing
it all with the world, I'm sending it out to
a bunch of strangers, and they're gonna come back to
me and let me know who I am. - Wow. - Uh-uh. No. Check in. And remember
this, you millennials. That Like/Dislike comment
that you put today, it's gonna outlive you. It's immortal. It's permanent. You and I are not
permanent. That comment is. Think about before you
click and what you put out. Are you putting out something today that you're gonna look
forward to looking back at? Are you putting out something
today in your resume of life that is going to write your
eulogy after you're gone, which is gonna introduce you forever- - Wow.
- when you're gone? Think about it. - How did you... I mean, you've done, it
seems, like a million movies, so many big hits, but there were some that got some controversial
feedback or bad reviews, right? There was different stages you had. How did you handle it as a creator, as an artist, as an actor,
when you got negative reviews or when it didn't hit the
expectation at the box office or whatever you guys had? How did you deal with that
to say, "You know what? I'm not gonna let the opinions
of others bring me down"? - Well, (groans) they did
bring me down sometimes, I have to admit.
- [Lewis] Really? - Look, my favorite word
in the world is unanimous. I know I'm never gonna get it. There's no such thing, but
that's still what I'm chasing. And I know I'm never gonna get it, so I'll be underwhelmed
for the rest of life, and that'd be fine if I keep
enjoying the chase, right? I did this exercise one time. I sat down and I had my
publicist gather every bad review over 20 (indistinct).
(Lewis laughing) The bad reviews. And it was a thick-
(Lewis laughs) It was a thick folder. - It was a big book. - In ways, it was more constructive than reading the good reviews. There were some people I could read, oh, they already didn't like me. This review was written poorly before they even saw the movie. I could just tell. You could hear the snark
in the opening comment. There were other ones that had
constructive things to say. Know, McConaughey, this
is what I love about you that you do that is quintessentially
you, and you didn't... I don't know who you were or who you were trying to be in this. You missed the mark. You didn't give that heart that you give. Or something that I could say is essential that I can give to every role,
no matter what I'm playing. So some of it was very
constructive and I went, "Mm, you're right. Mm, you're right." And I had to go back, look in my diaries during those movies. What was I doing? What was I eating? Who was I hanging out with? Where was my mind? How
was I feeling about this? Was I working hard enough?
Did I prepare enough? Did I get complacent? Oh, yeah, you did. You
got complacent there. You thought you had it going. That's actually the scene that
this critic's pulling out, saying, "You know, you lost
me right there, McConaughey." I'm like, "Yeah, I was
lazy in that scene." So, look, other times, there's a real pivotal time
in my life when I'd been, I was on a roll with
the romantic comedies. - Crushing.
- Loved doing those. Crushing the rom-com and-
- Snagging a role just like, boom, boom, boom. (laughs) - Took the baton from Hugh
Grant and turned up the speed. - Let's go, baby. - It was great, man. They're fun. I was
getting paid handsomely. They were making a lot of money. But what the challenge became, though, that was only thing I was getting offered. With the success of those,
any dramas I wanted to do, the opportunity to do those became less and less and less and less until it was like, no, McConaughey is the
shirtless-on-the-beach rom-com guy. I remember looking in
the mirror going, "Okay." And, yes, I'm shirtless on the beach because those rom-coms
were paying the rent for the house I've got on the beach that I'm running shirtless on. (chuckles) Yes, I worked to get that. I looked it in the eye. In fact, that is me now. That does not mean that
it didn't become a thing that became a pigeonhole. Oh, that's all McConaughey is and does. And it was a time in my
life where Camila and I just had our first child. Do you have children? - No kids. Not yet. - You'll see when and if you do. A man is never more masculine than right after the
birth of his first child. And I don't mean macho.
I mean the clarity. That Autobahn we're talking about, that mind, heart, spirit,
and loins, it is so clear. The first six months after your newborn, don't double-down, triple-down
on any instinct you have. Career-wise, relationship-wise, anything. Stock market, just triple-down
on. You'll be right. It's an incredible time. Anyway, I had just had a
newborn. Camila had the newborn. So my life was so vital, man. I mean, I was loving harder. I had more rage in the right places. I would get sad more. My emotions, the ceilings
and the basements were really incredibly vital. And the rom-coms have a
much thinner bandwidth for those, how you can
feel about something. The ceiling and the basement
are compressed quite a bit, and that's how they're built. You're supposed to
bounce along the clouds. They're built to be buoyant. And I was like, "Ah, I
wish I could find some work that would challenge the vitality and drama, great drama
I have in my own life." Those things weren't coming to me. So since those things
weren't coming to me, I decided to stop doing what I was doing, which was the rom-coms. Now, I'm figuring this is gonna be a bit of a dry spell in my career,
but I don't know for how long. I shed many a tear on
the shoulder of my wife talking about, "You know what? I wanna make a change, honey. I want my career, some work,
to challenge the man I am, to challenge the life that I'm living. But I mean, that means I'm not gonna go with work for awhile." Called my money man. He
says, "You can take off. You've handled your money well." Called my agent. He goes, "Do it. I work for you. We got this. Go ahead." And then I stopped. I moved down to Texas. You didn't see me on the beach. You didn't see me in the rom-com. You didn't see me in the tabloids. You didn't see me anywhere. Rom-coms kept coming in as offers. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. And then one comes in.
It's an $8 million offer. Let me read this one. I read it. It's pretty good. No, thank you. I pass. They come back with a $10 million offer. No, thank you. They come back with a $12.5 million offer. Dot, dot, dot. Mm, no, thanks. They come back with a $15 million offer. I say, "Let me read that again." I read it again. Same script, word for word, as the original $8 million offer. But at $15 million, ooh, it
was written so much better. - It looks good, doesn't it? - It's funnier. It was more dramatic. I got angles on this.
I can make this work. Oh, yeah. I ended up saying no. And that really got the
message across to the industry. Okay, McConaughey's serious. He's not doing any rom-coms. Then nothing came in for about 10 months. Nothing. Dry as a bone. After 20 months of a desert
and nothing coming in and saying no, first saying
no to what I was doing and then nothing coming in at all, all of a sudden, I
became a new, good idea. McConaughey for "Killer
Joe," "Magic Mike," "Mud," "True Detective," "Dallas Buyers." All of a sudden, I was
a new, novel, good idea. Why? Because I'd un-branded. I had stepped away, and I was gone. They didn't know where I was. Couldn't find me on the
beach without my shirt. You couldn't find me in a rom-com. And I became a new, good idea. So that's kind of the most
dramatic sort of hinge point in my career that deals
with how I dealt with how I was perceived or what
I was doing in my career. - This is a very important question. If it was 25 million,
would you have done it? - No. I wouldn't have done it for 100 million. - Wow. - No, I'd already made the
Socratic oath with my soul. - You were committed. - I was in. I was in. It would've got more excited. The fact that the money went up, it was such a buzz to even have
the courage to say no to it. - Wow.
- At the end of the day, it empowered me, so uh-uh, uh-uh. - That's cool, 'cause you
go back to your values and your identity of like, "No, that's not what I wanna be anymore. This is who I wanna be." Did you call it un-branding?
Is that what you said? - [Matthew] un-branded, yeah.
I un-branded to then rebrand. - Yeah, I think that's powerful. It's like we should always
be in a stage of reinvention. You know, you reinvented
yourself as a father. You reinvented yourself as an actor. I think that's really
powerful. Good for you, man. It's hard to turn away those checks. - Yeah. Well, you know,
I'd saved my money well. I was appreciating the basics.
Had a roof over my head. Honestly, in that two years,
I considered other vocations. I considered other careers- - Like what?
- during that time. - Oh, coach. A high school football team. A teacher, fourth-grade teacher. Orchestral conducting. Wildlife guide. Write. I did a lot of writing at the time. Didn't have a book I put out at that time. Did a lot of writing at the time. I didn't have the confidence to think the writing was worth publishing, but I was still doing a
lot of writing at the time. - So if you would've not
gotten the dramatic roles that you were looking for after two, three, four, five years, you would've gone and been
a high school football coach or a writer or a wildlife
guide for 60 to 80 grand a year and been just as happy? - Well, I'm pretty sure, I'm almost definite I
would've been just as happy. One of the central themes in the book is that when faced with the
inevitable, get relative. That's really one of the
key tools in the book, is how do you get relative when you deem a situation inevitable? So how do you start making an upside of what could be that perceived crisis? - Right.
- When and how we do that is really one of the keys
to satisfaction in life. If you do it too early, okay. Say, for that instance, if I'd have said, "Okay, it's been two years. That's enough. I give. I'm going off to do something else," well, that would've been the wrong choice 'cause I would've been a quitter. Look what happened. I just had to outlast them
and it take 20 months. If I'd have pulled the plug at 18 months and done something different, I would've been a quitter, right? I didn't endure enough. But there's also situations that you can bang your
head on through endurance, where you're actually acting
out the definition of insanity. You're trying to get
something done the same way, over and over and over, and not getting the results you want. So you need to back up and,
relatively speaking, pivot. Wait, let me reapproach the situation. Maybe I'm looking at it the
wrong way. Let me pivot. Then there's other times you
just gotta wave the white flag and say, (lips smack)
"You got it, you win. I'm gonna go fight
another battle up here." (chuckles) You know? So when do we do one of
those, each one of those, with every given situation? That's sort of the honey
hole, the tool that really, I think, that's gonna be helpful to us. - I'm not always watching the award shows. Sometimes, they're on and I see them, but it's not the thing for me to watch. But I remember watching
the year you won the Oscar. I remember your speech was, has to be one of the most
iconic speeches of all time from an award show. You talk about chasing... Your hero is your 10-year
self in the future. I'm curious, if you could put
yourself 10 years from now, 60, 'cause you just turned 50, what would your hero at 60 say about who you are today, looking back? - Wow, yeah, it's a great question, and one I think we
should all ask ourselves. (chuckles) Have I had that great sit-down with our future self? You could say: Make
sure you trust yourself. Make sure you did a good
job at trusting yourself. But you know what? You could've
even trusted yourself more. You could even trust yourself more. You made some things, maybe made some things a little too hard, maybe where you didn't need to resist it. Just sit back and trust yourself. So made some things hard because (inhales) you felt like you needed to feel it. (sighing) No, you had
already done the work. You had already laid the
rails on the road just now. Ride it now. Stay vital. Keep those rails greased.
Keep yourself in shape. Mentally, spiritually. But overall, you've done it. You did it. You're doing good at trusting yourself. I'm proud of how you... My favorite thing about
you, 50-year-old Matthew, is that you give a damn. Sometimes, I wish you would've
maybe given yourself a break in places where you didn't. But you know what? That's
who you've always been. Shoot, now that I look
in the mirror at 60, that's who I still am, too. (laughing) So anyway, thanks for getting me here to 60. It's great to see the kids
all out of the house now. Me and our wife Camila
are having a great time. Kinda like a honeymoon again. Those kids are out of the house, and we got a new season in life. You did a good job being a
parent. You're a good father. And that was the thing
you always want it to be. It's the thing we've always
known that we wanted to be, the only thing we ever
knew we wanted to be. You weren't perfect as a father, but you did a doggone,
damn good job as a father. Oh, yeah. Let's keep rocking. - And let's keep living, yeah. That's a beautiful reflection
of your future hero. - I haven't had one of
those before till just now. Haven't really thought about it that way. Thank you for asking that question. - Of course. That's beautiful. I'm curious, you mentioned... I wanna ask about your
dad here in a second and the impact he's made on
you and the biggest lessons. But you've talked about
your wife many times. What do you admire about
your wife the most? - I admire how, instinctually, without any intellectual
mathematics at all, no matter what she's doing, no matter what job she's on,
no matter what she's handling, if something comes up to help me or the kids or the family out, she so elegantly sets
what she's doing down and comes and handles that and helps. Puts family first. Like that. And she does it in such a graceful way. Look, hence why she's got 163,000 emails. You know what I mean? She's able to do that over there. Me, I would be like,
"Yeah, I'll be right there. Let me finish this up,"
puh, puh, puh, puh, puh. You know what I mean? She's able to just go, (whistles) "Nope, I know what really,
really, really matters. This is all stuff that I should do, but this is not of the greatest import. Lewis, I'll be right
back," very gracefully. - [Lewis] Wow.
- And she would do it in a way where you wouldn't go,
"She walked out on my show." No, you'd be like, it'd be one of the
better interviews you had and moments in an interview
'cause she'd come back and go, "Yeah, my son just said so-and-so and I had to help him with so-and-so." And you'd be like, "Wow." How elegantly she can
make that of most import at any given time, her
family, me and the family, of the most import at any given time, and how gracefully and
elegantly she can do it is one of my favorite traits of her. - Mm, that's beautiful. Now, we have a few things in common. We both love football. Unfortunately, you like Texas football and I like Ohio State, but
we're not in the same conference so I'll support Texas football from afar. It's okay. If you were from
Michigan, it'd be harder for me. (indistinct) - But we both have the same middle name, which I just found out about. - David.
- Yeah, David. I'm not sure if that's your
mom that gave you that- - Lewis David. - I'm not sure if your mom gave you that or your dad gave you that
or it was a combination, but we both have the underdog
mentality, I like to think, of we're always in that
underdog, David-versus-Goliath. You've talked about being
an underdog in your book and also in your speeches on YouTube. A lot of great speeches of you on YouTube. Your father, who I'm assuming was a part of giving you the name David,
was a big impact on your life. A lot of amazing lessons in this book. Again, I wanna remind people to make sure they get this book, if they haven't got "Greenlights" yet. But your father put a
big impact in your life. He passed when you were... I think it was five days in,
shooting your first movie. Is that correct?
- Two. Shooting "Dazed and Confused," first movie I ever made, yeah. - First movie-
- August 17th, '93. - And you were 20...
(indistinct) - So I'm 20... '92. 22, I think, 22 years old. - Something we have in
common is, when I was 22, my dad got into a near-fatal car accident. He was in New Zealand with
his girlfriend at the time. My parents got divorced,
he's in his next girlfriend, they were in New Zealand
traveling, I was 22 years old. He got in a car accident, was
in a coma for three months. We didn't know if he
was gonna live or die. He's still alive today, but
he's a completely different man. He's not there physically
and emotionally like he was. It was almost like I lost my dad that day, emotionally, mentally.
- Right. - We can have conversations,
but there's a lot of amnesia. It's a lot of asking who
I am and things like that, or the past. But that moment for me made
me, it was a rite of passage. You talk about rite of
passages in your life as a man. I would not be where I am today doing the things I'm doing today without that experience of
essentially losing my father emotionally and mentally. And you lost him physically, he was gone physically from your life at the same age as I did. Where do you think your life
would be if he was still here? Do you think you would be able to have the impact you have on humanity? Do you think you'd have the relationship, the children that you have? Or would things be different
because you don't have the, what you call in the
book, that safety net? - It's a great question,
and I don't know the answer. I mean, my... (blows raspberry) You know, these existential questions are always fun to go over 'cause it's all a mystery going forward, it's all science looking back. And we can connect the dots, looking back. I don't know what else I would be doing 'cause this is just what I've done and I've only done it once. I'm doing it once. Maybe I would've... Him passing on and that year in Australia are two moments that I do often question. Would I be sitting here
right now talking to you with the life I have if it didn't happen? I'm very confident that I would've had some sort of enriched
life that I felt satisfied and felt joy in living if I'd have been doing something else. But at the same time, those moments, what I can really speak to is that I manned up when he moved on. I don't know how you felt when you... You didn't lose your dad
physically, but emotionally. A father for me was, he was my safety net. Those values that he was teaching me, I still had in my hip pocket that, oh, if I only kinda use them 85% of the time, I'm good,
'cause he's got my back. He's above law, he's above government. He's my safety net in
case I really need him. So I'm kinda half-assing
these values he's teaching me. Maybe I'm doing pretty good at
them, but I'm not committed. 'Cause I got him. And then he was gone physically. All of a sudden, it was like, "Whoa, oh." And I remember this, I write
about this in the book, I remember this was
something that came to me. Just Keep Livin came to me, which was about keeping his spirit and what he taught me alive
in life after he's gone. But also this four words: less impressed, more involved. I remember things I
write after he moved on, things that were mortal in
life that I had reverence for. Fame, money, success, people. And all of a sudden, while
I still respected them, instead of looking up in awe of them, they came down to eye level. Looked them in the eye. They were mortal. I had full respect for
them, but they were mortal. I could be involved with them
and look them in the eye. Things that I looked down upon, I was condescending, patronizing. Ah, geez, I don't like that. Look at her. Look at that. All of a sudden, those things (whistles) rose up to eye level,
and the world was flat. I could see further, I could see wider, I could see more clearly,
and I was standing taller. My head was higher. My heart was higher. And I was like, it's time to man up and become a man, McConaughey. This is how you need to see the world. You need to have the
courage to follow through." That is always not the
most popular decisions. Quit half-assing yourself. Quit doing things just to get along or if you disagree with it. We're not gonna be that guy who
makes the joke at the party, that makes more people laugh but everyone walks away
disrespecting you more. It was the beginning of understanding what are the choices you make? Again, the compounding
assets, the choices we make, the compounding assets for our future. How do we be more true and
kind to our future selves? How do we start making some more choices, make choices that, by hook or by crook, they're gonna be brave, courageous choices that you can look in
the mirror, if it works, and go, "Yup, I'm responsible." And if they don't work, you
can go, "Yup, that's on me." Quit living in limbo. Straddling the fence here or there. Be smart. Don't be foolish. Don't dive in. Courage to take more risks. Courage to get
uncomfortable with that fame and be able to go, "The world
needs you here right now. The studio wants you
to pick out a picture. You're as hot as can be, but I don't care. I gotta check out, go
spend some time with me to figure out this." The courage to do those things. I don't know if I'd
have done those things. I had the courage to do them. Because maybe I would've
still been stuck in, no, I'm still happy to be here, I'm so impressed to be here, I'm so thankful I have these options and these possibilities for success. Thank you. Well, if you're so impressed
with something in your life, even our relationships, you can't really be involved in them. If you're overly impressed with me or I'm overly impressed with you, you and I can't even
have a real conversation because one of us is holding
the other on a pedestal. Look at our relationships, our girlfriends, our wives, our friends. If we hold them up on a
pedestal, it's unfair. We don't really have a
relationship with them. We've got them in this immortal bubble of being a superhuman or a superwoman. It's not fair to them. And then what happens in the
reflection of their eyes? They see us the same way. Then we're both dealing with... We're both for rent. (laughs) We're both not... We're both too impressed with each other to be actually be involved. - I mean, it sounds like you
learned a lot from his passing and you grew a lot and you
held true to that courage that you're talking about,
which I think has made you the man you are-
- Tried to. I've tried to. I mean, it's a constant, as you know, it's constant and process work. I've evolved my questions and eliminated a lot of things in my life that did not feed me, did
not turn on my true self. I've tried to eliminate those and keep more things in front of me that are things that will
feed me and feed my best wolf, since we got two wolves in us. - Yeah, we do. I love that story.
- A good one and a bad one. - I love that story. What do you think are the five things we should all eliminate
to live a better life? - First, we gotta quit
hanging out with those people that sort of only turn
on our most banal selves. Sometimes, they're the
easiest people to go to. 'Cause they're the life of the party. I've been that guy before. Like I said, the life of the party, tell the joke that's about
someone that's not in the group, it's on them, we all
snicker and it's great. You got the biggest laugh, McConaughey, but everyone walks away going, "I don't respect him as much." So again with those long-term choices. Think about long money, not short money. (chuckling) Long money. Places. Hey, man, damn. Well, I don't know. Why do I have a nasty hangover
every time I go to that bar? I don't know, is it the
drink? Is it the people? Whatever it is, I just don't... Every time I wake up the next morning, after going to that bar or that place, I feel, ew. Eliminate that. Quit trying
to make that place work. We gotta eliminate this thing, this habit we all have
in society right now, which is, I raise me up if I put you down. It's false. It does not have a return. There's no ROI in that. It appears to be. It goes back to that what
do we tell millennials about everyone living online
and social media with comments? There's this false sort of
impetus that, oh, I'm taller. I win if I make sure you lose. That's not winning. There's room for us both
to win a blue ribbon, though we may do something different. And to covet or be jealous of your success, and if I don't like you
and I'm, fuckin' lose, man. I wanna see that guy fall. You're giving yourself a disease to think, "Oh, that's gonna raise me up." Again, it's short money. It's short money.
- [Lewis] Yes. - It may be even counterfeit. (both laugh)
You know? There's a few things. We've had this tendency, too. We put our finger up and
point out the disease before we point out health. We rubberneck at the car
wreck on the other side. Love to see a wreck.
- [Lewis] Wow. - You know what I mean? Dissect, here we go. We love to dissect problems. Well, start dissecting success. Start looking in deconstructing your life, your choices, those people you're hanging
around with, those places. When things are going
well, when you're like, "Ah, I feel like I finally
caught a groove here," put the pen to paper or look
down or start dissecting. What am I doing? 'Cause there's some
science to satisfaction. We don't just get there
by dissecting our failures and when we're in a rut. We need to be confident enough to go, "Well, things are going well and I can't take this for granted. What is it I'm doing? Oh, I prepared more.
I didn't have stress." I mean, it goes down to the, I always call this delayed gratification, teeing yourself up for a green light. Starts with the simplest
thing. And this is what I mean. Enjoy putting the coffee
in the coffee filter the night before, so the
next morning, you can get up and just go, boop, press the button. Aha, look at me. I teed
myself up for a Saturday. I got a green light. Instead of the next morning
going, "Oh, gee, where is it?" 'Cause sometimes it's
hard to make your coffee when you haven't had your coffee, like it's hard to find your glasses when you don't have your glasses on. I mean, tee yourself up for some little pleasures, some Saturdays. Tee yourself up for some green lights. Kiddos, work. It's Friday, you got that
morning meeting you're gonna lead on Monday morning, or you got the homework you gotta turn in, and you just finished on Friday and you wanna go kick back
and head out and relax 'cause you're gonna wait till,
oh, I'll do it Sunday night. Sometimes, it's pretty
cool to go, "You know what? I'm gonna get it done right now. Because Sunday, dude, I'm
gonna watch some football and maybe hang out with my friends. Sunday night game may be a good one, too. I may wanna go late and I
don't wanna have to think. I go, 'Oh, I gotta get home and do that.' So I'm gonna tee up myself for
some freedom on Sunday night by handling the stuff right now, so Sunday night I can be
like, 'I'm ready for tomorrow. I'm ready for Monday.'" And look, that doesn't
mean don't be a hedonist. That's the responsibility and the freedom. That doesn't mean you're not free. It's actually giving
yourself more freedom. - [Lewis] Yep. - It's actually giving yourself
more pleasure later on. I love delayed gratification. It's one of the things you'll
see if you have children. It's one of the great things I think to try and get them to understand. When I won the Oscar for
"Dallas Buyers Club," I had a really cool teaching lesson. My kids were like,
"What's the trophy for?" I said, "Well, it was given to me 'cause my people in my industry deemed my work really excellent." And they go, "Yeah, but what's it for?" And I went, "You remember
a year and a half ago when Papa was really skinny and you said his neck
looked like a giraffe?" And they're like, "Yeah." And I go, "Remember how you'd wake up and Papa was already gone to work, and then Papa would get
home and we'd have a dinner, and then he'd have to go
study and go to sleep, and he did that for like two months and he was gone all day?" They're like, "Yeah." I go, "Wat I was doing
that was every day then, someone gave me a trophy for, today, a year and a half later." - Wow. - So what you do today, what I was trying to get across to them, it's like, what you do
today can matter tomorrow. You can be rewarded for it. If you do something really well
today, you can be rewarded. You can get a green light
for that later on in life. - You may not get the reward today. - You may not get it today. So trust that you can be rewarded. At the same time, let's look
at the inversion of that. Go ahead. Lie, cheat, steal. Alright. Now, what? Lie, cheat, steal. Broke up on the text. Cheated on so-and-so. Whatever, whatever. I'm not buying green
lights to the future. Why? Because now, everywhere I go, I gotta look over my shoulder
and see if someone's there that I owe money or someone's
there that I cheated. And all of a sudden, now, I'm not present, and I'm stressing because someone goes, "Oh, yes, so-and-so is here." Oh. That's not a green light. It's a yellow light. It's stress. Unnecessary stress because I
left crumbs then, yesterday. Don't leave the crumbs. Tee yourself up for some freedom. The responsibility of
picking up your crumbs to handling stuff buys you your green-lights
freedom in the future where you're going, "I'm
fine. I can walk in anywhere. I don't have to look over my shoulder. I'm doing my best to live a life where I don't have to
live over my shoulder." It's a good thing for us
each to do with ourselves. And it's selfish. That's the other thing. It's selfish. Now, you have a full
redefinition of selfish. I'm for what is selfish.
It's also selfless. But it's teeing yourself up. It's being cool to and
kind to your future self. And it's also what's best for
the most amount of people. - Absolutely. - I call it the egotistical
utilitarian, you know? - You mentioned how a
lot of people are trying to tear other people's buildings down. When I interviewed Kevin Hart, he said that greatness was about helping other people succeed as well, not just you succeeding and
tearing other people down, but also making winners around you and building other people up around you as someone who's great.
- [Matthew] Yeah. - I love this quote by Jim Carey. I don't know if I'm gonna say it correctly but he said, "I hope everyone
becomes rich and famous so they can realize that's
not the answer to life." Something like that, he
said in a speech one time. It seems like so many
people on social media wanna become rich and famous. What have you learned
about both of those things? And what advice would you have to someone who is working so hard for fame and money based on-
- Here we go. - the lessons you learned?
- Love that. Look, first off, what have we all learned about rich and famous? If you are rich and famous,
you can be president. ♪ Ta-da ♪ - [Lewis] Right. - Now, look at the definition of success. If you go back in the
original Webster's dictionary and read the definition of success, it is vastly different from the
definition of success today. We have put, especially in America, fame and money at the top of the ladder for what you need to get to succeed, to be successful. And if you're successful,
you have respect of peers, because you're famous,
because you've got more money. The order of what we're telling
our children and ourselves to aspire to, it's out of order. It's not in order. It's part of the reason we have distrust in leadership today. There's nothing wrong with
pursuing money. I love money. There's nothing wrong with fame. It's fickle. Fame is a
mistress; it's not a wife. - [Lewis] Right. - (laughing) And you have
little trysts with fame, but it's not an end-all stay. It's not a real destination. Or I don't think it should be. There's nothing wrong with pursuing it. But then we get into this question. Okay, so we all want relevance. We want this money and we want relevance. Yes, I agree with that. I do, too. Relevance for what? That's the question we
ought to ask ourself. What do I wanna be relevant for? I wanna be famous because
I made a sex tape? Well, pretty sure I can
get famous if I do that. Pretty sure you can get
famous if you do that. Was that what you wanna be famous for? Eh, I don't know. I'll pass on that one. (sighs) It's a bit out of order. We need to ask ourself that question. Alright, if I wanna be
relevant, which everyone does, what do I wanna be relevant for? I think this is a good
question to ask ourselves. And, again, coming off of
what you said Kevin Hart said, yeah, we want it for
us, but can we be famous for doing something that we enjoy but also other people, it
builds up other people as well? We don't have to. Again, I'm gonna go to
Barkley here for a second. You get rich and famous, I don't believe it's your
responsibility to be charitable. No, it's your choice. It's a choice for anybody. It's your choice to make or not. It's not responsibility
because I'm in a position to. No, I have to make the choice. Now, that may be a more
responsible choice by me that gives me more freedom because I feel better
helping other people out, and it makes me feel good selfishly when I see them receive
something go out, thank you, which is a selfish, good feeling. So it has payback that I would say is, again, right there,
responsibility and freedom, that it's paying me back and it's paying some other people back. I would stick with that. I would just end it on that. We wanna be relevant. Ask ourselves (indistinct)
money and success. Look at the definition of success today and the definition in the
original Webster dictionary. It is out of order, especially in America, what we are telling each
other to aspire to be, to be deemed successful, to get respect. - Yeah. - With Donald Trump, became president. I had so many friends
that were so surprised. I'm like, "What are you talking about?" At the very base of it, just
the lowest common denominator, what do we tell people
to be in this country? Rich and famous. He was that. He was on TV and he was rich. That's how we tell everyone is successful. So it's not surprising
he became president. It wasn't to me. That's what we've been telling
everyone you need to be to succeed in life. Again, if that's your only pursuit and you disregard certain integrity and you disregard being as
true as you can to yourself, that's short money.
- Yeah. - It ain't long money. - Ooh, take that long money, baby. That's why I love your- - Long money.
(bell rings) - Your Instagram bio, I love, 'cause it says husband,
father, then actor. You lead with the thing that's
you wanna be relevant for, that you wanna be known for, that you care about deeply the most, which I really admire
and respect about you. Even though that may be
some small, subtle thing that someone doesn't see or recognize, I recognize that that's
there purposefully for you. It's not-
- [Matthew] Yes. - Oscar Award-winning,
best actor in the world, PEOPLE magazine Sexiest Man Alive. Although that's fun, too, and
you can put that out there, but that's not what you lead with. - [Matthew] No. - My thought of that, it's very intentional that you did that, and I recognize that-
- [Matthew] It is. - so I think I admire
that a lot about you. I know I have seven minutes left with you. I just wanna be very
respectful of your time and ask you a few final questions. Again, I'm gonna keep mentioning this. Make sure you guys get
this book, "Greenlights," because it's truly inspiring,
some incredible stories. Matthew goes in deeper
on a lot of these topics and gives you a lot of fun, humorous, powerful, emotional stories to tie into to remember as well about these lessons. So check this out. My question for you. I've got a few final questions. One is, what is your biggest fear? And what's been the biggest fear you've ever had to overcome? (Matthew exhaling) - My biggest fear. I tell you my least favorite feeling and a certain emotion
or feeling that I have, that constantly challenged
and battled with, is a sense of significance. I think a lot of that comes from, and this may go back
to my 60-year-old self telling my 50-year-old self, "Hey, you could've trusted
yourself a little more," but I feel a need so often to achieve and accomplish. At the same time, I know in my heart that, as we've been saying,
there's no destination. It's all a verb. Life's a verb. It's a process. You don't ever achieve. So I'm trying to reframe that into going, "We'll keep achieving in the
pursuit of the unachievable, and make steps." So I do wanna evolve, but a lot of times, I'll emotionally feel insignificant if I don't achieve something. - Interesting. - I think it's, sometimes it's good. 'Cause it is good to accomplish. It is good to set a goal, get
what we want, go after it. Other times, it's like, you
kinda just need to sit still or just stay in stay in
your perpetual motion and go forward and quit... Don't miss the process for the
clenching seek of the result. Don't let the result tell you,
"Ah, now I'm significant." (sighs) You know what I mean? At the same time, I've
had a lot better results when I was stuck to the process. When I wasn't as worried about the result. The best golfers shoot the best rounds when they walk off 18
thinking they're going to the next tee box and
someone's gotta tell them, "No, you finished the round. You shot 63." "Oh, I did?" You know? I've done my best work
when we wrap and I'm like, "Okay, see y'all tomorrow morning," and they're like, "No, that's it. We wrapped. The show is over." And you're like, "Oh, really? Oh, wow." Stay in the zone, in the process, and I've found that more
results will come your way. So I've battled that sometimes, with making sure to remind
myself to stay in that, because I can get
result-oriented to an extent that I don't feel a sense of significance or a real lineage to my identity if I don't achieve the
thing that I wanna achieve. And I find out later maybe
it wasn't what I needed to, it wasn't what I was really
trying to achieve anyway. But I sometimes need a measurement. I can have more patience
with myself to go, "That's really not... This is part of the process 'cause there's another
achievement down the line that you don't even know
you're working towards." - Right.
- You know what I mean? So give yourself a break. You're in process. Stay in process. - I think this is really powerful for any goal-oriented, driven person, whether they're an actor or not, to realize that even you
deal with that challenge, that fear that, I don't know
if I call it insecurity, but a fear of, am I having
significance in my work? Am I still relevant in my work? Or whatever the thing is that's- - How am I doing as a father? How am I doing as a husband? You know? Am I doing it as good as I can do in those places, in my relationships? Can I be a better friend? You know?
- Yeah. - Oh, I could've been a better parent. I could've done that better. - That's beautiful. I'm glad. Thank you for opening up about that. And I gotta be respectful of your time. I got three minutes, so I wanna ask these two final questions. This is called the three truths. I ask this question to everyone
at the end of my interviews. It's a hypothetical question. So you've written a memoir at 50. You share a lot of your
wisdom and truths in here. I would imagine you're 100, you're 150, you're as old as you wanna be, and for whatever reason, hypothetically, all the movies, the books, the work, the interviews that
you've done in your life, they all gotta go with
you to the next place. So no one has access to Matthew McConaughey's content anymore. It's all gone. With you to the next
world, wherever that is. But you get to leave behind a note. A love note to the world
that is your three truths. This is all people would
have to remember you by from your content. It would be the three lessons
that you would leave behind to the rest of us, or what I
like to call your three truths. What would you say would be yours? - Ooh, great question. Let me riff here. Let me (mumbles). Value values. Make a sense of
humor your default emotion. And (sighs) remember that you will have thousands of crisises in your life, and most of them will never happen. - I don't think I've
heard those three before. Out of 1,000-plus episodes, I don't think I've heard those three, so those are beautiful. I wanna acknowledge you, Matthew, for the significance
that you continue to make every single day in your life. Whether it's a fear or
you feel like you're not, I think it's amazing, the way you show up. You show up for your wife,
you show up for your kids, you show up for the work you do. I was chatting with
Emmanuel the other day, who you did the second episode, I believe, of "Uncomfortable Conversations
With a Black Man," and you show up in moments
when the world is uncertain or when our country and our nation is going through so much unease. You continue to show up
and make a significance in so many people's lives, so I wanna acknowledge you, Matthew, for being fun-loving, for living
life, for doing your thing, but also for being a real
human being every single day to the best of your ability. Obviously, we're not perfect,
but I see you showing up, and you're making a difference, and I really acknowledge that, beyond the awards and the
acknowledgements and the acting. I really acknowledge that for you, man. - Thank you for those. - Of course. My final question is coming, but make sure you guys get this book. I'm telling you, it's gonna
be a game-changer for you. Go get it right now. "Greenlights." You're gonna love it. Get it for a friend as well. It'll be the best gift
you get them all year. Final question, really quick, what's your definition of greatness? - Greatness. Whoo, well, you know, I love unanimous, and you know I love perfection, even though I don't think
I'll ever achieve them or that either are
achievable in this life. Greatness is pursuing that. Staying in the race,
committing to the chase to be your better self,
be better families, communities, civilizations, and people. America's promise, our country's promise is opportunity and greatness. We're not ever gonna arrive. The topsy-turvy times
that we're in right now, culture revolution, we're not
gonna come out of this and go, "Oh, now we've found perfect justice." No. But as long as we keep evolving, as long as we got an ascension,
that's called evolution. Stay in the chase, commit to
the chase, stay in the race. (inspiring music)
And that's greatness. It's staying in the process of the chase. - Mm.
- (indistinct) Yet. - My man, Matthew McConaughey. Thank you so much for
coming on. I appreciate you. - Lewis David, I enjoyed it. - Appreciate it, man. If you want more greatness in your life, then you gotta check out
this video right here. - He had a great quote that said, "Rest at the end, not in the middle." That's something I always live by. Not gonna rest. I'm gonna keep on pushing. A lot of answers that I don't have. Even questions that I don't have. But I'm just gonna keep going.
