Matthew McConaughey On: His Morning Routine; When To Take Risks; How To Bounce Back From Fuckups; And the Dangers of Cynicism

A guide to navigating "the rodeo of life". Academy Award–winning actor and #1 New York Times bestselling author Matthew McConaughey is a husband and a father, an eternal optimist, a hopeful skeptic, and a man of faith who believes that we should all start sellin' Sunday morning like a Saturday night. His latest book is Poems and Prayers https://www.amazon.com/Poems-Prayers-Matthew-McConaughey/dp/1984862103. In this episode we talk about: What Matthew's prayer practice looks like How to figure out what your beliefs are His relationship with doubt and humility How to reframe your relationship with failure, risk, and embarrassment Morning rituals and how to prepare for the day Sins, cynicism, and what to do when things get hard Matthew's take on the world Misconceptions of 'good' and 'evil' The difference between 'hope' and 'belief' Why "belief is punk rock" And more Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD On Sunday, September 21st from 1-5pm ET, join Dan and Leslie Booker at the New York Insight Meditation Center in NYC as they lead a workshop titled, "Heavily Meditated – The Dharma of Depression + Anxiety." This event is both in-person and online. Sign up here https://www.nyimc.org/event/heavily-meditated/! Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more here http://eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025! To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris SPONSORS: Monarch Money: use code Happier at monarchmoney.com https://monarchmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:33Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:47Dan Harris?

  Hey, gang. One of the very cool parts of my job is that, once in a while, I get to talk to people whose work I really admire. I'm talking about public figures who I've been watching or listening to for decades. Today, it's Matthew McConaughey, who I've loved in movies like The Wolf of Wall Street, The Dallas Buyers Club, et cetera, and also the TV show True Detective and much more. Side note, I sometimes laugh, and I was actually thinking about this during the interview, but I didn't bring it up. I sometimes laugh about that great faux confrontational interview between Zach Galifianakis and Matthew McConaughey on Zach's web show Between Two Ferns, where Zach turns to Matthew and says something like, "Do you ever worry when you and Woody Harrelson are on set that somewhere there's a sack not being hackied?"

• 1:32Dan Harris?

  Anyway, it was kind of surreal to talk to Matthew, and he did not disappoint. He was full-on Matthew McConaughey. This interview centers on his new book, which is called Poems and Prayers. We talk about Matthew's morning ritual, what he means by prayer, and how he does it. He gets pretty granular on that. His relationship with doubt and humility, how to reframe your relationship with failure, risk, and embarrassment, why he's so worried about growing cynicism in the culture, the difference between hope and belief, why he says belief is punk rock, and much more. Before we dive in, just a quick plug, don't forget to check out what we're doing over on danharris.com. Paid subscribers now get guided meditations with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes, plus we are now doing weekly live video meditation and Q and A

• 2:16Dan Harris?

  sessions. We do these every Tuesday at four Eastern. I'm doing the next one solo, but sometimes I do it with our teacher of the month, or the teacher of the month does it solo. Also, if you want to meditate with me in person, I've got a couple of events coming up. The first is on September 21st. I'll be doing a workshop at the New York Insight Meditation Center on the Dharma of Anxiety and Depression with the great Leslie Booker. You can do that one online or in person. And I will be back at the Omega Institute for another edition of Meditation Party with Seven A. Selassie, Jeff Warren, and this time Afosu Jones-Cortez. That's the weekend of October 24th at Omega. Links to both in the show notes. Okay, we'll get started with Matthew McConaughey right after this.

• 2:57Speaker 00

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• 3:56Dan Harris?

  Matthew McConaughey, welcome to the show.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  Dan.

• 4:00Dan Harris?

  It's awesome to talk to you. I'm really glad you made time for this. Congratulations on the new book. It's called Poems and Prayers. So I thought, and this is not particularly original on my part, but I thought we'd start with poems and prayers. What is the role of poetry in your life? Is that a sanity inducing mechanism for you?

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Sanity inducing, it's a good way to put it. Sometimes it is, sure. When the logic and the math and the evidence and the facts aren't adding up to an outcome that I can appreciate or want to strive to, poetry is, you know, like prayers, they're dreams and aspirations and pursuits to believe in beauty and divinity and the world and in ourselves. And sometimes I go to poetry when I'm like, you know what? Enough with the academia. Enough with the damn logic. I'm looking around at reality and I'm not finding the things that I want to believe in or that are building me up to have belief in others and myself. So I'll go to poetry, like music, like prayers and those aspirations of the ideals in life

• 5:00Speaker 03

  to make sense of the world or to remind myself that there's higher ground to strive for.

• 5:06Dan Harris?

  In the introduction to your book, you talk about many of the things you just mentioned there that at times it's like hard to know what's true as we look around at the world. And so for you, poetry or art, rhythm, mysticism can be a refuge in a world where objective truth is often obscured or weaponized.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it can be a beautiful and musical and way to access, again, those ideals when, look, logic and the truth, and I love logic. That's where I've always gone. I go to nonfiction to create the fiction. I believe art emulates life. That's what just keep living. My motto has been forever, that I look around and see reality and I'm like, that's as good as it can get, you know? Let's let that inspire me and us to create art. And I still believe that, but I was finding that harder to do here in the last few years for whatever reason. Logic, the numbers, the math, the facts, they're also tacit. They're very, almost can become acidic. They're academic.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  It's very conscientious work to try and sift through it all and then work out the digits that you want to believe in or what the hell the facts are. So a relaxing but beautiful place to go to sometimes make sense for what's between the lines or what the overall story or theme could be is poetry and prayers for me.

• 6:27Dan Harris?

  Let's talk about prayer. You get pretty detailed in the book about exactly how you pray. And I'll be honest, I was raised by atheist scientists in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. So I don't have like a rich prayer life. I'm a pretty dedicated meditator. And I think there's overlap there, but I don't pray per se. And I don't know if you'd be willing to recapitulate it here, but I was really intrigued by your sort of walking the reader through your prayer process, which if I understand correctly, kind of starts with some gratitude.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, it starts with the baseline gratitude. I get asked all the time, or I just have conversations with people all the time. My agnostic and atheist friends as well, like, I mean, I got things to pray for, but how do you do it? What's the rules? You know, or kids ask me that. There really are no rules. Find a space to get quiet with yourself, have a listen. And if your mind doesn't go somewhere, pick out somebody or something you're thankful for. Think of what that is in them, why you're thankful for it, why it turns you on, why it just maybe doesn't do anything for you, but you just love what it does for them. Well, pray for more of that in them and maybe in you as well. So the way I just started that of what prayer is, is very much an overlap of, I suppose, what you do with meditation.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  Find that quiet space, listen for a minute, try not to be hung up on the ideas and the aspirations or the plans that we have for our future and just be still for a moment, listen to yourself. So prayer could start off, I start it with gratitude. What I do is I try to go through the Rolodex of all the people in my life that I love and care for, and I try to Rolodex through my memories lane of an image of them when they're most truly themselves, not Instagram happy, cheese, perfect light, and not doubtful and mournful, but just when they were themselves. And you saw grace on them and you see their light shining bright because they are just who they are in that contentment of that moment. And I lock in on that picture of them in my mind.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  And I pray for more of that in them and pray to see them, for them to feel that more. And I roll through that, however long that takes, and then I get to what I talk about is the hardest part. Now I get to me and I gotta roll through the Rolodex of trying to see myself in that space. And that can take a mighty long time sometimes to find that vision of myself and that picture of myself. But I stick with it until I do. And then I sit with that for a minute. And I think about what made me feel that way. Why I was in that space where I was, where I wasn't ahead or behind, but I wasn't advertising and I wasn't performing and I wasn't exaggerating the goodness and I wasn't dwelling in the

• 9:07Speaker 03

  pain. And I was right there, level, and the world seemed flat and my eyes were high and I could tell by the look of myself that I was honest across the board with who I was. And I'll concentrate on that and I'll pray for more of that myself. And then after I'm done with that, that's when I say amen.

• 9:25Dan Harris?

  To me, coming at this from a Buddhist lens, this sounds similar, if not identical, to loving kindness meditation. Are you familiar with that practice?

• 9:36Speaker 03

  I'm not, but I've heard about that and I have friends that do and I think it sounds quite similar. You know, I'm curious, you know, what's the real difference in that?

• 9:45Dan Harris?

  Well, so the basics of loving kindness meditation are you, this is gonna sound very similar, you sit, bring to mind, usually you start with an easy person, could be a cat, dog, could be a kid, and then you repeat four phrases, may be happy, safe, healthy, live with ease. Then you move to yourself, then a neutral person, sorry, before the neutral person, there's a mentor, after the neutral person, there's a difficult person, and then everybody, everywhere. I would say the primary difference, and actually, this is a point of curiosity, it's basically a question for you, the potential difference is, in the Buddhist schema, there's no creator god, you're not petitioning anybody for help.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  Right. I do believe, I don't know this, but I do believe that when I am praying to God, when I am seeking to imitate and proclimate the divinity of God and be more God-like.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  And I'm talking to, and I think we all are, talking to our sacred selves. Somebody may hear that and go, "That's a blasphemous thing to say." I hope it's not. I believe we all have it in us. And whether I call that God, or you don't have a destination of who you're talking to, or what entity you're talking to or reaching out to, it's another way to get to a very similar place. And so, as I've said, you know, early on in this book, and I wanted to make clear, I'm a believer. So for me, this, I wrote this book as part of a spiritual therapy for my own relationship and doubts that I have and have had with my own belief in God.

• 11:25Speaker 03

  But it's also for anyone who wants to believe more in themselves, wants to believe more in others, wants to believe more in tomorrow or yesterday. And I would say when people go, "Well, where do you go for belief?" It seems to me the best place to start is to ask yourself, "Who or what would you die for?" And everyone can answer that question, start there. And why that's a great place to start with who you die for, and figuring out who that is and admitting that is a great place to look. That's where your belief is. And it's also a great signal to what to start living for. In a time when it's very confusing to many of us, it's like, "Well, what is the purpose? What am I supposed to start living for? I'm confused. I'm not sure. My attention span's all over the place. What do I give a damn about?

• 12:10Speaker 03

  What do I really value? What do I care for?" And those are baseline things that matter to us that should stand the test of any kind of weather that we're in and change around us, politically, AI, whatever, all the tension and confusion and stimulus. Those are things that can keep us a baseline of a truth for us through all the noise.

• 12:29Dan Harris?

  When you ask yourself that question, "What would you die for?", what's your answer?

• 12:33Speaker 03

  Well, I'll tell you this, I have a hunch that this answer means that I have some more, a lot more work to do with my faith than I do. And I have, I have a hunch that this answer means I have more doubt than I need to have. And that answer is, the list used to be longer. Dan, the list used to be longer. But then I look back and when was that list longer? When was that list up to 40 years old? That I could have honestly said, I will die. I would easily sacrifice my life for any human being. Around 40, I started to change. Now, that's about when I started to have children.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  I've got a wife, I'm in love, we built a family. Oh, that number starts shrinking because now I've got dependents. And I'm like, oh, I'm, I'm an artist with them, trying to raise them as a father, the most reverential position that I know in life. And, oh, I don't know if I necessarily want to give up my life for a stranger across the world that I don't know. I think I'm building something here and I believe in it. And I don't want to, if I'm not here for that, will those children have the best chance of becoming the best of themselves if I'm not here? So I have those quite selfish references now in my life. The list, I would say, is longer than my immediate family, but it's not near as long as it used to be.

• 13:57Dan Harris?

  Yes. I've heard you a couple of times talk about you're wrestling with doubt so far in this, in the early stages of this conversation. Do you, is that like?

• 14:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:06Dan Harris?

  Are you beating yourself up for having doubt in, in the existence of God? Where, where are, what am I hearing?

• 14:11Speaker 03

  So, I'll throw a few jabs. I used to throw right hooks at myself. I'll throw through jabs at myself now. I'll get myself in a bit of a headlock. Because I've fallen out of rituals that I believe that helped me feel so full of belief and faith. Now, I've shaking hands and I believe this is more than amnesty for myself, but I've shaken hands with that doubt's part of the process. And that God at least is happy I'm trying. I've had my agnostic years, years where I said, uh-uh. Self-reliance, it's on me, hands on the wheel, fate my ass. Uh-uh, this is it. I'm responsible. We're each responsible for what we do for ourselves.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Those were very valuable years. And when I came out of those, back to faith and belief and strong belief in God, I heard God applauding, going, "Thank you for the courage to believe that you could do it all yourself. I need more like you, putting your hands on the wheel, because I've got too many out there, just relying on faith. Inshallah, hey, whatever. Good Lord willing, no, I need your self-reliance and faith go together. They're not contradictory. So, thank you for having the courage to feel like you could do it yourself, and welcome back. Those were wonderful exercises in that. But I did come back, and it's always there. Sometimes it's a bit hazy.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Sometimes I have to even sell myself on the habit, the rituals, to stay in tune with my own spirit and belief in God. I can get away from it. When it's ideal for me, and this doesn't happen that often, but every day is a walking prayer, with eyes open. Every interaction is a gift and a prayer. That doesn't always happen, so follow the rituals of how to start my day with a prayer before a meal, or to end my day, or to what I do on Sunday. Those rituals help me with humility. They help me with confidence most of the time, sometimes. But I had a real struggle with the relationship with humility for decades, until I heard the definition that it's admitting we have more to know,

• 16:20Speaker 03

  admitting we have more to learn. And once I heard that definition, I was like, "Oh, I'm in." And I was able to seek humility and find it, yet still be confident. But I go through doubt, not saying all the time, but I have seasons of doubt. And one of them was here about a couple of years ago, and was part of the reason I wrote this book, and part of the reason I started looking back to my own poems and prayers, and writing more of them, and then put them on the page for me, and then saying, "Hey, maybe these are worth sharing, because I'm hearing a lot of other people have the same feelings."

• 16:50Dan Harris?

  On this note of humility, there's a really nice, I think this is a poem or either a poem or just a brief reflection in the book that Eleanor, who's producing this episode, Eleanor and I really honed in on, and I'll quote it to you and then maybe you can talk about it on the backside. Every time we stand to be corrected, we also stand to be correct.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  Be correct, right. Yeah, that part and parcel goes along with that other little maxim I had in there is like, anytime you're asking for something, I forget the rhyme, but the answer is no until it's yes. You know, it's also has to do with how we look at consequences. You tell anyone, well, you know, you make that choice, just tell them there's gonna be consequences. Ninety-five percent of our head goes, uh-oh, and we forget that, no, it's 50/50. Could be great consequences. We don't give credit to the great consequences. We just think, oh, that means trouble. And so I want to flip, I like flipping some things on their heads sometimes about going, look, you know, I have another one in there. I'm not sure how to do it right, but I'm, I'm not sure to do it wrong, but I'm pretty damn sure I didn't do it right. Every time you're incorrect, you stand the chance of

• 17:54Speaker 03

  being correct. So take the chance. You know, we have a culture that sort of really hammers you if you fail or if you're wrong. We love to hammer the person who missed the shot more than we like to cheer for the one who made the shot. And so just throwing that in there to say, look, let's admit it's 50/50. Even if you don't know how to do it and you try to do it wrong, you might pull it off and do it right. You might actually be correct. So don't stop taking chances.

• 18:21Dan Harris?

  I completely agree with everything you're saying. Would you say this is kind of the spirit of your prior book or one of your prior books, Greenlights?

• 18:30Speaker 03

  It's definitely kin. This is the, the pools of prayers and meditations and songs that inspired a lot of my actions and a lot of the stories that I told. In green light. So this is more the spiritual side, the secrets that we all have, that we'd like to try and turn into habits and behaviors in our life. And these are ones that have worked for me. As you know, there's chapters in here called wobbly, lost and looking, times of great doubt and confusion. Some brought on by myself, some just by the ways of the world and me looking up and going, what the hell, man? I need a compass and digging out of some of those and finding my way again. And a lot of things in here have helped me and others, you know, that I've even heard

• 19:12Speaker 03

  has given us a rudder again to get out of trouble, to get out of doubt, to get out of the haze, back into the dream, to get out of indifference and doubt and get back into belief, which is more than hope, but to get back into doubling down, tending the garden of, putting more wood on the fire of the things that we value in our life and care for and believing in those.

• 19:34Dan Harris?

  The reason why I brought up green lights is my understanding, one of the central arguments in that book is you should try because you might hit a green light where most of us are braced for the red light. We don't want to fail because we live in the panopticon of social media where everybody is shamed all the time or always in performative mode.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:51Dan Harris?

  But why not take the risk and be slightly optimistic?

• 19:56Speaker 03

  I agree. Why not? The failures don't, you know, we think they're perceived to carry so much more weight than they actually do. And I'm not saying go out there and be foolish. I believe in the merit of understanding a craft, hustling, getting educated at and trying to be good at something before you just go, hey, I can do it because I feel like it. No, I'm not talking about that half ass or BS. But every time I've failed, most every time I've failed, when I fessed up to the failure and dusted myself off, the people I gave a damn about, the people I looked up to, the people I was pursuing to be more like, looked at me and were like, yeah, me too. There you go. They were very

• 20:38Speaker 03

  affirmative to go, yeah, thank you for being on the playing field. Thank you for taking the shot and thank you for getting up and saying, yeah, my bad. I missed. Ready to go again. Thanks for staying in the game. And most people, I think, do that, at least the ones that we care about or should care about. And I just, I see, especially with children these days. Look, in some ways, I wish we brought more embarrassment back. I sometimes like, I wish people would be more embarrassed. What happened to embarrassment, man? Or a little bit of guilt. I mean, come on, you're okay. You sleep well with that being how you handled that situation or how you handled your day? I'd be ashamed. And I'm glad I am because I've got a measure of what I'm holding in expectation myself.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  But at the same time, there's stuff we shouldn't be embarrassed about, a failure. There's there's stuff that I see young people going, no, I don't try that for fear of the failure. Like, what's the big deal? What would happen if you did fail? And I don't, I don't want to find out. For something that is just going to be some of that social pressure that someone else is going to make a much bigger deal out of it than it actually is.

• 21:43Dan Harris?

  Yes, I see this in my own son. I have a 10 year old. I know you have kids. And this isn't always true of him, but sometimes he doesn't want to try because he doesn't want to fail. The way I see this playing out in the culture and my own experience is if you try something publicly and fail, in your case, maybe it's a movie or a TV show. In my case, maybe it's a book that doesn't work or whatever. You might take some shit in the moment, but there's that second opportunity later, and it doesn't even have to be that much later, to do what you were describing a few moments ago, which is to get up and say, you know what? I tried something, it didn't work, I screwed up. People usually applaud that.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  And you see it, it's prevalent in the Silicon Valley.

• 22:26Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  Those guys get up and just take swings all the time.

• 22:29Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  300 million dollar valuation, whoop, didn't work. Okay, next, boom. I mean, they do it all the time. I'm sitting back and I've gotten in business and started to learn a little bit about that. I was amazed looking into that industry. Baseball's a lot better percentage than you guys. You know what I mean?

• 22:44Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  But they're like, no, that's, that's just how it goes. We took a swing. I'd say one of my greatest, I've been told this by people that I admire, one of my greatest attributes in brands is risk. It's also the thing that I believe I need to take more of, that I don't take enough of. Now, as part of that, go back to the same reason of my list is shorter for how many people I die for, because I got a family and I've built this and it's non-negotiable and I'm going to continue to build this for my life. So I don't want to be foolish with risking that. Do I have a career that I've built over 36 years that I don't want to just be half hazard and be silly with? Yeah, but at the same time, measuring what the right risks are and not settling into a successful sort of complacency

• 23:29Speaker 03

  of just saying, well, put up the walls, let's maintain, put up the walls, let's maintain. I don't, I don't, I don't want to sit there either, although I do love to prepare and I do, I do love to measure, you know? And preparation has been one of my greatest assets. I also, on the flip side of that, don't want to prepare myself until death and hope for a lot of things.

• 23:51Dan Harris?

  Right.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:53Dan Harris?

  If there's been a decline in risk tolerance post babies.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:59Dan Harris?

  Where do you find that showing up in like, oh, well, I'm not gonna, maybe I don't do Dallas Buyers Club this time. Maybe I go for something safer. Is it artistic choices? Is it something else?

• 24:13Speaker 03

  Hmm. It's not really artistic choices, I don't think, unless it's dealing with amount of time I'm gonna need to go be solo. For instance, writing, that's a solo experience for me. I'm not any good at going, oh, after this, Dan, I've got three hours in the afternoon before my next deployment. I'll go write. I don't know how to do that. I have to have no curfew on the backside, at least eight to 10 days on the backside of knowing I have, there is no clock. I don't have to have a return ticket back at all to step out if I'm creatively turned on. So time is some, but I'm also very fortunate. When I go to work for over more than three weeks, the kids and the family come with me.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  So I'm not missing out on them. The risk of roles, no, it would be no problem. I could Dallas Buyers Club to go, hey, we're gonna do this. So it's gonna be five months. I'm gonna be on a militant diet. I'm gonna be, that's not a problem. It's a good question. What is the answer of that? Where I take risk of who to bring into my life.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  Who to share our life with? What areas to expose the kids to as since they're usually with me and Camilla? I think it's those. Cause when you have more to protect, you gotta, I try to watch that. I don't want to lose trust, but I also with success, you got a lot of people coming for you. And some of them are very good at hiding their transactional motives. And try to be as wise to that as possible, but at the same time to measure those things. Stunts a creative process because a creative process works on yes. Embrace, carry on. Yes, come on, have another.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  And so balancing that out, and my wife has probably a more skeptical, watchful eye than I do. But it's how much to share and then in 24 hours, not to. Some of the taking the risk is about obviously bringing on new things. But it's also on the other side, a greater risk to go, no, don't bring on new things. Put more logs on the fires you've already got going. And don't let those just be, oh, that was a fad. Oh, I'd worked on that for a couple of years. No, keep building the fires that are already built and see how high they can go. How wide those flames can go. And so it's measuring those and plus without, I can have a tendency to over leverage myself and look up and go, damn it.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  I got eight campfires on my desk again. I'd rather have two bonfires. I'm feeling pulled left and right. Kind of feel like I'm not able to give a hundred percent. I'm half assing this over here. I'm half assing that over there. I'm feeling quite incomplete. Can I get six more hours in a day? Nope, they're not giving them. Okay, what do I need to do? Need to pull a few campfires off. And that's probably the greater risk for me now is to probably pull some campfires off. To use that wood to put in the one, the bonfires that I've got going.

• 27:13Dan Harris?

  That is a huge problem for me personally. I know what drives my eye over commitment. It's usually fear, like a fear of missing out, fear of not making enough money. What drives it for you?

• 27:25Speaker 03

  Finding out, I love to find out. Most times in my life, when I thought, oh, I don't have time for that. Yeah, you do. Go do it. And I found more time and I found more energy to go think I can handle it and handle it and actually handle it. But can I do that while keeping my health intact, while keeping my husbandry intact, while keeping my fatherhood intact, while keeping my faith intact, by keeping those relationships intact? Sometimes one of those goes into the debit section if I'm going to take on too much. And I've found that as much as you may say, hey, no, just need your name on the board. Just need your name on the invitation. Uh-uh. I don't know how to just be the name.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  If I'm going to do it, I'll look up and I'm, you know, if you ask me to read a script, you say, Dan, you say, Matthew, I got the script. I want you to read it for me and give me some notes. I'm going to say, Dan, are you sure this is the one? Because I know it's 120 pages, think it's going to be an hour and a half read. No, it's not. It's going to be an hour and a half read, but it's going to take me eight and a half hours because I'm going to be taking notes along the way and then I'm going to assemble them, then I'm going to get them and get back. That's going to be my whole day. So are you sure this is the one you want me to read? I'm not good at, and I guess I'm glad I'm not good at. I'm not good at just dipping a toe or going, yeah, I'll be affiliated with that. Yeah, you can put my name on it because I'll end up getting into it. And once I'm into it, I well exceed all of my contractual obligations and all of my, and all of my relations.

• 28:52Dan Harris?

  The other thing you mentioned a couple of minutes ago that intrigued me was knowing when to trust people. You're a very well-known person, public figure. You said, and I really like the way you put this, some people are really good at hiding their transactional agenda. How do you know when to trust people?

• 29:10Speaker 03

  I go in with a pretty high measure openness of trust on howdy. I go in with a great reverence for most everybody I meet. Nobody, including myself, ever really lives up to the reverence that I give them.

• 29:30Speaker 03

  And I know some exceptionally exceptional people. But in the same way, no movie, no character, I've every time I've slipped up to the divinity that I dreamed it to be. And I've done some excellent stuff and been a part of some excellent movies. And I'm not over here booing them. I'm saying they were pieces of art, or they end up being, people end up being more mortal than maybe I on howdy was believing they could be. So I go in with a lot of trust. I am not foolish with that. I don't share numbers and open up my account and books. That's usually what snakes are after. And I've been burned many times on the first chance. I was like, oh, okay, I didn't get the reciprocity that I see with that. That was a singular transaction. Okay, okay.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  Measured, not repeating that. So I don't give it all on the first chance where I can squander what I have, I'm not foolish with, but I've got many times where I've given my time and gone, oh, that was way oversold to me. And that actually benefited them, but didn't benefit me at all. Let's mark that. I've got people around me that help if I'm going to engage with something. I'm like, yeah, this guy's great, or she's great, or let's go into this project. I've then, before I say yes, allow my team around me to go, let us do some work here and study and see if everything's what's being said. If everything you're being sold is actually what the facts are. Then we assemble and I tell that person, I get back to you, I've got to do some diligence, but it sounds great.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  And then I assemble, I get my facts together, measured against time, what I've got to do. And sometimes I'll come back and go, and just did this yesterday, not going to do a deal, but I tell you what, you wanted 10, I'm going to give you two for free. I don't want to be part of the deal. I like what you're doing. You got two for free. Do what you want with them. Market, you can use my name and my voice for that. Go market it, see if you can get more. We're great. That's all I can do right now.

• 31:23Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Matthew talks about his morning ritual, his morning routine, how he prepares for the day. We also talk about sins, cynicism, and what to do when things get shitty. Matthew's take on the current state of the world, misconceptions about good and evil, and why belief is punk rock.

• 31:48Dan Harris?

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• 32:29Dan Harris?

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• 33:11Dan Harris?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was us. 10% happier, it's the best way to support this show. For both of us, the cold weather is now officially back. I, however, am not dreading it this year because I've got Bombas. They make socks, slippers, and footwear that keep me warm and cozy and snug all winter long. And everything they make is great for gifting, so I'm also not stressed about the holidays. Bombas makes slippers for staying cozy inside, and now they make footwear for going out and about. From fuzzy sundae slippers for lounging around in, to water-resistant suede booties that Can handle the winter.

• 33:56Dan Harris?

  Bombas socks are a winter go to as well. Merino wool and cashmere blend socks for warmth. Fuzzy socks and plush gripper socks for cozy vibes at home. They also, of course, make socks that you can exercise in. I am a heavy user of Bombas socks for working out. I also wear them when I'm wearing sneakers out and about because they look good and they're really, really comfortable. And the best part about Bombas, for every item you purchase, they donate an essential clothing item to somebody facing housing insecurity. One purchased equals one donated with over 200 million donations and counting. Head on over to Bombas.com/happier and use the code HAPPIER for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash happier and use the code HAPPIER at checkout.

• 34:43Dan Harris?

  Again, the book's called Poems and Prayers, and one of the things that Eleanor and I, again Eleanor, the producer of this episode, that we honed in on is your morning routine. There's a bunch of parts to this, but I'm going to read one, one little passage and hopefully get you to unpack it a little bit.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 35:00Dan Harris?

  Then there are other aspects of your morning routine I want to talk about, but here's the first one. It's called "Living Life to a Tune." "Some mornings I wake up with a certain musical meter in my mind. If I like the sound of it, I'll do my best to move to the pace of that rhythm throughout the day, to exchange the cadence with everything I see and do. If I keep that meter in the way I think, see, and move, the world around me often responds in kind to my calling, making every interaction I have a rhyming verse in the song that is my day." Can you say a little bit more about that?

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. A lot of my writing comes from a musical meter. There's quite a few poems in the book that I woke up with.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  And I woke up and I had it and the line was in my head and it fit that meter and I slowly walked to my laptop and I started writing.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  To that meter and all of a sudden, six hours later, have 40 pages. And now I go back and go look and go, let's see if any of that's worth a shit. And, you know, do some editing, look, I go, hey, some of that is, some of that's not. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. The same way of starting my day. Do you drink coffee in the morning?

• 36:14Dan Harris?

  I have panic disorder, so I can't have caffeine.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  Okay, so no caffeine. So if you did, you would be sped up ahead of time, right?

• 36:22Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  Okay, and your discussion with me or the world, you'd be ahead. Maybe you wouldn't listen as well. Maybe you'd be over anticipating what's the next dancer and you wouldn't be able to be present. All of a sudden, this thing, we would kind of be off musically, right? Well, same with me. If I don't have anything, I'm going to be maybe a little bit slow and I don't know, not using the right amount of words and then feeling anticipation because I'm going like, geez, sharpen up. I wake up with a certain meter in my head of an exchange short of dance that I'm going to have through the day with how my day is going to start. That starts with though, the night before, having a look at kind of what my day is laid out. I've got six destinations that I've agreed to be at. I've got this breakfast with my wife.

• 37:05Speaker 03

  I've got this 10 a.m. meeting, got this one, I got this two, I got this three, I got this four. And then I'm going to my son's football game at seven. Let's lay that out. All right, what do I need to be prepared for what? Well, to start off the day, the first one's going to be easy. Let's ease into the day. Hell, maybe I'll meet my wife over a cup of tea and we'll do a few pieces of a puzzle just to catch up on the day. But then I'm going to start getting cranked up for the nine and the 10 because I got to be on there an hour. I got to compartmentalize, I got to be sharp. And then by the end of the day, when can I take the big exhale? Right before I'm going to leave, the last meeting to go to my son's football game. It's another meeting, but it's not, I don't have to be on. That's already now I've got three acts of a song of where my energy is going to go through the day.

• 37:47Speaker 03

  And that starts with looking at my plan from the day before. I'm also going to run into a few things I didn't expect. I'm gonna hit the traffic jam, so I'm gonna be late for the two o'clock, which is gonna make me late for the three o'clock, which is gonna then, oh, can't make me late for the Suns football game, because that's non-negotiable. I have to leave the four o'clock early to get to that one. So I'm pinching, but I'm still, I like to leave on time, so I can take my time. I don't like to be in a hurry. I don't like to be in a rush. I like to have it sorted, so I can saunter in, be on time, be present, and saunter right out. I don't want to get there early and hang out too long in your green room. I don't want to get there late and us try to hurry up and rush and get what questions in we can in 40 minutes when we really need an hour. That's

• 38:29Speaker 03

  a meter. That's a meter of how I'm planning my day. That's a meter of how I'm gonna move. That's a meter of how I'm gonna talk to some people in passing, because I'm on my way to where I need to go. No, I can't stop every single time, because I've got this thing, I've got this plan, I've got a dance I'm doing and where I'm going. That's also, hey, happened to get there early, ran into Eleanor outside, got in a conversation with her for 10 minutes before you and I started to talk, because I was there. It's all in the same rhythm, but it's from the rhythm of the plan I looked at the night before. And if I can keep that cadence, there's a rhythm to the day. There's a rhythm to the work. It starts to rhyme. Or in the words of T-Bone Burnett, like a song, if you just keep at it, you'll eventually write a

• 39:14Speaker 03

  song. And it's also realizing that the bumps, that the traffic jams, that the F-ups, and the things that didn't go as planned, that's part of the same song. Don't lose your rhythm there. That's part of the same song. Don't let that throw you out of rhythm, like you got a new song. It's part of the same song.

• 39:31Dan Harris?

  I really honed in on, in your book, this balance that you've just been talking about between wanting to have a kind of smooth, laid-back, saunter through your day, but also to get all the shit done. And it sounds like to me, what part of that for you is, as you referenced, preparation.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  Preparation, we all feel when we feel stressed, right? What is usually the things we have to do in front of us, the amount of unresponded, unreturned emails, that number gets bigger. They start to mount vertically on our shoulders.

• 40:06Dan Harris?

  Yep.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  It's a vertical mount. Shit. How am I gonna get all it done?

• 40:12Speaker 03

  When in reality, usually we go do it and you're like, oh geez, it wasn't as much weight on my shoulders as I thought. But what happens when we're prepared? All those things aren't as on our shoulders, they're actually laid out in front of us laterally. And when they're laid out laterally and you're like, I'm not looking at these, there's all these appointments I gotta make. I see it and they're lily pads that I'm gonna saunter and dance to each one and I'm calling each one a swing by.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Just sometimes I've even that idea of looking at my busy day and go, these are swing bys, not appointments. All of a sudden I'm like, oh, okay. And I'm better in the appointments. Because I've been like, nah, you're swinging by, man. And that's because I see them laterally in front of us. And it gets off that vertical stack that we put on ourselves that puts the pressure. Cause you can't see them. They're stacked on top of you and after the few on the, on your shoulders, the ones up top, you can't see the damn things. And you're intimidated by them. And the weight gets heavy, but when they're laid down in front of us and you go, oh, I see, I go there. Then I'm gonna go there, then I'm gonna swing by over there. Oh yeah, then I'm coming back over here and pop over. Yeah, it's a great way of looking at it that takes the pressure off and takes the weight off. Because you can see it and it's not on your shoulders.

• 41:23Speaker 03

  So it's a lateral way of looking at all the plans that we have or all the appointments or responsibilities that we have. And you can see them.

• 41:32Dan Harris?

  I like that. Another key part for you seems to be like, you don't leap out of bed in the morning, like there, you take a beat and check in.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Try to. Yeah. You know, they'll be trying to go through the house, there's a, a big cardboard, very artfully drawn message in the kitchen. No devices or mobile devices for the first hour you are awake. And at the bottom it says, that includes you, Popeye. That's me. Oh geez, I get it. And my day does start better if I give myself enough time to not check in with what's happening in the rest of the world. And to just stay in my cocoon of, hey, how am I feeling? Oh, good, good. I hear the kids down there laughing. Good. I'm gonna catch them before they hop out to school. Let me go down and hang out with them. Like I said, make a cup

• 42:23Speaker 03

  of tea, check in with my wife, talk about the day. If I've got the time, a real luxury to do a few pieces of a puzzle. Simple, you know? It's like, I think, what Wordle does for people. Just to get the brain active in a slow way before I'm gonna engage in getting too much of a rush or have to move quickly is sometimes I have to do. That's how I like to start my day. Sometimes I have, wake up with an idea and I'm gonna go put it down in my notes. And my notes are in my phone. Pretty damn hard to put a note in your phone when you see and you also cross those extra numbers in your email box. How do you keep from checking those but actually going into the phone to use your notes? And that takes a bit of discipline and I don't always pull it off. But I do like when I start my day

• 43:07Speaker 03

  that way much better than when I've come downstairs to greet the family and start my day when I'm already thinking about, if I've checked my message, I'm already thinking about everything I've got to take care of that day. And now I'm not, I'm not as relaxed with them. I'm not as present with them. I'm a little bit in a rush. What I've got to do later on is more important than what I'm doing right now. So let me, just a second. No, I'm listening. No, I know. Yeah, yeah, just a second. Yeah, I know. I hear you. I'm listening. Bullshit. No, you're not. Put it down. So I try to buy that time in the morning for myself. And for the most part, pull it off and I'm happy when I do.

• 43:43Dan Harris?

  I've done something similar and I found it to be really helpful. And it also sounds to me like you have some flexibility, some grace to fuck it up.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. Look, there's some times where it's all hands on deck. I need it. It's timely. It's now. And they don't have to put an exclamation mark and all caps, all red to let me know that. I know, this is something I gotta go. And I'll later and go, this is something I gotta handle. Let me get a quick kiss. Hello. Love you too. Have a great disco. I gotta go handle this. I'll see you this afternoon. I know, don't give me shit about it. We'll laugh about it later. I'm gonna do this. Trust me. I gotta handle it. Bam. Gotta get into it. Yeah, there's some grace in there. And I gotta allow that grace with my wife and she allows it with me and the kids allow it with me and... What's my excuse? When they go like, well, I didn't do it. I was like, yeah, with the message, you got to return, ain't paying the rent. Mine is.

• 44:35Speaker 03

  That can be my excuse.

• 44:38Dan Harris?

  I've tried that and I've gotten some harsh looks in response.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I haven't gotten a good response to that one either.

• 44:45Dan Harris?

  I just on this, on this note of fuck ups, there's a, another Matthew McConaughey quote here. I like, if we're not missing coming up short or sinning enough. Yeah. Maybe we aren't trying hard enough.

• 44:59Speaker 03

  Hmm. To sin, it comes from, it's an archery term, to miss the mark. And I love, I'm a prescriptionist. I love going back to the original meaning of words. And that just opens that up for a lot of people who may not, may not believe in sin or may not believe in God or what have you. So which, which the word sin is usually connected to. Yeah. You know, I'm curious as a believer, when and if I get to, if there is that so-called pearly gates and judgment day or whatever, what's better to have shown up, taking eight great risks and pulling off seven, or have taken a hundred great risks and pulling off eight? My hunch is that if there's a God, he's going, I'll take the hunt, eight out of a hundred.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  Way to go. That's my hunch. But I don't mean being reckless with those things and just being a repeat offender of bad things, but I believe that to take the effort to try and try again, to take the risk is, and my belief, God saying, yeah, I didn't, I didn't want you coming back here with even money, bud. And there's a great story in the Bible about that, about the two sons. The father gives them money and one buries it in the backyard and the other one goes away to the city and spends it on gambling and whores and everything else and comes back broke and crying. The, the one who buried it was like, see, I'm the good one, I'm the good one. And he throws the party for the one that came back. He goes, yeah, you just buried yours in the backyard. At least this one went out and tried. You know?

• 46:31Dan Harris?

  That leads to me to another thing I wanted to talk to you about from your book, which is courage, which seems to be a real theme that I want to read you another passage and let you talk about it on the backside. There's a passage called "Man Up." "So much of life seems to come back to courage, doesn't it? Being willing to go one more step before you quit, one step deeper into your relationships, one step further in being faithful to yourself, to your God. What if everybody took one more step to salvage their marriage, to secure their own character, to not sell themselves short? One more step by enough of us can change the world."

• 47:03Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, I believe that. And I know I'm, as my, a lot of my friends tell me, "Boy, you're trying to change behavior. That's a big, square rock up a hill." Well, I don't, I don't care. I think that, I think that's where it is. I think that is the way forward. You know, are there times and how we learned and times, and suppose it's a very Buddhist quality to let go, you know? No, it is what it is. Let the wind blow where it is and hey, that's how it is. Yes, there are definitely times for that kind of grace, forgiveness and letting go, pivoting, moving on, changing direction. But I also believe that the larger problem

• 47:48Speaker 03

  we could solve is quitting too early. Not only with, when things get hard, even when things are going really well, you know, Icarus in reverse is what I think we need more of. I think a lot of us turn back because we think it's getting, we're flying too close to the sun. It's going to melt our wax on our wings and it's 50 degrees Fahrenheit, man. You still got a beanie on. It's not even close to melting the wings. Keep going. Who do you think, you arrogant son of a bitch, you thought you were kidding? You thought it was getting hot? There's a lot more room to go. So on both ends of the spectrum, when things get hard, I've done it. I know a lot of people that do it.

• 48:30Speaker 03

  I've got friends that do it. Responsibility adds up. Path of least resistance, sneaking out the back door. Uh-oh. Uh-uh. That's not going, that's stuff that, that you didn't finish. It didn't go, it didn't disappear. It's now it's getting double wide for tomorrow and it builds up and people end up going, "I'm out." And I see it in relationships, I see it in marriages, and I believe there are some divorces that are absolutely necessary that were good for both people. Hundred percent. I'm not saying every one of them, but I do see some divorces from the male and the female going, it's kind of hard. So we checked out. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, now what? Now, wait a minute.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Or, yeah, it's just how the world goes. I just go along with it. Whoa, if that completely goes against your character, stand up for that. Don't quit. Partially what I'm trying to do with this was, you know, belief. I don't want to quit believing in my God, in myself and others. And I felt myself getting a bit cynical. And I swore to myself a long time ago that cynicism is a disease that we choose in life, and it's a way of dying early while we're still walking on two legs. And I'm not going there. And I see other people asking that same question and in that same battle.

• 49:47Dan Harris?

  In moments when you're feeling cynical, is there a go to move that helps?

• 49:54Speaker 03

  Humor, humor. Because the doubt that comes with cynicism and the disbelief that comes with it. I'll let myself sometimes have the, okay, put a period on into that. Clever, smart, right on. Fact, maybe. But it doesn't end there. Now, hang on, and we're not going to say that's just how the world is. We're not going to apply that to everybody. You're going to apply that to everybody, that kind of disbelief starts to come back at you in the mirror. Uh-uh, now, hang on. So humor to go, clever, McConaughey, good one.

• 50:35Speaker 03

  You got my laugh at the cocktail party, but I don't respect you as much as I did before. Ah, okay, okay. It's an easy way out. That's the thing. It's such a cop out. And it's too easy and it's clever and snark and it can, like I said, can get the chuckle at the cocktail party. But I, but I, it's definitely not a way forward as far as I can see.

• 51:00Dan Harris?

  What's your take on the state of the, of America and the world right now?

• 51:05Speaker 03

  Wow, well, that's a big question.

• 51:08Speaker 03

  Seems, I was talking to a friend the other day, and he used a really cool word, which I think is a good one for this answer. We're in a great time of disorientation. Where do we fit in? How do we fit in? AI. Oh, I took my job? Oh, yeah, go to college, learn this. Guarantee you, that's the best way of the future. Oh, shit, they're not hiring for that anymore? That's not needed? Oh. Where are we oriented in this? Where are we humans oriented in this? Where are we oriented with this? And, you know, the AI atheists are like, well, no, this is evolution. This is the next link. We're gonna be extinct. That's great. I'm not ready to go there.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  And I hope that's not where we're going. The way we... I was reading something this morning. The way we label people. I've got a poem in there about condemn the act, don't condemn the person. Condemn what they did, but don't label them the liar, cheater, stealer, if they happen to just get caught one time lying, cheating, or stealing. Give them the chance to go, no, it's not who I am. That was an aberration. I hit it out of bounds. My bad, let me come back. But we label someone completely if we disagree with their politics or we disagree with their point of view. We label them as a bad person. And we've gotten into a place, even politically, where we're not talking about good and bad.

• 52:37Speaker 03

  We're like talking about good and evil. I don't know that that's always our place to be labeling people good or evil. Sometimes I'm like, I have it in that poem, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Oh, sometimes there's times of the day, it looks like God deal with that. There are good and bad. We should have judgment. We should have discernment to say, I choose this over that, but not condemn an act, but don't condemn the person or label a person as evil. If they don't subscribe to your own personal politics, so to speak. Again, I think it's an easy way to go. I think politically, our far extreme rights and left are much closer than they realize. I think there's a massive majority in the middle that just needs to take the mic back

• 53:22Speaker 03

  because they let the pirates of the extremes on the right and left come over the edges and kind of take over the ship. But that place is not going to reveal itself. All right. If it is sold or understood to be a passive meat in the middle. That place, the masses are going to have to understand and behave, I think, like it's a punk rock rebellion. Moderation is becoming punk rock. Belief is punk rock, I believe, right now. It's not old school gray haired white man at the pulpit saying, this is what you should do. No, I think it's absolutely, when I say in the beginning, let's sell Sunday morning like a Saturday night. This is, it's a rebellious thing right now.

• 54:06Speaker 03

  I see so much distrust. I see so many transactional relationships. So many so that people aren't even that good at hiding them that much anymore. I'm like, dude, you could have like tried a little harder to get away with that. It was very apparent. You're trying to pick my pocket. I mean, you're gonna, you're gonna have to be better than that. I almost want to help him out going, no. You know what I mean? That was bad acting even, you know? But it's just seems to be part of, oh, well, you caught me. Cool. That's just what we do. No, in the name of progress, which is not a bad word. It's a great word. And the right's got to shake hands with that progress is what we all want. Just what's the definition of that? Now, we all have to understand, the youth in us has to understand that that does not

• 54:49Speaker 03

  mean casting out everything that was in the past and saying yes to everything in the future. That's not progress. There are certain things, truths and traditions that have worked over time and no matter what happens in the world, need to still be maintained. And there's certain values that need to be maintained. Carrying on those and being open to changes, but not accepting every single change is a battle I go through every day. I think most people do. But carrying on taking those from the past that are non-negotiable into the future that are adaptable to changing times, that's where true progress lives.

• 55:24Dan Harris?

  Much more with Matthew McConaughey coming up after this.

• 55:38Dan Harris?

  My wife Bianca just went on a major shopping spree on Wayfair.com, one of our favorite spots to buy stuff for the home and a longtime sponsor of this show. Thank you, Wayfair. Bianca did the readout on what she bought. A lot of kitchen stuff, like platters, serving platters, and espresso cups. Basically, she's prepping for all of the hosting we are going to do throughout the holiday season. We'd love to host something that makes us very happy. And it's much easier when you've got some great stuff that you've acquired through Wayfair.com. We love Wayfair, and Wayfair has something called Wayfair Verified, which helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value, and trusted reviews.

• 56:18Dan Harris?

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• 56:55Dan Harris?

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• 57:40Dan Harris?

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• 57:52Dan Harris?

  When you say belief is punk rock, which I think is an awesome formulation, what do you mean specifically by belief?

• 58:03Speaker 03

  Okay, difference between hope and belief. Hope, I hope I win this. If it happens, somehow it kind of got lucky because I just hope for it. It's like relying on fate. Well, if I hope, if I just think about it, I'll manifest it. If I just say it out loud, it means it can happen. Dream it, you can do it. Bullshit. What a horrible thing to tell somebody or for someone to believe. That's the first part to have at least something that you want to achieve or get to or see. But you got to deal your way to that. Belief comes with the engine to deal your way there. So I call belief the original dream. You can see it. There's a way to get it.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  It's why we got to work on the American dream. The path there, people are very confused of what is that? Well, I thought if I did this, was responsible, got a job, did my work and did my work well, that that would be a path to that. Well, people are saying that. No, maybe not rewarded for that. Is that changing? Is that, how much of the American dream an illusion? We got to make sure we're defining that and that there's rules and sort of regulations for how you can pull it off if you do it that way. Belief, though, you see the path. The path is there. Now you got to put in the sweat equity to go get it and make it happen. Yeah, you hopefully probably got to get fortunate along the way because there's no guarantee. The only guarantee with the American dream or belief is that you have the opportunity to fail at it. But you can be in the game and you see how to do it. You see how you can pull it off.

• 59:32Speaker 03

  You're going to run into adversary. You're going to run into major obstacles that you didn't expect. Boy, it all played well. You won while you were on PlayStation, didn't you? Now you got in real life? Oh, uh-uh. It's a little bit harder. But belief, you can still see the path there. And if you don't get it, you can still believe in that path and go, I'm going to get up, I'm going to dust off, I'm going to try it again. Or I'm going to back up. I'm going to learn a little something. I got a new tact here. But you can see the path to it. I don't think people see that path right now. I think, I don't think people are looking around and kids are looking around and going, this is who I look up to because these are people that I look up to because. I think they're confused where it is. When we see liars, cheaters and stealers winning the jackpot,

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  where you get success rewarded minus the profit, where quantity is the only measure. Forget the quality, bro. Quantity is the measure. Ah, that's success, but that's not profit. So success have to meet profit. What, that starts with going, do I want to make more? You damn right. Well, how do I want to make it? How I make it has something to do with it. And I don't think we should just be giving the gold medal to anybody just because they crossed the finish line first and they got picked up in a car at mile two and driven the next 20 miles and got out and ran the last four. We should give, okay, you crossed the finish line first. You're not getting the medal, bro. You cheated. And we do that. We reward that quite a bit. We even say, or starting to say, or we have been saying,

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  but we even are saying, so what are the ethics of life? What are our expectations of each other ethically and morally? Well, I don't know. What the winner do? The winner cheated and pillaged on the way here and lied and cheated, stole. You saying that's it? They won. There's your ethics. That's dangerous. I'm not ready to say that's how it is. And I don't think most of us are ready to say, well, that's how it is. So belief, belief though is, is very different than hope. And belief, and I say it's punk rock. Boy, you find something to believe in right now and grab a hold of it and go, that's a north star for me. Religious or not, yourself, each other, something to believe in, what you would die for, believing in that, living for that.

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  I think it's in short supply and I think if people grab, oh, that is punk rock. That's Saturday night at the rave. That place is going off. Also, that lane on the highway, there's not a lot of traffic on it. And it's a beautiful autobahn. There's room to get after it. And it's right there waiting for us.

• 1:02:06Dan Harris?

  Let me say this back to you, just to make sure I've got it. Here's how I would put it back to you, but you'll correct me where I go wrong here. Just when I think specifically about America, and you and I are of a similar age, I think both quite patriotic. I'm just making an assumption.

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:02:23Dan Harris?

  And this is a tough time in the country. I'm interviewing you the day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Dan Harris?

  You're interesting to me for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that as far as I can tell, you seem to have equal appeal in red America and blue America. And when I ask you like, how do things look and what can we do to make things better? It seems to me your answer is like, hey, why not turn the volume down on the cynicism and turn the volume up? On the risky, sometimes embarrassing move of earnestly, wholeheartedly believing in something and committing to it.

• 1:02:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would subscribe to that. Now I'd also say this, Dan, I hear this the other day. You may know more about this than I do. Is there some term that the new, the young generation? There's a term about the distaste for any earnest or saying, oh, you're meant to do it. There's a term going on that that is out of fashion to be earnest and like really mean it and try hard. That that's like.

• 1:03:23Dan Harris?

  That's the term. It's a try hard.

• 1:03:26Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm sorry. I'm gonna go online here and saying I'm not being a dinosaur for saying, I think that's bullshit.

• 1:03:35Speaker 03

  Now, it does illuminate something. They're not seeing what's clear to believe in. If you disdain for someone trying hard for something, it looks like, well, you don't, you don't believe in what they're trying for. So therefore you don't believe they don't, if you don't have anything that you're trying for, that you're seeking meaning for. To expand the value of in your own life, you're not seeing things in your life to believe in and mean it for it. And try for that. So it does illuminate maybe somewhat indirectly what I'm talking about and the lack of belief or knowing what to believe in. Sounds like that's where that comes from. Well. I don't think that's a recipe, and it's a sad one. But I don't think that's a solution.

• 1:04:21Speaker 03

  If it's fair to say that I think everyone would like to look for some solutions in their own lives and collectively. I don't believe that saying, trying for something and putting in effort and seeking meaning and meaning and believing in something and being earnest. Yeah, I don't believe that not having any of that is a solution for what is it then nihilism? Is that what they're saying? That nothing matters? I'm not going to argue with them. I'd rather spend time on going, why do they feel that way? Huh. What are they not getting? What are we not giving them? As adults, as leaders, what are they not seeing? Or what do we have that they don't feel like they maybe can get?

• 1:05:05Speaker 03

  Or what do we have that they don't want? I don't know. That's fertile territory right there. Yeah, I asked kids what it was like being a teenager last night. And they brought up the Charlie Kirk thing. They said, police officer was shot in Silicon Park this morning on the way to school. Charlie Kirk got shot in the throat. Utah State.

• 1:05:31Speaker 03

  They were like, it's all over school. We're not supposed to have phones, but yeah, we all have phones. We go show each other. I didn't want to see it, the Charlie Kirk shooting, but everyone had it and I couldn't take my eyes away. And I saw it. It made me sick to my stomach all day.

• 1:05:47Speaker 03

  Felt like I was walking on glass all day. Everyone's kind of punchy. Everyone's not sure where they're going. The whole school, people were just kind of bumping into each other. Everyone just had an edge. But it's confusing, not just from today, but it's confusing being a teenager. Nobody knows who they really are. We're all trying to figure out who the hell we are and no one really knows how to get there or where we're going.

• 1:06:08Speaker 03

  That's running parallel to that feeling we're just talking about of the disdain for the tryhard and not having or understanding what's worth believing in. Now, obviously, part of that's growing up, right? We try to teach our kids delayed gratification. Shoot, a lot of us adults need to learn about it, too, the idea that, no, it takes work and continuous work. It's not immediate gratification for things you believe in. There's certain sacrifices we make today to get more tomorrow. There's things that we believe in that we take care of that are non-negotiable in the masses. Well, you're younger, kids don't have as many of those things. It's easier to say as a father and a husband and a person with a career.

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  But I think it starts with us as parents to show and be examples of those things for our kids of these things are worth believing in. These things are worth standing up for. This is even more dangerous to sometimes worth standing against and being unpopular, taking one on the chin proverbially. Yeah. Parents, leaders, brothers, sisters, big brothers, big sisters, mentors, teachers. We can do a better job of showing each other, and especially are you what things that worth believing in?

• 1:07:26Dan Harris?

  It kind of leads me to the last thing I wanted to ask you about, and this is personal, so you can take a pass on it if you don't want, but there's a story I read about you, your family of origin, in a profile of you in The Times, a kind of searing early memory of you watching your parents fight and your mother breaking your father's nose with a telephone.

• 1:07:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Dan Harris?

  And then they made up and had sex on the kitchen floor. And so I read that, that definitely meets the qualification of an adverse childhood event, and I wonder how you carry that into your own parenting, like, or try not to carry that into your own parenting.

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  Well.

• 1:08:09Speaker 03

  Let me prequel this with, yeah, that's one of the opening stories of my book of green lights. Do I practice the same sort of tough love that they had for each other? Thankfully, no. It's not really for Camilla and I. We still love each other. You know? I was also, was that an adverse circumstance for a child? Sure. And I'm not defending this. I'm just telling you the straight truth. Not once. Was it scary watching it? Did I, yes.

• 1:08:47Speaker 03

  Did I understand very soon, when it was completed, that that was how my mom and dad loved each other? That while it was bloody, while there was a knife pulled, while there was a phone across the nose, that was the way they loved each other that night in that moment. That was a wild ass story that I put it in of. It's true that I witnessed that was, that didn't. When people hear that, a lot of people come to me after the book and, oh, I'm so sorry about your childhood. I was like, don't, what are you, whoa, whoa, you're trespassing there. Don't apologize. I didn't have a bad childhood. I had a wonderful childhood. That story wasn't like that happened weekly, monthly, yearly, or ever again.

• 1:09:29Speaker 03

  I mean, the amount of love that we had in our family, the hands in the family were the hands that healed 99% of the time. That was one where it was much more awkward and corporal and physical. The love was just never in question in our family. I just want to make that extremely clear. And that's not me defending my family. That's even in my five-year-old mind. It was never in question. It was dramatic. It was a frickin circus sometimes, but the love was never in question.

• 1:10:01Speaker 03

  My way parenting, if I have to raise my voice, I'm automatically backlogging, trying to figure out what did I not handle to get to this point? And I think usually, that's probably not fair of me to put on myself because it's not just me. What do they, I couldn't have been there for everything they were going through and what they didn't say, I didn't say, I can't read their minds. I mean, sometimes it just gets to that point. But I'm already backlogging going, why did we get to this point? We talk out a lot more things, like I think a lot of more parents do today. You know, the old adage of I was raised on, if you got into the argument of why, the answer that stopped the conversation was because I said so. And that ended the conversation. That one doesn't really fly as well anymore.

• 1:10:46Speaker 03

  That one doesn't fly anymore. They're like, okay, well, why? And I feel obligated and Camilla does go, okay, well, here's why. And we will explain. And so we have much more discussions. You do have to watch when the kids know that you'll discuss it, they start working you. But they're, they're already wise to why. They just want to keep on see if they can kind of noodle it. You gotta go stop it. You know exactly why. Quit playing dumb now. You know what I mean? My parents had a really interesting read, and I think it was a great one. Now, whether you agree with how it was done or not is still open for discussion. And most people today would not be in agreeance with it. Their point was, the reason we got, you know, we got in trouble. Mind you this, every time we got in trouble, we were guilty.

• 1:11:30Speaker 03

  Yep, I tried to get away with that. I didn't. Yep, that was me. There was never a time where we got in trouble. It was like, but I didn't. No, we knew it and we did it and we admitted it and we got in trouble.

• 1:11:40Dan Harris?

  It's been so fun to talk to you. I'm just gonna sneak in two last questions here. One is, is there something you were hoping to get to that we didn't get to?

• 1:11:48Speaker 03

  Hmm, nothing sticks out to me, Dan.

• 1:11:52Dan Harris?

  Final question then, can you just remind everybody of the name of the book and any other books that you've written that we should know about?

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I wrote Green Lights a few years ago. I'm real happy how that translated. And then I've written now, my latest one's Poems and Prayers. It's basically selling belief, and it's not just a belief in God, but that's a belief in ourselves, others, and tomorrow, whatever it is, our better selves. And I think belief's in short supply these days. And as far as I can tell, and what I hear from others, we could use more of it. Because if the doubt wins, we all lose, right? This is some of those poems and prayers of mine. Some of it's serious, some of it's not serious at all. Some of it's real fun to read, some of it may get you thinking. Either way, whether you sit down and read it all, or just have it next to your bed, or whether any other place you sit down and just open up a page or two over time.

• 1:12:42Speaker 03

  Hopefully, it'll be an enjoyable ride.

• 1:12:44Dan Harris?

  Well, it was an enjoyable ride to talk to you, Matthew. Really appreciate your time.

• 1:12:48Speaker 03

  All right, thank you, Daniel, as well.

• 1:12:53Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Matthew. Check out his book, Poems and Prayers. Don't forget to check out what we're doing over on DanHarris.com. Our Monday and Wednesday episodes now come with custom guided meditations to help you pound the learnings from the conversation into your neurons in a much deeper way. Paid subscribers also get live, weekly, video guided meditation and Q and A sessions every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. The next one is on Tuesday, September 23rd. I'll be doing that one solo. Sometimes the teacher of the month does it with me. Also, if you want to meditate with me in person, don't forget what I mentioned earlier about the events I'm doing first on September 21st at the New York Insight Meditation Center, and then later in October, a meditation party. Links to both in the show notes.

• 1:13:39Dan Harris?

  Finally, thank you very much to everybody who works so hard on the show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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