Most Replayed Moment: Matthew McConaughey - The Comfort Crisis Is Destroying Your Potential!

Why comfort might be costing you more than you think. Matthew McConaughey is an Academy Award-winning actor, bestselling author, and a famously thoughtful voice on purpose, resilience and living with intention. In this Moment, Matthew McConaughey shares why growth requires resistance, what our obsession with comfort is doing to us, and the mindset shift that changed the way he approaches life's biggest challenges. Listen to the full episode here! Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/lqeNCD5N14b Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/zaKGMU9N14b Watch the Episodes On YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Matthew McConaughey: https://www.instagram.com/officiallymcconaughey/

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

• 0:05Steven Bartlett?

  Do you remember these?

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:07Steven Bartlett?

  You wrote this roughly around the same time in 92. Roughly, actually, when I was born, funnily enough, I saw the date on the top and thought, oh, it's a few days after my birthday.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:15Steven Bartlett?

  And again, you put fatherhood number one, but there's a series of other things on this list of your 10 goals in life.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:21Steven Bartlett?

  Which you wrote in 1992. As you reflect on those goals, do you wish you hadn't written any of them? And is there anything else you wish you had written?

• 0:30Speaker 01

  No, that, that, that, I wouldn't change a thing about it.

• 0:33Steven Bartlett?

  10 goals in life: become a father, find and keep a woman for me, keep my relationship with God, chase my best self, be an egotistical utilitarian, take more risks, stay close to mom and family, win an Oscar for best actor, look back and enjoy the view, just keep living.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  I don't know what I'd add to that.

• 0:54Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things that you talk, you've talked a few times about is this idea of like needing resistance.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:59Steven Bartlett?

  You've said it two or three times. And going back to what it is to be a man and what it is to be a well-orientated, stable man, needing resistance, is that a goal to aim for? Is that?

• 1:12Speaker 01

  I think it's just a necessary necessity for

• 1:20Speaker 01

  having more than just an individual life, the top of the high rise with money. If that's, if you're successful, do that. I mean, I'm supposing that, well, there's different words, your friend went to Christianity for this, for a very similar reason.

• 1:40Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  It's like, certain amount of guilt's very healthy. It helps us, keeps us, it's boundaries.

• 1:48Steven Bartlett?

  Boundaries.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Without any shame, without any embarrassment, without any guilt, you tell me it's all just four dimensional? Where's the form?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Where's the, where's the art? It's four dimensional, it has no form. You gotta have gravity to have form, you gotta have some resistance to have some form. You gotta push off of something to go somewhere. You gotta be, it's very hard when you're just floating and no gravity and no resistance to actually pursue a north star. You have no leverage. You're floating, where's the art?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Probably more anarchy than art.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  So resistance gives form.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Heard great artists say this, limitations

• 2:36Speaker 01

  reveal style.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Resistance, something to go, or else, it's like in green lights. If life's just nothing but green lights, if you've got no yellows and reds, no reasons to pause, or crises that stop you, resistance?

• 2:57Speaker 01

  This, what are you, just going in circles? Are you running out of gas? Get dizzy?

• 3:04Speaker 01

  I don't see that, how do we evolve or devolve without resistance? Now, picking the right resistance is, is an art in itself, it's challenging. I've been clumsy with it in my life, when, especially when I got famous and got success. And enough people telling me I love you and the caviar and the champagne, I was like, what the shit, why me? I don't deserve any of this. What did I do? And I, I fucked things up on purpose just to say like, I tripped myself running downhill so I could bloody my own nose and go, ah, now I can feel, okay, okay, now my heels are on the ground. I need, it was clumsy.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  So I don't think we need the kind of resistance that we create that can harm us or get in our way for getting in our way sake, because I've come to learn, and I think we all are. No, when things are going really well, resistance is gonna come. If you stay, if you stay with, if you're, if you have any ambition, resistance is gonna come.

• 4:08Steven Bartlett?

  We often see resistance as a form of failure and something that we should endeavor to avoid. You think about the avoidance of like people building families or even, you know, many people consider that we're living in a bit of a comfort crisis. This is slightly a different sort of analogy, but most of the diseases that we have today, whether they're diseases of, I don't know, the mind, like, you know, people feeling lonely and isolated, all physical diseases, 80% of Americans getting back pain, but no one in the Hadza tribe in Africa getting back pain. They're all a consequence of us continually choosing comfort.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:39Steven Bartlett?

  Which is a short-term friend but long-term enemy. And resistance, I think, is, is something increasingly we can choose, opt out of.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  It's a choice too. I mean, can I hit a little point that's on this subject? It's called Tips Included. And I wrote this based on participation trophies, entitlement, how too much of something can be just as harmful is not enough. How we all need good fortune, good fate and charity sometimes, but we shouldn't rely on that.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Okay? Called Tips Included. When extra credits included, credit doesn't get as due. When more gives us less, the exchange rate's gone askew. When amnesty is offered going into the crime, we're more bound to commit it because there's no fine. We start playing to tie instead of going for the win when participation's the trophy for every cow in the pen. If I stay on the porch because you picked up the slack, when you look over your shoulder, I can't have your back.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  If there is no curfew, we're gonna stay out all night. No tab at our bar, we're gonna get drunk and start a fight. All these long lenses got us losing our sight. You keep lifting it from me, I'm gonna lose all my might. When a four-star duty suits a six-star rate, we take our hands off the wheel and rely on fate. Eating all we can at the all we can eat buffet gives us a 3.8 education and a 4.2 GPA. We steal from ourselves and get away with the scam. What's the measure of merit with less give a damn? Hmm, these unlimited options sure have me confused while all the conveniences are keeping me properly lubed.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  In this red light district with the whore of inflation, the ROI's math don't pay for vacation. So let's just admit it, this extra credit's quite a fluffer, because when the tips included, the service will suffer.

• 6:54Steven Bartlett?

  That's so good.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  But it's about that, the conveniences, the long lenses, everything's like, oh, and we've out-convenienced ourself. What's AI gonna do to us? Talk about convenience, how much, and I want to keep hearing studies, I wonder if you have an opinion on this, how much of you coming up with an idea and then writing and rewriting it, thinking about it, no, no, no, no, it's not an extra, oh, no, this is what I really mean and how to get to, how much of that is really valuable? To get it beyond just an intellectual idea, more valuable than just going, ah, there it is. Because what comes out of AI? Incredibly impressive.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Like, a hunch is that, yeah, we can use it for like, signpost to help us, oh, that's good, thank you for helping me organize. But there's a value to us going through the sweat equity of learning something.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  How do you, how do you feel about it?

• 7:53Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, exactly what you've said, but the studies have just, that they've just come out using different things like ChatGPT have actually proven what you've just said to be true. That when people use AI to produce a piece of work, not only can't they recall what they've made, but they also start speaking in a language more like the AI, so they start to lose their own voice. But I mean, yeah, I mean, through history, people like Richard Fryman, the physicist, has said, the best way to learn something is to learn it and then to go through the pain of writing it, condensing it down to a simple truth like you do so often in your new book, Poems and Prayers, and then sharing it with the world and then getting the feedback. And if, if the world understood it like you meant it, like that poem you just shared, you, you understand it.

• 8:37Steven Bartlett?

  That's evidence that you get it.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:39Steven Bartlett?

  So I think AI is gonna be great for me saying something to you, but not learning something myself. And I think, if you know, if you want to defend creativity and innovation and the ability to think, you actually have a huge opportunity, which is to go left when everyone's going right.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:55Steven Bartlett?

  And it goes to what you were saying there, you were talking about, be careful when you mess, mess with incentives. Like, be careful when you choose the easier road, be careful of the unintended consequences. And AI is a prime example of an unintended consequence of you taking the easier road today.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:12Steven Bartlett?

  And, you know, I just actually made a video about this, funnily enough, just, just warning my audience about when something appears to be like a short-term friend, it's usually a long-term enemy.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 9:23Steven Bartlett?

  Like when, you know, when you choose easy today, you choose hard tomorrow. And there's always a trade-off.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Right. You think if you choose hard today, you usually get easy tomorrow?

• 9:39Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, there's, there's obviously a ton of nuance to this, but, um...

• 9:47Steven Bartlett?

  In many contexts, yes. So for example, I think of, I was thinking of my father. My father would never have, he would avoid conflict at all costs. He would avoid the difficult conversation. And when I zoom out over the decades of his life and marriage, I go, man, that costs you big time.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  You caught up with him.

• 10:04Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, my God. And me inverting that in my own life and continually just confronting it head on has had the complete opposite effect. You never, you know, like when you were talking about being a young man and making that decision because you had that voice in your head saying law might not be my thing. And you made that phone call to your father.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:24Steven Bartlett?

  Like what, what I hear you did is like you realigned yourself to you. Now, if you hadn't made that call and you'd let a couple more of those bad habits, you would have got to 40 and been like, who the fuck is this guy?

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:35Steven Bartlett?

  What is this life? You would have looked around and said, who is she? Who are they?

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:39Steven Bartlett?

  What is this job?

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:40Steven Bartlett?

  And that's that course correction that I think it requires you to do this slightly harder thing today. What do you think?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  I agree with you. That's the, that's the resistance that you're choosing, you know? Look, I still gotta learn how to take a vacation. Because, you know, we, there's some times when the wind's at our back and we've earned it. There's some times when it's easy street and it's like, yeah, don't interrupt this, man. This is a sweet ass song. Trust that the hill's coming. Again, don't be so impressed with this and don't. What I have to do is don't fall into when things are going really well, I go, ah, there it is. That's the mean.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  No, it's not. Not with any ambition, it's not. Or not with life happening, it's not. But my hunch, I want to see what you think about this theory is that you shoot for an A and make a C is rather better than shooting for a C and making an F. Now, so go for perfection. Reality always comes in under it. But in that moment, when you see the inevitable reality, the outcome, the result,

• 12:09Speaker 01

  how quickly can we go, okay, but I got so much more out of it. The job, the person, myself, because I went for perfection. Then if I'd have just gone for, nah, dude, just, I mean, you know, just pass class. It's again, that little owner's renters mentality. And but what can be hard for me sometimes is it takes, can take me too long to, to, to come down from when, oh, it didn't hit perfection. And maybe it takes me a week to go, dude, now do you finally realize that? Of course you weren't going to get perfection, but you got so much more out of it because you went for perfection.

• 12:53Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  So be pleased with reality because you got a, you got a good grade on it, man. That was, that was, that was good. That piece of art was, wouldn't have been that true if you wouldn't have been, I don't know. Like I always say this all the time and I never mean this in a, in a, in a disrespectful way. I've never done a movie or a performance that lived up to what I thought it could be. Cause I'm thinking it can be divine. Comes out, maybe majorly inspiring, may speak to masses. Even have some magic to it, but it's divine.

• 13:35Steven Bartlett?

  That's resist, that's tension.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:38Steven Bartlett?

  Unclosed gap. And I think, I think that everything that's ever been built, that's great or creatively brilliant has come from someone who has a big, a big expectation gap. And of course, the very definition of that, you're never going to close it. And actually, probably the reason you then are motivated to move to the next thing and pursue divine again is because it wasn't divine last time. Maybe there's still something left on the table and that's, means you never arrive.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:04Steven Bartlett?

  You talk about arrival a lot in the poems and prayers as well. I, I also was reflecting on your mother's words where she, at a very young age to you, positioned life as a dichotomy of being humble, but like know that you're the shit.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:20Steven Bartlett?

  And all those things you went through. And it's the same thing. It's like strive for protect, protection, perfection, but also know that nothing will ever get there. And can you, can you be okay with that dissonance?

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Right. And that, and there's a moment. And it's, I think it's where the, one of the arts of living is if you, if you are going to prescribe to go shoot perfection. There's that moment when reality comes in, when you had to declare and the cards speak for themselves. And it's under. But you, because you oversaw it. It's a theory I got called oversee. Cause you oversee, expect the best, this, this divinity out of people and, and art and of yourself. And then it always comes in under. How quickly can you go, ah, nice reality?

• 15:06Steven Bartlett?

  Can I ask you a question about that then? If you had aimed for something to be perfect and then it delivered itself as perfect, exactly how you had imagined, if, if, if at all possible, would that have made you happy? Would you have been?

• 15:20Speaker 01

  I don't know. You're right.

• 15:23Steven Bartlett?

  Um. Would it made you scared?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Both probably. Because, look, I've had moments. Let me, let me, let me tell you one, uh, in, in, in Africa. I'm in Mali, Africa. Doggone country. Me and my guy who's a buddy now, Isa, we're hiking from village to village in the Banjagara. Each village is 10 to 15 miles away. I went over there, needing my anonymity under the name of David. And I said, I was a writer and a boxer. Well, they called me Dauda. Anyway, I, um, they didn't give a damn about the writing part, but they were very interested in the wrestling part. So each village I would go to started to catch up to me. They're like, strong white men named Dauda. And they loved to wrestle over there. They loved to wrestle.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  It's kind of a form of entertainment. The boys just walk up and start wrestling. I get to this one village one night, Benjimatu. And I'm laying there, it's a 14 mile hike to get there. I'm laying on the ground stretching. The village is all kind of come up around. They're talking and chattering and all of a sudden I hear this chatter and that's sort of at me. I could just hear it and I look up and it sees two boys that are about 18 and they're boom, boom, boom, popping at me. And I can be like, and I know enough in the tone. I don't know what they're saying because they're speaking in bombata. I'm like, are they talking shit to me? And Isa goes, yes. He goes, they, uh, um, they are the wrestlers of the village. They say that they are the best wrestlers in the village and they are challenging you to wrestle. So I was like, oh, they are.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  It's like, well, they sure are talking a lot. I go, I don't know if they mean it. Y'all have this thing over here? We have a thing in America where if someone talks too much, they really don't mean it. He goes, yes, we have this, we have this. And just as that happens, you hear the crowd, wah, scream. And I look up and the two boys bam, run off. Why? Because the real champion wrestler of the village, Michelle, five foot nine, tree trunk legs, about 220, burlap bag wrapped with a rope around his waist. He showed up. He doesn't say a word. He just stands over me, points to me, points to himself and points over here. I look over where he's pointing and there's a big dirt pit.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  My heart starts racing. There's the challenge. As my heart's beating going, oh no, I start to get up. Because as this ear's saying, oh no, I'm hearing in this ear, if you don't, you will regret this for the rest of your life. You've got to go do it. This would at least be a great story to tell. So I get up, village goes crazy. Oh, about 80 people have gathered now. The chief comes out, I'm standing in the middle of the pit going, I'm not sure how this is supposed to go. What are the rules? Chief puts his hands on our heads. Michelle grabs me by the waist, mimics to me. I grab him by the waist, then he burrows his forehead down into my clavicle here. And I burrow mine into his. So now we're like two bulls like this. And the chief puts his hands on our head and then raises them and goes, stop.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  And the crowd goes wild. Ding ding is what stop meant. So we start going around, man. And I'm thinking, okay, I, I get some leverage on this guy. Legs are like tree trunks. I'm like, oh, I ain't getting him down low. So we're scrapping, grappin', boom, and I get him over, bam, flip him on his back. He flips me back over. I backflip him off my back. It's somersault and he comes in, gets me in a fricking leg lock that I can barely breathe. I'm almost got to tap out from my shimmy to that thing. All of a sudden, chief comes in, separates us. I'm hyperventilating, man. Crowd's going crazy. He's got to split Michelle on this side, me on this side. I have these talismans that were in my beard. They got, two of them got torn out during the wrestling match. Got blood running down me here.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  My knees are bleeding, my ankles are bleeding. I'm hyperventilating and covered in sweat. I look over at Michelle, who's just staring at me going. Barely a glisten on him. And that's when the chief goes, duh. And I go, oh shit, here we go. Boom, boom, boom, grabs my waist, bop, bop, burrows his head. I burrow my head, we're off. Goes around again, pretty damn good match. Strong, I flipped him, he pinned me. I, we got up, got moving. All of a sudden, chief comes in, separates us. Raises both our hands. The crowd goes crazy, wah. As soon as he lowers our hands, Michelle runs off. Everyone sees him go and they come in and grab me and put them on their shoulders.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Dauda, Dauda, Dauda. I go over, now I'm a big man in the village, which means they give me the best chair that has the least broken sort of, you know, uh, straw on the seat. Which means the village boy finds me the biggest chicken and plucks it and they cook it for dinner for me. Which means they take me to the cleanest spot in the river. And I come back that night, we eat, I get on the roof of the hut. What a magical day. I lay back. I see the Southern Cross for the first time in the sky. Like it was in neon lights on a black backdrop. It was, you could not see it. It was so bright, staring me right in the face.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  I laid there, 30 minutes, saw 29 shooting stars. I'm going, I might have a direct line. I might be the chosen one. Wow. Just as I'm about to shut my eyes, I got a little in my throat. So I sit up. Go to spit out over the, off into the, off the top of the roof. Loogie plastered to my face. I forgot I had put my mosquito net on.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  And I was like, oh, perfect. Just when I was thinking, I might have the direct line. I just bit a loogie in my own face. And there became the humor. Now, to finish off that story, the next morning, when I left the village, remember Michelle who ran away? I got to the edge of the village, about to make the 14 mile walk to the next village. And there, behind the first tree, passed off the property, popped out Michelle. Not a word, looked at me, bowed, grabbed my hand. He walked me the 14 miles to the next village, got to the village border, the next tribe, bowed and walked home. I went back, unannounced, six years later. Did the same trip, ran into the same people. The kids had grown six years older, everybody.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  We get to Benjyamatu, there's Michelle. He's had five kids, and he broke his hip. So he's got a limp, right? So, we all agree, not another wrestling match. We have a great dinner that night. We talk, we tell stories. They're speaking Bambaata, I'm speaking English, but we're just understanding each other's sort of charades now. Get up the next morning, go to leave, find that same tree. Out pops Michelle, bows, reaches out his hand, holds my hand, and 14 miles to the next village.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Stop, bows, turn around.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  I ask Isa back then, the first time in 99, after that night when I wrestled Michelle, and he walked me the first time. And I got there, I was like, what? Tell me about that, what happened last night? I do all right? He goes, oh, no, no, no. You do very well. He said, when you accept the challenge, that is when you were big men in this tribe. It was not about the win or the lose. You accept the challenge, and then you wrestle Michelle, who's not only champion of this village, but of this village and three villages back? And you handled Michelle. Handled was the word. I won't win or lose, it's handled.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  He goes, you come back, we make money.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  That's what he told me then, and I went back six years later and had that experience. And that experience with Michelle, the respect we had if he took. He walked me, broken hip and all, 14 miles to the next village.

• 24:01Steven Bartlett?

  You accept the challenge.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Accept the challenge. That is when you were big men in this village. Because I was like, they put me on their shoulders, man. What was it? He was like, oh, you were big men when you accepted the challenge. He said, whole village think, Michelle going to have strong white men named Dauda on back in 10 seconds, over. But you handled Michelle, not win or lose. Handled. But you were big men when you accepted the challenge. Beautiful. And then he's there, six years later, and walks me the same way. I mean, I think your question was on, you know, when we,

• 24:43Speaker 01

  when we know, or how confident, when we're feeling like we're on the right path, which that was a time when I thought I was so much. I was, I think I might be the, you know, loogie in my face. And that, to me, was God going, you're doing good, but not that good, bud.

• 25:03Steven Bartlett?

  What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.