BONUS | Matthew McConaughey’s Advice on Handling Difficult People

When Marcus Aurelius wrote 'the obstacle is the way,' he was talking about difficult people. Tune in to hear Matthew McConaughey’s advice on how to handle the challenging individuals we all face every day. 🎥 Watch the full video of Matthew McConaughey LIVE at The Painted Porch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8pCvA40GhM 📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work":https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast 🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/ 📱 Follow us: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Was there something you wrote that didn't end up in the book? Or something that was really hard to relive, to rewrite?

• 1:03Matthew McConaughey?

  There's a few things that, and I'll try and say this the right way, with some of the age group. There's a few things in the beginning, like I said, I have this, this happened to me, that I purposefully made it one line, and said, "There's a great story there, but I'm not writing that story because that'll be the headline." "I'm not writing that story because someone will put that line in bold print, and that is not what this book is about." So I purposely held back on some certain things, and they're really good stories. But I knew, being in my position, being a celebrity, that would have been a headline, and it would have been the lead for a lot of the conversations. And I would have gotten tired of going,

• 1:48Matthew McConaughey?

  "Uh-uh, that's not what the book's about. You've got to get past that point." That would have been, it was too Page Six news. And so there were things I was conscious of, I was like, "Uh-uh, don't give them that. Even though it's a great story, hold that one back because you don't want anyone leading with that, and that is what they'll lead with."

• 2:03Ryan Holiday?

  I was gonna ask you about that, cuz there's something, I saw you on The View, and they tried to ask you a question, and you could tell that what they were trying to get was a soundbite that would either, that would preemptively end the prospects of a political career before it started.

• 2:19Matthew McConaughey?

  Yep.

• 2:19Ryan Holiday?

  And I, that restraint, that ability to think, hey, instead of going off the cuff here, I'm gonna dodge this trap, which it was, which so often, that's what people are after. They wanna sort of a gotcha thing, or, or, you know, in sports, like, the reason people trash talk is they want you to overreact and get in trouble.

• 2:38Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah.

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  But, but there's something, I think, stoic about going, hey, I see what you're trying to do here. I'm not mad about it.

• 2:44Matthew McConaughey?

  Right.

• 2:44Ryan Holiday?

  But I'm not gonna fall for it either.

• 2:46Matthew McConaughey?

  Well, I've got, done it long enough to not be mad about it.

• 2:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 2:49Matthew McConaughey?

  Again, not to think it's unbelievable. I can't believe you asked that question. I'm always like, are there any questions off, off limits? I'm like, no, ask whatever you want.

• 2:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 2:55Matthew McConaughey?

  I understand now I have the right to go, none of your business.

• 2:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, next.

• 2:59Matthew McConaughey?

  To any question.

• 3:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 3:00Matthew McConaughey?

  And to trust that pregnant pause, though, when someone asks you a question, and I didn't even do it in That View. I did retort. I made up for it and recontextualized my position. But what's really cool is to just sit there and straight face them and go, and let them get uncomfortable in the silence, and let someone else bring up, and, uh, by the way, and then just go, he just, he just stared at me. He wasn't, he wasn't, he wasn't angry. He just breathed. He just sat there and like, but you get a, the silence, we all get a little uncomfortable in the silence, so you wanna fill it. And I even, I did fill it, you know, but what would really been cool, which I've done a few times, is just sit there and go.

• 3:38Ryan Holiday?

  When we live in a world now of social media where people aren't even asking you to weigh in, people are just unsolicitedly stepping in it, you know, like, we, we just wake up and go, what's my hot take on this culture war issue that no one asked you about? And then eight years later, you're in trouble for it, or regret it, or what, like, I, there's very few things that I have said while I'm upset, that I'm like, later, I'm, I'm so glad I weighed in on that.

• 4:02Matthew McConaughey?

  Well, there's also, today with social media, you are, if somebody speaks up on something and, and, and takes an opinion on one side in the culture war, or something or political, if the tribe that you're around, I'll jump on that bandwagon, and you do not comment.

• 4:24Matthew McConaughey?

  You're obviously

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, yeah.

• 4:26Matthew McConaughey?

  Your silence condemning, your silence means you believe

• 4:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:30Matthew McConaughey?

  the other, or you disagree.

• 4:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:32Matthew McConaughey?

  And that's a, that's a largely too far.

• 4:35Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 4:36Matthew McConaughey?

  And so then you get people, you know, right tweeting stuff that you're like, I too condemn this. You're like, well, duh. Who, who doesn't?

• 4:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:46Matthew McConaughey?

  You know what I mean? Did you need to con, did you, did you, did you need to say that? Cause maybe we all thought you did think it was okay before it's condemned?

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  Right, right.

• 4:52Matthew McConaughey?

  And so you're kind of jumping into that, that game. And I've, I've tried to, you know, I, I tried to refrain from some of these things that you go, there's a lot of context to this point that is, needs more than 40 characters. So let's not go on, on, on, on, online and, and, and make a statement when tomorrow or 10 years from now, or even longer, you're going to find out there was more to the story than you knew.

• 5:28Speaker 04

  My question was kind of hijacked by you, Ryan.

• 5:30Ryan Holiday?

  Sorry.

• 5:31Speaker 04

  It's okay. I was going to ask what your secret was to dealing with difficult people, but I think you've already answered it.

• 5:37Matthew McConaughey?

  Dealing with difficult people?

• 5:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. Like, how do you not let people get under your skin?

• 5:42Matthew McConaughey?

  Oh, okay. The first thing is, I mean, I write about it in green lights. Least dumbest word in the dictionary, unbelievable. Just quit being so like, oh, I can't believe they did that. Yeah, they did it. They do it all the time. So just when somebody does something that gives you, makes you go, just not being, it's like, oh, of course you did. It happens all the time. People are trying to all it. So to not be surprised

• 6:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:10Matthew McConaughey?

  at all, when that happens, I think is a first, the first thing. And it makes it much less difficult. It's just not difficult if you don't let it be difficult. You measure.

• 6:19Matthew McConaughey?

  Because I want to sit there and believe, I want to give, I want to give more trust in a conversation, even with a stranger. I want to, but I'm, I want to be wise to understand that this conversation is not just between you and me right now, Ryan. It's right here, and it's going wherever, whoever's recording it. It's like, be conscious of those things. And you know, you see people, look, some of them are very good at baiting, but I've gotten, I've gotten pretty well seasoned in knowing, just as I'm mid-sentence, oh, if I finish this the way I want to finish it, that's going to be bold print, so I'm going to keep talking, and make sure I don't stop at the sentence period at the end, so I can fill this out, so they can't edit this down, and now I've made context and saved my backside. Okay.

• 7:01Matthew McConaughey?

  You know, and so to be apparently, be, be, to understand or aware that when, sometimes it hits me in the middle of a sentence, and I can tell, ooh, that's going to be in bold print. Or I'll finish and I'll go, just want to go on the record, please don't print that unless you print what I'm about to say now, which is the other side of that story, which I do back both together. But that alone, please don't burn me on that. And they, the press has been pretty good with me so far with that.

• 7:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, really thinking about how the words you're gonna say are gonna be used, or how they're gonna be heard. I remember the first big profile of me in my work, there was a New York Times profile, and she was asking me like, you know, how do, how do we know you're, you're not writing about ancient philosophy to make money? Which I thought was a funny question, and I said, you know, if, if you're shameless enough, you could, you could sell anything to make money. And then I paused, and I said, but why would I choose an obscure school of ancient philosophy if that's what I was, you know, after? I was like, there's better things. I was like, there's cryptocurrencies and drugs, and you know, there's other things you could do. But of course, none of that, only the first part of the quote is there, right? And so really thinking about how you, I like your

• 8:11Ryan Holiday?

  idea of just, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pause to allow this sentence to come to a

• 8:16Matthew McConaughey?

  clue. Don't give me the edit point. Don't give me the edit point.

• 8:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, exactly.

• 8:18Matthew McConaughey?

  And then you will, many times, I'll see things that are printed, and I'll go, no, no, no, watch the video. Because you didn't get my gist, or my context, or that I was, or that I led with, that's actually what I heard from someone else, or, or you didn't get, the setup of the joke wasn't there, you know? So if you watch the video, you can use, you can usually see, oh, I see what they were, where they were at. Or they weren't finished with their sentence.

• 8:42Ryan Holiday?

  To go to your point about difficult people, actually, the Marx realist quote about how the obstacle is the way, he's not talking about natural disasters, or storms, or traffic. He's actually, there's some ellipses in that quote, he's talking about difficult people. And he's saying that at the very least, difficult people are an opportunity for you to practice being a good person, or to practice restraint, or to practice forgiveness, or to practice any number of the opportunities that they present to you with their obnoxiousness, or difficulty, or rudeness.

• 9:15Matthew McConaughey?

  And oftentimes, they're there to remind us of how we don't want to be.

• 9:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, totally.

• 9:25Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say, we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please, spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything, I just wanted to say, thank you.