Matthew McConaughey Wants You To Find Your Frequency

One of the world's most compelling public figures, today Matthew McConaughey graces the show to share his incredible life story -- a journey laced with timeless wisdom & lessons on authenticity, character, integrity and what it means to be true to one's self. Do I really need to introduce this guy? Dazed And Confused. Dallas Buyers Club. Wolf of Wall Street. Interstellar. True Detective. You've seen them. You love 'em. And you love him. But over yonder -- far afield of the epic screen characters -- resides a mystic cowboy poet. A family man and father prone to ponderings profound. A seeker ever questing for adventure off the beaten path. A Texan on a four-dimensional vision quest, pursuing life in accordance with a homespun code. His is an experience-earned philosophy. Truths both personal and universal that he shares in his utterly unique way. A way that can only be described as 100% McConaughey. Beyond the make believe, tactile Matthew is an active philanthropist through his Just Keep Livin’ Foundation. He's a professor at the University of Texas in his hometown of Austin, where he also serves up 'Minister of Culture' duties for the UT Athletic Department and the Austin FC Soccer Club, of which he is part owner. Matthew is also quite the writer. Inspired by a lifetime of journaling, his recently released Greenlights is a delightfully earnest self-mythologizing romp. It's also a surprisingly astute and philosophically profound love letter to life -- a beat generation inspired pastiche of journal entries. Hollywood nights. Teenage daydreams. Off-grid plots. Amazonian scraps. Monk-like retreats. And, of course, lessons learned -- all sprinkled with just the right amount of self-help fairy dust. I couldn’t put it down. And that doesn’t happen often. Don't let the hang-dog laconicism fool you. Matthew is a man with a world-class work ethic. Razor sharp focus. Bull-like tenacity. And full commitment to everything he does. A master of perseverance and resilience, Matthew is also one of the most spiritually attuned beings I have ever met. This conversation is an exploration of many things. It's about discernment. Making critical choices. Crafting your future with intention. And the importance of character. It’s about widening our aperture on life. How to effectively and consistently grow, learn and transform. And it's about how to hone intuition to connect (to coin Matthew’s phrase) “the autobahn between your mind and heart.” But overall, this conversation is about my favorite subject -- the hard-wrought journey to authenticity and self-actualization. The visually inclined can watch our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I know Matthew is making the legacy media and podcast rounds. But I think (and hope) we took this to a few places others haven't. Either way, this one is super fun -- and chock-a-bloc with timeless life wisdom. It was an honor. I sincerely hope you dig it. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually gonna make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Each one of us needs to look in the mirror and go, how can I be a little bit better? What can I do a little bit better? Why don't I be great? Why don't I be perfect? There is no best. How can I be a little bit better? How can I be a little more fair? How can I understand that my brother and sister are also hurting, maybe in more and different ways than I am? How can I have a conversation without a condemnation? How can I have more patience to take a breath and listen and let someone who hasn't been heard speak more loudly than maybe they need to? But hear them. How do we make this time not just a flash in the pan? How do we be honest for the choices we make for ourselves selfishly are also the best choices for the most amount of people?

• 1:50Speaker 01

  And then there's not any specific recipe for that, but take that into consideration when we make our choices for ourselves. I'd say this, man. Start off with trying to create more green lights for yourself and others, and see where those two meet, and see that actually being selfless is actually a very selfish act. Creating more for others is actually very selfish for yourself as well. And try to make sure your selfish choices for yourself also light the way for more people as well. This is Matthew McConaughey, and this is episode nickel, nickel, nickel, AKA 555 of the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:33Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Come on. That's right. He is here. We made it happen. It's all very exciting. But before we dig in today, can I, may I indulge you with a brief, but very exciting announcement that begins with a little expression of gratitude. As most of you guys know, I've been doing this thing behind a mic for almost eight years at this point. And I think it would be an understatement to say that it's been and continues to be an extraordinary privilege to have meaningful conversations with truly amazing folks who I think, and I hope you agree, have important stories to share and critical life lessons to impart.

• 3:18Rich Roll?

  And I don't take that privilege lightly. And I want to continue to honor this work and my guests, and most importantly, you guys, the audience. So my team and I have come up with one way to do that. It's a book. It's a book that will ultimately become a series, and it's called Voicing Change. In this book, the first edition of Voicing Change, I'm showcasing some of my favorite conversations in a beautiful publication replete with interview excerpts, timely essays, timeless wisdom, inspiration, and stunning photography. It's basically a veritable printed highlight reel of the podcast, a unique way

• 4:00Rich Roll?

  to revisit amazing people and their wisdom, or if you're new to the show, to learn about the guests you might have missed. So if you enjoy the podcast, I've no doubt you'll love the book, a book I'm personally super proud of, a book you can proudly display on any coffee table, and of course, makes for an amazing gift. Voicing Change: Timeless Wisdom and Inspiration from the Rich Roll Podcast. That's the subtitle. Comes out November 10. It's available for preorder now exclusively, not on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but exclusively on my website. To learn more about the book and pick up your copy, visit richroll.com/vc. That's richroll.com/vc.

• 4:55Rich Roll?

  Okay, so if there was ever a guest who truly, truly needs no introduction, it's this guy. A guy who, I think it's fair to say, has somehow managed to actually transcend the epic characters he portrays on screens, Big and Small, Dallas Buyers Club, Wolf of Wall Street, Interstellar, True Detective, you guys know the movies, and has really become, in certain respects, a sort of national treasure, a modern cultural icon, if you will. But less understood, at least until recent years, is just how wise this dude is. He's

• 5:36Rich Roll?

  sort of a mystic cowboy poet who thinks deeply about life. He's a guy who seeks adventure off the beaten path, somebody who's not afraid of a psyche-probing vision quest, and has emerged from these experiences over the decades as a man with a code. And I don't know that you'd call him a guru, I'm pretty sure he'd bristle at that label, but there is a sliver of truth in that label. He's definitely a guy with a philosophy drawn from experience, and somebody with a truly, utterly, unique way of communicating truth

• 6:18Rich Roll?

  and wisdom, both personal and universal, that can only be described as 100% McConaughey. So, as most of you no doubt know at this point, Matthew has distilled all of it into a book, Greenlights, which is this delightful, I was happy to discover, very honest, but also self-mythologizing love letter to life, a sort of Beat Generation-inspired pastiche of journal entries, stories from his experiences, lessons learned, all sprinkled with just the right amount of self-help fairy dust.

• 6:59Rich Roll?

  Truth is, I couldn't put it down. I love this book. That does not happen often. And I know Matthew is making the rounds right now. Not only is he everywhere on Legacy Media, he's also popping up on tons of podcasts and on YouTube channels, but I think, I hope at least, that we went a few places others haven't, to really better understand the off-screen dude. And one thing is clear, from reading his book and having this conversation, is that behind Matthew's hangdog, laconic persona, is a guy who really works his ass off, somebody

• 7:38Rich Roll?

  who fully commits to everything he does with a razor-sharp focus and the tenacity of a bull, somebody who understands the importance of perseverance, how to persist beyond whatever obstacles lay in his path. He is, in many ways, a master of resilience, a guru to himself, and one of the most spiritually attuned beings I've ever met. So this conversation, first and foremost, is about discernment. It's about making critical choices, how to craft

• 8:16Rich Roll?

  your future, and the often, at least right now, overlooked importance of character. It's also a conversation about widening our aperture on life, how to consistently grow, learn, transform, and, most importantly, how to hone your intuition. To coin Matthew's phrase, it's about connecting and expanding the autobahn between your mind and your heart. I've said enough, too much probably, like most people. I adore this man. This was super fun. It was an honor to talk to Matthew. I hope you guys dig it. So with that, I give

• 9:00Rich Roll?

  you the aficionado of the intangible, Mr. Matthew McConaughey.

• 9:08Rich Roll?

  Ready to rock?

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Let's roll.

• 9:11Rich Roll?

  So our point of introduction or inflection was our mutual friend, Dan Buettner, who pleasantly introduced us. And we were meant to go on this backpacking trip in Utah, like this ultralight backpacking trip that got canceled because of COVID. So I was looking forward to meeting you in person, but that's gonna have to wait for another day.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Well, Dan, our good man Dan is good curator of people with like but challenging minds. You know, my nickname for him is GH.

• 9:43Rich Roll?

  No, what does that mean?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Generally heroic. And I don't mean just sometimes. I mean, from four dimensions and 360 view, whichever view you want to take, he's generally heroic.

• 9:56Rich Roll?

  Where did you first meet him?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  I met him, shoot, we were over, I think, in Europe at a Google weekend, a Google getaway, and he was one of the speakers. And he was the first speaker, I believe, and of the day, of that so said day. And what he had to say, I remember listening to him, just going, that guy's got the greatest job in the world.

• 10:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  He goes around studying longevity and happiness and people and culture. And so I chased him down and made sure I got his eye line and shook his hand and met him and talked to him about some things. And he continued to call me Bradley Cooper. And then I think, you know, he went up and flirted with my wife and called her Mrs. Cooper.

• 10:42Rich Roll?

  That sounds like Dan.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Still generally heroic. And now he's rehabbing, he's rehabilitating. Did you see his latest fall?

• 10:47Rich Roll?

  I did, I did. I'm gonna go up and visit him up in Santa Barbara in a week or so.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  I told him, I said, a pothole in the middle of the street in Minnesota, it just doesn't fit the meter of a generally heroic Dan Buettner wreck.

• 11:00Rich Roll?

  For all the stuff that that guy's done, riding his bike across Saudi Arabia and everything, for him to get knocked down that way. But hey, man, happens to the best of us. But I reached out to him and I was like, what should I ask Matthew that is, you know, mainly not Google-able? And he said, some people think that Matthew is heroic in a lot of areas, acting, fatherhood, ambassadorship, scholarship. Others think he's just generally heroic.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:33Rich Roll?

  Care to comment.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  So my, so my boomerang came back, huh?

• 11:37Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Oh, that's all him. He's, he's the purely GH one. Um, he just, he calls me many nicknames. One of them professor, I think, because I'm a professor at UT. Um, no, he's the generally heroic one, uh, more so than me. So your question being what? How am I generally heroic?

• 11:54Rich Roll?

  Or how do you respond to that? Can you take that compliment? How does that land for you?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Hmm. Well, I've always, I've enjoyed trying to entertain what the definition of a hero is all through life. I mean, you know, you've got the, uh, what's always been said, they talk about, you know, or men and women who go off to defend, to defend the country are the true heroes. And then you say there's heroes every day that, that do good deeds. I don't know if that's heroic. Um, I'll say this on, on, on, on any kind of heroism, whatever your definition is, whatever anyone's definition is.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  When I got fame and success and started a, um, a foundation that we have, it just keeps living in the school foundation. It's doing very well.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  I didn't, I chose to do that. Now that's heroic. I don't think it's heroic, but what I'm leaning into is this. Some people say it's a responsibility. Once you have success, you, it's your responsibility. I don't think that's true. I think it's a personal choice. Just like, uh, um, you know, every day the choices we make, uh, I think should be very selfish. I don't think we make good choices for anybody unless it's personal. So I don't, I don't, I don't know about the heroic. I wouldn't, I would consider myself a, a hero. Um, I've been fortunate and had an innate ability and worked my backside off to be. At least pretty damn good at some things. Uh, I've still got some things in the debit section.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Uh, I will say this, my favorite job in the world has been a father. Um, I don't know if being a good father is a heroic job. It's just being a good father. So I don't know, I don't know what to do with the hero comment coming back.

• 13:41Rich Roll?

  Right, maybe, it all depends on how you define it, how broadly or how strictly, I suppose. But more a conversation around, you know, how to be a man of character, I suppose.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  A man of character, I'll take that.

• 13:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  You know, we can talk about that till all, all, all day long, you know? And even that is not a responsibility, but a choice, you know? The only thing I ever knew I wanted to be was to be a father in my life. And then I've also learned now that, okay, well, just because you helped make a child doesn't mean you're, you did the work of a father. Fatherhood is a verb, um, as in life is a verb. These character choices we make, choices we make every day are, are, you know, compounded assets for our future or not. I have been blessed with that long view of, of life of realizing early on that in investments in ourselves today can tee up ROI in our future, can buy us green lights in our future.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  The choices we make today are compounding assets of our future and can tee us up uh, for success. Hence the title of the book, Green Lights. I know, I know for a fact we can engineer green lights in our life. I also know for a fact that I've been damn fortunate and had some just fall on my lap. But choices of character are long-term choices that deal with delayed gratification.

• 14:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I remember something that Dan told me a while back, which was when he was, when he was early in his career and thinking about what he wanted to do and who he wanted to be, he was spending time working for George Plimpton at the Paris Review. And he would go to these fancy, you know, Upper East Side, uh, parties with all these mucky mucks. And George, although he was respected, wasn't necessarily a man of means, but he had made this decision to live this life of adventure. And when they would go to these parties, all these people would gravitate. Around George because he was the one with the stories. And that's what made Dan inspired to live the kind of amazing life of adventure that that he's lived.

• 15:43Rich Roll?

  And I see a lot of that in you. I mean, we're going to talk about the book, but these pivots that you've made, the wanderlust that kind of infuses your life. And these moments where, you know, by dint of a wet dream or some kind of epiphany that you would have or being stuck, you would always know this is the time where I need to kind of do my walkabout. So I'm interested in how that kind of plays into the fabric of your life and how you prioritize it.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, look, I think, you know, those hints, angels of truth are around us all the time. It's just we don't always notice them. You know, they're there, but we don't notice them. And it's understandable. A high frequency life, man, a lot of noise coming in on all of us. I have learned early on to listen to that spider sense in me that says, you need to go get away, McConaughey. You need to go spend some time with yourself. Open up the auto bond between your head and your heart. Because right now it's a bit of a one way gravel, you know, dirt road for you. And, you know, your heart and your heart and your mind aren't really in sync, as much in sync as they should be. And then questioning what matters.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  I've always questioned since I was 14. It's one of the things with writing the book. My diary entries when I was 14 were about similar topics that I'm still interested in today at 50. I've had a pretty good threshold for when I do get that spider sense to say, oh, you need to get out of here, McConaughey. You need to leave what you're in so you can get outside and have a clearer view. You need to leave where you are right now and find out what do I find out when I go away? Memory catches up. Oh, demarcations between events that maybe I was handling. And I'm good at handling events, just being being in the middle of it going, press, you know, let's do this. Pilot on me. I'll be a horse. I'll get through it. But I didn't notice what had happened to me like, for instance, when I got famous. I didn't notice what that was until I got the hell out of Dodge and went on a 22 day walkabout with myself in Peru.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Then I was like, oh, that's what happened. Oh, that's what that event or circumstance or run in with that person was about. Because they were all on top of each other at the time. I wasn't able to separate things that were going on. Too much frequency. So I have gone away many times on my own. Um, I've learned to enjoy the solitude, not necessarily enjoy my company in the solitude, which usually the first 12 days, I do not enjoy my company. Um, I'm shaking demons off my back, feeling regret, lost, confused, trying to figure stuff out. And usually around day 12 or day 13, I'll have a breakthrough. And it's usually, it's that breakthrough where, all right, come on a hay. Since you're the only guy I'm stuck with and I can't get rid of,

• 18:23Speaker 01

  which is each of us for ourselves. What are we gonna forgive and what are we gonna say I'm not, not putting up with anymore? Figure those two out, shake hands with myself and wake up the next morning. And then those trips are wonderful. Then I'm present, then I'm singing a song, then wisdom's landing on me. Then I'm hearing those angels and those butterflies of truth that land and you go bam. This is on me, I'm hearing it. Now, how do I personalize it? This truth and ask myself and answer the question, why it's coming to me? How do I preserve it? Have the patience to preserve it? And then when I leave those trips, the big fun challenge is how do I take that truth? The solitary truth back into the masses, back into the stadium of life?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  And ride that bull, that rodeo of life and remember, trust that this truth that crossed me, that found me while I was in solitude is true now, then, and forever, wherever I am. That's the hard part.

• 19:20Rich Roll?

  Right. It strikes me as almost this impulse for self-preservation or self-defense. Like there's, it takes a certain level of awareness as an individual to recognize those moments, even if they're visited upon all of us. And you're somebody, you know, the fact that you've been journaling consistently from, you know, way back from an early age tells me that you're an introspective person by nature. I'm not sure where that came from. Maybe you have an answer to that. But then you go on these adventures that are about self dependence, self preservation, reinvention, reflection, and then the trick, the hard part is bringing it back and not letting

• 20:01Rich Roll?

  it evaporate, but but taking, you know, having, being able to distill whatever wisdom comes to you about the experience itself, but more importantly, what you learn about your own self, and then trying to exude that, to imbue it and live your life in accordance.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Yes, and you're right, the initial reaction to leave and go into solitude is a defense mechanism, is a survival mechanism, is a whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not feeling grounded here mentally, spiritually, so I need to, I don't know what the answer is, but I just know I gotta get out of here where I can hear myself think. I know I gotta get out of here where I can be in a place where I can receive some of the truth. Then, yeah, that fun challenge of bringing it back, and yes, not let it be stripped away, which it eventually does, and it gets tripped away, but even better, sometimes bring it back and play offense with it. Like, go, I'm not just coming back going, can I hold on to it? I want to put it into action. I want to, you know, it's why I'm such a slow reader.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  If I read, you know, one of my favorite writings is Emerson's essay on self reliance. Well, I mean, that take, that essay, which is about 20 pages long, took me two years to read.

• 21:14Rich Roll?

  So good, though.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Because the first paragraph, I'm like, whoa, I gotta take that and see if I can apply that in life and see what the reverb of life is back to me if I'm looking through that lens, which takes me a couple of months before I can come back and read the next paragraph. That's the fun stuff I like to read, or the fun things that wisdom will come to me in solitude that I want to take back into society. And you're right, it strips away. You look up and you go, oh, I'm falling back into some old habits. I forgot that. I gotta go calibrate. I gotta go back to school. I gotta go break a sweat. I need to go away again. I need to go revisit my diary and look at what I was doing when I was satisfied, when I was successful, when I was happy with myself, my relationships were good, when I did have that autobahn between the mind and the heart.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Because I'm in a rut again, so I need to go back. And I've found clues in my diaries of when I was happy as to what I was doing. Oh, who was I hanging out with? What was I drinking? Where was I going? How much sleep was I getting? Oh, I see. Now in my life, I'm in this bit of a rut. I'm complacent with some of those things. I'm doing some things that are not feeding myself, and so I need to go back. So some of those diaries have been good little maps for me to go back and dissect when I felt successful and happy, rather than just go dissect failures, which is more of our habits, I think.

• 22:35Rich Roll?

  Do you find it more difficult to pull the trigger or pull the ripcord and, you know, split when things are going well or when things are challenging? Like, as you progress through life and you have more responsibilities and more abundance in your life, it's got to be harder to say, I'm gonna walk away from this and go try something else. It's different when you're all of whatever you were, 23, 24, and you were living in an airstream.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and having three children and a life and family makes that a little harder, too. But yeah, more difficult when things are going well, because I don't know about you, but me, when things are going well, I inevitably feel like, oh, well, this is the mean. This is how it's supposed to be. This is how it is. I've got it figured out. This way, there's no reason for it ever to dip below this, which of course it always does. And then I gotta go off again. But I have, you know, part of the inspiration for going away to go write this book was a bit, was that. I needed a trip away. And not only that, my wife knew I needed it.

• 23:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  She gave me a kick in the backside, and she'll come to me and tell me, you need to get out of here for a while. Go off, you know, go off. Don't come. And then I'll call, you know, and she'll like, don't even call. Well, of course. What's that mean? Of course I'm calling now, right? Much quicker than if she just said, make sure you call. Because I don't like to be told what to do. But I'll go away and like, with this, she goes, don't go back till you got something. However long that takes, we're good. I got the kiddos here. Oh, it was a gift she gave me. I was able to go away on these walkabouts without having to look over my shoulder and go. Oh, am I building a debit right now? Because when I go back, am I gonna have to do a whole lot of extra work to catch back up for what I missed? She's never been someone who made me feel

• 24:21Speaker 01

  like, okay, now you've been away, now you need to double up on all your duties. It was always like, she pushes me out the door. And she did with this book.

• 24:29Rich Roll?

  That's, uh, that's amazing. You definitely married the right one for that.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:33Rich Roll?

  Well, the, this, as the story goes, and I don't know how much of this is apocryphal versus true, you took off with your journals, you went to the desert for something like 52 days. I read somewhere that, that you did it without electricity. But then in the book, you, at the end of the book, you kind of, you were in a couple of different places, right? Like, I'm envisioning you with a typewriter. Like, if you don't have electricity, how are you writing this book?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Well, I started off with that electric, the first 12 days were with that electricity. And it took a generator, so I could plug in my laptop.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  And that was just, you know, I wanted to go someplace where I didn't, email, I'd shut down my account. I wanted to go someplace with no phone signal to where only, you know, 6:00 PM each night, there's a certain hill about a half a mile away that I would hike to the top and make the call to check on the family. And that was it. Other than that, no incoming calls, no incoming emails, no outgoing. I needed to be stripped out of the necessities to go say, how can I best cope solitude with me and me of my last 50 years, without any outside invitations? And so that was the first 12 days. And I must say, I went into it, it was intimidating when I wanted to go. I thought, looking back at 50 years of my life, I was gonna be embarrassed. Thought there were

• 25:51Speaker 01

  things, I knew there were things I was gonna be ashamed about. There were places I was gonna go, you arrogant little prick, what were you thinking? And what happened is, most of the things that I thought I would be embarrassed about, I ended up laughing at. Most of the things I thought I'd be ashamed about, I'd ended up forgiving myself for, or noticed I already had forgiven myself for. And the parts where I was arrogant, I laughed at, but was also like, well, good on you for thinking you knew it all at that point. Because following those points in my diaries where I would be so self-confident and all-knowing. I always very soon stepped in shit in my life, going based off like I am, I, I absolutely know. And I was happy that at least I had the confidence to think I had it all figured out.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  And then as life dealt me a card, found out I didn't.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  I went away thinking that these diaries are going to be much more academic. And I remember the first four days sort of trying to force it into an academia mind. And all of a sudden I stopped and I remember I stopped one night, I said, look, all right, you haven't even looked at these things, just read each page and see what it is. See what it lends itself to be. And let's just stack up, see if some categories show up. And what happened after about 10 days was I had these seven stacks. It was a stack full of stories, it was a stack full of people, stack full of places, a stack full of prescribes, stack full of poems, prayers, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. So those were my categories. And then I said, okay, we have some semblance here, some structure of something.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Now what is all this? And that was actually that what I just riffed off was my original title. Stories, people, places, prescribes, poems, prayers, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. Not a bad title, but I then said, now let's read through all these and see if something, another central theme or column reveals itself. And that's where the title Green Lights came from. I noticed that there were successes in my life that I engineered. I noticed there were successes that I got just plain good fortune and landed in my lap. I noticed that in certain ways, red and yellow lights in my life, crises and hardships. I believed while I was in them, that there was a lesson to be learned in a green light asset within them, not knowing when I would, it would be revealed to me, but trusting just to stick with it, stick with the hardship, endure it.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  And there's a, there's a, there's a green light in it. I noticed that some things that I thought like my father passing, how can that be a green light? That's an absolute red light. Well, I keep reading my diaries 10 years later, I'm understanding how the values and incentive that he taught me, I wouldn't have enacted them in my own life if he'd have still been alive, because I would have relied on him being there to have my back. So his passing away actually gave me a kick in the backside to look the world in the eye and have more courage to go chase down who I wanted to be and be myself. So. Some of the hardships that I had revealed green lights. Some of the hardships I've had, I suppose, have not revealed their green lights yet. It may not reveal themselves, they may only reveal themselves to my great grandkids. I don't know.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  But eventually, the theme of the book is that all the red and yellows do eventually turn green, and I believe that.

• 29:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so the narrative always comes back to this idea of green lights. And, I mean, first of all, I should say, like, I finished the book this morning. I loved it. To echo what our other mutual friend, Ryan Holiday, said, I think he said something like, "I knew it was gonna be a good book. I didn't know it was gonna be this good." Like, you did an amazing job with this book. It has this really, you know, very McConaughey-esque touch to it. Like, it's your book through and through. But it also reminded me of kind of the Beat poets. It has that type of aesthetic. And it's this kind of patchwork of, you know, stories from your life in a relatively traditional kind of memoir narrative, but interspersed with your poetry and always

• 29:54Rich Roll?

  with these kind of life lessons and takeaways that are just unbelievably wise. And I would look at these and I would wonder, like, how old was he when he wrote this stuff? I mean, when you went back and looked at your journals, were you surprised at the wisdom of some of the things that you said when you were younger? Was there anything that stuck out that you didn't expect?

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Obviously, the earlier diary entries were wise. Why, what, where, when, how? It was the questions. There was a question mark after everything. So I was always seeking the questions. As I evolved and got older, I started to answer some of those questions and could sum them up in a wisdom bomb, or an aphorism, or a bumper sticker, right? But it didn't lead to any fewer questions. My questions evolved, I think. But, as I said earlier, what I was looking, what I was at, the questions I was asking at 14 about existence, and who am I, and what's what matters, and what's life about, how the world works, who am I in this world? I still question those.

• 30:57Rich Roll?

  But it is unusual for a 14-year-old to be asking those kinds of questions. So I'm curious, like, where do you think that comes from in you?

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know, you know, I don't know how to answer that, because...

• 31:11Speaker 01

  We weren't raised as a very introspective family. We always have our prayer and gratitude as a family. We were raised as consistent extroverts. I mean, like, I wasn't allowed to watch TV or read because my mom would say, "Why read about or watch somebody do something that you can go do yourself? Get outside."

• 31:29Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  There's always, "Go, go do it. Go experience it." You know, I don't know where my, my, my family, my mom wasn't really a writer, my dad wasn't. Um, I mean, I was always though, early on, the inquisitor of the family, the interrogator, the one who wasn't satisfied with mom and dad just going, "Because we said so." I would go, "Well, let's get underneath this. That's why I was gonna be a lawyer." I was, they were like, "Huh, dude, you, Matthew, the youngest one, you debate things and question things to the nth degree and it's exhausting at times." So I was always sort of wanting to get to the underbelly of the meaning of things, um, at a very early age. So I don't know where that came from, but that's just kinda, I think, always been who I am.

• 32:09Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Yeah, in reading about growing up with your dad, I mean, I, I just, I was thinking, most people who have had an experience like that would be, you know, doing a lot of therapy and harboring a lot of resentments, but you really have a lot of peace around it and a lot of love.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  A lot of honor, a lot of love. That's the word. You know, I, I, um, if you look at the stories, they open up with a wild story about a monumental fight that my mom and dad had, which got bloody, but ended up with them making love on the floor.

• 32:45Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  I always, when people ask me about the love in my family, or the love that I have, my parents had for me and that my mom and dad had for each other, I always have told these stories of discipline that involve some form of violence or corporal punishment. And on this book tour, I've been wondering why, because when I tell you this story, you see me light up and people go like, "On paper, I've got my hand up in my mouth going, 'Oh my gosh, call child protection services and yes, Matthew McConaughey, you must have been in therapy since then to deal with this trauma.'" And I'm like, "No." So when I tell the story though, people get very, you see the humanity and the love that I have for them. And I think the reason I tell those stories is because they were

• 33:29Speaker 01

  the biggest test to defeat the bubble of love that we were surrounded with, but they never had a chance of beating it. And so I tell those stories because there's like a lightning rod of like, oh, this is trauma. Oh, this is violent. Oh, this is problem. Oh, this is where it all falls apart. But it actually never had a chance. All apart. I mean, my mom and dad divorced twice, married three times. The two divorces are that lightning rod trying to puncture that bubble of love. Ends in three marriages, got married more than they got divorced. Us getting punished. I earned every time, everything I got punished for. And I look back and I go, well, you got your first butt whooping for not answering to your name. Your second for saying, I can't. Your third for saying, I hate you to your brother.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  And your fourth for lying. Well, if I'm gonna go back and do the math, that's four pretty doggone good reasons to get you butt whooped. Always answer to your name. Know you're having trouble doing something instead of that you can't do it. Don't hate and don't lie. I mean, like, there were values instilled in those. And every time I did it, I remember not the butt whooping, but the value that I don't say that word, C A N T. You know, I don't, I don't hate. Um, I do go, no, it's not Matt, it's Matthew. You know, I do my best to tell the truth and not lie, you know? So those are good, those are good lessons that were ingrained in us.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  And I think that's why I tell those as love stories, even though, like I say, on paper, you agree or disagree with the form of punishment. That's what was being instilled in me. And that's what I took from it. Even then, you know, when my mom taught me to swim and threw me in the river. And here we come on a waterfall that if I go off that, I'm not gonna die, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna break a bone or two. And she walks along the bank with her arms crossed going, swim, swim, swim. When I finally put my head down and saw that waterfall coming and swam to the bank. I was scared, but I wasn't mad. I was immediately proud.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  And, and like, you know, in shock, but is immediately proud of it because I was like, mom was right. She was right. It was time for me to swim.

• 35:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's, there's so many lessons in that. It's an extreme example of something that I think has been eroded in our culture in this time of, you know, participation trophies, where, you know, we're coddling our kids to such an extent that we're depriving them of, you know, some of those rough and tumble moments where they get their knees skinned so that they can learn these lessons. You know, I don't know about the extreme of your, your examples, but at least letting kids fail and fall and get into trouble and figure out, you know, where their compass lies.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Let them go negotiate. I mean, I agree with you. I think in some, some ways we, we can and do deprive our children of understanding how to go negotiate a situation. I, I've been looking at it like this. It's like a, a tree limb. A child's not afraid of heights until they fall. Well, before they've fallen, it's like, all right, see them on that tree and you go, they fell from there. I mean, it's gonna hurt, but not gonna, you know, have to go to the hospital. I think I'll let them keep climbing there. You know, let them go negotiate that. And maybe they make it or maybe they fall. Well, then it gets up higher and they're starting to excuse you go, I mean, if they fell from there, this could be really, really painful. I think now's the time to go, hey, everybody come on down a little bit.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? It's like, what level limb do we let them go out? And then we should, I think a lot of society, raise the level of that limb a little bit to let our kids go, yeah, you're gonna get bumped and bruised there, buddy. You're gonna skin the knees. Go ahead and wear those knees out in your jeans and, or fall from that limb and go, yep, you see? That happens.

• 37:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  If you don't pay attention. So I, yeah, I would say, I'm not, you know, I don't think we should say the, the, the level of the, the height of the limb that my parents sort of, or we'll let us walk out on needs to be the mean for everybody, but there was great value in those, in those lessons. And we never.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Were abused. We never were injured. It hurt. Blood was drawn, but we were never injured. There's a difference between hurt and injury. And we were never, you know, so, and we were never abused. And again, the love was never in question.

• 37:45Rich Roll?

  And being reared in the kind of shadow of this outlaw logic, there was a fair amount of acting out on your part, but it was kind of healthy teenager stuff. Like you weren't taking it to, you know, to such an extent that you were getting into big time trouble.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  No, I, number one, I was pretty good with getting away with stuff because I had two older brothers who, as they say, paved the wide highway for me. And, you know, my brothers would jack with me because they were like, you little mama's boy, the golden boy. And I remind them, well, I got away with stuff better than y'all did too, because I learned that. At the same time, I was, you know, a bit of a hell raiser, but it was all sort of good. What it wasn't, it wasn't too gnarly a stuff. I mean, I, you know, I never really got into drugs. I didn't harm other people. I got away with some things that, you know, wouldn't be prescriptive for everyone to get away with. But I also say this, and someone asked me the other day, do you believe, you know, you were, you

• 38:44Speaker 01

  were raised, as I see in the book, Matthew, with a certain amount of fear of your father and mother. You still believe in the value of that? And my answer is yeah.

• 38:52Rich Roll?

  So how do you translate that as a parent to three kids now?

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, differently than my mom and dad did.

• 38:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would think so.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Just because I don't choose to, and I'm not judging how they did it. Again, yeah, I write about this in the book. My parents also, their reasoning, trust me, I went to them before and said, would you please ground me? And they were like, no. I go, why? And I go, because that would be taking your time away from you. And your time is valuable. Now, Bendo, we're gonna get this over with and then it's over. Glad that happened that way. That's not how I choose to raise my children right now. Um, I'm trying to, Camilla and I are trying to teach our kids values. We do talk, we do not say, because I said so, as much as my parents did, or most of our parents probably did. We do try to explain things. We try to. Uh, you know, we had an instance the other night. The youngest one was, was, was getting sleepy

• 39:44Speaker 01

  and popped off and, and, you know, disrespected his mother just by like walking away from the middle of the thing like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Now look, I'm tired. Camille's tired. It's a late night. We've been out all day with the kids. What do you want to do? You kind of want to let it slide and just go to bed and let them go to sleep. No, no, we're building a debit. We've got to gather up the energy and sit down with our son and go, do you understand why that's not allowable? This is your mother. All right. She works her butt off. We work our butt off to give you a house, to give you a meal, to raise you and nudge you to be the young man that you can be. And you have to have respect and what you just did was disrespectful. And if you're

• 40:25Speaker 01

  disrespecting her, you're disrespecting yourself. And you do not have the right to talk to your mother like that. It's a hell of a lot easier for your mom and I to let it slide and just let you go to bed with that punk move you just pulled. But we're going to stay up and we're going to handle this right now until you understand why that's disrespectful and why it's mean and why it's ugly and why you're out of line. And why if you continue to do that, the days will just not be as fun for you. And it took a while. He's a very stubborn son that I was talking to. Went on for over an hour and a half. And finally, he understood it. And the fact that we gave that amount of time to say, no, you're not going to bed yet. No, we're not going to bed until you get it. I mean, yeah, just sitting there spending the time and your child going like, geez, mom and dad are still here an hour and a half

• 41:10Speaker 01

  later and they're not letting me off the hook. Okay, I get it. So, and then, you know, the challenge becomes how do you have them, how can they remember that? So they don't become repeat offenders so quick, you know, right after?

• 41:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he'll remember that. And I think, you know, what you said earlier about asking your mom to please ground you, like, the child wants those boundaries and they know that you're coming to them from a place of love, even if it's hard and concerning.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Well, on the fear thing again, I know that there's a lot of things, I was faced with temptation to a lot of things growing up, that I knew I shouldn't do, that I did not do for fear of the consequences. So fear definitely kept me from doing things because I'm like, I measured it. Wait a minute. If we go egg that car and do that and man and pop find out about that, oh my gosh, that's gonna be hell to pay. No, risk reward, I'm out. You know, there's just certain things that said it's not, it's not worth it. And I had certain friends that didn't have the consequences to deal with that I would have had to deal with, that did go do it. And got

• 42:15Speaker 01

  away with all kinds of stuff and some of them didn't ever really, uh, kind of, some of them turned out to be, you know, crappy dudes.

• 42:24Rich Roll?

  But there was also, like, it was almost like your dad wanted you to do some of these things as long as you told him the truth. It wasn't the offense that offended him, it was you lying about it. Like, as long as you were honest with him and you got away with it, it was almost an attaboy from him.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  In a way. And that was part of the initiation of mandate. He wouldn't let us know that, what you just said. But that is what he was looking for. So, there's a story in there about me stealing a pizza one night with, with a buddy of mine, Bud Felker. And got home, my dad's on the phone with Mr. Felker, the father of the guy that I was out with and we stole the pizza. We walked out on the pizza from Pizza Hut. And, you know, you get older, you come home, and you've stolen a pizza and your dad goes, "Did you pay for that pizza?" You should know, right now that he knows you didn't. But of course, at that age, I'm like, "Well, no, I mean, I think so, Dad." I mean, we, we, well, the girl

• 43:22Speaker 01

  had recognized Bud, called his dad and said, "Hey, it was my table. They walked out on the pizza." And my dad was just looking for me to go, "Yeah, we stole the pizza." And he'd have gone, "God damn it, son. I've stolen a lot of pizzas in my life. Listen, next time, get away with it better, but thank you for telling me that you did. Now, gosh damn it, get your ass in bed." Right? Watch it. Well, I didn't. I groveled. I defended myself. I tried to weasel my way out of it. He gave me three, four chances to tell him, "Yes." And I dug myself such a hole that I'm shivering there at the damn pea spot in my jeans in fright, not from him, but at my own cowardice.

• 44:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  And I remember I finally asked, gave me one last chance, "Just tell me, did you know you were gonna steal that pizza?" And I went, "Well, no." And he basically backhanded me. And I crumbled to the floor in the corner, not from the backhand. But because my lactic acid, coward, hypocritical legs were numb under me from being such a weasel and not being able to just admit, "Yes, I did," and that's what broke his heart. And I was scared because I saw I was breaking my dad's heart right in front of me because all he wanted me to do was what you said, "Just tell me, son, just tell me the truth. Don't lie to me about stealing the damn pizza, man. It's not about the stealing the pizza. It's about owning up to what you did and telling your father the truth." And that I remember. The tears on my face were seeing my dad heartbroken and knowing that I let him down.

• 44:48Rich Roll?

  Well, it's just one of many rites of passage that he puts you through. And the book is, you know, makes it very clear how important these rites of passage are in your, you know, evolution as a human being. So much so that it seems to me that these walkabout adventures that you go on later are your way of creating additional rites of passage when, you know, we live in a culture where we're bereft of those. Like, most people don't grow up with any kind of meaningful rites of passage. And that's something that we're hardwired to need. We have to test ourselves or we need to be tested by somebody else. And if we're not getting that, we have to put ourselves in that position.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Yes. Need resistance to find structure, to create form. And, you know, for me, later in life, I get successful, I'm famous. You know, too many options can make a tyrant of any of us. And when the world's saying, "Yes," well, that's where the devil lives and all the yeses, not the noes. And I needed to go, "Wait a minute, is this what really matters?" I have that line in the book, "But when you can, ask yourself if you want to before you do." Well, when you're getting all these things for the first time in your life and the world's a big green light and everything's yes, I wanted to go away and see, "Wait a minute, are these green lights that are plugged into a battery or are they eternal, you know, solar-powered green lights?"

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Well, I'm getting a lot of them that I'm like, "Oh, these are all kind of plugged into a battery. They're impermanent, they're just kind of for now, they're kind of a fad. They're not really things, they're stops, not stays." And so... I need to go away, create that resistance, put myself into discomfort, go without things, sort of fast, um, from not just food or drink, but fast from attention, fast from fame, fast from all the yeses that are coming to me in the world, and get some discernment again. As I said earlier, let my memory catch up. Who the heck am I? What really matters? What do I give a damn about? What was that moment? Was that a real moment, or was that just part of the, was I just part of the machine, you know? And so, to disseminate

• 46:55Speaker 01

  and discriminate, make some choices for myself again. That's why I needed those walkabouts, and still do.

• 47:01Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, when you're, you talk about, you're kind of hitting your stride, you're making bank, you're in all these movies, you move into the chateau, you're wearing leather pants, you're hitting the clubs, it's all, it's all happening. I mean, most people would just ride that out, and just more, more, more. When am I gonna get the house up in the hills? And just continue to double down for as long as, you know, the industry would allow them to do so.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Until you're 27 years old, that seems to be the going age of all the, the great rock and rollers. They make it to 27, and then they go.

• 47:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and they all, all at the chateau, too.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. God bless the chateau, boy. They, they promote a little bit of mischief, thank goodness. And I gave myself some license there. I said, you know what, I'm gonna test this out. I'm gonna test out my threshold of hedonism. I'm going to, I don't wanna be harmful, don't wanna be mean, I don't, I don't wanna be, uh, you know, mean to anyone else or myself. At the same time, I'm gonna give myself a Saturday night POV for, for, for some time. And I did it for a couple of years. Um, and then I just noticed that, okay, this feels revolutionary, not evolutionary. This feels like a stop, not a stay. This indulgence,

• 48:18Speaker 01

  an option to indulge, is not, I'm not really feeling an ascension in my life. I'm cool with where it is, I'm not griping about it, I'm enjoying it, and I'd be silly if I didn't, but I'm not really feeling a build, an ascension in my life. And I wanna feel billed. Um, so... I decided to get out of there and go away. So I knew at that time, it was that that was a stop and not a stay. I also, you know, during that time, at the end of that time, really started to question my belief in God and stuff. And so I remember saying, you know, okay, you're a believer, but why?

• 48:59Speaker 01

  And is your belief, is your sense of belief, Matthew, your fatalistic sense of belief, that it's all fate? Is it, is that it? Are you using that as an excuse almost in ways in your life to let yourself off the hook? And I remember going, well, let's just put two hands on the wheel of self determination here and let's be our own judge and jury, Matthew. And let's call it out and not rely on, hey, no, you know what? If, you know, it's all been written. And so I went through a very, I would call it an agnostic time. And as I said in the book, it wasn't as much of a time where I disbelieved God. It was a time where I said, you need to hold yourself more accountable. Matthew, you need to have both hands on your wheel of where you're going because you're letting yourself slide on just about a lot of stuff. And I want to go test that out.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  I want to hold you, I want to hold you more accountable, Matthew. So I wanted to hold myself more accountable. And went through a couple of years of that and it was a very good exercise. And my relationship with God, I believe, I, my belief is that God was smiling and going, yeah, good on you, good on you. Way to grab a hold of the wheel because I didn't, because yeah, you do have free will and, and, and I don't, and I, and it didn't make me think that anything is going to change after this life. But it did make me say, hey, while I'm in it, remember that I've got freedom of choice and hold myself more responsible for my choices.

• 50:15Rich Roll?

  Well, let's dig a little bit deeper into the faith conversation. Because I think that Green Lights really is a spiritual book. I mean, just on the subject of green lights itself, there's this idea that you can catch them by virtue of skill, intent, endurance, resilience, discipline, hard work, all of these things. But the flip side of that coin is this idea that you talked about earlier, like engineering them. And that's about frequency, that's about intuition, fate, like you just said. It's about finding your way into the zone and it's about how you comport yourself in the world so you become a magnet for good things as opposed to somebody who's chasing them.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, look, I say in the, in the book, I'm pretty sure the world's, at times, I'm pretty sure the world's conspiring to make me happy. And then what I mean by that is, someone asked me this the other day, what do you, what do you, your measures of trust, where they come from? And how do you, and how do you have that with people? And my answer, which I'd never answered before until I was asked that, was, I come into this conversation just meeting you, and you have 100% of my trust, until you disprove me, until you give me reason to distrust. I give everybody, I have utmost respect and reverence for, for people, and believe in the goodness of people, and that no one's

• 51:41Speaker 01

  out to try and harm me. Now, I'm not foolish, my eyes are open, I could listen to your questions, and maybe I hear you going, oh, I think Rich is trying to weasel in here, and trying to do something that's not really true. But until then, I'm going, no, 100% trust, until you prove it otherwise. I have learned and do believe in this relationship, responsibility and freedom, the responsibility of freedom and the freedom in responsibility, the choices we make today, that compound assets in our future, they, you can tee yourself up for more green lights with the choices we make today, meaning if I don't like cheating and steal, if I choose not to. Now, I think it's a very selfish act not to like cheating and steal. When someone will go, wait a minute, it's a selfish act to like cheating and steal,

• 52:26Speaker 01

  because you get what you want right now. Yeah, is that really selfish, though? I don't think so, because if you do that, for the rest of your life, everywhere you go, you gotta look over your shoulder to make sure no one's there in the room that you like cheating and stole from. So, when you're looking over your shoulder, you're not spending your time, you're spending their time, and you're not present, so you're stressed, so you really didn't, you really wasn't a selfish act. You bought debits and yellow lights in your future, not the freedom of green lights. I'm trying to live a life where I don't leave crumbs, and don't have to look over my shoulder, don't owe anybody money. You know, I don't, I haven't been perfect, but for what I've screwed up on, hopefully I've gone and apologized, I made amends, and probably still have more to make that I don't know. But-

• 53:09Speaker 01

  I'm trying to make choices where each I'm teeing myself up for tomorrow morning at the very basic level. Here's a, here's a basic green light. Put coffee in your coffee filter the night before. So when you get up tomorrow morning, Grog, all you gotta do is push the damn button. Cause it's hard to make your coffee when you hadn't had your coffee sometimes. And when you don't put the coffee in the filter, you get up the next morning like, why didn't I tee myself up for this? Why wouldn't I kind to my future self here? Well, there's choices we make every day to be kind and cool to our future selves. And the honey hole of those choices, I think, which is what I'm chasing, is where can we make the choices where what we want is actually what we need? And what we need is actually what we want. That seems to be the honey hole of heaven on earth, right

• 53:54Speaker 01

  there. Where what's good for us selfishly is also what's good for the most amount of people. That's the, that's where it's, that's the ultimate spot, I believe. That I have got to, but I'm still chasing.

• 54:06Rich Roll?

  It's not dissimilar from 12 steps. I'm, I'm in recovery for a long time and, and so much of the steps are about like putting a person through a program that allows them to, you know, make amends for their past behavior, redress their character defects so that you can emerge and navigate the world, looking people in the eye, telling the truth, not being afraid of what's, you know, your wife's gonna find in your jeans pockets when she's doing the laundry or, you know, just being able to like live congruent, like where your actions are in alignment with your values and you don't have to look over, you know, your shoulder or worry about like when that lie is gonna catch up to you.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've, I've heard that. I've never, never been in or don't really know the 12 steps. I've known some people that are in them and really enjoy the conversations where we found a synonymous sort of approach and view on things. Um, look, man, I

• 55:03Speaker 01

  It's hard to remember a lie. It is, it is. It's work, man. And it's not fun work to try and make up and go to every situation going, oh, wait a minute. Who all is involved? Is there anyone screwed over here? What's the situation? Geez, oh man, it's stressful.

• 55:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  And, and me, I'm a fan of stress. And people that go, no stress. I'm like, what are you talking about? You're a liar.

• 55:21Rich Roll?

  It's a toxic stress that you carry around.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not the right kind. Life's hard enough with that, creating extra work for ourselves that's not constructive. If we're just running around trying to play defense to cover up our past mistakes, we're busting our ass, dealing with stuff and something that's not constructive or affirmatively moving forward. We're going to run into enough hill uphill battles without having to deal with, you know, sins of our past or, or things or, or contracts we broke in our past. Man, try not to gather up too many of them and you've got more energy to handle the ones that you, the, the, the real battles that are in front of us anyway.

• 55:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, the other idea that you keep circling back to in the book is this idea of relativity. And I'm not sure I totally grasp where you're coming from with that, but it keeps, it keeps coming up in bold typeface throughout the book.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Yes. So the tool theory that's come to me is this, when faced with the inevitable, get relative. Now, when do we deem a situation inevitable? That's already a relative question. Let's take COVID right now. Inevitable. It's here. Don't deny it. Don't sit here every day getting all excited about maybe tomorrow it's gone because it won't be gone tomorrow. So how do I get relative with this? Okay. Well, for me, for instance, you can persist through a situation. You can pivot or you can raise the white flag and say, I give to fight another day. Well, we're in COVID. So let's not raise the flag and say, we're going to fight another day because we're all in it. Now, can I persist through this doing, living and expecting everything that I was before COVID?

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I could do that, but I don't see the the net gain in that because I think it's gonna be around here for a while. So I gotta pivot. Alright, so what I mean by pivot, get relative with this situation, the inevitable COVID that we're in. Alright, I'm forced to be at home more. I'm quarantining. Don't like that. I don't like that. But alright, let me start looking at the upside here. Uh, I'm doing some more inventory on myself. I'm spending more time with my kids. I'm cooking more with my family in the kitchen. I got my mom with us, so the kids are around their grandmother more than they ever were, and she's 88, so that's a good thing. Um, maybe spend some more time writing right now. Um, I'm starting to try to find the assets, the green lights in this red light that we're in. That's how I'm choosing to get relative with it. That's a choice that we can make

• 57:42Speaker 01

  with every situation, once we deem it inevitable. Now, if we endure, if you, if you, if you deem an outcome of something you want, if you say, well, it's inevitable, I, I, I can't get it. If you say that too soon, we're a quitter. But if you say it too late, we're acting out the definition of insanity, trying to bang our head off, trying to get a different outcome by doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over. So, we have to measure those things for ourselves. When do we deem a situation inevitable, an outcome inevitable, for us, or, or by getting it or not getting it? And then how do we get relative with it? Sometimes I need to back off being so persistent and resilient and say, I have to reapproach this, the way I'm looking at this. I gotta dance up in a different

• 58:27Speaker 01

  step. I gotta throw myself off balance and reapproach this circumstance in my life, this question, this crossroads. That's an art there, that we're all trying to, I think, work out, is when to deem something inevitable, and then once we do, how do we get relative with it?

• 58:42Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Is that-

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Is that still confusing?

• 58:46Rich Roll?

  No, I got it. I mean, it reminds me of the serenity prayer, which is sort of-

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Very much.

• 58:51Rich Roll?

  You know, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, encourage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Like, it kind of boils down to that. But I'm wondering, like, does this come, is this a muscle that you've flexed for so long that it comes naturally to you, or is there like a daily practice? Is gratitude a reflex, or is that something that you have to cultivate for yourself?

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Good question. Um-

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Look, I didn't come, you know, it was going back and looking at the 50 years of my life and the 36 years of diaries that revealed that understanding when faced with the inevitable. Get relative. It wasn't something that I'd written down or thought over and opined over in the past and then tried to practice. Um, look, as far as gratitude, I will, you know, I was raised on, you know, if you come into breakfast in a bad mood, mom said, get your ass back in your bedroom and don't come out here till you see the rose in the vase and see the dust on the table. I was raised on, oh, you're griping about not having any shoes. Is that right? Oh, yeah. You think you got it so bad? Well, let me introduce you to the

• 59:57Speaker 01

  kid with no feet. Whoa, shit. Okay. Uh, talk about relativity. Um, we were raised on being thankful that the sun came up another day and that better be enough for you to be happy today. That better be enough for you to stand tall because that wasn't a guarantee. So what are you gonna do with it? We were raised on drop down to rock bottom and be thankful for things that we take for granted every day. So has that triggered me through life to maybe see and be have thanks for certain things that maybe I should just expect? Sure, probably. Um, at the same time, you know, uh, I've got a pretty, I've had a pretty good threshold for taking the context of a situation pretty early in, in the circumstance

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  and going, all right, what's my risk reward here? How do I get what I want here? And is what I want really what I need? All right. What's the long-term, long money ROI on the choice I make here? Am I doing something, uh, being eccentric for eccentricity's sake? Ooh, yeah. Well, there's nothing really constructive about that. That's kind of not worth shit. That's a fad. Uh, that's not gonna last. What's a lasting choice that I can make here that's gonna be good for me and good for the whole situation, uh, that I could sleep well with? It's not gonna wake me up in the middle of the night going, oh, why'd you do that? Or I'm not gonna wake up tomorrow morning and go regret it or think it was a one-off flash in the pan. Trying to make choices that are gonna have long money. Um, ones

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  that are gonna last, one that are gonna, gonna, um, feed my good wolf instead of my bad wolf. You know what I mean? Um, so.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  A lot of it, I think, has been instinct. And then I'm just now trying to put it into words and to a theory that I can go, oh, remember that you can apply that tool. Is that situation inevitable? When do you deem it such? And how do you get relative with it? So it was a way of just almost academically intellectualizing something that maybe has been an instinct for me that I noticed in looking at my diaries and how I got out of situations and turned some red lights into some green lights.

• 1:02:00Rich Roll?

  So it's not a function of every day I get up and at this time, this is when I sit down and journal and I actively try to, you know, make a gratitude list or anything like that. It's a more ephemeral kind of thing.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  No, it's more of a, I'm not a, it's more of a, you know, I like to say it this way, you know, I've been working on this for about four years now. No audition, it's live. You're in the movie. It's all happening. Life is the movie. You wake up, it's all the record button is always on. It's always on. So when inspired, do it. We don't have to, preparation, preparation what? Well, it's live. Go now, do it. Quit talking about it. I mean, work it out. A lot of times being live is preparing. I'm a big preparer for roles and work and preparing for things, but trying to look at is like, so many times in my life where I sat there and prepare, prepare, prepare,

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  prepare, prepared, looked up and three years later, I'm like, you never got in the game. You're still preparing, dude. What are you doing? Go, go, what are you so afraid of failing? Hop in the game of life. So, yeah, it's more of a, it's more of been an instinct that I'm just now sort of defining.

• 1:03:22Rich Roll?

  One of the things that you say in the book that has really stuck with me, I mean, I highlighted a bunch of stuff, but this is the one that really stood out to me the most is this idea of being less impressed and more involved.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:34Rich Roll?

  I love that. And it's so concisely put and it's profound because it applies to so many things like less impressed with yourself, less impressed with other people. Not trying to chase other people's ideas of what you should, could, need to be. Trying to find your moral center. And the path to that is to immerse yourself, to give of yourself in service to others, but to be involved in your community, to, you know, engage with the world in, you know, a deeper way.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  And engage with yourself in a deeper way. I mean, if I have a reverence for you, Rich, right now. Oh, my God. Rich, I got, I mean, I do not know how long I've been wanting to talk to you, man. I just think you're like the-

• 1:04:19Rich Roll?

  Trust, I'm fighting it right now, dude. I'm so happy to be talking to you. And it's like, I, the people pleaser in me is what I'm trying to keep at bay. So I can just be-

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:29Rich Roll?

  Present and involved in this conversation.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Well, if you succumb to that, and you were gonna go, people please, you wouldn't be, if you were overly impressed with me, you wouldn't be involved in this conversation to the extent that you can be. Just like if I had that reverence for you to an, that you were above mortality for me, I couldn't actually be giving my true self to you in this conversation because I'm removed from it. And so if I have a reverence, I noticed it was soon after my father died when this came to me. Fame, money, people, that I was like, wow. My dad's passing gave me the gift to go, no, all mortal things, better look at them at eye level. At the same time, the underbelly of that is all the things you're patronizing, McConaughey,

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  and looking down on and condescending and sloughing off is not worthy, rose up to eye level. And the world was flat. I could see wider, further and more clearly. And I stood up straighter. I was a half inch taller and looked in the eye and go, welcome to the rodeo, buddy. Time to get on the bull, you know, quit relying on dad to make sure he's got your back if you fall off. That was part of being, so it happens, you know? And so how do I do that? How do we do that with full respect? I have full respect for you. You can have full respect for me, but now we can still be involved in the conversation. Because if one person is on the pedestal above humanity and mortality, you can't be involved with it.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  And it's not even fair to that person. It happens in relationships. You'll see somebody in a relationship, and I've been in them, where- A female thinks I'm Superman and I think she's Wonder Woman. Well, that relationship ain't gonna go too far.

• 1:06:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  Because we're both holding each other on an unlivable expectation of a pedestal. Neither one of us can live up to it. And we're neither ones who are really involved with each other humanly because we have such reverence for the other.

• 1:06:29Rich Roll?

  Projection.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I don't mean any lack of respect. And I don't have less respect, I actually have more respect. But respect is a more mortal understanding where you and I can engage. But if I have too much of a reverence for you or anyone else, I can't really be involved with them. And they can't be involved with me. So if the if the if the tables turn. So that's what that less impressed, more involved is. You know, it's a bit of the, you know, the eye in the sky when you're in the when they're in the palm and the hand of God or the cradle of when you when you think you've got it all figured out. Go to that Google Map POV and look at this little bitty dot on this spinning planet called Earth. And this whole thousand of years as the hands of time move.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  And you notice how meaningless you are. And we look at it and we go, oh, jeez, none of it matters. Which is a very liberating feeling. Oh, good, takes the pressure off. Jeez, none of it matters. But at that same time, what has happened to me is I've gone, oh, and that's exactly why it all matters. Oh, here we go. Now we're on the bull. Now we're riding. You know, just when I saw how little I mattered is usually when it's come to me how much it all matters.

• 1:07:46Rich Roll?

  Well, there's a humility in that, right? And I think humility is hard to come by for everybody in certain times throughout their life. But, you know, for somebody who kind of exists in the world at this strange, you know, level of stratosphere. How do you like the connection to that kind of humility so that you can be involved in the world? I mean, is that you always seem to carry yourself with that and you've never not had that. And I have to imagine that part of that is because you've made this choice to, you know, be in the world in a certain way, whether it's, you know, at the RV park or, you know, on the Amazon or, you know, wrestling in Africa.

• 1:08:29Rich Roll?

  Like that keeps you grounded and level headed about, you know, who you are and where you where you sit, you know, in the grand scheme of everything.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, also, some of those experiences I've had have been better than fiction for me. You know what I mean? Some of those stories, I'm like, oh, geez, if Hollywood wrote this, no one would believe it. You know, so they were more extraordinary in ways to me at the time.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  You know, humility, that's a, that's been a word that I've wrestled with all my life because for so long I had the wrong definition of it. Humility, to be humbled, humility. We all say have humility, but no one likes to be humiliated. Oh, wait a minute, what's the nexus of that word? How can I be humble but still confident? How can I be humble but still have identity? It wasn't until a few years ago, and I think this definition came, I think it's Jordan Peterson. The definition of humility, which I do purchase, which is it's admitting you have more to learn. And that definition, I lose no confidence or lose no identity in, but am very quick to go, yep, I got more to learn.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Now, if I can call that humility and go into the world every day going, I know I have more to learn. I can move confidently with that humility and be humble. But, boy, my early definitions of humility in my mind were almost arrogant, false modesty. Oh, no, no, no, no, that don't, no, no, no. You know, and I remember this, I'm gonna tell you, this was a, I've harked back to this moment in high school, there was a girl, Renee Sherman. And I remember, I showed up to school one day, I was a junior. And she was a friend, she was a friend of mine, we never dated, she was a friend, she goes, she's coming, she goes, you know what, Matthew McConaughey? You are a handsome man.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  And I went, oh, come on, no, no, Renee, don't, and she grabbed my hand sternly and looked me in the eye and she goes, don't you dare, give me that, I don't know, no, no, no, no, no. She goes, you know what you need to do when someone gives you a compliment like that, that's true? I go, what? She goes, say thank you. And I remember going, oh.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Oh, okay. And it hit me, but I didn't learn really how to live and understand humility. It was always almost a regressive feeling. It's like the word vulnerability. I'm still wrestling with what that word means and how to feel, still feel empowered in that. Part of what I've come up with that it helps me understand that, my relationship with the word humility and vulnerability, is that like, I know I want to be in the know. I love being in the know. But I'm still learning to be in the know is also knowing what you don't know. I want to know what I don't know. So that's another version of understanding the definition of humility for me. That feels like it empowers me, but still has me be humble.

• 1:11:17Rich Roll?

  Well, a close cousin of that, those ideas, humility, vulnerability, is authenticity. And, you know, your arc and your journey is very much one of, you know, trying to get closer to who the authentic Matthew is. At least that's what I got out of the book.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:35Rich Roll?

  And I think a really powerful kind of illustrative example of that is the McConnaught sense itself. Can we talk about that a little bit?

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:11:43Rich Roll?

  Because it's such an epic pivot, you know, which is another theme in your book. I don't know if this is a spoiler, but you admit in the book that you're the one who actually came up with that word.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:56Rich Roll?

  Which I would not have thought. So that's, that's being vulnerable to admit that you're the one who crafted that. And then look what it became.

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  That's the one piece of the book that my wife still, "Did you really need to put that in there? It's gonna sound so arrogant." And I was like, "No, I gotta put it in there."

• 1:12:13Rich Roll?

  I thought it was great. I'm like, I'm admitting it, you know?

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  I admitted it. It was, look, I felt, I was aware enough at the time that I've run in a few, gone a run of a few films that were, that had their, you know, relative hits and that made their mark. And I was getting some, you know, adulation and people, people in the interviews are going, "Man, you're really on a great run here. Really on a great..." And it came to me that this term of like, "You're on this great run, you're on this great run." And I was in, I think, Telluride or one of those film festivals. And I said,

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  Being a lover of bumper stickers and slogans, I was like, I gotta give this like an album, I gotta give this like a title of an album here, you know, this sounds this little movement I'm on that people are saying I'm on. So I was like, McConessant. I said, well, I can't come forward and say, yeah, I call it the McConessant. But in this interview, and I'd thought about it just at the moment, the guy went on, the interviewer was going, yeah, and you've been on this run, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you've been on, I was like, yeah, I was talking to a reporter the other day, and he actually called it a McConessant. And he goes, a McConessant? I go, yeah. And he goes, oh, that's great. I love it. McConessant. You like that? I'm like, yeah, I mean, shoot, he said it sounded like, comes off the tongue pretty easy. Sounds pretty cool to say. I'm with it. Well, he wrote that, and then it

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  picked up, and people started calling it the McConessant. And I just kind of went with it. And so then in the book, I decided to say, you know what, I'm the one who planted that seed.

• 1:13:40Rich Roll?

  I love that. I think that's hilarious, man. But what's amazing about it, everybody knows the story. They know the movies you were doing, and then the movies you ultimately ended up doing. But that period, what I didn't realize was how much intention and mindfulness went into making that pivot, that it wasn't, first of all, it went on longer than I thought. And then also, that it was very much planned. Like, if I can't do things that interest me, that intrigue me as an artist and as a human being, like, I'm gonna opt out purposefully

• 1:14:21Rich Roll?

  and be willing to suffer the consequences of not making any income and having your wife, you know, by your side for that period of time. Now, you know, it's not like you couldn't put food on the table, but still, it's scary, you know, in Hollywood to suddenly say, I'm not gonna do that. Are you gonna be obsolete? Will you ever work again? And you went through, you know, a really extended period of time where it wasn't clear that you were ever gonna make your way back.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  No, it wasn't. And I didn't know how long the sort of sabbatical drought would go on. And I shed many a tear on my wife's shoulder. One, with

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  What I, what I was getting for my career and what I wasn't getting for my career. Um, I was rolling with rom coms at the time. I was rom com McConaughey shirtless on the beach and I looked that in the eye and still do and go, you damn right I was and those rom coms paid rent for those houses that I had on the beach where I went shirtless. Guilty fact.

• 1:15:28Rich Roll?

  I remember seeing you on the beach one time in, I think you were renting a house with Lance for a period of time.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:34Rich Roll?

  I remember that. I was running down the beach and I saw you guys out there.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Yes, indeed. Um, so, but I looked at my life and I remember I just had a newborn. Camila and I just had Levi. And so the one thing I knew I always wanted to be is a father now come true. And my life was full, man. My life was so vital. I would, I had, I had more rage. I had more joy. I had more happiness. I laughed louder. I cried harder. It was just my life. The ceiling in the basement of my emotions were full in my life.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  But my work was like, oh, another rom com. I love doing these, but oh, there's a new script. I think I could do that tomorrow morning. I think I could wake up and do that. And I was like, well, that's not bad, but geez, I want, I sure would like to do some work that scares me in the right way. That makes me go, ooh, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with this role, but this is gonna be an experience. And I wasn't getting those roles. So, yes, I couldn't, the roles I wanted to do were not being offered. So because I couldn't do what I wanted to do, I stopped doing what I was doing. And I remember I called my money manager. How'd I do with my money? You've invested well? Okay, good, because I'm about to take off work and I don't know when I'll get work again. Called my agent and I talked to Camilla about it and she said she repeated my dad's words to me, you know? Okay, if we're gonna do this, don't half ass it. We're gonna, you're gonna do it.

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  So I said, no more rom coms. Well. Nothing came in, nothing was offered except rom coms for the first six months after that. And I have that, you know, how puritanical was I? I have that great little story about getting an eight million dollar offer for a rom com and reading it and going, it's a good script, but no, thank you. Then they came back and offered me 10 million dollars. I said, no, thank you. Then they offered 12.5 million dollars and I said, ellipsis, ellipsis, ellipsis. No, thank you. Then they came back at 14.5, you know what I said? Let me read that script again. I mean. And I read that script again. And you know what?

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  It was better written than the original one at eight million dollar offer. It was, had more angles. I saw more opportunities. I saw more ways I could make it work. And mind you, it was the exact same words as the original script, but at that offer, it was a better written script. But I said, no. And then that sort of seemed to get the signal across Hollywood. McConaughey's not bluffing. He's really not doing any rom coms or action comedies right now. So what came in for the next year? Nothing. Nothing. I mean, I check in with my agent every couple of weeks, but it was basically like, nothing. Your persona non, persona non grata, nothing's coming in for you. Now we're 20 months into the sabbatical. I'm in Texas, you haven't seen me in a rom com, you haven't seen me shirtless on the

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  beach, everything that you expected to see me in, that I would sort of pigeonhole me into only being that and not considered for other roles. 20 months into that, all of a sudden, what I think happened is some producers and directors in Hollywood went, you know who would be an interesting, to cast for this role? In Killer Joe, Paperboy, Mud, Magic Mike, True Detective, Dallas Buyers Club, you know who would be an interesting choice? A novel choice? McConaughey. But I would not have been a novel choice for those things 20 months earlier.

• 1:18:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  So the way I look at it is that was an unbranding time for me. Again, back to process of elimination. I couldn't do what I wanted to do, so I decided I had to eliminate what I didn't want to do anymore. And I unbranded for 20 months. No one knew where I was. And I wasn't also, I also was not in your household or on your TV screen or in your theater, being what you had expected me to be. And so all of a sudden I became a new good idea.

• 1:19:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  And that was a, yeah, that was a sacrifice. And I didn't know when that damn thing was going to end or if it was. And I entertained different career paths. I entertained getting out of the entertainment industry altogether. Thought I might go be a fourth grade teacher. I thought I might be a high school football coach.

• 1:19:42Rich Roll?

  Wow, you did, seriously, you really, that's, that's hard to believe. You really were doing that?

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:48Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  I, I thought I might get back into law. I, I considered, you know, being an orchestral conductor.

• 1:19:59Rich Roll?

  Well, there's a couple of lessons in that. I mean, one is back to this idea of, of magnetizing the green light. Like ultimately, and, and the second being, you know, saying no in order to get the yes. Right? Like you had to do, there was this palate cleanser that Hollywood had to endure to get to the point where suddenly you were a good idea when you weren't before. And that required you to say no. I mean, I don't know how many people, you know, have the gumption to say no to $15 million to do a movie for a couple of months. Ultimately, it pays off and it shows the power of that. But it takes a lot of fortitude and conviction to commit to something like that and faith

• 1:20:43Rich Roll?

  and belief to foresee that at some point it's going to pay off.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you look at the Australian story when I was an exchange student for a year.

• 1:20:54Rich Roll?

  I couldn't even believe that story.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  It's all true.

• 1:20:58Rich Roll?

  Have you, have you gotten back in touch with that family?

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Every time I do Australian press, they usually show up on screen.

• 1:21:07Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, that year.

• 1:21:12Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  You know, before I went on that year, the Rotary Club who sponsored me wanted me to sign the contract to say, I won't come home until a full year's done. And I said, no, what do you want me to sign that for? I'm going for a year. And they go, no, that's what everybody says. But you're gonna get homesick you wanna wanna come home. And I said, no, you know what? I'll shake your hand on it, but I'm not signing that thing. Well, they agreed on a handshake and I agreed on a handshake. Well, trust me, you read that year. There are many times I had full good reason to get the hell out of Dodge and come back home. But I was like, no, man, I'm in this. I've got to finish it out. There's something in this for me. There's a green light in this hardship experience that I'm going through, this insanity I'm going through. There's a reason for it, so stick with it. Don't pull the parachute.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Well, same thing with, uh, um, you know, the sabbatical of, of, of not working. Once I was in it, I was like, I'm not going, I'm not, I'm in. I almost gained more confidence as I went going, no, this is getting gnarlier. But every day, you're not kidding, it's getting gnar- oh, you're in it now, McConaughey. This is, this is, this is upside down and backwards. Stick with it. There's really something good, good to come out of it. So when those jobs did come that I wanted to do, I was ferocious on those things. I, I mean, I, my fangs were long and I chewed them up and went hardcore into them.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it was by saying no. Um, and I have, you know, there's great prudence in sticking through, sticking with resistance. You know, I mean, look. Let's talk about this for this time we're in. I wish COVID was gone tomorrow, wish it would have never been here. So I want to preface this next thing I say with that. But as a people, individuals in a society, is there value in it? To ourselves, even though we will have more tragedies and even losses of life? Will we have a greater value and understanding of a green light in the future? If we're in it for longer because we paid the penance longer? Because we were stripped to our necessities longer? Because we went through this resistance longer? And we were pulling our hair out of our head?

• 1:23:14Speaker 01

  So when we come out of it, we don't just snap back to right where we were before? Because we're, us humans are, are tricky, man. We, we, we can, we can say we go through change. We intellectually talk about it. But boy, we go right back to old habits like that.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Even bad habits, we go back to them. And so unless it's the consequences are enough or the unrest, the disruption that goes on long enough for us to go.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  No, my floor has literally been moved. I am changing my priorities about what I value in life because of this hardship. It has to go on. Things, we're, we're, we're sort of, our muscle memory switches, goes right back to where we used to be pretty quickly, unless it's a long enough penance to pay.

• 1:23:56Rich Roll?

  You can't be the phoenix unless you burn. You gotta burn first.

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  Gotta burn. God, it's gotta be in, in like, it's gotta burn. You gotta look down and you gotta find, it's a lot of times, we have to be scarred. Not like, ooh, that was hot. Not like, ooh, it left a little black mark. Like, oh shit. No, I got a scar, the seraph life from getting burned. Oh, well now, I'm really making the change. I mean, we're, we're, we're, uh, what's the word? Uh, we're hard headed like that, you know, as, as people, we, again, we intellectualize that these things change, but very quickly, we, we reverb right back to our old habits, even if they're bad ones, unless the penance has gone on for a long enough time.

• 1:24:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. There's always opportunities in these setbacks and in this moment of forced repose, you know, amongst the economic challenges and everything that so many people are enduring right now, there's the general discomfort of being still with oneself. That's so difficult, right? Like this mirror is up in front of us and it's forcing us to reckon with how we're living our lives. Because we can't move right now, we have to be in that discomfort and it's debilitating for a lot of people. But if you can open your aperture to it, there's so much to be learned from that. And you don't have to go to the Amazon. We're stuck at home on Zoom, but we have that opportunity.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  Open your aperture to it. We are in a forced winter right now. And many of us, including me, needed to take one ourselves anyway. Well, now it's taking, we all got the permit. We're all on it. We got our forced winter. It's forced time to be introspective, time to do inventory, whether you want to or not. Strip down the necessities. What do we got? How do I navigate? Who am I? Oh, I can't go anywhere. Well, what's one of our, you know, part of pulling the parachute is, well, I need to go out. I'm going out. Going out to dinner. We're gonna go, come on, let's go get together. There's some prudence in being forced with ourself. And hopefully we're taking enough of us can take the opportunity that's there in that to evolve in this time.

• 1:26:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. How do you feel about?

• 1:26:06Rich Roll?

  This, you know, later chapter in the McConnaughton sense of you becoming like this guru, you know, this person of wisdom that I don't know when it began. Maybe it began when you gave that commencement speech, but at some point you kind of went from Matthew, the actor into somebody who, you know, was, was basically imparting life lessons to the world. Like, how do you think about that? Or how do you feel about that? Was that intentional? Or is it just a byproduct of who you are?

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  I think it started off more of a byproduct and then has gained some intention along the way. Um, you know, to go back to that, it's live. We're all on the show. The recording, the cameras always record, you know, and ask myself, are you making legacy choices for yourself right now, McConaughey? Are you living in a way live that is useful for yourself and others? Um, look, I'll say this. I go back to University of Texas and I had an idea for this script to screen class as a professor, but in my mind, I'm still like, I'm talking to students. I feel like I was there the other day, but then I start sharing

• 1:27:23Speaker 01

  things with them and they're going like, whoa, that's awesome. Thank you for telling me that. I'm like, oh, that wasn't obvious? And I'm like, no, we didn't know that. And so I started to go, wait a minute. You got 28 years of experience of acting and being on sets, Matthew. Oh geez, that's right. Add that up. You do have some experience that may be innate to you now. That is novel to a student. So you do have something to share, some experience to share that maybe someone else didn't have. Um, I, you know, sharing this, this book has got quite a few tools in it for how to find our frequency individually and hopefully as a collective. We're going through a time right now of great distrust. We don't know what to believe in. You don't trust, trust others. You all of

• 1:28:05Speaker 01

  a sudden you look up, you don't trust yourself. And that little revolution can go back and forth. Well, now I don't trust myself. Now I really don't trust you. Uh, now I don't believe myself. Now I don't, I don't believe in anything. And Those are dead end streets ultimately. So how do we rebuild some trust? I think it's through values. I think values are bipartisan, non-denomination. I think those are the solid stepping stones that we need to each look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we can be better out on a daily basis. And that'll be incremental steps out of this time into hopefully a more evolved state that we can get out of and help us look back at 2020 as an actual red banner year of recreation and recreation and a new beginning. I try to share what I know. I also try to share what I don't know.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  I share questions a lot. People, for instance, come to me a lot about, oh, they love the Fauci, Dr. Fauci interview I did. I didn't reveal anything novel in that. I, like everybody, was just saying like, can I get a bullet point sheet on the to-dos and the not-to-dos? And can you just say them for me real clearly? Because there's no consensus here, man. And can you just give me not the long version and just the short? Yes, no, do this, don't do that. And so I just went on a rapid fire with him and didn't ask questions that have not been brought up. They just hadn't been sort of, for a lot of people, hadn't been brought up in a succinct way. So I said, you know, do I have a platform where maybe someone else already knows that information, but maybe I got a platform where someone else is going to hear it and maybe listen to me in a way they wouldn't listen to someone else?

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  Or maybe they didn't hear it. Yeah, well, let's go have those conversations. The Ministry of Culture work I'm doing right now is a lot based on that. And that's me, you know, saying I'm stepping into playing my favorite character. That's me saying, go play you and the character of you in life. The things that wake you up at 2:00 in the morning that I've been writing down in my diary since I was 14. It's always about culture, about how do we get along? What's our individual responsibilities? How do we get to freedom? How are we responsible for freedom? And how does freedom have its responsibilities? What should I expect of you? What should you expect of me? Can we have a social contract here as humans? You know, because right now our social contracts are broke. Right. Where are my purse? Why are they broke? Well, partially, maybe I broke my own social contract.

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

  Maybe I've let myself slide on things and to go out and act like I have a social contract with you, I'm just acting like one and not being one. Well, wait a minute. I'm not going to let that pass. I gotta be one. I need to be one, that voluntary obligation. We need to make voluntary pledges with ourselves of what we expect of ourselves so we can expect from others. And if we get that reciprocity going, then enough of us do that, then we collectively make change. The other idea is this. We gotta remember we're never gonna arrive. There's not a destination. I don't, you know, it's, it's, it's like our lives and say, America, the Langston Hughes point, America, yet.

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  That's what should be, we should be chasing, yet. We never get there. With the social, the cultural revolution, we're going, we're not gonna get to perfect justice. But if we can make an incremental ascension forward, that's it. Could stay in the race, commit to the chase. And with ourselves, can we just keep chasing our better selves? A little bit, and then we're gonna screw up a long way. Can America just keep, we're an aspiration. Our lives are an aspiration. America is an aspiration. It's a chasing of yet. And I think that's what we ultimately are as, as individuals. We all should be chasing ourselves. What more fun, wild, adventurous thing to chase in your life than yourself?

• 1:31:44Rich Roll?

  Well, there's a, there's an unbridled optimism to that, that's infectious and that I love. And I don't want to take up too much of your time. We can, we can end it on this. You know, I can't let you go without digging a little bit more deeply into kind of where we're at in this American experiment right now. We're headed into an election. We are extremely divided. Communities, families, individuals are having difficulty finding common ground, being able to even effectively communicate. And there is this, you know, layer of, of whether it's fake news or misinformation that's confusing people and driving us apart.

• 1:32:24Rich Roll?

  And I have this sense of us fracturing and I'm trying to figure out how to get my hands around it, how I can communicate with my brothers and my sisters, how I can be more empathetic. Like, how can we look to what unites us, to our commonalities, which are so much more robust than the details that might divide us on paper or on social media. But I find myself concerned about what I'm seeing and where we're heading. So how do we, how do we right the ship, Matthew?

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Great question.

• 1:32:59Rich Roll?

  Solve this problem for me.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  And here we go.

• 1:33:02Rich Roll?

  For us.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Yeah, right. Um, you know, I was talking about earlier. Yeah, it is times of great distrust in others and ourselves. Our social contracts are broken. Our personal contracts are broken. We don't have expectations of ourselves or others. Right now, the private sector down to the individual has more power than ever. We can't trust our leadership. Politics is a broken business.

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  What do we want? People are wanting security. Well, we're all individuals. Wait a minute. What's where's the collective?

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  It's a we got it. We got to all this is being politicized along the way. The body counts are being added up for which side of the which side of the aisle wants to win. That's the only numbers each side that's counting. Um, we got an election year. Are we going to have a civil war? Man, can we just get to January 2021, which is a symbolic day, but nothing more than a symbolic day. Do we have a 10 year restoration? Do we have a 20 year restoration? I don't know how long it'll go. What can we rely on? Empathy, one thing. A little amnesty. Right now, it's a tough time for everybody. I don't know how to make a collective change. I don't know how to make an overall systemic

• 1:34:13Speaker 01

  change or a law. I don't think people want to be legislated like that. I think it again comes down to each one of us need to look in the mirror and go, how can I be a little bit better? What can I do a little bit better? I'd be great. I'd be perfect. There is no best. I can be a little bit better. I can be a little more fair. How can I understand that my brother and sister are also hurting, maybe in more and different ways than I am? How can I have a conversation without a condemnation? How can I have more patience to take a breath and listen? And let someone who hasn't been heard speak more loudly than maybe they need to, but but hear them. How do we make this time not just a flash in the pan?

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  How do how do we be honest for the choices we make for ourselves selfishly are also the best choices for the most amount of people? And then there's not any specific recipe for that, but take that into consideration when we make our choices for ourselves.

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  Again, responsibility and freedom. We're gonna have to build our way out of this time. We're gonna have to break a damn sweat for a while. And I think we have to have that long view. That feeling like this is gonna go on for a while. Now, how can we make that a part of our daily instincts of how we go about our lives? How do we treat ourselves? How do we treat our loved ones? How do we treat our employees? How do we treat people we work with? How do we treat what we're building and what are we? Are we just for profit or are we for purpose as well? What's our purpose? I'm not interested in politics. I'm interested in some purpose, though. Politics is a broken business. We don't know who to trust. So that's what I mean by the private sector down to the individual. You have more power right now to define your future than ever.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  Because you actually don't have anyone else up there, no institution to rely on for that guidance. So I understand it, man. Some of us are going, well, what the hell, man? Give me a map. I don't know what to trust in. I don't know what's a consensus here.

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  Some of us are gonna do well right now because we can just keep our head above water. Just try and make it through this time. It's gonna pass. We're gonna be moving forward. We are not turning the page yet, though. When the time comes to turn the page on COVID, when the time comes to turn the page on the cultural revolution. The only way it's gonna work is that the collective, all of us. Every color, if you've got COVID, if you don't, every color of skin, do it together to some form or fashion. I think, you know, as much as we are a nation of individuals and love our individualism. We are failing at any sort of collective responsibility.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  We have failed with the mask of seeing that as a civic duty instead of a damn, don't you tell me what to do bullshit. It's the wrong kind of selfish. It's actually not a selfish move to fight those fights. There is a responsibility that we can choose to take for and with each other and ourselves. And those two are not exclusive. My hunch is it lies in values. My hunch is it lies in responsibility, accountability, risk-taking, sense of humor. The list goes on and on and on. We can just be a little kinder, a little more fair, a little more empathetic, a little more understanding, a little more forgiving. Also, holding on accountability. There's not gonna be a free ride. I'm not in for a world kumbaya.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  No, we gotta, it's gonna take work and. Greatest thing about America is when America's working right is if you're willing to work at something and educate yourself and go after something, you more so than anywhere else should have the opportunity to achieve that, but not without the work and the education and the hustle to go do it. So, you know, I'd say this, man, start off with trying to create more green lights for yourself and others and see where those two meet and see that actually being selfless is actually a very selfish act. Creating more for others is actually very selfish for yourself as well. And make sure you're trying to make sure your selfish choices for yourself also light the way for more people as well.

• 1:38:20Rich Roll?

  Boom. Beautifully put. Thank you, man. That was incredible. I appreciate your time today.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  I enjoyed it.

• 1:38:27Rich Roll?

  Super fun, man. Thank you. The book is incredible. Green Lights available everywhere. October 20 is the day it comes out. That's right.

• 1:38:36Speaker 01

  October 20th this year.

• 1:38:39Rich Roll?

  You've been attacking this thing like it's the release of a blockbuster movie. Like, oh, you've been out there, man. Like, this is going big and wide. I can tell already.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  Well, that's how I'm approaching it. Look, this is the truest permanent extension of me that I've ever been a part of. And to whatever extent, I'm honored with that. And I want to. It's the first time, you know, if I look at it like a movie, which I have, I wrote it. I directed it. I edited it. You know what I mean? I did it. So I'm not acting in someone else's script, being directed by someone else. So it's the truest permanent extension of me that I've ever put out. And that's scary and fun and all those things. And yes, I had to have my chin strap on and my mouth guard in while I was writing it, but.

• 1:39:29Rich Roll?

  Well, you did an incredible job. I love the book. I read it in like just two sittings. It's super enjoyable. And I think it's gonna, I think it's really, it's gonna help a lot of people, too. It's gonna help a lot of people.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  I hope so. That'd be great.

• 1:39:44Rich Roll?

  Cool. All right. Hope to meet you in person one day. But until then, best of luck.

• 1:39:49Speaker 01

  See you on the trail, right?

• 1:39:51Rich Roll?

  Best of luck with everything. Yeah, at some point, hopefully, we'll go do that trip with Dan.

• 1:39:55Speaker 01

  Good deal.

• 1:39:56Rich Roll?

  Thanks, dude.

• 1:39:56Speaker 01

  I appreciate it.

• 1:39:57Rich Roll?

  Appreciate it, man. Best of luck.

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  See you in person.

• 1:39:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right on. Peace.

• 1:40:03Rich Roll?

  Okay. How unbelievably awesome was that? Could you imagine if Matthew was your college professor?

• 1:40:13Rich Roll?

  I don't know about you, but I could listen to that silky smooth southern drawl all day long. I want to thank my pals Dan Butner and Ryan Holiday for helping connect the dots to make this one happen. Be sure to check out Greenlights, available everywhere. While you're at it, make sure to preorder my new book, Voicing Change, in addition, which you can find exclusively at richroll.com/vc. Let Matthew know how this one landed for you on his socials. He's @officiallymcconnahey on Instagram and @mcconnahey on Twitter. And be sure to check the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com, where you will also discover that we completely revamped the website, top to bottom, courtesy of Emory Agency. Thank you for the great work.

• 1:40:55Rich Roll?

  Hope you like the new look and feel of the site, which will soon include many more new features we are working on, like our impending subscription offering, as well as categorization of the podcast episodes, copious additional educational resources, and much more that we're going to be rolling out in the coming months. Finally, we also have another Roll On AMA coming up next week. Give me a call, leave me a voicemail at 424-235-4626. Leave your question there and we just might answer it. If you'd like to support our work here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, all the good places.

• 1:41:37Rich Roll?

  Share the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. Thank you to everybody who helped put on today's show. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for handling video duties. Jessica Miranda for graphics. No portraits today, this one is on Zoom. DK for advertiser relationships. And theme music, as always, by Trapper, Tyler, and Harry. Appreciate you guys, thanks for the love. See you back here in a couple days with another edition of Roll On. Until then, alright, alright, alright. Just keep livin'.

• 1:42:18Rich Roll?

  Bees, plants... ...and us.