Matthew McConaughey On Stoicism & How To Focus On What Matters

On today’s episode, Ryan speaks with Academy Award-winning actor and producer Matthew McConaughey about his approach to the craft of acting, the simple keys to living a happy life, his new book, the #1 best seller Greenlights, and more. Matthew McConaughey has been working in Hollywood for over 25 years, appearing in movies like A Time to Kill, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Dallas Buyers Club. His work in the latter film won him the 2013 Academy Award for Best Actor. McConaughey also works as a producer and spokesperson, and recently released his first book, the bestselling memoir Greenlights.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 1:03Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. We're rerunning an episode, actually. This one originally aired in November of 2020 with the one and only Matthew McConaughey. We're rerunning it because, as you know, the show is now an Amazon Wondery podcast. So we're having this exclusivity window where some of the episodes run exclusively a week early over there. I didn't want to leave anyone hanging. If you missed this interview because you're a new subscriber, I thought I'd throw it up for you. It's one of the best interviews I did. I did this, I was on vacation with my family in Florida, and we zoomed this in in what was still the serious days of the pandemic. I loved Matthew's book, Greenlights,

• 1:48Ryan Holiday?

  and he was nice enough to ask me to blurb it, which I did. There's also a new Greenlights journal, so I thought I'd give that a bump. And his wife actually has a fun new kids' book called Just Try One Bite with Adam Mansbach, who wrote that great book, Go the Fuck to Sleep. Camilla and he did a wonderful job on this book. I think you will like it. If you haven't read... Green Lights, or seen the Green Lights journal, you should. They both sold a bazillion copies for a good reason. But this episode is about Matthew's approach to acting, focusing on the essential things in life, saying no to what doesn't matter, and the simple keys to living a happy life. And as I was saying, we're now officially a Wondery podcast, which means in addition to the interview episodes, we're going to be running longer stuff on

• 2:33Ryan Holiday?

  Sunday, excerpts from audiobooks, etc. We're doing a Q and A episode each week and brand new Stoic-related content each day. If you sign up for a Wondery membership, you get early access to some of these new episodes, as well as, if you sign up for a Wondery membership, you get early access to these. I think you can listen to them early on Amazon Music as well. You can access all their cool podcasts at wondery.com. But this is just a holdover episode that I thought I'd throw up. You can also watch it on YouTube, on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel at youtube.com/dailystoic. In the meantime, enjoy. So I thought we'd start this, I've always wanted to ask this question to an actor. There's

• 3:18Ryan Holiday?

  this great line from Epictetus. He says, you know, "Life is like being an actor." He says, "You don't get to choose your lines, you just choose how you deliver them." He's basically saying that sort of life is written, that, you know, that there's a higher power who's mostly in control, and then we have this sort of circumscribed role where we do the best we can. It's always struck me as a weird profession, your line of work, in that you have so little actual control of what you do. You get to choose your movies at this point in your career, but you don't control what the other actors do. You don't control what the director does. You don't control the marketing budget. No.

• 4:00Matthew McConaughey?

  I mean, it's a select the the the Barstool whiskey version of that is how you play the hand you're dealt. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's part of the reason that I did write a book and I'm going to go back into the the acting. So there's four filters from my first raw expression as an actor. There's what I do, or what I'm doing, someone else's script, it's being directed by someone else, it's being lensed in the camera by someone else and edited by someone else before it's presented in the final form, which you see in the theater on TV.

• 4:33Matthew McConaughey?

  You know, it's a little bit of what I do in my class at UT with the script to screen. It's the the original script is so different from the final product.

• 4:42Matthew McConaughey?

  Things change, you know, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, sometimes it's just completely different.

• 4:48Matthew McConaughey?

  My job as an actor, and I and I only learned this in the last 15 years from the great Penny Allen, my mentor,

• 4:57Matthew McConaughey?

  who really taught me what acting was, she's like, you have to own your man, your character, you have to be the sole owner of that. You have to know your man upside down, backwards, forwards, better than anybody else. It's not the directors anymore. It's not the writers who wrote it anymore. You're the bloodline, you're the expression, the baton has been handled. Now, to do that, that takes a lot of the work of my version is I want to come in with four versions of the truth in every scene. So, like you said, when every actor goes off script or changes something up or the director completely wants to surprise you, I'm calling audibles, I'm ready. And I'm not having to think about it, it's instinctually coming out of me.

• 5:36Matthew McConaughey?

  Now, if I can do that, like I've always said this, my ideal place when I really get to know my man as an actor is put a blindfold on me. Take me, I don't care if you take me to Mars, wherever, be rolling camera, be video, press record as soon as I walk off and take the take the blindfold off. And I should be able to behave as my man would in any situation. I don't always get there, but that's the place. And again, I gotta have the dialogue to have the monologue. But every character, every actor should know the monologue of his man or his woman.

• 6:11Ryan Holiday?

  So was that frustrating early on in your career? Cause you seem like a sort of an ambitious guy, a guy who wants to, has a lot of artistic expression that you want to get out. Was it hard for you to sort of see your role as like, especially I guess in movies that maybe you didn't like as much? How do you, how do you sort of go in and go, I can only focus on what I do here? I think one of the nice parts about being a writer, as I'm sure you've found is, you do have so much more control over the artistic expression.

• 6:41Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah.

• 6:41Ryan Holiday?

  Cause it's a, it's a solo sport. It's golf versus football.

• 6:44Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah. Well, even though acting, you know, acting, I've learned to understand that yes, while it's a football, while it's a team sport,

• 6:55Matthew McConaughey?

  I get pretty selfish on that. I'm like, I mean, I, I'm a team player. I love collaboration. I've learned that there's more than, that though I may not be wrong, there's more than one way to be right. Or a better word for acting is to be true, to go out and just tell the truth. Not about right or wrong.

• 7:13Matthew McConaughey?

  I mean, sometimes I try to get a measure from a director early on on what is our measure of excellence? All right, I did this with Gary Ross from Free State of Jones. We're two weeks into shooting and we're communicating pretty well. And he's given me direction and I'm feeling pretty good about it and what he's got to say. And I feel like his meter of excellence is similar to mine. I'm enjoying his direction and I'm giving stuff back to him and he seems to be receiving it. But I want to check it. I want to check our relationship. So we do this one, we do the scene one day and I do 10 takes. So after the 10 takes, I said, Gary, come here. We go and we go into the, the tent and look at the monitor. I said, I'm going to write down what I think is the select best takes. You write down what you think are the best select takes out of the 10.

• 7:58Matthew McConaughey?

  And then we're going to swap papers to see if we're seeing things the same. So I write down first half of take four.

• 8:08Matthew McConaughey?

  Second half of take two. We watch all 10 takes. We swap papers. I open this paper. It says first half of take four, second half of take two. Now, when that happens, now I'm like, here we go. Freedom. You and I are seeing things the same. Doesn't mean we agree on everything, but we have the same measure of excellence. Like you see that, that, that take five, which was really good, but I kind of, I was acting. You see me there? There was a good moment and I anticipated and I tried to put a little cherry on top. It wasn't as true as it was when I did it in take four for the first time. Yes, it's exactly what I saw. You know, so when we meet there on a measure of what we deem excellent or deem the most true, then the relationship becomes much more collaborative for me. Meaning if you're the director and you're telling me what to do, I don't have any sort of defense up.

• 8:52Matthew McConaughey?

  Now, I've had many a films I've done where the director and I are not seeing eye to eye on my character or what the truth is for my character. And boy, they open their mouth and I'm going.

• 9:05Matthew McConaughey?

  Yep, yep, yep, yep. And the other thing is, is to go out there and I'll, if, if, this has been said long before I'm saying it now, but in Hollywood, they say if the director ever says, well, give me one take my way, just for me.

• 9:20Matthew McConaughey?

  If you do it, that takes what's gonna, they're gonna put that take in a movie.

• 9:25Matthew McConaughey?

  No matter how, no matter if you did it that, that well or not, most of the time they're gonna put that in a movie. So.

• 9:30Ryan Holiday?

  I feel like that's a good question. I, I find myself asking people that question a lot when I work on books for people. It's sort of like, what does success actually look like here? Because I find like, so, so obviously it's one problem when people aren't aligned, but I find maybe a more common issue is actually nobody has even thought about what success looks like and they're just sort of winging it. You know what I mean? You seem like a guy who goes in with a strong sense of what you want.

• 9:57Matthew McConaughey?

  Absolutely.

• 9:57Ryan Holiday?

  You know.

• 9:58Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah, absolutely. Look, I.

• 10:02Matthew McConaughey?

  I am not really one for for jumping off and saying, well, let's, let's, let's wait. Now, I have succeeded, though, when that has happened, actually. And sometimes I have to remind myself now to be more open to saying, just let it go. Just whatever. But I do, I am a fan of writing the headline before writing the story. I am a fan of before doing a movie, sitting down before we've shot one scene with the producers and the director and going, what's the poster? Just where, where are we heading? What kind of, what's the movie look like? I mean, if the poster's a close up silhouette of my face, that means, oh, the director's really going to follow this like a real lead character drama. It's going to be a real character piece.

• 10:45Matthew McConaughey?

  If the poster's a big, broad landscape with a sun setting in the background and a lightning bolt and some, some shadows, some silhouettes in the background, oh, okay, that's more of a backward epic. It's going to be more about story than character. You know what I mean? So I'm getting in my mind, what is that place we're going? And that poster will change. This, like, my own headline will change, but it gives me, I, I, I'd love to have that bit of a goal line, just to understand where we're going. It's what I say in the book about, like, look, just give me this, this conservative or the liberal lake. Let's define our direction. We go in north, south, east or west. If we just pick that, now give yourself 16 lanes to swerve and you can take the feet of road off all you want because you're, you're going the general direction.

• 11:28Matthew McConaughey?

  You're either heading towards Florida, California, Montana, or Mexico. Which way are we going?

• 11:32Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's what I was going to ask about the book. You know, if this idea of a green light, if you don't act, like, there's this quote from Seneca, which I love. He says, if you don't know which port you're sailing to, no wind is favorable. So this idea of hitting the green lights, obviously, you want to hit the green lights, but if you're going in the wrong direction, actually hitting the green lights is the worst possible gift you could get. So having a clear sense of what you want is essential.

• 11:57Matthew McConaughey?

  Intentional and deliberate choice to go that way. And then, I know for me, if I have, if we have that. Then it's easy to dance and blow in the wind. You know, create your weather, then blow in the wind. But I'm not for just saying, yeah, whatever, we're heading out. Well, wait a minute, I want to check the forecast. Where I am right now may be 82 degrees, but where we're going is going to be negative 12. Yeah, if I head out without checking, I'm going to be cold where I'm going. So let's just check out some general things and say, what can we, should we be prepared for? What are the general rules of engagement that I'm heading into? And then be free to dance and go, yeah, I'm ready to do backflips with my eyes closed.

• 12:40Ryan Holiday?

  No, and that was one of the, the things I was really interested in in the book is your sort of deliberate decision to change the trajectory or the arc of your career. So, yeah, on the one hand, an actor doesn't have a ton of control over what happens in the movie, but you do have some control over what movies you choose to be in or not.

• 12:58Matthew McConaughey?

  Sure.

• 12:59Ryan Holiday?

  And so, yeah, your, your decision to say like, hey, I'm going to be a different kind of actor, then allowed you to say yes and no to certain movies that probably seemed totally crazy to other people, to your peers, to your management team, but you knew where you wanted to go. So actually being offered, you know, X amount for this movie, no amount of money made it the right decision.

• 13:22Matthew McConaughey?

  No, because I had hit a red light with my soul and myself. I had hit a red light where it wasn't about how much money that was given me. It was about, wow, these, I'm going to work. It's easy, it's fun. Nothing wrong with that. Let's not be, you know, okay, I remember telling myself, hey, nothing wrong with that. Let's not just, again, let's not trip ourselves running downhill here. I said, but man, I, I think there's a way, and I, I want to find a way where my work is challenging me, where I'm having an experience in the work, where I'm growing in the work, where it's challenging the vitality I have in my life, which was feeling very vital and has been feeling very vital.

• 14:04Matthew McConaughey?

  So that was a red light for me, is that when I would go to work, I'd feel like. Well, I didn't feel as much in, in life as I do in real life. And it felt like, oh, okay, I'm going off to work. This is too easy. And it's supposed to be easy, but is that really what I want? So I had a red light in my life. I was not growing through my work at that time. And so that's why I stopped doing what I was doing and did turn down. And it wouldn't have mattered. You know, people go like, well, look, you know, that big offer you got for 14, whatever. If that had been 20, would you have done it? I was like, no, man, I mean, I really wasn't. I would have probably reread it again, just to say, I think I should. That would be the responsible thing, just to consider it.

• 14:43Matthew McConaughey?

  Uh, but I was never that, that check, my check was, I'd already cashed that check with my soul saying, I'm not going back.

• 14:50Ryan Holiday?

  It's a champagne problem, certainly, but it's not easy to do, right? To say no to, uh, when people, when it's hard to say no to socially acceptable things.

• 15:00Matthew McConaughey?

  Yes. And socially acceptable when they are the best champagne in the world. I mean, as far as the, the taste, it's a very shiny gold things were in front of me. And they weren't the devil.

• 15:15Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 15:15Matthew McConaughey?

  They weren't, they weren't evil. They weren't tyrannical. They were, I felt they would be tyrannical to me in doing them and to spend my time there. And so, yeah, it was, it, it was difficult. And it is difficult to say no sometimes, but you know this. You talk about it all the time. There, there was, that was the great power, the, in the no. I mean, I had, look, could I have made that decision 10 years prior? No, obviously. And I didn't make that decision 10 years prior. Remember I come in, you come into something. And this goes along with the line I bring up about being less impressed and more involved. Look, I'm still impressed with this industry and impressed that, wow, I get to do this? I would do it for free.

• 15:58Matthew McConaughey?

  There's not one film that I've done that I would not do for free because I love the work. But you can't roll through going, I'm still just so happy to be here. You're offering me that work? Of course. You have to be discerning. There's only 24 hours in a day and we've got to schedule through a year. You can't do everything you want to do. If you're, if you're in a fortunate position, which I am, so I had to make choices.

• 16:20Ryan Holiday?

  And life is short.

• 16:22Matthew McConaughey?

  It's so short. You know, even though it did, it does seem to last a while sometimes. Overall, it's very short. So, you know, yeah, to say no to those things was hard, but I had a hunch.

• 16:37Matthew McConaughey?

  I had a hunch that there was a joker in the deck at the end of the line somewhere. I didn't know when the end of the line was, was gonna come, but it did about two years later.

• 16:47Ryan Holiday?

  I'm glad you brought up Free State of Jones, because that's actually maybe my favorite movie of yours. And I told Bob Simmons of STX, who I've gotten to know over the years, that I love that movie. And I think he joked, "Oh, you're the only one, you're the person that's seen it." So that's probably part of it too, which is, I don't know about you, but I feel like some of the stuff that I'm most proud of is the stuff that the least amount of people have seen.

• 17:12Matthew McConaughey?

  Right. Sometimes, sometimes I know it, you know, and I've learned this. Hang on, because sometimes they resurrect themselves down the line somewhere where they get found. And, you know, I've been through times in my life where the work I'm doing that I dislike the most or don't love the most is maybe loved, is maybe accepted the most, but maybe by people that I'm like, "Ah, but that's not really the people that I appreciate and respect the most." So, you know, I mean, but I have found this, I'm trying to think of what has done it. I've had a couple that disappeared, never got their head above water.

• 17:56Matthew McConaughey?

  Films are like, "Ah, just came and went. No one even knows it came and went." And then five, 10 years later, all of a sudden it has a little resurrection. "Hey, man, I was watching last night and this came on. That's a great movie." And it'll happen. So sometimes patiently it comes. And then I always like to think of it like, you know, try to have a career. This is a lofty thought, but like Dylan, you know, he just pounded out albums, man, and things.

• 18:24Matthew McConaughey?

  You know, Willie Nelson, they just pound out albums and keep hammering you with them. And certain ones rise later on. If you look back at the, you know, the history of a career like a Dylan like that, you go, "Man, he was expressing who he was along the way and wasn't really worried about the result." And there are some absolute gems here.

• 18:44Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's like quantity is actually a way to get to quality. Maybe they're not always at odds with each other the way people think that they are.

• 18:52Matthew McConaughey?

  Maybe. And the other, well, the other thing is, I would say that artists, like they'd be saying quantity is just...

• 18:59Matthew McConaughey?

  Have quantity if you want to put, if that's what, if that's what it ends up being.

• 19:03Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 19:03Matthew McConaughey?

  I mean, if you're going like, I, I, I have to keep creating here. I have to keep creating. I just finished one. I gotta go to work again. I gotta do it again. I'm, I'm, I'm in a gold, golden age of creativity with myself. I need to just keep putting out content.

• 19:18Matthew McConaughey?

  Good. Do so. Uh, because you're doing it for you and you're not doing it for the result of, well, wait a minute. Now, mind you, I, that sabbatical I took, I did sacrifice quantity at that time.

• 19:32Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 19:32Matthew McConaughey?

  But I was not allowed, I knew that I was not being allowed at the time to play in the sandboxes that I wanted to play in.

• 19:39Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 19:40Matthew McConaughey?

  And I wanted to play in different sandboxes. So I said, you can keep nailing quantity in the sandboxes you've been in, this romantic comedy sandbox, which is the only one they're letting you play in.

• 19:52Matthew McConaughey?

  But it was, it started to feel revolutionary. It started to feel very circular. Like, they're all sort of the same. Boy meets girl, they break up. Boy chases girl, cuts it, at the end, roll the credits, we happy. You know, I mean, that's it. They're all the same in this. That's fine. But I was looking for, I was looking for roles that I go, jeez, I don't know what I'm gonna do with this. This scares me. I'm sweating in my boots, man. This, oh, that is what I was looking for, a buzz. I was looking for the buzz.

• 20:28Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's what I was gonna ask you about Newton Knight. It's such a, such a fascinating character. It must've been weird too, as a, as a, as a born and raised southerner to play this sort of guy that is neither north nor south, right? And I, it strikes me as, we need more people. I, I, when we first met, I said this to you, but it was like, I feel like we need more people like that these days. People who make, make decisions for themselves, not decisions based on identity or affiliation or, you know, the idea of breaking away from the south in the south is just an incredible

• 21:07Matthew McConaughey?

  Incredible idea.

• 21:08Ryan Holiday?

  amount of moral and physical courage.

• 21:10Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah. I mean, and, and look, and I'm, I'm with you. You and I've spoken a little bit about this offline. The, right now, to the 2020, right now, the individual has more, the, the, the private sector, all the way down to the individual, has more power than ever and should take advantage of that power. I don't know how to make systemic change, but we, we, we can each look in the mirror and make the choice and go, I am an individual. And it's, it's within that, that really, like, I found this with the book. The more personal I got with the book, the more relatable it was to more people.

• 21:47Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 21:47Matthew McConaughey?

  The more I dove into the I, the more it was relatable to the we. Well, it's in that individual choice with ourselves, not, not parried to any party or anything else. That's where we create the collective.

• 21:59Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 22:01Matthew McConaughey?

  And people, people see that as, I think, a contradiction. And I do often, sometimes myself, but that's what I know I'm trying to chase. Go, no, the actual, the best decision for the I is actually the best decision for the we. The most selfless decision is the most self-less decision. And vice versa. Best decision for the we is the most for the I. But, but before you try to, it's a little that act, act locally, uh, you know, first, then, then globally. It's, look at self first, and that will open yourself up to what is, how we become a collective, how you're acting, what the best decision is for the we, what is the most self-less decision. But there, there, there are much more paradox than a contradiction, I think, that most of us make them sometimes.

• 22:39Ryan Holiday?

  But that goes to your definition of acting earlier. You defined acting as sort of the decision to be true. I think what, what you see in a character like that, or what you see in these sort of people, whether it's a Martin Luther or a Martin Luther King, the sort of, here I stand, I can do no other, I am incapable of not being true to myself in this moment, come what will.

• 22:59Matthew McConaughey?

  Well, and there, and there you go. So, so, and this happens when, going back to roles that I'll play in acting, or who we are in life, like people you brought up. I'll write pages and, and go through major amounts of intellectual, uh, rigor to find my man, so to speak. But you know, when I, here's when I, here's when I really have it. And here's when I really have myself in life. When you go, yeah, but why, but ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. And my answer is very simple. Because that's who I am. There's nothing more. There's no, no adjectives, no adverbs, because.

• 23:37Matthew McConaughey?

  Because that's too.

• 23:39Ryan Holiday?

  But it's and then that that's the hardest thing, I think, for people to do because, as you said, that feels very selfish. You know, I there's the famous sort of Stoic resistance character is Cato, although there was there's a few other Stoics after they're sort of known as the Stoic Opposition. There sort of came this, the emperor would sort of go like, why can't you just be normal? You know, like, why can't you just go along with everybody else? Why, why is this so important to you? You're like the only one that's not going along. And then, and then, as you said, you sort of boil it down and you boil it down and you go, because that's who I am and I don't have a choice. Everyone else might have a choice, but I don't have a choice.

• 24:24Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah, if we can get there, beautiful. And I say, you know, I'm all everybody, if you if you're not a tyrant in those choices, you know what I mean? Then set sail. I mean, I think I think that actually, family structure and societies are sort of built like that anyway, that you you create a formation. This is what's expected of you. Everyone toe the line. And there's a lot of great things to that. They keep order, they keep forgive us form, structure, let us know and and but certain individuals at certain times, when you break out of it and go your own way and the and the and the the the powers that be, the the the father or society goes, no, you can't do that.

• 25:05Matthew McConaughey?

  But if you are not asking permission and you fully own it, all of a sudden you do it, Steve Jobs, whatever, society and the family goes, there you go. They applaud it.

• 25:21Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 25:21Matthew McConaughey?

  If but but the thing is, it's that thing, you know, you go, when I went to to to my father to say I wanted to go to law school, film school and said law school, he heard in my voice that I meant it.

• 25:34Matthew McConaughey?

  If I'd have been like, well, I think I want, I want, he'd have probably popped off and got mad because he'd been challenging me. No, no, no, you're not coming at me. Don't come at me with it, with, with, with a request until you've committed to it and, and, and are gonna do it with or without my approval. And that, when I did that, he was like, yes, don't half ass it. That's my boy. And I noticed it. He appreciated that his son being a rebel and going his own way, by hook or by crook, in, in one conversation, within 10 seconds on the phone, my dad heard it and we made a full transition in our relationship and I was launched out and I, he, he saw me becoming a man by my own choices.

• 26:10Ryan Holiday?

  I like your point about you have to be sort of a tyrant or, or an asshole about it. There's a, there's an F. Scott Fitzgerald story called The Four Fists, and it's about this sort of very principled guy, but at some point, he's, I think, in one of the, in one of the sort of pivotal moments in the story, if I'm remembering this correctly, he, he's sort of, he's in this business deal, and if he does the right thing, it's the right thing, but if he does the right thing, if he does the right thing, he's almost certainly going to be fired and lose his job, and then his family and his children will suffer. And he's sort of wrestling with the, oh, to do the right thing here is actually a selfish thing. And so he's good, that must have been

• 26:53Ryan Holiday?

  hard too, as you think, and obviously, again, champagne problems, but as you're thinking about, you're like, hey, I could do this and my family will be set for life, but I'm tired of being in romantic comedies. You know what I mean? Like, there, there's a part of you that probably go, but I'll just, I'll just gut this out. I'll just do it anyway, even though I don't want to, because it's the responsible thing.

• 27:14Matthew McConaughey?

  Well, it's a responsible thing, it's an expected thing. And trust me, my, my, my family, my blood family, my brothers and, and mother and brother were like, what the, is your problem? What are you doing, man? You're getting, you're, you're, you're, you're mentally meditating, Matthew, little brother. You're like all locked up. You're overthinking this. You're, you're, paralysis of analysis, you know? And I was, and I was like, no. And I had that discussion where I was able to say to them, guys, it's not, I'm not, I, this is not open for debate.

• 27:41Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 27:41Matthew McConaughey?

  I'm not, I'm not coming to you going, what do you think? The ship has sailed. I'm doing, and soon as they had said that, they're like,

• 27:50Matthew McConaughey?

  There you go, little brother. All right, good luck. I don't get it, but he does. All right. And then I was in. Then there was no, they had my back from then on, but they still didn't understand it, but they knew that, oh, this was not open for discussion with me, with the choice I'd made.

• 28:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I guess that's where this idea of courage comes in, but I was thinking too about, you know, the idea of green lights. It's almost like you decide what you want, and then it's often the people who you care about most who throw up the red lights because they're worried about.

• 28:23Matthew McConaughey?

  Right, right. This is interesting. Yeah. Um, you know, and to go back a second to your comment before, which is about these green lights, it's, and I haven't really talked about this in the book, but it's a further conversation from it, is which green lights, some green lights are plugged into a two-volt battery.

• 28:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Matthew McConaughey?

  They shine bright for the moment, but they're not gonna last. Some green lights are solar powered. They're eternal. They're gonna shine after we're gone. Now, if we can get plugged into those and make those kind of green lights non-negotiable, and be able to see, oh, this is a green light right now, but it's a stop, not a stay. Oh, the ones that are plugged into batteries will turn red quickly, is what I'm saying.

• 29:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, sure.

• 29:10Matthew McConaughey?

  You will get the red and yellow, because you should get the red and the yellow, either by someone else that's around you and cares for you, or with your own self going like, well, this is a stop, not a stay. This is just a little vacation. This isn't a true green light. I'm giving myself this hedonistic experience right now, and realizing it's a green light, but this isn't gonna last, you know? And I've had many times of that in my life, where I was like, okay, I'm gonna ride this green light right now, and I'm gonna press gas, and I'm gonna go, and I'm gonna enjoy. I'm gonna give myself a license. And I'm not gonna slow, usually I would slow down tomorrow, I'm not gonna slow down. I'm gonna give myself an entire month, you know? And that's okay, as long as I, it's only

• 29:54Matthew McConaughey?

  okay when I realize it early, though, because sometimes we can go chasing those battery-powered green lights that aren't really true for us now and tomorrow. We can chase those until we're out of gas, and you're standing, you're sitting in front of the real green light, and you've got no gas to go. You've got nothing in reserve tank. You're out of it, you know?

• 30:14Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Ryan Holiday?

  Don't you think your point about sort of there being bright green lights and maybe some faint green lights, like I was just talking to my editor on my first book, my first sort of book about Stoicism, I was sort of asking, I was like, hey, what did you think in retrospect when I came to you, you know, wanting to write a sort of a book about an obscure school of ancient philosophy? They were like, well, look, we were just basically telling you yes, because we hoped you would get discouraged and then go back to your other books.

• 30:44Matthew McConaughey?

  Okay.

• 30:44Ryan Holiday?

  And so that sort of, I love the story in the book about your first movie. Yeah, you were in the movie. Like they gave you a green light to be in the movie, but you sort of took that for everything that it's worth. Like just because there's a green light doesn't mean it's good, it's going to be straight green lights from here. You might.

• 31:02Matthew McConaughey?

  Right.

• 31:03Ryan Holiday?

  You know, go out as soon as you pass through.

• 31:06Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah. And don't put it on cruise control just because you caught a green light.

• 31:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:10Matthew McConaughey?

  Keep, keep, keep your hands on the wheel, you know, and keep driving and navigating. And, and along the way, as I was saying, keep your eye open for, as you said earlier, when do we have enough green lights? We're like, wait, I think this is, this is, this is a battery powered one. I need to pull off and catch a yellow here. I need to take pause. I need to take a repose. I need, I need a red light. Oh, I need some resistance.

• 31:31Ryan Holiday?

  To stop and think or.

• 31:32Matthew McConaughey?

  Yes.

• 31:32Ryan Holiday?

  Make sure you're not.

• 31:34Matthew McConaughey?

  Head in the right direction.

• 31:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Matthew McConaughey?

  You know, make sure you're heading in the right direction. Oh geez. And I've got a, I've got a great story about that, that didn't include it in the book, but it was coming across the 24 mile bridge of over Lake Pontchartrain, coming back from this set of Dallas Buyers Club. It's a 24 mile bridge, longest single standing bridge, I believe, over, about, so.

• 31:54Ryan Holiday?

  I think there's a longer one in China.

• 31:56Matthew McConaughey?

  There is?

• 31:57Ryan Holiday?

  But.

• 31:57Matthew McConaughey?

  Ah, since.

• 31:58Ryan Holiday?

  In the US, we met, we claim whatever. Right.

• 32:01Matthew McConaughey?

  Well, so I get over that bridge and as I've been driving in that bridge, I've been, I've been, uh, uh, bagging rays. I hadn't had sun for months. I'm listening to Dylan Baggers. I get off that bridge after I get over it, pull off, go into Sonic, get a Route 44 cherry limeade, get back on the road and I'm driving. And all of a sudden I notice.

• 32:24Matthew McConaughey?

  That sun's behind me now. I'm like, oh shit. Oh no, Bill. Oh, I got back on the bridge going back eastbound.

• 32:32Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 32:33Matthew McConaughey?

  And I couldn't exit. I couldn't, I was going the wrong direction.

• 32:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's no turnarounds on that.

• 32:38Matthew McConaughey?

  And there's no turnarounds.

• 32:41Matthew McConaughey?

  A full 24 miles down and get off. And I remember just chuckling to myself. Um, you know, going, okay, well, I guess you needed some sun on the back of your head. I guess you needed to listen to more Dylan and I guess you needed to enjoy the anticipation of going home to see your wife for another hour and a half. So, you know, it, it, yeah, sometimes we just go in the wrong direction and we need that, we need that red light.

• 33:03Ryan Holiday?

  It's weird though, some of those are like my favorite moments. Like when I think of like moments that really stick in my mind of like when I was happy or when life felt really good, it was some weird moment like that. It wasn't, you know, accepting the Oscar, you know, hitting number one or whatever. It's, it's weirdly, it was like, oh yeah, I was drinking a soda, driving down a bridge and it, it hit me. I was going.

• 33:25Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah.

• 33:25Ryan Holiday?

  The, the world was slow enough that I could actually be present for a second.

• 33:29Matthew McConaughey?

  Yes. Well, I'll, I'll do, you know, I call it a malaprop. You know, some of the malaprop, some of my best moments have been in malaprop. Some of my funniest jokes, people laughed harder when they thought I said something else in the punchline than actually what I meant to say.

• 33:43Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 33:43Matthew McConaughey?

  And so you're like, none of you, and I'm, I've stopped myself from interrupting because I don't want to keep them from laughing because they thought it was funny and they misunderstood it. And I'm like, just go with it, go with it.

• 33:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:51Matthew McConaughey?

  You know, I mean, take, take it sometimes. Um, well, those are, you know, that, to bring up Penny Allen again, I told you she was my earlier mentor. She would always tell me, and this is a good one for life as well, because I love to prepare. I love to be deliberate, intentional. I love to be, come into the game solid. I'm on solid footing. And she was like, okay, you got that down, Matthew. Now, now that you got that down, here's how I want you to enter every scene.

• 34:19Matthew McConaughey?

  On one foot, off balance, and then find your balance in the scene. And I think that's a bit of that malaprop you're talking about. Those moments where you find yourself going the wrong way on the bridge, having your cherry soda, you're off balance again. Now you have to find your way back. That's where we're in action. You know, that's where we're not a noun and we're actually a verb. Because we're having to, and that's what's fun to see. That's what's fun to experience is how am I going to find my footing again here? Not when we're solid. When we're on solid footing, it's kind of boring sometimes.

• 34:54Ryan Holiday?

  When you atrophy, you're not growing muscle.

• 34:58Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:00Ryan Holiday?

  So another question on green lights, because I saw you had Mark Manson blur the book, who I love and is a friend. He has this thing, it's one of his more popular articles. He says sort of like, it's fuck yes or no. Basically that you either really want to do it, you have to do it. You know, you would rather die than not do it, or you're going to pass on it.

• 35:22Matthew McConaughey?

  Right.

• 35:23Ryan Holiday?

  And that's true. It's definitely, I get the logic of it. But there's also a tricky part there because I feel like some of the decisions I've made, whether it was dropping out of college or, you know, leaving my job to become an author. There were also decisions that I made that I was pretty sure I was making the wrong decision. And I was terrified as I was making them. And it was very close to being those like, I'm so going to regret this. But it turned out to be the right thing. So how do you know? You know what I mean? How do you know?

• 35:53Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah, I do know what you mean. I mean, look, I'm a, I'm known in Hollywood as a quick no and a long yes. What I'll do is if there's something I really want to do, I'm saying, let's call it a movie. And I read, oh, I like this character. And I've checked out, how's the pedigree around it? Who's the director? They have the financing. It's, they're going to make a real movie, et cetera, et cetera. Before I'll say yes, my nose are pretty quick. Before I'll say yes, I'll go, okay. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Camilla, I'm doing it. Matthew, we're doing it. Here we go. Setting sail, we're leaving in it, we're leaving in two months, going away. That's in my mind.

• 36:36Matthew McConaughey?

  And everything about me with that script is now I'm looking through the lens. If that's going to be my future, then I'm going to have it. Now.

• 36:48Matthew McConaughey?

  Do I wake up in the middle of the night, three nights later? Ah, dang it, I'm still concerned about that damn director, man. I'm not sure, am I trying to make,

• 37:01Matthew McConaughey?

  make him worry, am I trying to make that work? Or do I wake up in the middle of the night, oh, man, that part, the script, the second act, that the writers just said, yeah, we'll fix it on set, we'll just work with you. If that doesn't work, the whole script doesn't work. Do I trust that? What's keeping me up?

• 37:16Matthew McConaughey?

  Then I'll go to, alright, and this is before I make any decision.

• 37:20Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 37:20Matthew McConaughey?

  I'll live a week or two weeks with that. Then I'll go, I'm not doing it. Now I'm gonna go for two weeks, I'm not doing that. Get that script done. Guys, change the schedule, we're not going off to be that man, we're not doing it. Now what keeps me up at night? Does anything wake me up? If I sleep well, that's a pretty good sign that, yeah, you probably shouldn't do it, because when you were gonna do it, you, those other things were waking you up. Now, if I'm waking up in the middle of the night going, ah, I gotta do that guy, I gotta be that man, I've got, no, I, oh, no, I have to. I don't care, I, I, I can work with this director, and I'm gonna start on the second act right now, working with those writers. We're gonna make this happen, because I, the idea of not doing that, I'm gonna feel regret it so bad, no way, I've got to do it, I have to.

• 38:03Matthew McConaughey?

  Well, that's a good reason to go, I'm in. But I give myself about 10 days to two weeks in each frame of mind. Yes, I am, no, I'm not, and then I measure what wakes me up at night.

• 38:15Ryan Holiday?

  So a quick no and a long yes?

• 38:17Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Ryan Holiday?

  Interesting. So I don't want to put you on the spot, and we can cut it, or we can, we can not make the, the details of it specific. When, when the, the project that you and I connected about early on, we didn't know we were even in the same universe bumping up against each other on it. One of the reasons, as you were thinking about not doing it, you said, uh, you like being you. You were gonna pass it, you were gonna pass on it right now, because you like being you at this moment. I loved that answer, what the hell does that mean?

• 38:56Matthew McConaughey?

  Okay, so, that script, I want to say, we didn't say the name of, was a great script, and is a great script. And, well done, right? We kind of, the way you and I kind of came together is kind of really, really cool, from some outside influences. It was really well-written, and really a great read.

• 39:16Matthew McConaughey?

  I am having, I am having a lot of fun being me right now. And I say that without any, you know, you print that to people go, oh, that's arrogant. No, trust me, I've had plenty of times where I don't like being me. Right now is not one of those times, thank you. Sure. I am, the, the, the role in the life I'm living right now, have been living for the last couple of years, is turning me on daily so much. I cannot wait for Monday morning. I, I, I, things, family, work, creatively, the things, the, the, the choices I'm, I'm making, and where I'm investing my time in life.

• 39:58Matthew McConaughey?

  I'm looking at this whole, this, the big movie, the big movie's life. Right. And the recorder's always on. And I'm having a good time trying to challenge myself to go, be the man you want to be, be the man you are and want to be right now, live 24/7. You really want to put on the boots, McConaughey, as I'll call myself in third person, which I have no problem with that. Sure. Um, put those, put those boots on, quit acting like one and be one. Let's go. Now I'm having a wonderful time. I'm, I get more mad now, more sad, I get more joy, I'm laughing hard, I'm feeling resonance with the thing I'm doing, I'm feeling a lineage with things I'm building.

• 40:39Matthew McConaughey?

  Um, I feel like I really have a really, really long, long view of, of, of what, where I'm, where I'm going. Um, uh, and so, that's what I mean, I'm having, and the book is part of this, a part of that. You know, you know, you've written, it is a singular expedition. And to go back, I had such a great time, I had the best creative time I've ever had writing this book. I laughed, I cried, I drew blood, but I had the best time I've ever had with the best company I've ever kept, writing this book, me. And again, I say that freely because I've, I've been not my favorite company plenty of times. Um, so I can speak of the asset section because I've had plenty of the debit.

• 41:23Matthew McConaughey?

  Um, so to the idea of going, oh, I'm going to leave my life what I'm living right now. I'm going to leave.

• 41:32Matthew McConaughey?

  Trying to execute and be the man that I want to be right now. I'm gonna leave how nervous it makes me, how anxious, how excited I get about it. I'm gonna leave the idea of creating this ministry of culture and what's that gonna do going forward? And say, "I'm gonna go away and do someone else's script, yours, mind you, a very, very, very good one. Be directed by someone else, lensed by someone else, edited by someone else, playing someone else or another part of me that I'm not completely playing now." Well, that's a lot of filters away from my direct expression to just go do something and put it in a capsule and let that live for time. I'm like, "Well, let's, what about the experiment of this, every day, every hour, every minute, being part of the capsule? And if we live 100 years, it's a 100-year capsule.

• 42:17Matthew McConaughey?

  If we live 80 years, it's an 80-year capsule. But all of that, let that be. We don't, action was called when we were born. Cut is only called one time and that's when we die. So between action and cut, how are we doing in this take? This is the take, I'm like, "I don't want to get out of this take."

• 42:33Ryan Holiday?

  I love that and it's always struck me how rare that is. And I'm sure you've met many, many successful people and some of the most talented artists of your time. It's always striking how little autonomy and freedom some of these people have in their lives. Like when you look at their schedule, "Hey, what are you doing?" And they're, "I gotta go do this." And I find myself doing that all the time because it's really hard to say no.

• 43:00Matthew McConaughey?

  Yes, but also, you know, you and I were talking earlier and right now, I'm not, I'm not. Even say if we said, "Forget the book tour," and I'm not working on the film set. I'm not on vacation. I mean, my days are full.

• 43:13Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 43:13Matthew McConaughey?

  And I'm in my office working, doing stuff, but I'm not. Well, I was writing this last night about we gotta get to where we enjoy, enjoy, more enjoy getting ready to do the work.

• 43:26Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 43:27Matthew McConaughey?

  It's like, we gotta get to a space where we go like, "No, I know this work." I got things I gotta do this afternoon that are from prior commitments. It's, I'm enjoying talking about the book and going on talking to people like yourself right now. Been doing it for three weeks and I'm enjoying that. This other thing I gotta do this afternoon has nothing to do with it. But it's from a contract with another affiliation I have that helps pay my rent and one I enjoy doing. But I gotta get in another headspace to do that. I don't wanna do that. But what's my alternative? Not doing it? And if I don't do it, okay, you willing to give up that contract? No, I'm not actually. So if I don't do it and try to put it off, I'm gonna double up the work for the next time I gotta do it.

• 44:08Matthew McConaughey?

  And I've, trust me, on that day, I know that on that day when I do it in the future, and if I push it down the road, I'm not gonna have a free day then either. So that day's gonna, I'm gonna be like, well, I don't wanna do today, but now I gotta even do twice as much as I did back then. So I'm like, get the ax out, man. Just take another swing at the tree. Just keep on working, keep on swinging the ax. And if the work that I'm doing is feeding me in the long run and being true to me, then I'm, then that's the kinda hard work that I think we need to lean in to go, I'm gonna find a way to enjoy this. If I'm gonna do it, do it pleasure. This happens all the time with people in my industry. You go to a talk show, they don't like doing press. Ah, I can't be, I don't wanna do this. And I'm like, well, don't. I mean, go, just don't. I mean, I'm not being facetious, seriously, just go home. And like, no, I mean, I can't, I'm go, okay.

• 44:52Matthew McConaughey?

  The inevitable thing is you're saying you're doing the press.

• 44:54Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 44:55Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I gotta do it. Okay, so now that we're here, what the fuck dude? Let's, let's do this. I mean, what's the, let's have a better time doing something you don't wanna do than a shitty time doing something you don't wanna do? If you're gonna do it.

• 45:10Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think that's the balance, right? It's like you say, you say no to all, and Marx realized says this, he goes, you gotta ask yourself every minute, is this essential? Is the thing I'm doing essential? And the upshot of that question is a lot of the things you're doing are not essential, and therefore you don't need to do them. Because the double benefit is that you do the fewer things better. And I think that's, that's where you wanna get, is you say no to most things, and then the things you say yes to, you either actually like doing them, or you don't like doing them, but you do them like they matter.

• 45:43Matthew McConaughey?

  Right. Look, I've had to, you know, I'm, I'm a great over-leverager. You know, put me in, I, I, I got a great work ethic. I am like, I'll, but what I have to watch is taking on too much stuff. Yes. Because I'm like, I can do it. I can do it. You don't have that? Give it to me. I'll take care of it. Yep. Come on. I'll line it up. And I'm good at it. I've got resilience. I've got endurance. I'll outlast a lot of people and outwork them. I did have a time though, um, probably fifteen, right around that time where I took off the wrong comments and decided to take two years off, where my phone rang. I had a production company, I had a music label, was an actor, I had a foundation, I was a family man. My phone rang.

• 46:23Matthew McConaughey?

  And as I went to pick it up, I saw it was a number from my office where I have five, six employees and I pay the rent. In a beautiful office. As I went to pick up the phone, my hand paused mid-reach. I didn't want to pick up the phone. And I, in, in one second, I went, what is that? Why did your hand just, what? And I, and I backed my hand off and I let it ring. And I remember telling myself in my mind, I was like, why would your hand pause to pick up the phone from people that you pay salaries to, who you like in an office that you pay it for your production company? I let the phone quit ringing. Soon as it quit ringing, I picked it up, called my lawyer. I said, shut down the production company, shut down the music label.

• 47:03Matthew McConaughey?

  I'm making Bs in five things. I want to make As in three things. I want to be an actor for hire, have a foundation, be a family man. Boom. And that was a great decision. I cleared two things off my desk. It was hard to do. Those people, there were five people that relied, who were making a living off the salary I was paying them. Um, so I gave them fair severance, but it was, I needed to do that for myself. And I did feel like I did start making much better grades, so to speak, in those three things. Then I was making when I had five. And this is a constant recalibration and calibration because what we value changes over time, you know? I mean, I have a few, you know, it's nice to have a few non-negotiable ones that I put up top that you go, no matter how confused you are, McConaughey, this is always of the greatest import.

• 47:49Matthew McConaughey?

  Uh, family. Sure. That's up there. Just put, just put that up there and go, nothing needs to ever take that. If you always go to that, you can't lose. I mean, sometimes you just go, you can't be in the debit if you just invest in that. The other thing is, you know, needs and wants. Jeez, man, I mean, what's really necessary?

• 48:07Matthew McConaughey?

  I'm in a position where I don't have to work today to pay my rent tomorrow.

• 48:11Matthew McConaughey?

  I only have one home. I don't have two, but still it's a big, nice home. There's a couple rooms that no one sleeps in.

• 48:16Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 48:17Matthew McConaughey?

  I don't need, I don't need that big of a house. I don't need it. I mean, there's questions of like, why, if you really want to break it down, get rid of all of it and go get, you know, and go get a three bedroom house. The kids sleep in one room and mom actually sleeps in the other one and you come and sleep in the other one and you pay the rent and they're out of the house and that's it. And I would be just as happy, I know, once that decision was made to do that and cut away all the fluff, cut away a lot of the employees and, you know, housekeepers and stuff and go, but, you know, I don't, so, so I'm not as, I'm not near as lean as I could be for sure, you know?

• 48:57Ryan Holiday?

  No, I, I, and this might be a, a nice place to wrap up too. I was thinking about that in the book when you were talking about living in, in your, in your airstream. We, we bought a, we bought an RV in the middle of the pandemic. We're like, all right, we're not getting on an airplane in a while. If we want to go anywhere, you're going to have to do this old school. And we bought like a little RV with

• 49:17Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah.

• 49:17Ryan Holiday?

  bunks in the back and, and whatever. And I remember sitting, the first time we took it out, we were in, maybe it was Marfa, maybe it was in Las Cruces. We were on our way to California and I'm sitting in an RV park, you know, that costs 30 bucks a night, sitting in a camp chair that costs 20 bucks, you know, cooking hot dogs in the microwave. And I was like, man, this is nice. This is really nice. And you're like,

• 49:39Matthew McConaughey?

  It's high living.

• 49:40Ryan Holiday?

  This is all it, this is, when you have that sense of a baseline, it then allows you to turn down a big check or say no, or cut stuff down because you know how little is actually needed to, for, for you to be happy.

• 49:53Matthew McConaughey?

  Yes. And you and I've talked about this offline today now with 5G all over the world. That's more of a real, a reality now.

• 50:00Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 50:01Matthew McConaughey?

  Go live where you want, in small place, wherever you want. You can be wherever you want in the world. We're seeing that works right now with what we're doing remotely talking. And how much is that the new future? Uh, probably quite a bit or more than some people expect.

• 50:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, the, the, the good news is that means a lot of people we know are gonna move near us in Austin. And then the bad news is they're all gonna be in Austin and it's harder. What I love about Austin is it makes it so, I'm, I'm okay at saying no, but I'm really good at saying no to things that are happening in cities I don't live in. You know what I mean?

• 50:32Matthew McConaughey?

  Yes.

• 50:34Ryan Holiday?

  It, it was harder for me to say no when I lived in New York City or when I lived in LA. Cause it did seem like I should go to that dinner.

• 50:41Matthew McConaughey?

  Right. Yeah, yeah, well, it's, you know, eh, eh, back to that original thing we talked about. How can you make your own choice for what's true for you in the middle of it? I mean, you know, I mean, because you could, because that can be overdone too. People can go and think it's all about looking at the world in contrast as well. And it's not true. And when we're truly doing that, it's not. We're actually more a part of the world and more a part of the rhythms of what goes on outside our windows. When we are, eh, eh, eh, making our true choices for ourself. But sometimes, yeah, um, you know, we look up and we feel like, oh, being the individual means I'm putting a hand up and, and, and removing myself from the rhythms of society or the expectations.

• 51:25Matthew McConaughey?

  Because why am I going to the dinner? Because I mean, that's what they're doing and it's a dinner and I'll go have a good. And maybe you go have a great time. Maybe you meet somebody great.

• 51:32Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 51:33Matthew McConaughey?

  You know, maybe, maybe, but I think, don't you think part of it's just if you can be aware of it though? And go, I don't have to go to this dinner.

• 51:40Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 51:41Matthew McConaughey?

  But you know what? I'm gonna go. Why you gonna go? Is there a real reason why you gotta go? Not really, but I'll go check it out. I'm curious. That could be a good enough reason.

• 51:50Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 51:51Matthew McConaughey?

  You know, I mean, I know, you know, it's a, it's a constant art of the, of, of the balance there. And then you just see, you see what, what, what, what, what comes back? What residuals come back from our choices? And if we make choices that, that, that give us more consistent residuals.

• 52:07Ryan Holiday?

  I'll give you, I'll give you one more Marcus. I'll give you one more Marcus quote that I think helps me on those things. He says, are you afraid of death because you won't be able to do, insert the blank anymore?

• 52:20Ryan Holiday?

  So you go like, cause nobody wants to die, right? We want to live forever. And you go, am I afraid of death? Because I won't be able to do this thing that I'm doing anymore. And you're like, no, I don't know. I that's not it. Then you're like, well, you probably shouldn't be doing that thing. But

• 52:35Matthew McConaughey?

  Oh, really?

• 52:36Ryan Holiday?

  Spending time with family, et cetera. That is why I don't want to die. So that's a good sign of that. It's a good use of your time because you're spent. That's the hard thing for us to realize is that we are, we are purchasing these things with our life. So yes, they're offering you, you know, $14 million to be in this rom com. But you are paying them six months of your life, living in Vancouver.

• 52:59Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah.

• 53:00Ryan Holiday?

  Away from your family, potentially not doing creative art. And so I think about that all the time. It's like, okay, here's what you're paying me. But what am I paying you? And what's more replaceable?

• 53:11Matthew McConaughey?

  Heard. That's a great question. Oh, my God, I'm sitting here thinking right now. Must not be doing the right thing because I can't think of anything that I'm afraid of missing after death. But then, you know what I mean? Maybe I'm not giving a straight answer because I've already relatively gone. Well, when it's over, it's over. And that's the time. And how'd you do it until you got, how'd you handle the things you love doing until you get there? You know, so maybe I'm, I'm contextualizing that question already too quickly and not answering it in raw form.

• 53:39Ryan Holiday?

  No, but you told me your priorities are family and then your own work. And then doing the other sexy fun stuff. So to me, those are, those are the top. For me, my priority, like when I go like, what, what do I want? It's like, I want to keep writing books, not in no order. Keep writing good books that I'm proud of. I want to stay married and I want to be a good dad. Those are my three things.

• 53:59Matthew McConaughey?

  Okay.

• 54:00Ryan Holiday?

  And every, everything else, if it helps me do one of those things, great. And if it doesn't, probably a bad thing.

• 54:07Matthew McConaughey?

  Heard that. There you go. There you go. That, those are three great magnets and you've got them in order. Yeah. Hey, can I ask you a question?

• 54:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 54:15Matthew McConaughey?

  So I saw the letter to your dad.

• 54:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. Dude, this is so good. I can't believe this is, this is a weird quirk of our time, which is that we met like six months ago. And we haven't been able to actually see each other in person. And who knows when that'll happen.

• 54:29Matthew McConaughey?

  Right? And hey, I want to thank you for, you know, you know, and I. Started coming out with this book. You and I have mutual friend that, that, you know, there's many other stories about how our, how we kind of came together here, but it was natural. But you also have been so open, honest, and even forthright about going, "Hey, this is your first time going out with a book. Make sure you're doing this, or this, or this, or this." And you kind of give me a little guardrails of direction and structure through going through this. It's been really, really a help.

• 55:02Ryan Holiday?

  My pleasure. No, it was, it was an honor. And you'll know what, I mean, I don't know when this will come out, but you'll know, day after tomorrow, you'll get the news. Unlike, unlike Hollywood, you gotta wait three, four days before the, the box office receipts come in.

• 55:17Matthew McConaughey?

  We'll see. It's been fun.

• 55:19Ryan Holiday?

  I think it's gonna do great.

• 55:20Matthew McConaughey?

  Having a great time.

• 55:20Ryan Holiday?

  I appreciate it, man.

• 55:22Matthew McConaughey?

  Appreciate it, Ryan. Have a good one.

• 55:23Ryan Holiday?

  All right. See you.

• 55:24Matthew McConaughey?

  Bye.

• 55:27Ryan Holiday?

  You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa, the Stoa Pochyle, the Painted Porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can't all get together in one place because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people and we couldn't fit in one space. But we have made a special digital version of the Stoa. We're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community. You could talk about, like today's episode, you could talk about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people who are using Stoicism to be better in their actual, real lives. You get more Daily Stoic Meditations over the weekend, just for the Daily Stoic Life members, quarterly Q and As with me, cloth-bound edition of our Best of Meditations, plus a whole bunch

• 56:09Ryan Holiday?

  of other stuff, including discounts, and, this is the best part, all our Daily Stoic Courses and Challenges totally for free, hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our New Year, New You Challenge. We'd love to have you join us. There's a two-week trial totally for free. Check it out at DailyStoicLife.com.