#474: Matthew McConaughey — The Power of “No, Thank You,” Key Life Lessons, 30+ Years of Diary Notes, and The Art of Catching Greenlights

Matthew McConaughey (@McConaughey https://twitter.com/McConaughey) is a Texas native and one of Hollywood's most sought-after leading men. A chance meeting in Austin with casting director and producer Don Phillips led him to director Richard Linklater, who launched the actor's career in the cult classic Dazed and Confused https://www.amazon.com/Dazed-Confused-Jason-London/dp/B009CFZ9B4/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. Since then, he has won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club https://www.amazon.com/Dallas-Buyers-Club-Matthew-McConaughey/dp/B00HZ0SC4E/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, appeared in more than 40 feature films that have grossed more than $1 billion, and has become a producer, director, and philanthropist with his Just Keep Livin' Foundation https://www.jklivinfoundation.org/—all the while sticking to his Texas roots and "jk livin'" philosophy. McConaughey also serves as creative director for Wild Turkey and has co-created his own bourbon, Longbranch https://wildturkeybourbon.com/product/wild-turkey-longbranch/. He serves as Minister of Culture/M. O. C. for the University of Texas Athletic Department and the Austin FC Soccer Club, where he is part owner. McConaughey will launch his first book, Greenlights https://www.amazon.com/Greenlights-Matthew-McConaughey/dp/0593139135/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, on October 20, 2020. He currently resides in Austin, Texas, with his wife Camilla and their three kids while he is a professor at the University of Texas in Austin http://utexas.edu/. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim! Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as ‘robo-advising,’ and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost. Smart investing should not feel like a rollercoaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you. Go to Wealthfront.com/Tim http://wealthfront.com/Tim and open a Wealthfront account today, and you’ll get your first $5,000 managed for free, for life http://wealthfront.com/Tim. Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim will automate your investments for the long term. Get started today at Wealthfront.com/Tim http://wealthfront.com/Tim. * This podcast episode is also brought to you by Helix Sleep http://helixsleep.com/tim! Helix was selected as the #1 best overall mattress pick of 2020 by GQ magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. With Helix http://helixsleep.com/tim, there’s a specific mattress for each and every body’s unique taste. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete http://helixsleep.com/tim—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, to my dear listeners, Helix is offering up to 200 dollars off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/Tim http://helixsleep.com/tim. * This episode is also brought to you by Magic Spoon https://magicspoon.com/pages/tim Cereal! Magic Spoon https://magicspoon.com/pages/tim is a brand-new cereal that is low carb, high protein, and zero sugar. It tastes just like your favorite sugary cereal. Each serving has 12g of protein, 3g of net carbs, 0g of sugar, and only 110 calories. It’s also gluten free, grain free, keto friendly, soy free, and GMO free. And it’s delicious! It comes in your favorite, traditional cereal flavors like Cocoa, Frosted, and Blueberry. Magic Spoon https://magicspoon.com/pages/tim cereal has received a lot of attention since launching last year. Time magazine included it in their list of Best Inventions of 2019, and Forbes called it “the future of cereal.” My listeners—that’s you—get free shipping and a 100% happiness guarantee when you visit MagicSpoon.com/Tim https://magicspoon.com/pages/tim and use code TIM. *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews! For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hello ladies and germs, boys and girls, lemurs and squirrels, all things under the sun. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, people who are excellent world-class at what they do, to tease out all sorts of things: frameworks, questions they ask, favorite books, influences, you name it, lessons learned. My guest today is Texas native Matthew McConaughey. He is one of Hollywood's most sought-after leading men. A chance meeting in Austin, long ago, with casting director and producer Don Phillips, led him to director Richard Linklater, who launched the actor's career in the cult classic Dazed and Confused. Since then, he has won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Ron Woodruff in Dallas Buyers Club, appeared

• 0:44Tim Ferriss?

  in more than 40 feature films that have grossed more than $1 billion, and has become a producer, director, and philanthropist with his Just Keep Livin Foundation. All the while, sticking to his Texas roots and J.K. Livin philosophy. McConaughey also serves as creative director for Wild Turkey and has co-created his own bourbon, Long Branch. He serves as Minister of Culture, MOC, for the University of Texas Athletic Department and the Austin FC Soccer Club, where he is part-owner. McConaughey will launch his first book, Green Lights, on October 20, 2020. He currently resides in Austin, Texas, with his wife Camilla and their three kids, while he is a professor at the University of Texas

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  in Austin. You can find him on Facebook, Matthew McConaughey, on Instagram, @officiallymcconaughey, and on Twitter, @McConaughey. The book's official website is greenlights.com. Please enjoy this wide-ranging, extremely enjoyable and entertaining conversation with none other than Matthew McConaughey. This podcast episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Sleep is super important to me. In the last few years, I've come to conclude it is the end-all, be-all, that all good things, good mood, good performance, good everything, seem to stem from good sleep. So I've tried a lot to optimize it. I've tried pills and potions, all sorts of different mattresses,

• 2:09Tim Ferriss?

  you name it. And for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I also have one in the guest bedroom and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. It's something that they comment on. Helix Sleep has a quiz, takes about two minutes to complete, that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. With Helix, there's a specific mattress for each and every body. That is your body, also your taste. So let's say you sleep on your side in like a super soft bed. No problem. Or if you're a back sleeper who likes a mattress that's as firm as a rock, they've got a mattress for you too. Helix was selected as the number one best overall mattress pick of 2020 by GQ Magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others.

• 2:52Tim Ferriss?

  Just go to helixsleep.com/tim, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. They have a 10-year warranty and you get to try it out for 100 nights, risk-free. They'll even pick it up from you if you don't love it. And now, my dear listeners, Helix is offering up to $200 off of all mattress orders and two free pillows at helixsleep.com/tim. These are not cheap pillows either, so getting two for free is an upgraded deal. So that's up to $200 off and two free pillows at helixsleep.com/tim. That's H E L I X, sleep.com/tim for up to $200 off.

• 3:36Tim Ferriss?

  So, check it out one more time. Helix, H E L I X, sleep.com/tim.

• 3:46Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Magic Spoon. Magic Spoon is a brand-new cereal that I eat just about every day that is low carb, high protein, and zero sugar. I just ate a huge bowl of their cocoa flavor about an hour ago after a short workout. Magic Spoon cereal has received a lot of attention since launching last year. Time Magazine included it in their list of best inventions of 2019, and Forbes called it "the future of cereal." It tastes just like your favorite sugary cereal from childhood. Remember that? But it's actually good for you. Each serving has 11 grams of protein, three grams of net carbs, zero grams of sugar, and only 110 calories. It's also gluten-free, grain-free, keto-friendly, soy-free, and GMO-free. All the things. It's delicious.

• 4:29Tim Ferriss?

  And I don't say that lightly because most of this healthy version of X stuff is not delicious. But these guys really nail it. Magic Spoon has nailed it. It comes in your favorite traditional cereal flavors like cocoa, frosted, and blueberry. You can try them all by grabbing a variety pack at magicspoon.com/tim. Or you can just grab a box or a bunch of boxes. I'm going to order some more today of the cocoa, which is my personal favorite. But there's a new contender for favorite flavor because they just launched two limited edition flavors, Honey Nut and Peanut Butter, which are delicious. I am a sucker for peanut butter and it is outstanding. So I think cocoa and peanut butter are my two new favorite flavors. And fun fact, my friends are also obsessed with Magic Spoon.

• 5:14Tim Ferriss?

  One of the podcast's most popular guests, Dr. Peter Attia, routinely crushes six to seven servings at a time. That's a lot with no glycemic response. He's looked at this with a glucometer. He likes it so much, he invested. Other friends, two very fine gentlemen, and also past podcast guests, Kevin Rose and Ryan Holiday, also invested. So check it out, see what the buzz is about. Go to magicspoon.com/tim and grab a variety pack or cocoa, which is my favorite, or anything else. But see what strikes you fancy. Why not? Try a variety pack and be sure to use code TIM at checkout. My listeners, that's you. Get free shipping and a 100% happiness guarantee. So if you're not a fan, if you don't love it, they'll give you a full refund, no questions asked. Again, check it out.

• 5:58Tim Ferriss?

  magicspoon.com/tim. That's magicspoon.com/tim. Take a look. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole-food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today.

• 6:39Tim Ferriss?

  You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drinkag1, the number one. Drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Can I answer your personal question?

• 7:10Speaker 02

  No, it's a significant time.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism living this year over metal endoskeleton.

• 7:26Tim Ferriss?

  Matthew, welcome to the show.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Good to be here, Tim. How are you, sir?

• 7:30Tim Ferriss?

  I'm doing very well, and I have just an embarrassment of riches in front of me in terms of notes that I would love to take some stab at covering even a portion of. And I thought we could begin with a little backstory for those people who know your work, but perhaps not your personal story. Let's paint a picture of your parents. Now, I was in preparation for this conversation, doing some homework, and I came across a quote of yours. Feel free to fact-check this, of course. This is from The Guardian, but it says, "One of the great images I have of my father is on the phone with a cigarette at the airport, on the payphone, always pedaling." What was he pedaling?

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Pipe.

• 8:10Tim Ferriss?

  And how? Pipe. What is that for those who don't know?

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Pipe and couplings. So we were in the oil business, and to drill, you obviously need pipe and the couplings are what connect the pipe to drill for oil. So Dad was in the pipe and coupling business, and he was, he would call it pedaling pipe, pedaling pipe, no G on the end, pedaling, pedaling pipe. And that's what he did on the phone, eight to six, and then he'd hit the road and go make personal appearances trying to sell pipe. He started off as a truck driver, then owned a Texaco station down in Uvalde. We moved to Longview, Texas in the oil boom, and within like six months after being in Longview. Dad had like 26 employees under him. That's how big of an oil boom it was. And then obviously that that business fell through, I think in around 82. And he kind of held on from there. He was always peddler.

• 8:59Tim Ferriss?

  Always peddler.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  His line was great. He was always be, and he never did, he never went bankrupt. And that was a piece of honor for him not to go bankrupt. But he was always, after the oil boom sort of busted, he was always like, boys, if I could just hit a lick. If I could just hit a lick. And he never did hit that lick. Um, but if he had.

• 9:18Tim Ferriss?

  What is a lick?

• 9:19Speaker 02

  A lick is a big sale. A lick is a big account. A lick is, okay, Mr. Jim McConaughey, I want all my pipe from you. And we're gonna drill 200,000 feet, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so it's a huge account. Oh, my gosh. I'm gonna supply all the pipe to this one large account. That would be a lick. He never quite hit it.

• 9:38Tim Ferriss?

  So we're gonna jump to the other track with mom for a second here. And I'd like to have conversation about, or description maybe of mink oil. I would like to.

• 9:52Tim Ferriss?

  Could you, can you tell us how, how mink oil entered your life, please?

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would not be here talking to you right now if it wasn't for the oil of mink. Yeah. I think it was about, how old was I? 14, 15 years old, ninth grade, adolescence. My mom starts peddling, again, peddling, my whole, my whole family was peddling something. My mom starts peddling this oil of mink product, um, door to door sales. Look here, you, you, you put this mink oil on your face and it, it brings out all the impurities that you have. And once those impurities all come out, you then have clear glowing skin for the rest of your life. That was sort of the sales pitch, right? Well, I'm 15, I got a few pimples, as any 15 year old does. And one night my mom goes, well, you should use this oil of mink.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  I'm like, great, geez, you're gonna let me do that? Sure. So I start putting this oil of mink on my face every night before I go to bed. And after about a week, I, I wake up and I've got more pimples than I had a week before. And I, and I, and I check in the mirror and I go to mom, is it storm? She goes, oh, that's exactly what it's supposed to do. Pull out all the impurities. Keep doing it. Stick with it. Sure. And so I just religiously keep putting it on. Well, after two weeks, now I seem to be running into a problem here. I've got, I've got a whole face full of pimples and, and it's, it's, it's getting pretty severe. And I go back to mom. She's like, oh, wow. Well, you've just got more impurities than I thought you'd have. Just keep, keep doing it. We're gonna keep bringing out those impurities. I keep it up. Three weeks go by

• 11:23Speaker 02

  and now I've got full blown acne and I'm really concerned and my mom's just staying on with it going, wow, no, stick with it. All the impurities are coming out. Well, I sneak off to a dermatologist on my own. And this was not my mom's recommendation. I sneak out there on my own and I take a bottle of this meal and I go, doc, look at my face. He goes, what are you putting on your face? And I show him this bottle. He reads it later. He's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is for someone that's like 40 year old or not a teenage child who's got oily pores. Anyway, this is blocking your pores. Your pores can't breathe. You are 10 days away from having ice pick holes in your face from the acne. We've got to get you off of this. Okay. He goes, we also have to get

• 12:07Speaker 02

  you on this stuff called Accutane. It's a year's worth of, of medicine. It will dry you up. There will have its complications, but it'll be better than, than the acne that you're gonna have. So boom. I get on the Accutane, off the oil of meal. And around that time, my dad, who was always, as I said, peddling and looking how to hit a lick, looks at me, he says, damn boy, I think we got a lawsuit against this company. Damn, well, I mean, company. I mean, you're, you're a good looking son. I mean, look at you. You're all swollen up. So he, he takes me to see his lawyer. I remember his lawyer's name was Jerry Harris. So I'm sitting down with my dad and his lawyer, Jerry Harris, and we think we got a case. And he asked me like, you know, hey, did your confidence lower?

• 12:50Speaker 02

  You know, with these, with these pimples you've got and this acne? I'm like, well, yes, sir. I mean, he goes, are you doing as good with the girls? And I said, no, sir, not at all. He, his eyes light up and I can tell that even at my age of 15, that he, he's building his case. And he goes, Emotional distress. You were under emotional, you are under emotional distress. And I look at him and I'm like, uh, sure. Yeah. Emotional distress. And Jerry's slap, gosh, dog, we can get 35 to $50,000 off this. Emotional distress will go a long way, Jim. And my dad's like, hot damn, that's it. That's right. $50,000. Let's way to go, son. And so dad's getting all excited about this deal. We're going to make $50,000 off of my emotional distress. His youngest son. So anyway, meanwhile, I'm on Accutane.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Thing takes a year to get clear up and you get scaly, your dandruff and your knees hurt. You get slits in your mouth and everything else, but much better than this acne. And this Accutane starts clearing this acne up on my face. Well, as lawsuits go, you know, they, they drag on a while. So come two years later, I'm back in Jerry Harris' law office, sitting across the table from the, from the defense attorney. And now my acne is cleared up. Okay. And this lawyer sits there and starts off the conversation with me and he goes, "Oh my gosh, uh, must've been so emotionally distressful." And I'm like, he's lobbing me a softball here. I'm going to knock this out of the park.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. It was highly emotionally distressful. And he's like, I bet your confidence was down. I was like, he did it again. What's this guy doing? He's a horrible lawyer. He's teeing me up and just knocking it out of the park again. I'm like, yes, it was so emotionally distressful. My confidence was low. Wasn't doing well with the girls. I mean, man, it was bad stuff, sir. And I'm sitting there thinking, we've got this case. Well, this little boy gets this Cheshire grin on his face, reaches under the desk and pulls out this green yearbook. And it's got a page marked on it. And he opens it open in front of me, turns it around and opens it to a specific, that specific earmarked page and points to a picture.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Now, this was the 1988 yearbook for Longview High School, which now I was a senior. And mind you, this lawsuit started back when I was a sophomore. Ends this picture of my senior year, he points to it and he said, who's that? And there's a picture of Camisa Springs, really beautiful lady, girl, 18 year old with a stash across her chest that says, most beautiful. Well, arm in arm with her and next to her. Is the young man Matthew McConaughey with a sash off his chest that says most handsome.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  As soon as I see that I squint my eyes. I'm like, oh, we just lost the case. I look up at him. The boy smiles and he goes, so emotionally distressful.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  And we knew right then we had lost the case and it was over. And I remember my dad hemming hauled for for months. Gosh, damn me, boy. I mean, we were gonna win $50,000 and you gotta go off and win most handsome. You screwed up the whole deal, man.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Oil of mink and the McConaugheys who chased litigations but never quite win them. That was another way of my dad trying to hit a lick and I screwed it up by winning most handsome.

• 16:20Tim Ferriss?

  Was it true in your family? I read this, of course, you can't believe everything that you read. Two things. Number one, that your parents were divorced twice, married three times. So they ended up getting up one more time and then they got knocked down. True. Number two, that saying, I can't was forbidden or highly advised against.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Very heavily, heavily, heavily. I remember cuss words you could say shit and fuck and damn. And even occasionally maybe get away with the Lord's name in vain, but you weren't really, that was on the line. But the real words that we got like either punished for or were forbidden were hate and can't. And I remember my dad, I remember one Saturday morning when I was about 12, my Saturday morning chores were, you know, mow the lawn, weedy, shine his shoes and sweep the porches and get the cobwebs out of corners. Well, I'd get up very early on a Saturday morning to do that so I could have my Saturday afternoon to play. And I went out to try and start our push lawnmower and it wouldn't start.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Pull again, wouldn't start, pull again, wouldn't start. Check the gas yet. It's got gas. What the heck's going on? Damn it, it won't start. And I remember going into my dad inside and I go, Dad, the, uh, I can't get the lawnmower started. And he kind of slowly turned his head to me and I saw his molar's meat and kind of start to grit his teeth. And he goes, you what? And I knew enough right then to not say the word again. And I said, I, I, I, I. And he got up and I didn't finish my sentence. He slowly walked with me out of his bedroom, through the kitchen, through the garage, around the back to the shed where this lawnmower was that I was not getting started. He, without saying a word, he knelt down, looked at it, checked the gas, da-da-da.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Anyway, he found the little tube where the gas was not transferring and it had been disconnected. So he reconnected that, pulled a few times and it started. And there, over a new, now running, push lawnmower, he looked at me, put his hands on my shoulders and for the first time since I said, "I can't get it started," he put his hands on my shoulders, looked at me and very sternly said, he goes, "You see something? You were just having trouble running this lawnmower." And boom, you know, and I remember from that day, that lesson was like, oh, even if you're unable to do something on your own, you can still go seek help or get assistance. So you're still only having trouble, even if you on your own cannot do so.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  That was a, saying those words, still to this day, if I let him slip, I kind of have to look over my shoulder like, "Uh-oh, dad gonna get me."

• 19:03Tim Ferriss?

  So there are many different forms of influences. I'd like to ask you about one that is not your parents, it's not your siblings, it's a book that I've read, you came across, that had an impact in your life, and that is The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino. Could you explain for people listening, why that book was impactful or what impact it had?

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, so I've never been a big reader and growing up, didn't read much and never really liked, even in school, being told, "Hey, you gotta read this book, you gotta read this." Just the fact of being told I had to read something in school or by someone else sort of made me feel like it wasn't mine and I was not gonna have a subjective view of it. And plus, I just don't really like being told what to do. But this came to me, this book, and I always say this, I didn't find it, it found me, and I'll tell you how and why. It was between my sophomore and junior year in college at University of Texas at Austin. Now, at this point, I was always on the track to become a lawyer. I was gonna become that defense attorney.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  I was gonna become that, that defense attorney, you know, get us some oil and ink money, you know what I mean? Get the family some oil and ink money. I was a good lawyer. I took good stances. It started off in the family. They're like, geez, oh man, you know, I would take the table and win arguments with the family. And I'd be like, ah, damn it, you gotta become a lawyer. You gotta become the family lawyer. So that was always the plan. But between my sophomore and junior year in college, which is about the time when all those general liberal arts credits that you're getting need to have, start having some focus, or you're gonna lose them. You know what I mean? Right. So I'm start not sleeping well with the idea of becoming a lawyer. I'm doing the math. I'm like, I'm not sure it's what I want to do. I get out of here. I go to law school.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  Then I get out. Then I start maybe get an intern. I'm really not gonna be rolling in my vocation until I'm in my 30s. And I was like, do I want, I don't really want to spend my 20s just learning, or some of my 20s just in school. Now, I had been writing a lot, been keeping a lot of short stories in my diaries, and a lot of them, which are in this, in this book, Green Lights. But I didn't have the confidence to think that maybe I wanted to get in the storytelling business. Until a good friend of mine, Rob Benler, who I think at the time was NYU Film School, who I'd been sharing some of these short stories with, you know, one night on the phone goes, hey, you should think about, you know, getting in front or behind the camera. You know, you tell great stories. You got good character yourself. You know, you're a good writer. Try this out. And I was always

• 21:36Speaker 02

  like, oh, no, no, no. I mean, that's, that's like too avant garde. It's too European. It's the artsy. I can't do that. But he gave me the confidence to really consider it. Now, I go to my fraternity house, the Delt House, into that sophomore year for sophomore exams. I'm a studier. All right. I'm making, I got a 3.82 GPA. I like making my As. And any amount of time I've got to study, I will use it every single minute. There's never enough time for me to study. I go to the Delt House, and right behind it, in a little bungalow, is one of my Delt brothers. And I eat lunch, and I sit on his couch, and I've got three

• 22:18Speaker 02

  hours before my exam. And I open up my books, studying for my psychology exam. For whatever reason, for the first time in my life, I shut them. And I go McConaughey to myself. I go, you got this. You don't need to study anymore. First time I'd done that. I got three hours to kill. I then put on the TV. I love sports. ESPN. I'll watch cricket, the strongest man competition. I'll watch, you know, two grasshoppers race.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  For whatever reason, I just, I'm not interested. I turn off the TV.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  I look over to my left, there's a stack of magazines, there's Sports Illustrated, some Playboys, and I'm like, geez, I like sports, like checking out naked ladies in the Playboy, let's check that out. I pick up a Playboy, flip through thumb through that, half casually, and all of a sudden lose interest in that. And I'm sitting there going, okay, what am I supposed to do here? Got two and a half, about three hours to kill. Well, I start peeling back those magazines, Playboys and Sports Illustrateds and everything else, and about seven deep in that stack of magazines, to the left of the couch where I was sitting, I see this white paperback with this beautiful red cursive writing on it, and it says, "The Greatest Salesman in the World."

• 23:31Speaker 02

  And I remember reaching for it and aloud to myself saying, "Who is that?" And I pick up the book, and I start reading it. Again, I'm not, I'm not a reader, but I start reading this book, and all of a sudden I lose track of time, and I've gotten past the whole prologue to the beginning of this first scroll in this book, which is, "I Will Form Good Habit to Become Their Slave." Now, what this book had just told me, and it's just taken me on a journey and said, "You will read each scroll," there's ten scrolls in this book, "each scroll three times a day for thirty days until you move on to the next scroll." So, it's basically a ten-month read. And I had gotten to the first scroll, and had been,

• 24:14Speaker 02

  now understood, I now understood that the greatest salesman in the world was whoever's gonna read that book. So I was like, "Oh, that's me. He's talking to me." Well, bam, I look up, "Oh, my exam's in fifteen minutes. I gotta go." All right, head out. Go to my exam, my psychology exam. I ripped through that exam. I didn't care if I failed it. Something in this book had told me, no, this book is what you need to be into right now. This book is gonna give you confidence to go do what you need to do. I ripped through that psychology exam and immediately go, "I'm going to film school. I'm calling dad tonight. I'm not gonna go to law school anymore. I've got the confidence." This book found me. This is a seminal moment in my life. I don't know how or why, but it is, and I'm gonna get the courage to call my dad and go.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  And that night, I remember thinking about it. I'm gonna call my dad at 7:30. He'll have sat down, maybe had his first cocktail, already had dinner. And he'll be in a good mood for me to say, you know, Dad, I want to go to film school. I think. Well, I call him. 7:30, 6:00 PM. Hey Dad. Hey, what's up, son? Listen, I don't really, and I was nervous. And I said, I don't think I want to go to law school anymore. I want to go to film school. And that was hard for me to say, because I thought he was gonna go, you want to do what, boy? What the hell? Ba, ba, ba. And I said, Dad, I want to go to film school. There was a long pause on the phone, about five seconds. And he says, you sure that's what you want to do, son? And I said, yes, sir. There's another five second pause.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  And then he said, three of the greatest words I've ever been told. Don't half ass it. I remember going, huh? Don't half ass it? And I remember my eyes just, I lit up. And I was like, oh, my gosh. One, my dad not only approved, he gave me a responsibility. He gave me freedom. He gave me more than a privilege. He like sent me a flight and ending it with like, not only do I agree and say, that's okay, son. I'm saying if you're gonna do it, you better damn well go do it well and don't half ass it. And I went down the next day, changed my course schedule. My GPA got me into film school. Because I had a 3.82. I didn't have any sort of art to show them. And I started off behind the camera and then ended up as I am now in front of the camera as well.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  But that book, that day, that book finding me. And me feeling like it was my secret. And it came to me and no one told me, here, you need to read this book. It'll be good for you. Hey, you're supposed to read this. This is your, for school or even a recommendation. It was not reg, it found me. And I read that book every, I did exactly what it said. Morning, noon, and night. And I read, I've read it three times now that way. But the first time, I didn't miss one reading of that. I mean, and I had many a day where I went out in the morning on a Saturday. And my day of whimsy took me to a place where all of a sudden it was 10 o'clock at night. And I was like, an hour and a half from my house.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  And the book was back at my house. And I'd be like hanging out, partying and going like, oh geez. And I would stop, eat something, get some coffee, drink a bunch of water, wait till whatever, 1:30 in the morning when I was time to drive and I would drive back to my place, grab that book and either read it and go to sleep in my bed or drive back to where I was hanging out with the book and read it. I didn't miss one single read for 10 straight months. And that book is the most instrumental piece of literature and motivation I've ever read for me in my life.

• 27:49Tim Ferriss?

  And now you've produced Greenlights, this book, which as you've described it, is not a traditional memoir or an advice book, but rather a playbook based on adventures in my life. And I want to hop to a particular portion of this book, which is also a scrapbook of sorts. It's very multimedia in that respect, even though it's in 2D and book format. I want to ask you about a note. And this will segue into the practice of writing, since you've kept a diary for somewhere between 35, 40 years at this point, I believe.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:24Tim Ferriss?

  There's a note towards the end of Greenlights from 9/1/92.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:32Tim Ferriss?

  So 10 goals in life. This blew my mind.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Mine too.

• 28:36Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to read these 10 and then I want you to kind of place us in your life when you wrote these 10. And then I want to zoom in on a few of them, but let me just read these 10 first. So 10 goals in life. This is in 1992. One, become a father. Two, find and keep the woman for me. Three, keep my relationship with God. Four, chase my best self. Five, be an egotistical utilitarian. That's going to be my first follow up question. Six, take more risks. Seven, stay close to mom and family. Eight, win an Oscar for best actor. Nine, look back and enjoy the view. 10, just keep living.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:12Tim Ferriss?

  Where were you and when were you when you wrote these 10 goals?

• 29:19Speaker 02

  I was in a top bunk in the Delta, it's all Delta house. I believe my roommate was Monty Wills, who I'm still friends with today from Montgomery, Alabama. I was in the top bunk. I think I just probably, it was the end, it was the end of the night, it was about 9:30. I was just getting, nestling in for, for a good night's sleep. So I just started, what was the date, 93, what was the month and the, the month and the day? That was September 1st, 1992. 93, okay. Yeah. So I had just done, I had just finished Days Confused. That's right. Yeah. It was two day, two days after finishing.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. I had just finished a job, a summer hobby, a thing that, there were three lines written in a script that I got cast in because I went to the right bar at the right time, met the right guy, read for it, Richard Link letter said, come on and started throwing me in scenes. So three lines turned into three weeks work. I loved it. Was getting paid $320 a day. People were telling me I was good at it and I was running around going like, is this legal? It's so fun. And I finish it. My father had just passed away, like two weeks earlier. Yeah. August 17th of that year. So I had just finished a job that was a hobby that now that became a career. I had just finished that. Think about it. If you do

• 30:42Speaker 02

  the math, I didn't think about it till now. I just finished that Og Mandino, 10 months of reading that book. Oh, wow. My father had just passed away. I was just going through what that meant to me and what that, what I felt like that should mean to me. And that's where the just keep living comes from, to keep his spirit alive, even though he's physically not here, keep things alive that he taught me, that to keep me incentivized throughout my life, even though I couldn't rely on him personally being here to, to back me up with him. And so I remember writing those goals down. And the thing is that, you know, when you, you start off this conversation going, I don't know what your, what your, your adage or adverb was about it, but I, I found that just less than a year ago in my diaries and I'd never looked at it or remembered that I had written it.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Since the day I did. That date on that list, I never looked at that list again. I wrote it that night. And forgot about it. Or at least I thought I forgot about it.

• 31:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  I didn't. And that's the wild part. Because somewhere subconsciously, I obviously did remember it because so far I've accomplished those goals. And there's some very specific ones on there. That I'm like, what? You know? I always thought, even the acting part, win an Oscar for Best Actor. This is a time, I'd just finished Days of Confucius. I didn't know I was gonna end up being an actor. I still thought, didn't have the courage to even think I could pursue it as a career. At that time, I thought it might just be a hobby. I had a hobby for a summer. But obviously, when I look back, I'm like, oh, you did want to be. You did want to be an actor. And you wanted to be a damn good one. So I could admit it on my journal page, but I couldn't admit it to myself. Hell, I couldn't even admit it in my dreams. But I could admit it on my journal pages. So that's where I was.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Those are, so those are three big things going on in my life. And I'd say the most, you know, the biggest shapeshifter was father moving on. And, but that, with finishing Days and with finishing The Greatest Salesman, that's when I wrote that.

• 32:42Tim Ferriss?

  That's quite a Venn diagram as far as a snapshot in time goes with those three sort of momentous changes, those transitions. If we zoom in on number five, be an egotistical utilitarian.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:55Tim Ferriss?

  Do you recall what you meant when you wrote that?

• 32:58Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. I'd written a, I later, that next year, maybe it was my junior year, I wrote a law of a paper, an essay, John Wayne Goes West, The Egotistical Utilitarian. And I guess it was me writing a story about a fictional character that I guess was based on me going west to Hollywood. But the egotistical utilitarian, I'm always like, boy, that's it. That's what the real prophets are. That's what Jesus was up to. Making decisions, that's, that's the honey hole of when we are really can succeed or have satisfaction or live life the most truest. Where the decisions we make for the I, for ourselves, the selfish decisions.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Are actually what's best for the most amount of people. Utilitarian are the I where the I meets the we. Where the selfish is the selfless. Where what I need is what I want. And what I want is the ego. What I need is the utilitarian. What I want is freedom. What I need is the responsibility and the interplay of those things. What I is the ego and utilitarian is the objective. Utilitarian we. Um, that I was already starting to work and a lot of that. These thematics are through the book because they're inherently how I see life and have for a long time. But that was, uh, I was like, oh, that's the ultimate human. The egotistical utilitarian.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Where the decision one makes for themselves most selfishly happened to be the most selfless decisions as well at the same time. And where those two overlap and are one. That's the ultimate human. That was a pursuit. That was my belief then.

• 34:39Tim Ferriss?

  And why take more risks? We might come back to egotistical utilitarianism. Why take more risks? Did you feel like at the time you weren't taking enough risks? Was it something you had learned about risks from your parents or other people? Why take more risks?

• 34:54Speaker 02

  I think I was at that time seeing risk that I'd take really pay off. The risk to in the bar at the top of the Hyatt that night to go down and introduce myself to Don Phillips. Who ended up being a casting director of A Day's Confused. Who four hours later, at the end of the night, after we got kicked out of the bar says, hey, you ever done any acting? You might be right for this part. Taking that the, the, the risk to go and, and read for that part. The risk for Richard Linklater to say, there's nothing, you're not supposed to be in this scene. You're not written in this scene, but you think orders would be in it? The risk for me to go, oh yeah. And just hop in the middle of the scene and improvise and play. Those risks were paying off.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  I was be also beginning to feel, you know, the risk that I took reading that damn book, Great Salesman. It was the first book I ever read, cover to cover, and it's a thin paperback. Mind you, it takes 10 months to read, but that was a risk for me. And I was feeling very confident with who I was. I was also thrown upside down by my dad moving on. Now, I don't know, you know, if you've lost a parent, but as a son losing a dad, you want to talk about forced into identity? You know, my dad being this sort of crutch, just because he was alive and above government and above law, was now gone. I had no crutch. I had no safety net. All of a sudden, I remember this very clearly, this coming to me, besides the just keep living,

• 36:23Speaker 02

  with keeping his spirit alive. I remember one of the first lessons of him moving on was I was, and I carved this in a tree, I remember carving this deeply in a tree for about three hours one night. Less impressed, more involved. Hmm. And that leans into taking more risk. Cause I was like, after dad moved on, I was like, oh, all of these mortal things in life that I have a reverence for, even this point of just finishing acting and maybe having, you know, dreams of fame, wow. All these things that I revered, that were mortal, lowered down to eye level.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  And at the same time, everything that I noticed that I was condescending or looking down upon or snubbing my nose at or going, ah, that's, that's crap, or oh, they're, they're no good. I was like, they raised up to eye level. And I remember going, oh, the world is flat. Your dad's moved on, you better look the world in the eye. And by seeing the world flat, I saw further, I saw wider, I saw more clearly, I had more courage. I lost reverence for the mortal things that I had reverence for. I still respected them, but I lost reverence for them. So that gave me courage. And I lost this sort of snub nose look at things that I thought were beneath me. And I empowered them and they raised up to eye level. So all of a sudden, you know, that was a version where the I met the we for me.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  That was a version where what I looked up to maybe too much met what I was looking down on. And it was right in front of me. And that was how I was also taking more risk. I, I, I lost a lot of fear. I still had fear, but I gained a lot of courage to go meet my fears. And I didn't give enough credence to things that I probably shouldn't fear. Or have too much reverence for because they were mortal. And I was like, well, what's that? That's reverence for fame or not taking a chance to go get what you want. That's a mortal fear. That's like putting a limit on yourself, McConaughey. Why would you do that? I even called it a sin at that time, not to take certain risks and would feel guilty if I didn't and feel like

• 38:30Speaker 02

  I didn't do my due diligence. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't meet my quote that day in God's.

• 38:38Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Did you know if you missed 10 of the best performing days after the 2008 crisis, you would have missed out on 50%, 5-0% of your returns. Don't miss out on the best days in the market. Stay invested in a long-term automated investment portfolio. Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as robo-advising, and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. Wealthfront can help you diversify your portfolio, minimize fees, and lower your taxes. Takes about three minutes to sign up and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost. Wealthfront's

• 39:22Tim Ferriss?

  software constantly monitors your portfolio day in and day out, so you don't have to. They look for opportunities to rebalance and tax loss harvest to lower the amount of taxes you pay on your investment gains. Their newest service is called Autopilot and it can monitor any checking account for excess cash to move into savings or an investment account. They've really thought of a ton. They've checked a lot of boxes. Smart investing should not feel like a roller coaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you. Go to wealthfront.com/tim and open a Wealthfront investment account today and you'll get your first $5,000 managed for free for life. That's wealthfront.com/tim. Wealthfront will automate your investments for the long term and you can get started today at wealthfront.com/tim.

• 40:08Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you start using a diary? Or what has that helped you to do or given you over your decades of doing it? Because I've spoken to many people on this podcast who journal. Often they have different forms of journaling, including a name we talked about very briefly before recording, Josh Waitzkin. Very different approaches, very different reasons. What is it that you've gotten from having a diary? And maybe it's changed over time.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's evolved. I mean, my diary started off like I think most people's diaries do. You write things down when you're not in a good place or you're lost. And you know, my early diary entries were the, the why, what, where, when, how? The existential questions of what is going on? Does it matter who am I? Oh, my God, this shit. So my girlfriend broke up with me. I lost it. Started off with that. So I've noticed that I started writing down when I was in times of distress or disillusion. And then I started to say, well, wait a minute. You gotta, just like that Og Mandino book, by hook or by crook, you read it three times a day. I was like, well, we're gonna write my diary every day, McConaughey.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  And so when do, when do, when do most of us, including me, not write in our diary? When things are going great. Oh, I got it figured out. I'm not gonna need to take time to go be introspective and write down my thoughts. Everything's, everything's a green light. It's great. Well, no, I said, hang on a second. If we're gonna spend our life, a diary, the original use of a diary is to dissect failure or disillusion. I think there's some prudence in let's dissect success. Let's dissect what's going on when things are going well. Let's, let's write in this diary when you feel like everything's clear and you feel strong and confident, significant, and you feel like yourself. So I started writing in my diary when things were going well.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  And then started to map out certain things about, found that what that did is when I would get in a proverbial rut later, I could go back to that diary and look at what was I writing and what was I doing when I felt like everything was lickety split and I had it, everything handled. And I found consistencies. I found it from what I was eating, to who I was hanging out with, to how much sleep I was getting, to beauties in the world that I was noticing and really were affecting me. How I approached people, how I was approaching the day, how I was approaching conflict, how I was approaching and taking in things that worked, success. And I found consistencies. And so sometimes going back in those diaries, reading what I was writing when things were going well, would help get me out of a rut later on in

• 42:46Speaker 02

  life, when I wasn't doing so well. And I remember this early on in college, it's a reason that my buddy, as I mentioned earlier, Rob Bellner, said you should go into storytelling business, is I was writing short stories, but I was also writing things down idiosyncrasies of myself. I was really trying to get to know myself. I would always, when I'd be in a movie theater, I always laughed. I thought the funniest jokes, I'd laugh, I'd be the only one laughing in the theater. And I'd never thought the stuff that everybody laughed at was funny. The collective laugh, I never even giggled at. I was like, that wasn't very funny. But I'd laugh, how it's, and no one else would laugh. I was like, no one else thinks that's funny? I'd say that in the theater. I found that I cried at things

• 43:28Speaker 02

  that other people didn't cry at. Like, I've never really cried at death. I weep at birth. But things always have made me cry more than proverbial ends. So I started writing these things down, and at first was feeling like, are you weird? I'm kind of, hey, is this odd? Is this, is this okay? Can you be this kind of a person? And got the comics to go, yes, you can. It's okay. But let's write down those things. Let's write down what makes you laugh, what makes you happiest, what makes you sad, what makes you angry. And don't worry if it's the collective choice of, of, of the majority. Just what, what does it mean to you? And write those things down. And so that led to character, I believe. It

• 44:09Speaker 02

  led to my own character. It led to me being able to maybe go play different characters, to understand, then empathize with different people and have, how different people have different things that turn them on and turn them off at different times.

• 44:21Tim Ferriss?

  Why green lights? What is the concept or the intent behind using that word? What does it represent for you?

• 44:31Speaker 02

  Well, one, it's just a pretty cool title.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, I went through the very earnest, but not very good student independent films of a freshman or sophomore student like I was, you know, where you're trying to work out something as existential or you want it to sound really cool. Like, you know, I went through forced winters, you know what I mean? Because I have in the book what I would call a lot of forced winters. Mind you, I call this COVID time we're in right now a forced winter. I had a, you know, my most creative times came in my forced winters of life, my year in Australia abroad on my own. But forced winter is kind of a double negative. I mean, who wants to go open a book called forced winters? You know what I mean? So green light,

• 45:18Speaker 02

  much more affirmative. And I love verbs. I love words that are verbs. Verb is the holy word, as I'm sure you know, and that it has affirmation. It's alive. And so, green lights, I noticed, became a theme to the book because the metaphor of the yellow and the red lights that we have in our life, whatever those hard times are. I noticed in going through my diaries of 36 years that things that were definite red lights in my life, hard times, yellow lights in my life, interruptions, interventions, things that stopped my flow and got in my way, that at some point, either sometimes immediately, or decades down the

• 45:58Speaker 02

  line, revealed their green light assets in my life. I would argue my dad's passing was a green light. Now, his dying was a literal red light. But as I mentioned earlier, I would not be the man I am right now if he did not move on. I would have stayed lazy. I would have stayed more impressed and less involved. I would have not put myself to task and held myself and called myself to arms to man up and be more honest with myself and look at the world more honestly and have more courage if he had not passed on. Because I would have had him as a crutch. I would have had this sort of subconscious reliance

• 46:39Speaker 02

  that, oh, if I really get in a bind, I still got dad, I still got pop. He's my safety net. So, his passing revealed green lights for me. So green lights became a theme and it became, I noticed that sometimes it's about persisting through something, enduring something. Other times it's about pivoting. Wait a minute, I'm banging my head on the wall here. I'm basically living out the definition of insanity, trying to change something the same way over and over again. It's not changing. So I need to reapproach this. I need to back up and maybe dance around the situation, dance around the problem to get what I want. And then other times I noticed it's just you raise the white flag and go, you know what? I'm fighting for the wrong thing here. This is going against my grain. This is not really what I, what I want and need. So I'm going

• 47:23Speaker 02

  to live to fight another day and go find something else to challenge to overcome. And so in those are methods in which I've been able to find green lights. Sometimes I've gotten green lights, and I think we all do, by just sheer straight ass denial. I mean, I write that line in that great lesson, it's wisdom I heard from a very old man one time. You know, I've had many crises, I've had thousands of crises in my life. Hell, most of them never happened. I mean, that partially you can get by just denying that there is a crisis. Not being foolish with it, but some things I've just said like, I'm not even going to give that crisis credit. Therefore, it doesn't exist. That dart can't stick to me if you throw it at me if I don't give it, if I don't even give credit that it's

• 48:06Speaker 02

  a dart. You know what I mean? So, so that's, that's the green lights. I mean, ultimately, I believe that in the rearview mirror of our life, every red and yellow light will turn green. And that may not even be in this life, Tim. I think a lot of people, it happens for people in this life, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, 10 years from now, on our deathbed. But I, if it doesn't happen then, I think it can happen in the next life for our kids, or for our kids' kids, our grandkids. It's a lesson maybe realized three, five, 10 generations from now, it may become a green light. For some hardship that we go through in this life now.

• 48:49Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there are a million directions we can go. I have eight options. That'll make sense.

• 48:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's well, you know, that would make sense as soon as you hear where I'm going with it. So there are a number of themes that emerge in this book, which which I take to be, as you've mentioned, a playbook of sorts and helping you to either change your reality or change how you see that reality in the service of engineering or recognizing green lights of different types, right? And the eight themes that I've written down here, I'm going to let you take dealer's choice on. See, I'd like to pick one and explore. So one outlaw logic, two, find your frequency, three, dirt roads and autobonds, four, I like the sound of this one, the art of running downhill, five, turn the page, six, the arrow

• 49:43Tim Ferriss?

  doesn't seek the target, the target seeks the arrow, seven, be brave, comma, take the hill, eight, live your legacy now. Where should we go first? Good sir.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  Oh geez, these are fun. Look, let's start, I want to get to Art of Running Downhill because that one I know tickled you. So maybe we should just, we can start with that one and we should, we should maybe hit dirt roads as well, dirt roads and autobonds. Let's do dirt roads and autobonds real quick because it's, it's, it's simple, it's a simple flip on the, I think it's Robert Frost, you know, the road less taken has made all the difference. Yeah. Is that Robert Frost?

• 50:15Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I'm sure that my listeners or my team will tell us.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  If it's not, forgive the malaprop, but you know, the quote, um, the road less traveled, the road less traveled has made all the difference, right? Well, that always has been like, take the dirt road, don't go where the majority goes, you know? And I remember in film school, I was the frat boy, button down shirt, jeans and boots, hand shaker, non cynical, love the sunshine. And I was in a class with a bunch of all the film, it was the Gothic group. They all wore black t-shirts. They, they stayed in the shadows. They wore their shades. They kind of huddled in the back. I remember one of our classes was one of the things was, hey, everyone go see a movie this weekend, come back Monday, talk about your movie. I'd come back and talk about,

• 51:04Speaker 02

  you know, Die Hard. And soon as I started talking about what I liked about it, they'd be like, ah, that stuff shit, man. It's corporate sellout crap. And I'd be like, oh geez. And I remember they, you know, they'd all gone to the Eisenstein revival that weekend and would talk about that. And I remember being really intimidated going like, wow.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  They're artists. I'm not. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta untuck my shirt here a little bit. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta quit going outside and I gotta not appreciate the sunshine. I gotta, I gotta quit singing out loud. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta get more Amlesian here, you know? And, and just as I was going through that mental meditation on myself, I remember coming back again another week after a weekend of seeing a movie. And I'd gone to the multiplex again and seen a popular movie and brought it up. And of course, the cat calls from all the, the other filmmakers in the class, all in black, huddled up. So I'm going, ah, that's corporate shit. Uh, nobody sees that. That's a sellout.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  And I remember instead of backing down this time, I went, I went, wait a minute. Did you see, how do you know it's corporate shit? How do you know it is? What makes you say that? And they all stopped and kind of started looking at each other and started stuttering. And then finally one of them goes, well, I mean, we didn't see it. I mean, we don't know, but I mean, we just, you know, and I went, ah, fuck you. Fuck you, man. I said, after this time, I thought you've been seeing it and you've got this, you haven't even gone to see it. So that was where it hit me. I was like, oh, there I was thinking that the road less taken. You know, sometimes a dirt road, my dirt road was the autobahn of the multiplex.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  You know, my, my, my, their, their, their dirt road, you know, would have been, would have, would have been the same. They needed to go see that, go see a, a popular studio movie before just calling it off as nothing. Sometimes, you know, if there were two, and I've had it in my life, someone say someone's an agoraphobic. Their dirt road is getting out, you know? Someone who's a, a bit of a hermit or, or socially uncomfortable. Their dirt road is being an extrovert. Go out, engage, practice it. So it was a flip on that, that sometimes it's, you know, the road less taken can be a dirt road. Yes, many times, the path less taken. And other times, for some people, some of us in our times in our life, it's an autobahn.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  And sometimes, you know, I used to be so extroverted, I never would spend time with myself reading a book or doing introspection. Well, that was a dirt road for me to take some introspection. Now, shoot, sometimes I love being introspective so much, I like being in my dark room writing more than I like engaging with people. Well, my dirt road sometimes now is like, put the pen down, McConaughey, get your ass out in the world and go engage in the daylight and get out there. So it changes for us. And sometimes it's a dirt road, sometimes it's an autobahn.

• 54:11Tim Ferriss?

  And it is Robert Frost, I can confirm.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  Ah, thank you, Robert. Yeah. The other one that tickled you on the way down is the art of running downhill.

• 54:19Tim Ferriss?

  Now, may I, may I actually ask a follow-up to the dirt roads and autobahns? So it seems like, if I'm hearing you correctly and understanding, that it is a proactive approach to facing the discomforts that you may have, or the hesitation that you may need to face, at least in part, it seems like that is part of the lesson. And the person who introduced us, Ryan Holiday, had encouraged me to ask you about Stoicism, which seems to, in some respect, tie into that, since many Stoics, at least historically, those people we've read about, would take periods of time to do the things that would lead them to discomfort.

• 55:02Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any, just as a side avenue here, do you, do you have any perspectives on Stoicism?

• 55:08Speaker 02

  I mean, I think I do, but you're gonna, I'm probably gonna botch this up because I don't exactly know the vernacular of the Stoics near as well as you and Ryan do. I will say this, you know, his other book, Obstacles, is the way, and I touch on this in my book a lot, in my own way. Look, the need for resistance, the need to choose the right harder challenge, the need to choose the harder decision for the right reasons, the need to choose the obstacles for which to overcome, or at least attempt to overcome, is very, very wise engagement. The need, as I talk about in my book quite a few times, to get away and go off on your own and be stuck with yourself, even if it's the worst

• 55:53Speaker 02

  fucking company you've ever had, that is a good thing to do. There is a good valuable pennant. There are green lights in that, forcing your red light, forcing yourself into the red light of being stuck. With the only person you can't get rid of, even though you hate him, and yes, I use that word, and I've had those times, and in those times of grovelling and discomfort, and I can't sleep, and I'm throwing up, and I can't get the monkeys off my back, and I got through guilt, and oh my God, I'm lost, but I've got nowhere to go. I've got no one to reach out to. I don't have a phone, I don't have a car, I ain't got a friend. Well, going through that, those sleepless nights, and going, when is this gonna end? And going

• 56:35Speaker 02

  through, well, all right, McConaughey, what are we gonna forgive, and what are we gonna say enough's a fuck enough? And we're changing that in our lives. And let's shake hands on this, because you're the only son of a bitch I can't get rid of.

• 56:49Tim Ferriss?

  Well, let's, if you don't mind, I want to take it, and this is just the nature of my perhaps unfocused, perhaps nonlinear mind. We're gonna come back to the art of running downhill. I will not forget. But you're talking about, you were talking about the paying dependence of spending time with yourself, the red light of solitude that can create green lights. Why did you write this book, as I understand it, or you went away to the desert by yourself for 52 days without electricity? Is this true?

• 57:24Speaker 02

  The first 12 days were no electricity. The other 40 were limited electricity in places. But it was five different trips I took to solitary confinement each time. So I spread about it. I had to come home and take care of some honeydews and check in with the family, make sure everything was running good at the homestead before my wife. Sit me off again and said, get out of here and don't come back till you got something.

• 57:44Tim Ferriss?

  So solitude seems to be also a through line, at least a practice of sorts.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:49Tim Ferriss?

  Any other commentary on solitude and in those moments when you're spending time with yourself, which I guess is all the time, but I want to know, do you have in your inner monologue, a difference between when you say your last name to yourself and your first name? Or do you ever use your first name when you're talking to yourself?

• 58:10Speaker 02

  I know. You know what? Good question.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  Well, let me tell you what the best, the best thing for Mike Tyson in the future is what Mike Tyson wants to is yeah, I, I've thought about that. It's a fun thing to talk, talk about to yourself in the third person, but when you're in a Socratic dialogue, you gotta give your other self your name. And I guess I'll call mine McConaughey.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  I'll call myself McConaughey. And I, and you know, these dialogues, let's talk about those. You know, this, the, that old adage, oh, don't talk to yourself. What? Bullshit. Do talk to yourself. What I think we need to remember to do is when we're asking ourselves these questions, just make sure we answer. If all we're doing is asking ourselves questions, but never coming up with an answer, well, that can lead to some very imbalanced insanity at times.

• 59:03Tim Ferriss?

  That's a really, really important point. I just want to pause to let that sink in for people. So, so please continue, but that is so, so important. Just looking back at my depressive periods that I've experienced, it's when I'm asking a lot of questions and not actually taking the time to sit down and write down the answers or think about the answers.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or force yourself to remain in the discomfort of the questions instead of going, I, I give, huh, where's the bottle? Or where's, you know, where's some attention? Or, or, or, you know, where's, where, where's something, some entertainment? Where's the TV? You know what I mean? So I can get my mind off of it. Don't abort the situation. Don't abort the times when we got the questions. Now, mind you, you know, I've had to, you know, in some of those times when I'm going off and I know it's gonna be a, we're gonna, I'm gonna, don't know how long it's gonna be till I come out the other side. I've had to take a helmet and a chin strap and a mouthguard and put padding on the walls. You know, because

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  I knew it was gonna be a wrestling match with the me and the me. Um, so, and I've checked the floor before I go. It's nice when you go off to do these things to go, let's check the floor, make sure there's no broken glass, where, let's remove the sharp objects.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  Because this is gonna get four dimensional and uh,

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  You know, so, but to stick in there with it and to go through the withdrawal of the not knowing, to go through the draw of the questions, and I don't mean withdrawal from a substance, go through withdrawal of not getting along with yourself is, I mean, a great thing to do, and it's hard for a reason. But again, that goes back to what you said, stay there till you answer it. Wait till you get an answer. Wait till you either figure out what you're forgiving and figure out what you're gonna, what you've had enough of, what you're like, no, no, I'm not putting up with that part of myself anymore. We're not gonna keep being a repeat offender on that. McConaughey, or Tim, you know what I mean? And we're gonna change that. And then all of a sudden, there comes some grace. You come out the other side and go, okay, now I'm stuck with my buddy, the one I can't get rid of. If we're

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  gonna do this, at least we shook hands and you're not perfect, but we're moving forward and we've evolved a little bit because of this time that we forced to spend with ourselves. But yeah, to answer those or stick with it, or, you know, to evolve the conversation from where it was when you first went into solitude, at least, you know. So I'm a fan of people talking to themselves and say, remember to answer yourself, you know, you know, don't just have it a one way. It's not a Socratic dialogue unless you can respond.

• 1:01:42Tim Ferriss?

  The art of running downhill. What is the art of running downhill?

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  Okay. So, I get successful. I got major fame very quickly after A Time to Kill came out, the film I did in 96. And I mean, from the Friday, Friday afternoon before it came out to the Monday after the weekend it came out, my whole world was whoop, inverted. The world all of a sudden was one big mirror. I never meet strangers since that day. It was inverted. I mean, that Friday afternoon before Time to Kill comes out, there's a hundred scripts out there. I wanna do, I wanna do all, are you kidding me? I'll do any of them.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  Well, 99, no, you can't. One of them, yes, you can. Well, in a matter of two days, after that film opened that weekend and did well, that hundred scripts, it was yes, you can do 99, one, no. So I was like, whoa, two days ago, I would have done any of these and could only do one. And now, it's only two days later, but you're telling me I can do 99 of them. Help me discernment, discrimination, can I make a choice? Who am I? Geez, what I want to do? There's only 24 hours in the day, is last I checked. I need more. Um, so I was a little, you know, imbalanced, overwhelmed, um, didn't have my feet, my soul on the ground. And there were times that, and also remember that same lawyer I talked about in the oil and mink story,

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  Jerry Harris, I remember him telling me, he reached out, I hadn't talked to him for years. He reached out and he goes, hey, Matthew, you're from a small town, you're out in Texas. You know, you came in through Longview, Texas. Now you went out there, now you're a famous Hollywood star and you got all these things. He goes, make sure you don't suffer too much from the non-deserving complex. That happens with some people that get real successful from sort of humble beginnings. And it made a lot of sense to me because I was noticing

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  that, you know, in the name of obstacles being the way, I was creating obstacles for myself, some of them very unnecessary. Meaning here's my life, I'm successful, I'm rolling, I am catching green lights, I am going, I'm rolling downhill. I very less than gracefully handled some of my success. I would become belligerent at times, I didn't become belligerent. Trying to, you know, at the end of the day, I always say this, don't, you know, it's okay to have a point to prove, just don't always be trying to prove a point. Well, I had many times where I would try to prove a point. You know what I mean? And it was my own insecurity, it was my own self trying to find some balance in this.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  It was me, I was seeing the mendacities of, of all these people in Hollywood, all of a sudden saying, I love you. And I'm like, man, I've said that to four people in my life. And everyone says it out here, so they're, they're full of shit. It was, I was taking things personally even and sort of sabotaging some of the, uh, red carpet wine and caviar that was being handed to me. You know what I mean?

• 1:04:53Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  And I was slipping to some of my more banal self at times. And doing a proverbial face plant. Meaning I'm running downhill. And since this is all easy street, I need resistance. So I think I'm going to trip myself and face plant and break my, right into the concrete. So I can break my nose so I can be like, ah, there I go. Now I'm earning it. Now I feel it. Now I've earned it. Now I deserve it. Well, that can be a little foolish. There's an art to going downhill. And so what I noticed was, oh, hard times are going to come. It's going to get dry. You're not going to be able to do whatever script you want to do.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  I've had hard times or in a relationship we go through. It doesn't go well. Or someone gets sick in the family. A real uphill battle enters our life. And so the art of running downhill is about, hey, enjoy it. When you're going downwind downhill, don't trip yourself because that uphill's coming. All right, it's going to be, it's going to come whether you want it to or not. So don't trip yourself and face plant right now because you're going to have to work your ass off here very shortly anyway.

• 1:06:06Tim Ferriss?

  Let's talk about perhaps an uphill, perhaps a pause, perhaps something else, which I'd love for you to comment on, which did come later. And that was a decision which I'd love to explore, to say no to quite a lot of opportunities for a period of time. It seems like at one point you were very successful. You became very famous, like you said, practically overnight. You're being offered opportunities you couldn't have imagined a week prior. And you have a string of successes and then you realize, well, wait a minute here. I might be getting painted into a corner and you start to say no.

• 1:06:48Tim Ferriss?

  You start to turn down, say, action film opportunities with big paychecks, things like that.

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:54Tim Ferriss?

  Was that hard to do? Did other people say that you were doing the right thing and encourage you? Could you walk us through and just tell a story about that experience?

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, love to. So this is around, I don't remember the year, I'm guessing it's around 12, 13 years ago. I was rolling with the romantic comedies. I had taken the baton from Hugh Grant and was the male lead rom com go to guy. Rom coms are mid level budgets, 30, 35 million. They offer a good front end paycheck to me. They go make 60 million. I mean, the studios don't have to overspend and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make them. You get a good female and a male lead that have good chemistry. People love to go escape to them. My rom coms are doing well. They were my bank. They were what Hollywood banked on me to be in. At the same time, I'm living in Malibu, learning to surf, got my shirt off, and the

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  pop right to your Discovery Channel is like almost documenting this. And I'm like, you're damn right, document it. This is the life I'm living. I love it. I worked and earned to get this life. And those romantic comedies that I get paid so handsomely for actually pay the rent at the house on the beach that I live in, in front of this water that I'm surfing it. So I was full on shaking hands with gun. Yes. At the same time, I did notice that any other dramas I wanted to do, or even the way people sort of, when I said don't meet strangers anymore, even way this sort of people thought of me or approached me or talked to me or about me, there was no considerate. It was, it was, it was like,

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  I kinda is the shirt and rom com guy. And I was like, yeah, I am. And I'm, but there only I could answer that second question of, and I'm, only I could continue that, that sentence. No one else could. They were like Hollywood for sure. It's like, no, nothing else. And so any dramas I wanted to do or other pictures, no one wanted to make them with me. And I remember I just, we had just had Levi, Camilla and I just had our first son. And my life was so vital. Man, I just had a newborn. I've met the woman that I love and want to spend the rest of my life with. I'm laughing harder. I'm crying harder.

• 1:09:10Speaker 02

  I'm happier than ever. Life is very vital and I'm in it. My real life is.

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  But my work feels like, eh, yeah, I could do that tomorrow morning. Just give me the script tonight, let me look at it, I could do it tomorrow morning. It wasn't really challenging me. And the rom coms weren't challenging me. And my lifestyle was one big green light. And, you know, too many, it's all green lights. It's all sugar and candy. Well, we can, they'll make Tyra and Tyra to anybody. So I was saying, oh, I really want my, I wish my work could, I remember saying this. At least, I remember looking in the mirror, actually, and going, okay, McConaughey. So if your life is more vital and true to who you are than your work, well, if it's gotta be one or the other, that's a good thing because I know a lot of people that their work is more vital than their life. So I said, that's a good thing.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  I said, but jeez, could I just get some work that might challenge the vitality of my life and the man I am in it? Where I can get some work where I can be more me in it? Well, those roles were not being offered to me. Nothing. Nope, not a chance. We won't, no studio will bank you in this drama role or this other role you want. I had control of Dallas Buyers Club at that time, but no one wanted to make it for me, nor did anyone finance it. So I decided that if I couldn't do what I wanted to do, and what I wanted to do was not being offered to me, it would be prudent for me to just stop doing what I had been doing and what was in the pipeline continually coming to me, which were the romantic comedies.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  I called my money manager, said, all right, look, I'm gonna stop doing the only work I'm getting offered, and I don't know how long it's gonna be till I work again. How am I doing with my money? He says, you've invested well, conservatively, you're fine. You can take time off. I remember calling my agent, Jim Toth, at C A. Jim, I don't wanna do romantic comedies anymore. I remember this conversation. He goes, great. And I go, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean, great? He goes, great? And I go, how do you say that so quick? What are you gonna say Monday morning when you go into your superiors in the office and say, McConaughey's not doing romantic comedies? And McConaughey's been bringing a nice chunk of 10% commission into you guys with these romantic comedies for years now? And he said the coolest thing to me. He goes, I don't work for them, I work for you. Hi, that's a good line. That's a good line, right?

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  So then it was, I went to Camilla, my wife. And I'd been, you know, I'd shed quite a few tears with her going through this. You know, am I feeling fraudulent in my work? Uh, do I feel a lack of significance in my work? Do I feel like, you know, uh, is it okay to be feeling, you know, this? I mean, like I said, remember I'm, as we said earlier, I'm, I'm kind of going running downhill. Why would you sabotage not doing the work you're getting offered? But you can get paid so handsomely to do it. But she understood that I, that my soul was shaken and needed some recalibration. And that the work I was doing wasn't a true sort of expression of who I was in my life. And I was, I told her, I said, I want to get, find, hold out for some work that can challenge

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  the vitality of the life that I'm living with you and our son Levi. And she repeated the lines to me. She goes, okay, you're gonna get wobbly. I've been around you. You gotta work, Matthew, and you love to accomplish. You're gonna get wobbly. You might start, you know, reaching for a little sip of something to drink earlier in the day too. And I'm like, yeah, yeah. And she's like, she goes, days are gonna be longer. We don't know how long this will last. How long will be in this? She called it a desert. How long this will be a desert? She goes, but if we're gonna do this, if you're gonna do this, we're not gonna half ass it. She repeated my dad's line to me. And I went, yes, ma'am. Gave her a hug, put some tears on her shoulder. And we said, starting today, no more rom coms.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  Well, rom com offers came in to my agent for about the next six months, but nothing but rom com offers. And I didn't even, unless it was a major offer, uh, yeah, well, I just said, no. And they just stopped at my agent's desk, Jim Todd, no. And then one of them came through that was like a gargantuan offer for it. And my agent said, it's a pretty damn good script too. And so I said, well, send it out. Let me read it.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  And I remember this, the offer was like for eight million dollars and the script is pretty good, but it was still a sort of a rom com. And I remember reading it and going, no, thank you. And I remember feeling sort of emboldened and strengthened by saying, no, thank you. Great. Sticking to my guns. No rom coms. Six months into this drought. No, not caving in now. Don't half ass him. So they come back with a $10 million offer. No, thank you. They come back with a 12.5 million dollar offer. Now I go, dot, dot, dot, ellipses, ellipses. Nah, no, thank you. Now they come back with a 15 million dollar

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  offer. Wow. You know what? Let me have another reread of that script.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  And I reread that script. And you know what? At 15 million dollars, the same script that I've been offered for eight million dollars, the 15 million dollar offer script, which was the same exact words as the eight million dollar offer script, the 15 million dollar script was better. It was funnier.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  It had possibilities. It had angles. I had ideas. I could make this work. You know, I mean, this could work.

• 1:14:41Tim Ferriss?

  Now I'm imagining at this point, Jim is like, man, this saying no thing is really working out.

• 1:14:48Speaker 02

  He's in and he's over there teetering like, I know what we said, you know, but 15 million dollars and it's not like it's a pretty good script. I know it's a rom com. It's a pretty good script, but I said, uh, no, no, thank you. Well, that got the signal across Hollywood that McConaughey was taking a serious sabbatical. And so don't even send him a rom com. It got around.

• 1:15:15Tim Ferriss?

  So that was kind of the crucible then. I mean, that was like the crux move in a sense.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  In a way, that was, that was a, yeah, I called an audible six months in and had him thinking I might cave. I might just be posturing and come on back, McConaughey, we love you. And I said, no. And when they had pumped the money offer up so much and people knew in the industry what that offer was, it became very clear. Oh, oh shit. Okay. McConaughey, I don't know what he's doing, but he ain't doing this stuff. He's not doing any more rom coms. And it became clear. So for the next two, 12.

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  14 months, nothing came in, nada, zilch, not an offer for anything. I mean, I check, talk to my agent every couple of weeks, it'd just be like, nothing came in, nothing. So now we're 20 months into this desert period. I do have my son to raise, which, you know, being a father has always been the most important thing to me. So that, that's got my compass at least directed in a place that I, I go just trust in this. If you, if it has something to do with raising your son and being here on the land with your family, that even if you start to wander, just trust that that's always going to be in the asset section, McConaughey. You, you can't go wrong with that. So I stuck to that. And I was now fine with not doing any work. I didn't know what

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  I was going to be, didn't know if I was going to change my career, if I was going to become a teacher, a coach, or go back to being a lawyer. I didn't know, I didn't think so, but I was writing more. I was talking about forced winters. I had put a forced winter on myself. And I was pretty content. I wasn't, you know, waking up every morning going, did an offer come in? Did something new come in? I was past that. And then all of a sudden, 20 months in, 20, 21 months into this desert, I guess I started getting some offers that are interesting things. William Friedkin, Killer Joe, Lee Daniels, Paperboy, Jeff Nichols wrote mud for me, Steven Soderbergh called, Magic Mike, Richard Linklater and I go do

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  Bernie together. True Detective comes around. All of a sudden, Dallas Buyers Club. No one still wants to, you know, put a bunch of money up for a 1980s period drama about AIDS, but all of a sudden, McConaughey, all the directors were, no directors would do Dallas Buyers Club with me. They wanted, they wanted the script, they loved the script, they didn't want to do it with McConaughey. All of a sudden, we find Jean-Marc Felle, who wants, who says, no, I'd like to do it with McConaughey. So what happened was that 22 months, or that drought, that desert, I unbranded. I didn't rebrand, I unbranded. Me being away, me being in Texas, not being on a beach.

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  Getting pictures of me shirtless on a beach, not being in rom coms. I was out of the world's view. I was out of the industry's view. I was not in your living room. I was not in your theater. I was not in any of the places that the world had become expectant to see me and how to see me. Where was I? I was gone. Where is McConaughey? Well, you're gone long enough. All of a sudden, I became a new good idea.

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  Which I was not a new good idea. At any time earlier than that, at the end of that 20 month period. And then all of a sudden, the things came to me that I wanted to do. And I remember saying, you know what? Fuck the bucks. I'm going for the experience. If I read a role that shakes me in my boots and challenges the vitality that I feel in my own real life and challenges me the man I am in my own real life, that's what I'm going after. And man, they came in. Come in, I looked at each other, shed some more tears and she, we said, let's get after it. And I just started hammering them. The family came with me everywhere I went and just started laying down work that really, really turned me on.

• 1:19:09Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to dig into a few follow up questions here. So, so your wife, probably with some sage foresight, although I'm guessing, said, you're gonna get wobbly. Days are gonna seem longer. You might reach for that bottle a little earlier than you would normally. What were some of your practices or some of the inputs that helped you to either stave off getting wobbly or to recover when you did get wobbly?

• 1:19:35Speaker 02

  Good question. Look, my family, me and my mom, my brothers, supported me. They thought I was plum crazy for, you know, turning down that $15 million offer and sitting there going like, what are you doing? They thought I really was face planting while running, while having a downhill ramp to run down. They were like, what, who in their right mind would, you're not working. Do you like that? I was like, yeah, that works easy. I like it. And they're offering you, what, what the hell is your problem? But they knew. You know, they knew that I was like. You know, that I was a thinker. They've known that since long before that, that I took myself, you know, in those circumstances seriously. And then I was doing some soul searching and that and and they thought they they were like, that makes sense to us, but

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  we get it, little brother. You know, you're you're all right. Good luck. So they did support me. I'll say this, this this helped. We had a very real crisis in the family with someone in my family that needed all of my attention and all of my time, meaning one of those real red lights that entered our life, a real crisis that a real uphill battle entered, which gave me a large sense of purpose, necessary purpose. Like, it's not one. It's one of those unequivocal things you don't question. It's like if I had gotten any job I wanted in Hollywood of a script to go act at that time, even then, I wouldn't have done it during going through this family crisis. This was paramount. It was unequivocally

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  the thing to take care of. So, as you probably know, the death of someone in a family or a big family, a real family crisis, that that'll sober you up. And I don't mean sober you up from the bottle. That'll sober you up from missing any sort of, again, the scripts at that time, movies, making movies, that was a mortal thing. Dealing with this family crisis was an immortal thing. So I became very involved with handling this family crisis. And that is where my identity was. That coupled with my son's being raised. He's a brand new day for him every single day. He's getting to know me. How awesome is this that I get

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  to have this time? Because I know I'll go back and do some work somewhere somehow later, and it's not gonna not gonna have this time. So let's lean into the assets of being forced here with your son. You're building a home with a woman you love, and you've got this family crisis that you're dealing with, which is bringing you close to your closer back, even closer to your blood family. So I was finding purpose in in all of that. And, you know, as it usually happens, as it was getting to the point where, well, I don't care if anything comes in, I'm not even thinking about it. If any work comes in.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  I don't really care. Of course, that's about the time that the work comes in.

• 1:22:27Tim Ferriss?

  You've traveled a very unorthodox path in many respects. What are some of the biggest misconceptions, if any? What are common misconceptions about you that you hope or that you could clarify either right now or through the pages of this book? Are there any misconceptions, positive or negative?

• 1:22:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, look, one misconception, I think, which it used to concern me more so than it does now, is that, I mean, a lot of people think that I sort of like just wake up in the morning and go, roll out of bed and say, "All right, where's my mark? What are we doing today? What's this scene about? What's life about? What's the responsibility here today? What is, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah." A lot of people just think I just wing it.

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  And the truth is, like I was telling you earlier about me being a studier and loving my eyes, I am a preparer. That's, I know a lot of my success and satisfaction has come from being majorly prepared. And when I'm majorly prepared, I prepare so it's not work when I get in the game. I prepare. So that's the work. My work is pre-game. When I'm in the game, I am. When I'm best at being in the game, I am that guy that looks like I just woke up in the morning and just, "Hey, what's up?" To make it look easy comes from the preparation. So I'm daily prepared, whether it's work or trying

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  to be the best man I can, or be the best husband, or the best father. I'm constantly trying to work on that. You know, I have the saying with, you know, and you're reading the story of my mom and dad had a very physical and oftentimes violent, loud relationship. Hence, divorced twice, married three times. Me? I don't remember the last time I raised my voice to my wife or kids because for me, if I even get to the point where I have to raise my voice or I get, you know, start to feel like I'm gonna snap, I immediately, my threshold goes to, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what did you not handle up to this point, McConaughey, to let it get to this?

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  There's, you, you left some crumbs somewhere in your position as a husband, a father, or a man, to get to this point. So, let's not stop, let's go back and deconstruct how we got to this point to even feel like this, because you, you dropped the ball somewhere along the way to even this feeling. And I have a pretty short threshold for that feeling of whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let me recalibrate, let me, let me, let me take some stock in how I got to this point, because I'm feeling like I'm about to snap, or I'm feeling like I'm even gonna raise my voice. So, you know, that's some recalibrations that I inherently and instinctually, I don't know if I say I practice them, but I, I just, that's where my head and, head and heart goes. Does that answer your question?

• 1:25:33Tim Ferriss?

  It does, it does. I think that, that, you know, one of the sort of Gestalt impressions of the book, which is, I mean, really, really fun and very delightful. I mean, so congratulations on the book. It's not easy to do. And, and the Gestalt impression is that you take introspection, and, and maybe this isn't the right way to phrase it, but you take introspection seriously, and you practiced a lot of introspection. So, you've been able to take these moments that otherwise might be lost in the slipstream, those moments of success where things seem to be going well, the, the lows, and you've trapped them like flies in the amber, so

• 1:26:15Tim Ferriss?

  that you can look at them later, and even look at them like a flip book, so you can see the trends that take you in one direction or another. And I, and then that is, that is not common. So, I, I'd like to just ask one or two more questions.

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  That's, yeah, that, that, I mean, I'm trying to get what I think we're all trying to get, which I actually, and let's talk about this, because I do think it's common, that we all want more ROI. Yes, on ourselves, on ourselves. And is there any less boring or vital or immediate entertaining and angering and interesting subject than us on ourselves to create? I mean, I'm trying to, I know I'll never do it, but I'm trying to find some themes that support a science to being satisfied. And, and I think we can all uncover those in our lives by our habits.

• 1:27:13Speaker 02

  Like I said earlier, looking at your diaries when you're writing a diary, when you, when things are going well, dissect success as well as failure. There become certain themes that become like, oh, it's kind of reliable. I have more satisfaction. I am more me, I get more what I want. I am a better man, I'm a better woman, when I am acting and doing these things, going to these places, thinking this way, eating this, spending time with these peoples, thinking these thoughts. There's a science to it. I don't think I'll ever get it, but man, what, it's incredibly fun. Maddening, but what a riddle.

• 1:27:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:49Speaker 02

  To keep trying to figure out that will be never ending.

• 1:27:52Tim Ferriss?

  Right. It's like keeping track of plays in the game of life. I mean, it's, you have, you have to have the ability to look back at it. So, so if you were to have a billboard, metaphorically speaking, to get a message, a question, an image, anything out to billions of people, could have a paragraph, could be a word, anything non-commercial, what might you put on that billboard?

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  Ah, great question. And I, and it's, it's one that when I, I like to say, I think about all the time because I do have a marketeering mind. It'd be two words with a question mark behind them. I value, question mark. Tim, I, I don't know how to make systemic change. I don't, not that interested in politics. Seems, doesn't seem like the right, I don't know, category maybe for the kind of leadership that I want to listen to, or in some way, in some forms, be myself. It seems to me that, that the common denominator, or the bipartisan, non-denominational solid stepping stones for us to evolve as a species, as a nation, and as individuals.

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  Is based in values. They're fundamental principles that we can all agree on. I don't care what side of politics you're on, or what religion you are, but what do we value? What do we really value? We all want to be relevant. Well, let's ask relevant for what? Yeah. Before we say I want to be relevant, let's, let's, let's, and what are those values that we can go, oh, that's, yeah, if I act that way, if I'm kind in that way, if I'm accountable in that way, if I have a sense of humor in that way, how does that a very selfish act? Cause it's good for me. Good for my ego. Fills me up, pays me back, gives me mailbox money, gives me green light in my future, but it also gives you mailbox

• 1:29:44Speaker 02

  money. Gives you, it gives other people, it gives others residuals and our future's compounding asset. And I think we just, we, we need to work on or and have fun understanding that, that the things we do today, the choices we make are compounding assets to what, where we go in the future. And if we have, make more valuable choices and give more respect to the competence of values, our own personal values, we're buying more ROI, we're creating more green lights in the future for ourselves and others.

• 1:30:22Tim Ferriss?

  I value, question mark, very important statement right there. And question. And I agree with you about the values and the also for what, right? The, the relevant for what? It's such an important focusing modifier to adjectives that get thrown around very commonly. And

• 1:30:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know that there's another line in there that I have, it's based off that jeans being pressed story, is when we can, ask ourselves if we want to, before we do.

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  That goes along with, "Yeah, I want to be relevant." Well, wait, relevant for what? You know what I mean? It's just because we can. And maybe we're in a position, getting in a position of influence, where you get an option put in front of us that we never had before. You know, like I said, time to kill. Ninety-nine scripts I couldn't do yesterday, and now today you're telling me I can do all of them? What? Well, let's be discerning and ask ourselves, "Do I really want to do that?" I know it's the first time I have the ability to, or the first time it's been laid in front of me that I have the option to do that. And I'm sure I'm happy about that. But before I do it, let me ask myself, wait, do I really want to? You know, for me, the story about having my jeans pressed, I was so damn happy. I had a housekeeper for the first time, and she pressed my jeans. I was like, "Wow, look at that." And then I had a friend tell me, "Well, that's great if you like your jeans pressed."

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  And immediately I went, "Oh, shit. I don't like jeans pressed."

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  And ask ourselves if we want to before we do. And yes, we seek relevance, but let's ask, "Relevance for what?"

• 1:31:58Tim Ferriss?

  Matthew, you are one hell of a storyteller. You're a fun guy to talk to. At some point, maybe separately, I'll ask you about what they put in the groundwater in Texas for this storytelling.

• 1:32:13Tim Ferriss?

  Because you, Mary, Karr, I don't know what it is, but that's another conversation for another day. Your book's official website is greenlights.com. Very easy for people to remember. On Facebook, you are Matthew McConaughey. Instagram, official McConaughey. Twitter, @McConaughey. And I will include links to everything in the show notes for people, at tim.blog/podcast, so they can find everything that we've talked about. Is there anything else that you would like to say, share, ask, recommend with those people listening before we come to a close?

• 1:32:51Speaker 02

  Sure, this came from a conversation Richard Linklater and I were having some years ago. And it came out of just a verbal ping pong that we did. But what I think is we all should could use right now, and I need to remind myself of it daily, especially in these times where, look, it's tough in ways that for ourselves that we understand some of this we don't understand, but it's tough in ways for for everybody in ways that maybe even they don't understand and we probably don't. So everyone can use a little bit of amnesty right now. And what I mean by that is this, if you're not sure how to respond to a situation, can you just make sense of humor the default emotion? Can we just have a little more humor and give each other a bit of a break right now? It's tough times.

• 1:33:36Speaker 02

  Let's be for each other right now instead of against each other. And sense of humor does not, it does not get rid of the truth, does not get rid of the problem, does not get rid of the challenge. It actually reveals it sometimes in the most truthful ways. But we can laugh, to have some humor through the tears and humor through the pain and not laugh at someone else's expense, laugh at our expense, all of our, the human existence's expense. Man, we're doing the best we can. And if we're not, we're, let's help somebody try to.

• 1:34:05Tim Ferriss?

  Here, here. Well, thank you so much, Matthew. This was, uh, this was an incredibly enjoyable conversation and-

• 1:34:13Speaker 02

  Super fun for me, Tim. I really enjoyed it and love to do it anytime.

• 1:34:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, so I would love to do a round two sometime, maybe, uh, maybe when we're in proximity in Austin, we can do a 20-foot social distance, so TBD. But your first book, Green Lights, is so unexpected. It is so fun. It is a romp through your mind, a romp through the turns and twists and learnings of someone who's had an unorthodox path. And on top of that, documented so much for decades. Uh, it's, it's, it's a rare combination, so I encourage people to check it out. And for everybody listening, we'll have notes to all things we've discussed in the show notes, tinoplog slash podcast. And until next time, thank you for tuning in.

• 1:35:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:35:42Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out. And just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Magic Spoon. Magic Spoon is a brand new cereal that I eat just about every day. That is low carb, high protein, and zero sugar. I just ate a huge bowl of their cocoa flavor about an hour ago after a short workout. Magic Spoon cereal has received a lot of attention since launching last year. Time Magazine included it in their list of best inventions of 2019. And Forbes called it "the future of cereal."

• 1:36:26Tim Ferriss?

  It tastes just like your favorite sugary cereal from childhood, remember that? But it's actually good for you. Each serving has 11 grams of protein, 3 grams of net carbs, 0 grams of sugar, and only 110 calories. It's also gluten-free, grain-free, keto-friendly, soy-free, and GMO-free. All the things. It's delicious. And I don't say that lightly because most of this healthy version of X stuff is not delicious. But these guys really nail it. Magic Spoon has nailed it. It comes in your favorite traditional cereal flavors like cocoa, frosted, and blueberry. You can try them all by grabbing a variety pack at magic spoon.com/tim. Or you can just grab a box or a bunch of boxes. I'm gonna order some more today of the cocoa, which is my personal favorite. But there's a new...

• 1:37:09Tim Ferriss?

  Contender for favorite flavor because they just launched two limited edition flavors, Honey Nut and Peanut Butter, which are delicious. I am a sucker for peanut butter and it is outstanding. So I think cocoa and peanut butter are my two new favorite flavors. And fun fact, my friends are also obsessed with Magic Spoon. One of the podcast's most popular guests, Dr. Peter Attia routinely crushes six to seven servings at a time, that's a lot, with no glycemic response. He's looked at this with a glucometer. He likes it so much, he invested. Other friends, two very fine gentlemen and also past podcast guests, Kevin Rose and Ryan Holiday, also invested. So check it out, see what the buzz is about. Go to magic spoon.com/tim and grab a variety

• 1:37:53Tim Ferriss?

  pack of cocoa, which is my favorite, or anything else, but see what strikes your fancy. Why not? Try a variety pack and be sure to use code TIM at checkout. My listeners, that's you. Get free shipping and a 100% happiness guarantee. So if you're not a fan, if you don't love it, they'll give you a full refund, no questions asked. Again, check it out, magic spoon.com/tim. That's magic spoon.com/tim. Take a look.

• 1:38:20Tim Ferriss?

  This podcast episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Sleep is super important to me. In the last few years, I've come to conclude it is the end all be all, that all good things, good mood, good performance, good everything, seem to stem from good sleep. So I've tried a lot to optimize it. I've tried pills and potions, all sorts of different mattresses, you name it. And for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I also have one in the guest bedroom and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. It's something that they comment on. Helix Sleep has a quiz, takes about two minutes to complete, that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress

• 1:39:00Tim Ferriss?

  for you. With Helix, there's a specific mattress for each and every body. That is your body, also your taste. So let's say you sleep on your side and like a super soft bed, no problem. Or if you're a back sleeper who likes a mattress that's as firm as a rock, they've got a mattress for you too. Helix was selected as the number one best overall. mattress pick of 2020 by GQ Magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. Just go to helixsleep.com/tim, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. They have a 10-year warranty. You get to try it out for 100 nights, risk-free. They'll even pick it up from you if you don't love it. And now, my dear listeners, Helix is offering up to $200 off of all mattress orders

• 1:39:44Tim Ferriss?

  and two free pillows at helixsleep.com/tim. These are not cheap pillows either, so getting two for free is an upgraded deal. So that's up to $200 off and two free pillows at helixsleep.com/tim. That's H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim, for up to $200 off. So, check it out one more time. Helix, H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim.