1022 Matthew McConaughey: Keys to Success, Making it in Hollywood & Mastering Yourself

“Are you putting out something today, in your resumé of life, that is going to write your eulogy after you’re gone, which is going to introduce you forever?”On the podcast today is Academy Award winning Best Actor, Matthew McConaughey. In this wide-ranging conversation, Lewis and Matthew discuss the relationship between freedom and responsibility, how to deal with negative feedback, why we resist discomfort, some of the stories in his new book “Greenlights,” and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1022Check out Matthew McConaughey’s new book: www.greenlights.com Kobe Bryant on Mamba Mentality, NBA Titles, and Oscars: https://link.chtbl.com/691-podKevin Hart Breaks Down His Secrets to Success: https://link.chtbl.com/956-podKatherine Schwarzenegger Pratt on the Power of Forgiveness: https://link.chtbl.com/925-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  Your hero is your 10 year self in the future. I'm curious, if you could put yourself 10 years from now, 60, because you just turned 50, what would your hero at 60 say about who you are today?

• 0:12Matthew McConaughey?

  Wow, yeah, it's a great question and one I think we should all ask ourselves. Have I had that great sit down with our future self? Um, I think you'd say.

• 0:24Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:48Lewis Howes?

  Gandhi once said, "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." And Denzel Washington said, "Goals on the road to achievement cannot be achieved without discipline and consistency." I am so excited about this conversation today. I just had Matthew McConaughey on and we went there. We opened up in a big way and he is no stranger to achievement and discipline. He is one of the most well-known and accomplished actors in the world today and continues to find his voice through even more mediums. Academy Award winning best actor Matthew McConaughey shares some of the wisdom in his new book, Green Lights, and he opens up about his past.

• 1:31Lewis Howes?

  And I had such a great time talking with Matthew and I can't wait for you to hear everything he has to say. In this episode, we discuss the relationship between responsibility and freedom, how to deal with negative feedback, what you want versus what you need, and why they're not as different as you might think. How Matthew broke out of the rom-com box that Hollywood tried to force him into. This was crazy story about how much money he turned down in order to get into the roles that he truly wanted next for himself. Why you should think more about the comments you make online and the legacy that you leave behind. How to avoid self-satisfaction.

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  In times of great success, why we resist discomfort and so much more. I'm telling you, this is one of my favorite episodes we've done on the School of Greatness. Make sure to share this with someone you think will be inspired as well. Just send them the link lewishouse.com/1022 or copy and paste the link wherever you're listening to this on any podcast platform online. And also, if this is your first time here, click the subscribe button to the School of Greatness over on Apple Podcasts as well as leaving us a rating and review to help us spread the message of greatness to more people. Okay, after this quick message, the one, the only,

• 2:48Lewis Howes?

  Matthew McConaughey. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. I'm so excited. We have the iconic Matthew McConaughey in the house. My man, thank you so much for being here.

• 3:01Matthew McConaughey?

  How are we doing, Les? Good to be here, bud.

• 3:03Lewis Howes?

  Man, I've read your book, man, and it was hard. I'll tell you what, I'm dyslexic, so it's hard for me to get into a book and finish a book, but the way you tell stories is truly captivating. So, congrats on this book. So inspiring. There was a point in the book where you said that your first exchange student family asked you to call them mom and pop, I think it was, mom and dad. And you said no, which was, I guess, challenging moment where you had to kind of stand up for what you wanted. But why do you feel like values are so important for you? And what did that lesson in that moment, kind of standing up for your values against authority of a place that had you welcomed in, feeding you, housing you? How did you learn all that?

• 3:47Matthew McConaughey?

  Well, let me answer the, I'll come back to what I think values overall mean and how they've helped me get to where I am and go where I think we all hopefully need to go. But that story was, I was, I was in Australia for a year. Two weeks out of high school, I went over there. And for the first time, I was all alone. I was in a foreign place. I was Forced into great introspection, existential questions of, you know, who, what, where, when, why, and how. I didn't have a crutch, I didn't have my car, I didn't have a girlfriend, I didn't have a job, I didn't have money, I didn't have my parents, I didn't have friends. And I was lost in trying to find a bit of a compass and an anchor.

• 4:28Matthew McConaughey?

  And some odd things were going on for me, and my relationships with some people there, where I was questioning my own sanity. And I was kinda going along with everything. And that moment where I was asked to call someone mom and pop was a seminal moment because in my chaotic life and my anarchic brain that I was living in at the time, that was the first bit of real clarity that I was like, no, that is not open for discussion. All these other odd things that have been happening to me, I've been tallying up to, oh, it must be a cultural difference, it must be a cultural difference.

• 5:08Matthew McConaughey?

  This was something that I went, culture, my backside, Ben, I don't care, place, time, whatever, that's not negotiable for me. So I said, no. And it was very clear. And it gave me clarity, it gave me some identity, and it was just an obvious thing to deny, or that I could never call someone. So, I mean, look, the values are inherent in that, but that helped me, that really helped with my sanity, to have that sort of, that sort of, something that was so clear to me that was black and white. I needed that at that time in my life. It's hard to find those things in life in general, you know, and how many times do we call, you know, the compromise a shade of gray?

• 5:52Matthew McConaughey?

  When actually, the right kind of compromise is the eye of great light and truth. At the same time, we need, we feel like we need as humans, something to grab a hold of, something to grasp hold of. It can be very good for us, it can also be very dangerous for us. Look at what's happening now in our nation. The divide is people running to the extremes because they need something to hold on to, to have an identity, to feel like they have a purpose, to have a foot on the ground, in these chaotic times we're in. But the values of family, what that means, the values of loyalty, the values of accountability, responsibility, the responsibility of freedom, the freedom of responsibility.

• 6:31Matthew McConaughey?

  Fairness, those are things that I was raised on that I've found that are never gonna go out of style. And I actually think we could all double down on them personally and as a society now.

• 6:40Lewis Howes?

  For sure. You talked about identity. Is there a moment in your, your, your life after that moment where you lost your identity? Or you felt like, I'm losing the grasp of who I am? I know you talked about in the book of like, looking yourself in the mirror a lot and asking that question of, are you happy with what you see in the mirror when you look in your eyes? Was there ever points where you lost it fully and you had to kind of re-

• 7:02Matthew McConaughey?

  I've never lost it fully. I've never lost it fully. I have a pretty good threshold and a pretty good quick trigger for if I'm not feeling fully myself, I need to go remedy it. Which may be taking a walkabout with myself with a backpack for 22 days to Peru or Africa, or, or meditating or praying, or going and sitting still for a while, or going back to what I know I can rely on, family and sitting there and clearing my head about all this other ambitions and that I may have in my head. I've never lost it fully. And if anything, I've been, it's been a nice, I would say, a good trait of mine that my trigger is very quick for if I'm starting to feel imbalanced or lack of identity, not understanding exactly who I am, my feet are maybe not on the ground,

• 7:47Matthew McConaughey?

  maybe my head and my heart and my spirit and my loins are not aligned. You know, I always like to say, let's have an autobahn. When we're, when we're really, when we're really rocking, we have an autobahn between our, our head and our heart and our spirit.

• 7:59Lewis Howes?

  Just boom.

• 8:00Matthew McConaughey?

  You know what I mean? It's the time that gets blocked and you start going, wait, it feels like, it feels like a two lane highway or maybe next time I'm down to a one lane blacktop, I need to take a minute. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta step back and clean, clean, clean it out and widen up the lanes here. Um, and get aligned again. Um, so thankfully, I've, I've had a pretty good short trigger and threshold for realizing when I'm feeling like, oh, I'm headed that way and I need to do something about it. Um, so never fully lost my identity, but have calibrated and had to recalibrate and had many, many walkabouts to go check back in with myself, let memory catch up and have a Socratic dialogue with, uh, McConaughey and, and end up forgiving stuff and then saying,

• 8:40Matthew McConaughey?

  enough's enough with this other stuff. And you're the only person that I'm stuck with McConaughey, so we better figure out how to get along.

• 8:48Lewis Howes?

  You gotta have good company with yourself. What's the thing that's been the hardest for you to forgive?

• 8:54Matthew McConaughey?

  Ooh, that's a good one. Um, I can, I can forgive-

• 9:01Matthew McConaughey?

  Others much easier than I forgive myself.

• 9:03Lewis Howes?

  So the thing with you that's been the hardest to let go of?

• 9:07Matthew McConaughey?

  Thing for me, um.

• 9:12Matthew McConaughey?

  You know, I, there's no deep dark crimes in my closet. There's no, uh.

• 9:23Matthew McConaughey?

  Real. Violence or whatever really hurt someone. I've been, I've been, I've got times where I've been ugly. And I did not know or realize at the time, especially the life that I live now in the last 25 years. That. My words coming from me with my platform and someone's perception of me can come at you in bold print. And from a large megaphone and can mean more things that I'll.

• 9:52Matthew McConaughey?

  Things that may tickle me, I've noticed can bruise others. And I bruised. Some people along the way and didn't notice it until after and didn't notice the impact it had on me. I'm like, what? Really? Oh, I thought that was, oh, so I've had, I've done that and, uh, um, I've tried to, I haven't swept everything up and made full amends. Yet, and I'm happy to say, I think it's a pretty short list. It's not a long list, but I, but I've done that and I, and I have some guilt over that and I still have some amends to make with that.

• 10:24Lewis Howes?

  Really? So you feel like you haven't fully forgive, uh, let go or, or?

• 10:28Matthew McConaughey?

  I need, I need to make amends. I've, I've, I think I've let go, but I need, I don't think I can fully let go until I make amends with them.

• 10:34Lewis Howes?

  Uh, you've forgiven yourself for what you did or how you communicated, but you haven't.

• 10:39Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Lewis Howes?

  Hey, that wasn't cool or?

• 10:41Matthew McConaughey?

  But my intent, you know, and we have to watch this, I think, a lot in life is, is what we mean to say and what's actually being received can be, there can be a gap between that.

• 10:49Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 10:49Matthew McConaughey?

  I mean, I'm all for intent. I'm, I think I write about this in the book, the words are momentary, the intent is what's momentous and, and I think we could have some more amnesty, forgiveness on this, used on this. Where the way we're attacking words and the value we're giving words these days.

• 11:05Matthew McConaughey?

  And but there's times of my intent's been misconstrued. There's times it's look at it. It happens all the time in a doggone email. If someone puts an exclamation mark. If you're having a special morning, you think they're yelling at you. But if you're not having a special morning, you think that, oh, yeah, they're really happy. So you don't get the, do you need the emoji? You know, to let you know how I'm feeling or what I really mean by it. And that gets it gets a it can some of it can you can you can miss the intent. Or or at someone at a bad time and they don't receive it how you meant to. And so I've got some amends to make with some people. In my past and I, you know, I procrastinated some of that because I know they're gonna be. I feel they're going to be long, long drawn out conversations. I may be wrong. They may be like three minutes. The person may go, oh, dude, I forgave you that a long time ago. I forgave you that.

• 11:49Lewis Howes?

  Isn't there a chapter in your book about taking hills?

• 11:53Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah.

• 11:53Lewis Howes?

  Climbing hills?

• 11:54Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah.

• 11:55Lewis Howes?

  Would that be a hill for you to climb, which is like doing the hard thing? And and addressing the thing that's gonna take a long time or it's not gonna be uncomfortable?

• 12:04Matthew McConaughey?

  Well, there's climbing hills and there's also it's about the not handling the no's. Or the crises in life, if we handle the no's, they're they're actually more important than even handling the yeses sometimes. Meaning. I've always tried to practice if I get offered. Um, a script, say, for a movie and I form a relationship with so said director or producer. And then it comes a time, you know, I'm I'm I'm got five scripts, maybe I'm I'm working on. I'm formed a relationship, walking down the line forward with, say, three, four, five different directors. And gotten to know them, had a drink with them, had a meal with them, talked to them on the phone, know about the family. And there comes a time where I'm gonna have to say no to two out of those three or four of those five.

• 12:49Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:50Matthew McConaughey?

  Well, it's very easy to tell my agent to go. Just let them know.

• 12:56Matthew McConaughey?

  But I've tried to practice, I'll let them know either in person or by phone call. And those calls are hard because each one of those directors thought I was gonna be a yes. Right? And so while those calls were hard, when I hung up the phone with them, I gained more respect. They respected me more for making the hard no call. And I noticed that more and more, we realize that in life that people are big boys and girls. They kind of understand when they're told no or when someone's turned down. It's part of it. And if we realize that even if we ask the question, 50% of the answer could be a no, no matter how well this is going. And that comes and that's inherent in the request.

• 13:40Matthew McConaughey?

  The answer could be yes or no. And when we hand our nos personally by making that personal call or doing it in person, I've found that that's been an additive and compounding assets in my future.

• 13:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think we also gain confidence and belief in ourself that we can take on challenging things in the future. And we have more pride in like, hey, I did the hard thing. You know, it's kind of like this self reward of like, wow, okay, I believe in myself. I can do this. I don't need to always pass everything off to someone else.

• 14:10Matthew McConaughey?

  No, no, I mean, you know, that chapter about taking the hill, or you know, it's also about not creating false drama when it's not needed. And I see a lot of people do that and I've fallen insusceptible to it as well. The drama's gonna come. Real drama's gonna come. Someone's gonna get sick. All right. Someone's gonna get hurt. We're gonna really screw up and then have to handle it. Something's gonna happen. Or the world's COVID's gonna come. Something's gonna come that's real. And so don't look for the false drama when it's not there. And people have a habit of it. I've done it before myself. And that's sort of the inverse of take the hill and climb the hill is there's an art in running downhill,

• 14:53Matthew McConaughey?

  which I write about in the book. When things aren't going well. Don't trip yourself and face plant because because it's going too good. Don't get nervous, oh my gosh, it's going so good. No, embrace it and stay in stride. Because the uphill will be there in a minute and you'll have to break a sweat and it'll be hard again.

• 15:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, how do you, how did you not self sabotage when you were just getting hit after hit and opportunity after opportunity? And you were going downhill. Um, how, how do you not do that where you self sabotage? And what do you recommend for other people so they don't do it when the opportunities are?

• 15:27Matthew McConaughey?

  Great, great, great, great topic because I have tripped myself running downhill before. I have face planted, you know, broke my nose and to, to, to proverbially make sure I was felt. It's like you don't need to, you don't need to go that hard. You know what I mean? We don't need to draw blood, McConaughey, just to make sure we can feel. Um, so there's been times I have not been graceful when I was running downhill. Um, but I shook hands with the fact that, okay, obviously it means you give a damn. McConaughey, obviously it means you, you, you, you're trying to read through the mendacities of life. You're trying to get down to the common denominator about what really matters to you.

• 16:05Matthew McConaughey?

  You're trying to, uh, uh, uh, understand all this affluence and things coming to you that you never had yesterday. But now you have and you want 80 hours in a day, but they're still only giving 24. Um, I gotta get some discernment in here and for me, I've had to, I've been, had the ability and I have taken what I call fugamundi, a walkabout. I have taken those solo trips with myself. I have what we talked about early in the conversation, go on to a place where I could hear myself think, where I could get my head and my heart aligned. In those times of great affluence, sometimes it's all heady. And I have a, a, a piece in the book about.

• 16:49Matthew McConaughey?

  When you can, ask yourself if you want to before you do. Well, in times of great influence, we have a lot of I can in front of us.

• 16:58Lewis Howes?

  Lots of opportunity.

• 17:00Matthew McConaughey?

  And too many options can make a tyrant out of anybody.

• 17:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:03Matthew McConaughey?

  Um, so it's a very heady thing and sometimes that that's times when it's like, okay, this all makes sense in my head, but I don't really feel it inside my spirit. I don't know if it's really me, if it's really good for me, if this is going to turn me on and help BB and feed me. But geez, I mean, I've never had the option before. It sounds awesome. I mean, yes. Well, that's not a bad thing to do, but we got to check in on that because you can look up and the tank can be on, on, on, on, on reserve.

• 17:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:31Matthew McConaughey?

  Uh, when you look in the rearview mirror and go, whoa, I over leveraged myself with things that did not feed me and pay me back. And so how do we, we need to take that time to go check in. And it can be a hairy, hairy time, man, because the answers don't come quickly sometimes.

• 17:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:47Matthew McConaughey?

  And when they don't come and you're shaking monkeys off your back and you're not doing your own company and none of it makes sense. And it's all confusing and you're looking over there and you want to go, well, you want to go to entertainment or communication. You want to pick up the phone or you want to drink earlier. You know, one of those things that come up to, to, to mask that. You got to hold, try to hold back and say, no, I'm going to sit in this discomfort. This is a prudent, a pennants I am taking to get to know myself and listen to myself. And there's prudence in it.

• 18:14Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think so many people try to resist discomfort when so many great things come from being in discomfort? Why do we resist it?

• 18:22Matthew McConaughey?

  I mean, look, we all like pleasure over pain.

• 18:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:27Matthew McConaughey?

  But I think what we forget sometimes is that there's a greater pleasure that can come with going through a pain. I mean, you can have little pleasures. If you don't, I mean, I, it's, I don't see some people that are like just glide through life forever. Woo hoo. Those people are not really ambitious though, I find. They don't really, they're not really on the chasing down a better self or chasing down a higher existence or chasing down a high, a, a different truths. And I, it's admirable. It's fine. It's fine. If you can be the kingdom of your own castle and that's the world you live in and that's just how you walk and go, bravo, as long as you're not harming other people.

• 19:09Matthew McConaughey?

  But if you go through resistance and you choose resistance at the right times, um, and you go through it, you have greater, more evolved pleasure on the other side of it.

• 19:21Lewis Howes?

  So true.

• 19:22Matthew McConaughey?

  Um, responsibility and freedom, that relationship is really at the core of a lot of this.

• 19:29Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 19:29Matthew McConaughey?

  There's a responsibility to freedom and freedom in the responsibility. And the responsibility is the hard work. You know, the freedom's the Saturday, the freedom's what we want, the responsibility is what we need. Where you go through what you need and when what we want actually is what we need and what we need is actually what we want. That's the honey hole where, hey, I look, I look as good as I feel and I feel as good as I look. Ta-da. You know, where, where, where we're selfish and selfless at the same time. That's, I know what I, what I'm chasing.

• 20:04Lewis Howes?

  When we take responsibility and we have structure, which you've talked about also, uh, and, and kind of have those, not limits, but you have some structure and some boundaries, you can really be flexible and free within those boundaries. Um, which I think is powerful, but if we have no responsibility and no boundaries, it's hard to really create that.

• 20:22Matthew McConaughey?

  There's no form.

• 20:24Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 20:24Matthew McConaughey?

  It's anarchy. I mean, with, let's go, let's go all the way down to the basics, gravity. Without gravity, there's no form, you know, and with that gravity there'd just be chaos and anarchy. Um, some people do it the other way. I call this version, what you were talking about, conservative, early liberal late, meaning what are the rules of situation? Let me get my structure. Let me check my sandbox and make sure there's no glass and sharp objects in it. So I can, once I've checked all that, now I can blow in the wind and do backflips naked in the sand, in the sand, my sandbox. Or now I can get on my 16 lane highway that I've checked out. I've seen it's clean and I can swerve all through those lanes. Some people go the other way. They jump off the cliff and say, I'll figure it out on the way down.

• 21:08Matthew McConaughey?

  That's also, you, well, it's not how I choose, how I've found it works for me, but.

• 21:14Lewis Howes?

  It sounds like values are really important to you. Identity and responsibility are important to you. Why do you think? Why do you think it's so hard for the younger generation, the millennials? Why is it so hard for them to find their identity? Take responsibility and develop values? And what advice would you have for the youth on how to find all three?

• 21:35Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah, look, I'm gonna go back to a version of saying too many options can make a tyrant of any of us.

• 21:44Matthew McConaughey?

  This, look at the world that a lot of our young people are living in. We're all connected, but nobody's with each other. Their world is massive.

• 22:00Matthew McConaughey?

  They have more outreach than any of us ever have.

• 22:05Matthew McConaughey?

  But they're more isolated than ever before. So it's inevitable, human nature. Me, I'm betting you, I've got, I, I, I, I feel sound with myself. My spirit feels good. I've got three children and a, and a wife. But even I'll have a different nerd reaction if you give me a thumbs up on my comment or a thumbs down.

• 22:33Lewis Howes?

  Even you, the great Massey McConaughey.

• 22:36Matthew McConaughey?

  Even if it's just, well, wait, what was that about? Is that, you know, uh, is that, was that a constructive criticism? Or you just not like me? I, do you just, were you gonna put a thumbs down anyway? Or what was the thumbs up about? It, it can affect you. And so a lot of our youth is living in that world where their emotional feelings about themselves and their own identity is based off your reaction, strangers' reactions. Some of them which may not have even read or cared about what you were actually putting out and didn't care about the intent. And that can affect you. I'm not, and, and so I, I think we got it. There's a responsibility to that world that we, to whatever extent the millennials live in it. There needs to be, uh, they need to.

• 23:19Matthew McConaughey?

  Edit and govern back themselves with what they allow themselves to be out there, how proverbial and naked they are to like, I'm sharing it all with the world. I'm sending it out to a bunch of strangers and they're gonna come back to me and let me know who I am.

• 23:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:38Matthew McConaughey?

  Uh-uh. No. Check in and remember this, you millennials. That like, dislike, comment that you put today, that's gonna outlive you. It's immortal. It's permanent. You and I are not permanent. That comment is. Think about before you click and what you put out. Are you putting out something today that you're gonna look forward to looking back at? Are you putting out something today in your resume of life? That is going to write your eulogy after you're gone, which is gonna introduce you forever.

• 24:17Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 24:17Matthew McConaughey?

  When you're gone. Think about it.

• 24:21Lewis Howes?

  How did you, I mean, you've done, it seems like a million movies, so many big hits. But there were some that got some controversial feedback or bad reviews, right? There was different stages it had. How did you handle it as a creator, as an artist, as an actor? When you got negative reviews or when it didn't hit the expectation of the box office or whatever you guys had, how did you deal with that to say, you know what? I'm not gonna let the opinions of others bring me down.

• 24:50Matthew McConaughey?

  Well, they did bring me down sometimes, I have to admit.

• 24:54Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 24:55Matthew McConaughey?

  Uh, look, my favorite word in the, my favorite word in the world is unanimous. I know I'm never gonna get it. There's no such thing, but that's still what I'm chasing. And I know I'm never gonna get it. So I'll be underwhelmed for the rest of life. And that'll be fine if I keep enjoying the chase, right? I, I did this exercise one time. I sat down and I had my publicist gather every bad review over 20 years. Not forget the bad review. And it was a thick, it was a thick folder.

• 25:25Lewis Howes?

  It was a big book.

• 25:29Matthew McConaughey?

  In ways it was more constructive than reading the good reviews. There were some people I could read, "Oh, they already didn't like me. This review was written poorly before they even saw the movie." I could just tell. You could hear the snark in the opening comment. There were other ones that had constructive things to say. "No, McConaughey, this is what I love about you, that you do that is quintessentially you, and you didn't, I don't know who you were, who you were trying to be in this. You missed the mark. You didn't give that heart that you give, or something that you can say, I could say is essential that I can give to every role, no matter what I'm playing." So some of it was very constructive, and I went, "Mm, you're right. Mm, you're right." And had to go back, look in my diaries during those movies.

• 26:13Matthew McConaughey?

  What was I doing? What was I eating? Who was I hanging out with? Where was my mind? How was I feeling about this? Was I working hard enough? Did I prepare enough? Did I get complacent? "Ah, yeah, you did. You got complacent there. You thought you had it going." And that's kind of this, that's actually the scene that this critic's pulling out, saying, "You know, you lost me right there, McConaughey." And I'm like, "Yeah, I was lazy in that scene." So, I, look, other times, there was a real pivotal time in my life when I'd been, I was on a roll with romantic comedies.

• 26:42Lewis Howes?

  Crushing.

• 26:42Matthew McConaughey?

  Loved doing those. Crushing the rom-com.

• 26:45Lewis Howes?

  You're like a 10-year-old, just like, "Bo, bo, bo."

• 26:48Matthew McConaughey?

  Took the baton from Hugh Grant and turned up the speed.

• 26:52Lewis Howes?

  Let's go, baby.

• 26:54Matthew McConaughey?

  It was great, man. They're fun. I was getting paid handsomely. They were making a lot of money. But what the challenge became, though, that was the only thing I was getting offered. Like, with the success of those, any dramas I wanted to do, the opportunity to do those became less and less and less and less, until it was like, "No, McConaughey is the shirtless on the beach rom-com guy." And I remember looking in the mirror going, "Okay." And yes, I'm shirtless on the beach, because those rom-coms are paying the rent for the house I've got on the beach that I'm running shirtless on. Yes, I worked to get that. I looked that in the eye. In fact, that is me. Now, that also, that does not, that does not mean that it didn't become

• 27:38Matthew McConaughey?

  a thing that became like a pigeonhole. "Oh, that's all McConaughey is and does." And it was a time in my life where Camilla and I just had our first child. So, do you have children?

• 27:50Lewis Howes?

  No kids, not yet.

• 27:51Matthew McConaughey?

  You'll see when and if you do. A man is never more masculine than right after the birth of his first child. And I don't mean macho. I mean the clarity, that autobahn we're talking about, about mind, heart, spirit and loins. It is so clear. The first six months after your newborn, don't double down, triple down on any instinct you have. Career wise, relationship wise, anything, stock market, just triple down on them. You'll be right. It's, it's, it's, it's incredible time. Anyway, I had just had a newborn. Camilla had had the newborn, so my life was so vital, man. I mean, I was loving harder. I was, had more, more rage in the right places. I would, I would get sad more.

• 28:35Matthew McConaughey?

  My emotions, the ceilings and the basements were, were, were really incredibly vital. And the rom coms have a much thinner bandwidth for those, for those of you how you can feel about something. The, the ceiling and the basement are, are, are compressed quite a bit and that's how they're built. They're built, you're supposed to bounce along the clouds. They're built to be buoyant. And I was like, ah, I wish I could find some work that would challenge the vitality and drama, great drama I have in my own life. Those things weren't coming to me. So since those things weren't coming to me, I decided to stop doing what I was doing, which was the rom coms. Now, I'm figuring this is going to be a bit of a dry spell in my career, but I don't know for how long.

• 29:17Matthew McConaughey?

  Um, I shed many a tear on the shoulder of my wife talking about, you know what? I, I, I, I want to make a change and I, I, I want my career some work to challenge the man I am, to challenge the life that I'm living. I mean, that means I'm not going to go with work for a while. Called my money man. He says, you can take off. You've handled your money well. Called my agent. He goes, do it. I work for you. We got to go ahead. And then I stopped. I said, I moved down to Texas. You didn't see me on the beach. You didn't see me in the rom com. You didn't see me in the taboos. You didn't see me anywhere. Rom coms kept coming in as offers. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. And then one comes in, an eight million dollar offer. Let me have a read of this one.

• 30:03Matthew McConaughey?

  I read it. Pretty good. No, thank you.

• 30:08Matthew McConaughey?

  They come back with a $10 million offer. No, thank you. They come back with a $12.5 million offer. Uh, dot, dot, dot. No, thanks. They come back with a $15 million offer. I say, let me read that again.

• 30:28Matthew McConaughey?

  I read it again. Same script, word for word, as the original $8 million offer. But at $15 million? Ooh, it was written so much better.

• 30:38Lewis Howes?

  It looks good, doesn't it?

• 30:40Matthew McConaughey?

  It was dramatic. I got angles on this. I can make this work. Oh, yeah.

• 30:46Matthew McConaughey?

  I ended up saying no. And that really got the message across to the industry. Okay, McConaughey's serious. He's not doing any rom-coms. Then nothing came in for about 10 months. Nothing, dry as a bone. And after 20 months of a desert and nothing coming in and saying no, first saying no to what I was doing and then nothing coming in at all. All of a sudden, I became a new good idea. McConaughey for Killer Joe, Magic Mike, MUD, True Detective. All of a sudden, that was a new novel, good idea. Why? Because I'd unbranded. I had stepped away and I was gone. They didn't know where I was. Couldn't find me on the beach without my shirt.

• 31:30Matthew McConaughey?

  You couldn't find me in a rom-com. And I became a new good idea. So that's kind of the most dramatic sort of hinge point in my career that deals with how I dealt with, you know, how I was perceived or how, what I was doing in my career.

• 31:45Lewis Howes?

  This is a very important question. If it was 25 million, would you have done it?

• 31:51Matthew McConaughey?

  No. I wouldn't have done it for 100 million.

• 31:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 31:54Matthew McConaughey?

  I'd already, no, I'd already made the Socratic oath with my soul.

• 31:59Lewis Howes?

  You were committed.

• 32:00Matthew McConaughey?

  It was, I was in. If it would, I would have got more excited. The more, the fact that the money went up, it was kind of, it was such a buzz to even have the courage to say no to it. And it empowered me to go.

• 32:13Lewis Howes?

  That's cool, because you you go back to your values and your identity of like, no, that's not who I want to be anymore. Uh, this is who I want to be. I want to, you call it, uh, you call it unbranding. Is that what you said?

• 32:23Matthew McConaughey?

  Unbrand, yeah, unbranded to then rebrand.

• 32:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think that's powerful. It's like, we should always be in a stage of reinvention. You know, you reinvented yourself as a father, you reinvented yourself as an actor. Uh, and I think that's, that's really powerful. Good for you, man. It's hard to turn away those checks.

• 32:40Matthew McConaughey?

  Yeah, well, you know, I saved my money well. I, you know, I, I, I was appreciating the basics, had a roof over my head. I would have found, I honestly, in that two years, I considered other vocations. I considered other careers.

• 32:55Lewis Howes?

  Like what?

• 32:57Matthew McConaughey?

  Uh, coach, a high school football team, a teacher, fourth grade teacher, orchestra conducting, wildlife guide, write, I did a lot of writing at the time, didn't have a book to put out at that time, did a lot of writing at the time. I didn't, I didn't have the confidence to think the writing, the writing was worth publishing, but I was still doing a lot of writing at the time.

• 33:18Lewis Howes?

  So if you would have not gotten the dramatic roles that you were looking for, uh, after two, three, four, five years, you would have gone and been a, a, a high school football coach or a writer or a wildlife guide for sixty, eighty grand a year and, and been just as happy?

• 33:35Matthew McConaughey?

  Well, I'm pretty sure, I'm, I'm, I'm almost definite, I would have been just as happy. Because I'd get, as you, one of the central themes in the book is that when faced with the inevitable, get relative. I'm, that's really one of the key tools in the book is how do you get relative when you deem a situation inevitable? So how do you start making an upside of what can be perceived at perceived crisis? Um, when and how we do that is really one of the keys to having to satisfaction in life. If you do it too early, okay, if I said for that instance, about to say, okay, it's been two years, that's enough, I give, I'm going off to do something else. Well, that would have been the wrong choice because I would have been a quitter. Look what happened.

• 34:18Matthew McConaughey?

  I just had to outlast him and it'd take twenty months. If I'd have pulled the plug at eighteen months and done something different. Out of an equator, right? I didn't endure enough. But there's also situations that you can bang your head on through endurance, where you're actually acting out the definition of insanity. You're trying to get something done the same way over and over and over, and not getting the result you want. So you need to back up, and relatively speaking, pivot. Wait, let me re-approach this situation. Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. Let me pivot. And there's other times you just gotta wave the white flag and say, "You got it. You win. I'm gonna go fight another battle up here." You know? So when do we do one of those? Each one of those with every given situation?

• 34:58Matthew McConaughey?

  That's sort of the honey hole, the tool that really, I think, can be helpful to us.

• 35:04Lewis Howes?

  I'm not always watching the award shows. Sometimes they're on and I see them, but it's not like a thing for me to watch. But I remember watching The Year You Won, the Oscar. And I remember your speech was, has to be one of the most iconic speeches of all time from an award show. And you talk about chasing your hero as your 10-year self in the future. I'm curious.

• 35:27Matthew McConaughey?

  Right.

• 35:28Lewis Howes?

  If you could put yourself 10 years from now, 60, because you just turned 50, what would your hero at 60 say about who you are today? Looking back.

• 35:39Matthew McConaughey?

  Wow, yeah. It's a great question, and one I think we should all ask ourselves. Have I had that great sit-down with our future self? Um, I think you'd say, make sure, make sure you trust yourself. Make sure you did a good job of trusting yourself, but you know what? You could have even trusted yourself more. You could even trust yourself more. You made some things, maybe you made some things a little too hard, maybe where you didn't need to resist it. Just sit back and trust yourself. So you made some things hard because you felt like you needed to feel it. You had already done the work. You already laid the rails on the road. Just now, right now, stay vital. Keep those rails greased. Keep yourself in shape.

• 36:24Matthew McConaughey?

  Mentally, spiritually, but overall, you've done it. You did it. You're doing good at trusting yourself. And I'm proud of how you, you know, my favorite thing about you, fifty-year-old Matthew, is that you give a damn. And, and, and, uh, sometimes I wish you, whether you maybe given yourself a break in places where you didn't. But you know what? That's who you've always been. And shoot, now that I look in the mirror at sixty, that's, that's who I still am too. So, anyway, um, thanks for getting me here, uh, to sixty. It's great to see, uh, the kids all out of the house now and, and, and, and, uh,

• 37:05Matthew McConaughey?

  me and, me and, me and our, our wife, Camilla, are having a great time, kinda like a honeymoon again. The kids are out of the house and got a new season in life. And, uh, you, you, you did it. You did, you did a good job being a parent. You were a good father. And that was the thing, you know, you always wanted to be. It's the thing we've always known that we wanted to be. The only thing we ever knew we wanted to be. And you, and you, and you weren't perfect as a father, but you did a doggone damn good job as a father. Oh, yeah. And let's keep rocking.

• 37:32Lewis Howes?

  And let's keep living, yeah. Uh, yeah. That's a beautiful reflection of your future hero.

• 37:39Matthew McConaughey?

  I haven't had one of those before. I had until just now. I haven't really thought about it that way. And thank you for asking that question.

• 37:46Lewis Howes?

  Of course. That's beautiful. I'm curious. You mentioned, I want to ask you about your, your dad here in a second, and the impact he's made on you and the biggest lessons. But you've talked about your wife many times. What do you admire about your wife the most?

• 38:01Matthew McConaughey?

  I admire how instinctually, without any intellectual mathematics at all,

• 38:11Matthew McConaughey?

  no matter what she's doing,

• 38:14Matthew McConaughey?

  no matter what job she's on, no matter what she's handling, if something comes up.

• 38:22Matthew McConaughey?

  To help me, or the kids, or the family out. She so elegantly sets what she's doing down and comes and handles that and helps and helps, puts family first like that. And she does it such a graceful way. Look, hence why she's got 162,000 emails. You know what I mean? She's able to do that over there. Me, I would be like, yeah, I'll be right there. Let me finish this up. You know what I mean? She's able to just go, nope, I know what really, really, really matters. This is all stuff that I should do, but this is not of the greatest import.

• 39:04Matthew McConaughey?

  She, Louis, I'll be right back. Very gracefully. And she would do it in a way where you wouldn't go, she walked out on my show. No, you'd be like, it'd be one of the better interviews you had in moments in an interview because she'd come back and go, yeah, my son just had so and so, and I had to help him with so and so. And you'd be like, wow, how elegantly she can make that of most import at any given time. Her family, me and the family of the most import at any given time, and how gracefully and elegantly she can do it is one of my favorite traits of her.

• 39:39Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, that's beautiful. Now, we have, we have a few things in common. We both love football. Unfortunately, you like Texas football and I like Ohio State. We're not in the same conference, so I'll support Texas football from afar. It's okay. If you're from Michigan, it'd be harder for me. We both have the same middle name, which I just found out about. Yeah, David. So I'm not sure if that's your mom that gave you that.

• 40:07Matthew McConaughey?

  That's David.

• 40:08Lewis Howes?

  I'm not sure if your mom gave you that, or your dad gave you that, or it was a combination. But we both have the underdog mentality, I like to think of. We're always in that underdog, David versus Goliath. You've talked about being an underdog in your book and also in your speeches on YouTube, a lot of great speeches of you on YouTube. Your father... Who I'm assuming was a part of giving you the name David was a was a big impact in your life. A lot of amazing lessons in this book. Again, I want to remind people to make sure they get this book if they haven't got green lights yet. But your father put a big impact in your life. He passed when you were, I think it was five days in shooting your first movie. Is that correct?

• 40:51Matthew McConaughey?

  Shooting Days, first movie I ever made. Yeah.

• 40:54Lewis Howes?

  First movie.

• 40:54Matthew McConaughey?

  August seventeen ninety-three.

• 40:56Lewis Howes?

  And you were twenty.

• 40:58Matthew McConaughey?

  Ninety-two. So I'm twenty ninety-two, twenty-two, I think.

• 41:04Lewis Howes?

  So something something we have in common is when I was twenty-two, my dad got into a near fatal car accident. He was in New Zealand with his, um, his girlfriend at the time. My parents got divorced. His next girlfriend, they were in New Zealand traveling. I was twenty-two years old. He got in a car accident, was in a coma for three months, and we didn't know if he was gonna live or die. He's still alive today, but he's a completely different man. He's not there physically and emotionally like he was. It was almost like I lost my dad that day emotionally, mentally. Uh, we can have conversations, but there's a lot of amnesia. It's a lot of asking who I am and things like that of the past. But that

• 41:45Lewis Howes?

  moment for me made me, it was a rite of passage. You talk about rite of passages in your life as a man. And I would not be where I am today, doing the things I'm doing today, without that experience of essentially losing my father emotionally and mentally. And you lost him physically. He was he was gone physically from your life at the same age as I did. Where do you think your life would be if he was still here? Do you think you would be able to have the impact you have on humanity? Uh, do you think you'd have the the relationship, the children that you have? Um, or would something, would things be different because you don't have the what you call in the book, that safety net?

• 42:25Matthew McConaughey?

  It's a great question, and I don't know the answer. I mean, my, my.

• 42:32Matthew McConaughey?

  You know, these existential questions are always fun to go over because it's all a mystery going forward. It's all a science looking back.

• 42:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Matthew McConaughey?

  And we can connect the dots looking back. Um, you know, I don't know what else I would be doing because this is just what I've done. And I've only done it once and I'm doing it once. I, I, I do, maybe I would have, uh, him passing on and that year in Australia are two moments that I do often question. Would I be sitting here right now talking to you with the life I have if it didn't happen? I, I, I'm, I'm very confident that I would have had some sort of enriched life that I felt satisfied and felt joy in living. If I'd have been doing something else. But at the same time, those moments, what I can really speak to is that I'm, I'd be, I'm manned up when he moved on.

• 43:24Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:25Matthew McConaughey?

  I don't know how you felt when you, when you, when you, you know, you didn't lose your dad physically, but emotionally I, you know, a father for me was, he, he was my safety net. Those values that he, that he was teaching me, I still had in my hip pocket that, oh, if I only kind of use him 85% of the time, I'm good because he's got my back. He's above law. He's above government. He's my safety net in case I really need him. So I'm not, I'm kind of half assing these values he's teaching me. Or maybe I'm doing pretty good at them, but I'm not committed because I got him. And then he was gone physically. And all of a sudden it's like, whoa, oh. And I remember this, I write about this in the book. I remember this was something that came to me.

• 44:09Matthew McConaughey?

  Just keep living came to me, which was about keeping his, his, his spirit and what he taught me alive in life after he's gone. But also this four words, less impressed, more involved. I remember things after he moved on, things that were mortal in life that I had reverence for. Fame, uh, uh, money, uh, success, people. And all of a sudden, while I still respected them, instead of looking up at all of them, they came down to eye level.

• 44:45Matthew McConaughey?

  Looked them in the eye. They were mortal. I had full respect for them, that they were mortal. I could be involved with them. I'm looking them in the eye. Things that I looked down upon, I was condescending, patronizing, ah geez, I don't like that. Look at her, look at that. All of a sudden, those things

• 45:03Matthew McConaughey?

  rose up to eye level. The world was flat. I could see further, I could see wider, I could see more clearly, and I was standing taller. And my head was higher, my heart was higher. And I was like, it's time to man up and become a man. McConaughey. And this is how you need to see the world. You need to have the courage to follow through. And that does not mean, you know, that is always not the most popular decisions. Quit, quit half-assing yourself. Quit doing things just to get along, or, or, or if you disagree with it.

• 45:38Matthew McConaughey?

  You know, don't, don't, we're not gonna be that, that guy who makes the joke at the party that makes more people laugh, but everyone walks away disrespecting you more. You know, what are your, it was the beginning of understanding, when do you, what are the choices you make? Again, the compounding assets that are choices, the choices we make, compounding assets for our future. How do we be more true and kind to our future selves? How do we start making some more choices? Make choices that, by hook or by crook, they're, they're, you know, they're gonna be brave, courageous choices that you can look in the mirror if it works and go, yep, I'm responsible. And if they don't work, you go, yep, that's on me. Um, quit living in limbo.

• 46:23Matthew McConaughey?

  You know, straddling a fence here or there. Be smart, don't be foolish, don't dive in. Courage to take more risks. Courage to get uncomfortable with that fame and be able to go, the world needs you here right now. The studio wants you to pick out a picture. You're as hot as can be, but I don't care. I gotta check out with, go spend some time with me to figure out this shit. The courage to do those things. I don't know if I'd have done those things. I had the courage to do them, because maybe I would have still been stuck in, no, I'm so happy to be here. I'm so impressed to be here. I'm so thankful I have these options and these, these possibilities for success. Thank you. Well, if you're so impressed. With something in your life, even our relationships, you can't really be involved in them.

• 47:07Matthew McConaughey?

  If you're overly impressed with me, or I'm overly impressed with you, you and I can't even have a real conversation.

• 47:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 47:14Matthew McConaughey?

  Because one of us is holding the other on a pedestal. Look at our relationships.

• 47:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 47:18Matthew McConaughey?

  Our girlfriends, our wives, our friends, if we hold them up on a pedestal, it's unfair. We don't really have a relationship with them. They're, they're, they're, we've, we've got them in this immortal bubble of being a superhuman or a superwoman. It's not fair to them. And then what happens in the reflection of their eyes? They see us the same way. Then we're both dealing with, we're both for rent. We're, we're, we're both not, not leveling, we're both too impressed with each other to be actually be involved.

• 47:48Lewis Howes?

  It's, I mean, it sounds like you learned a lot from, from his passing and, and you grew a lot and you, you, you held true to that, that courage that you're talking about, which I think has made you the man you are.

• 47:58Matthew McConaughey?

  Tried to, I've tried to, I mean, it's a constant, as you know, it's, it's, it's constant and process work. I've evolved my questions and, and, and, and, and eliminated a lot of things in my life that did not feed me, did not turn me, turn on my true self. I've tried to eliminate those. Um, and keep more things in front of me that are things that will feed me and feed my best wolf, since we've got two wolves in us.

• 48:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, we do. I love that. I love that story. What do you think of the five things we should all eliminate to live a better life?

• 48:31Matthew McConaughey?

  First, get rid of, we gotta quit hanging out with those, those people that, that sort of only turn on our most banal selves. It, sometimes you have the easiest people to go to. Cause they're the life of the party. I've been, I've been that guy before. Like I said, the life of the party. Tell the joke that's about someone that's not in the group. It's on them. We all snicker and it's great. You got the biggest laugh, but then everyone walks away going, I don't respect him as much. So get one of those long-term choices. Think about long money, not short money, long money. Um, places.

• 49:04Matthew McConaughey?

  Hey, man, geez, why don't I have a nasty hangover every time I go to that bar? I don't know, is it the drink? Is it the people? Is it whatever? Whatever it is, I just don't, don't. Every time I wake up the next morning, if we're going to that bar or that place, I feel, eh, eliminate that. Quit trying to make that place work. We gotta eliminate this thing, this habit we all have in society right now, which is, I raise me up if I put you down. Hmm. It's false. It does not have a return. There's no ROI in that. Mm hmm. It appears to be. It goes back to that, what do we tell millennials about everyone living online and social media with comments? It's, there's this false sort of impetus that, oh, I'm taller, I win if I make sure you lose.

• 49:49Matthew McConaughey?

  That's not winning. You know, there's room for us both to win a blue ribbon. Mm hmm. But we may do something different. And to covet or be jealous of your success. And if I don't like you and I'm gonna lose, man, I wanna see that guy fall. That's a, that's, that's, you're giving yourself a disease to think, oh, that's gonna raise me up. Mm hmm. So again, it's short money. It's short money. Yes. It may be even counterfeit. You know? Um, there's a few things. Um, you know, we have it and we have a, we've had this tendency to, we, we, we put our finger and point out disease before we point out health. Hmm.

• 50:32Matthew McConaughey?

  We rubberneck at the car wreck on the other side. Love to see a wreck. Wow, you know what I mean? Dissect, here we go. We love to dissect problems. Well, start dissecting success. Start looking and deconstructing your life, your choices, those people you're hanging around with, those places, when things are going well, when you're like, ah, I feel like I finally caught a groove here. Well, go, go, put the pen to paper or look down or start dissecting. What am I doing? Cause there's a habit, there's a, there's a science, there's some science to satisfaction. And we don't just get there by dissecting our failures and when we're in a rut.

• 51:15Matthew McConaughey?

  We need to be confident enough to go, well, things are going well and I can't take this for granted. What is it I'm doing? Oh, I prepared more. I didn't have stress. I mean, it goes down to the, I always call this delayed gratification, teeing yourself up for a green light. Starts with the simplest thing. And this is what I mean. Enjoy putting the coffee in the coffee filter the night before so the next morning you can get up and just go, press the button. Ah ha, look at me, I teed myself up for a Saturday. I got a green light. Instead of the next morning going, oh gee, where is it? Cause sometimes it's hard to make your coffee when you hadn't had your coffee. Like it's hard to find your glasses when you don't have your glasses on. I mean, tee yourself up for some little pleasures, some Saturdays, tee yourself up for some green lights. Kiddos, work.

• 52:00Matthew McConaughey?

  You gotta, you know, it's Friday, you got that, you got that, that morning meeting you're gonna lead on Monday morning. Or you got the homework you gotta turn in and you just finished on Friday. And you wanna go kick back and head out and relax, cause you're gonna wait till I'll do it Sunday night. Sometimes it's pretty cool to go, you know what? I'm gonna get it done right now. Because Sunday, dude, I'm gonna watch football, maybe hanging out with my friends. Right. Sunday night game may be a good one too. I may wanna go late and I don't wanna have to think, I go like, oh, I gotta get home and do that. So I'm gonna tee up myself for some freedom on Sunday night by handling the stuff right now. So Sunday night I can be like, I'm ready for tomorrow. I'm ready for Monday. And look, that doesn't mean, don't be a hedonist. That doesn't mean, and that's the responsibility and the freedom, that doesn't mean you're not free.

• 52:46Matthew McConaughey?

  It's actually giving yourself more freedom. Yep. Um, it's actually giving yourself more pleasure, uh, later on. I love delayed gratification. It's one of the things you'll see when you have, if you have children. It's one of the great things I think to try and get them to understand. You know, when I, when I won the Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club, I had a really cool teaching lesson. My kids were like, what's the trophy for? And I said, what was given to me? Good, my people in my, in my industry deemed my work really excellent. And they go, yeah, what's it for? And I went, you remember a year and a half ago when Popeye was really skinny and you said his neck looked like a giraffe? And they're like, yeah. And I go, remember you'd wake up and Popeye was already gone to work? And then Popeye would get home and we'd have a dinner and then he'd have to go study and go to sleep. And he did that for like two months and he was gone all day. They're like, yeah.

• 53:31Matthew McConaughey?

  I go, what I was doing, that was every day then. Someone gave me a trophy for today, a year and a half later. Wow.

• 53:42Matthew McConaughey?

  So what you do today, what I was trying to get across to them is like, what you do today can matter tomorrow. You can be rewarded for it. If you do something really well today, you can be rewarded. You can get a green light for that later on in life.

• 53:55Lewis Howes?

  You may not get the reward today.

• 53:57Matthew McConaughey?

  You may not get it today. So, trust that you can be rewarded. At the same time, let's look at the inversion of that. Go ahead. Light, cheat, steal. Alright, now what? Light, cheat, steal, broke up on the tax, cheated on so-and-so, whatever, whatever. I'm not buying green lights to the future. Why? Because now everywhere I go, I gotta look over my shoulder and see if someone's there that I owe money, or someone's there that I cheated. And all of a sudden, now I'm not present, and I'm stressing because someone goes, "Oh yes, so-and-so is here."

• 54:30Matthew McConaughey?

  That's not a green light, it's a yellow light. Stress. Unnecessary stress because I left crumbs. Then, yesterday. Don't leave the crumbs. Teed yourself up for some freedom. The responsibility of picking up your crumbs to handle and stuff buys you your green lights, freedom in the future. We're going like, "I'm fine, I can walk in anywhere. I don't have to look over my shoulder. I'm living and doing my best to live a life. I don't have to live over my shoulder." It's a good thing for us each to do with ourselves.

• 54:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:56Matthew McConaughey?

  And it's selfish. That's the other thing. It's selfish. And I have a full redefinition of selfish. I'm for what is selfish, it's also selfless. But it's teeing yourself up. It's being cool and kind to your future self. And it's also what's best for the most amount of people.

• 55:14Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 55:15Matthew McConaughey?

  Called the egotistical utilitarian.

• 55:19Lewis Howes?

  You mentioned how, you know, a lot of people are trying to tear other people's buildings down. When I interviewed Kevin Hart, he said that greatness was about helping other people succeed as well. Not just you succeeding and tearing other people down, but also making winners around you and building other people up around you as someone who's great. I love this quote by Jim Carrey. I don't know if I'm gonna say it correctly, but he said, "I hope everyone becomes rich and famous so they can realize that's not the answer to life." Something like that, he said in a speech one time. It seems like so many people on social media want to become rich and famous. What have you learned about both of those things?

• 56:04Lewis Howes?

  And what advice would you have to someone who is working so hard for fame and money? Based on the lessons you've learned?

• 56:11Matthew McConaughey?

  Look, first off, what have we all learned about rich and famous? If you are rich and famous, you can be president. Ta-da!

• 56:20Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 56:21Matthew McConaughey?

  Um, now, look at the definition of success. If you go back in the original Webster's dictionary and read the definition of success, it is vastly different from the definition of success today. We have put, especially in America, fame and money at the top of the ladder for what you need to get to succeed, to be successful. And if you're successful, you have respective peers because you're famous, because you've got more money. Our, our, the order of what we're telling our children and ourselves to aspire to, it's out of order. It, it, it's not, it's not in order. We, we, we have, it's, it's part of the reason we have distrust in leadership today. I, there's nothing wrong with pursuing money.

• 57:06Matthew McConaughey?

  I love money. There's nothing wrong with, with fame. It's fickle. It's, fame is, is, is a mistress. It's not a, it's not a wife.

• 57:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:16Matthew McConaughey?

  So, you know, and you have little, you know, trysts with fame and, and, and, but it's, it's, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a, uh, an end-all stay. It's not a real destination. Um, or I don't think it should be. There's nothing wrong with pursuing it. Um, but then when we get into this question, okay, so we all want relevance. We want this money, we all want relevance. Yes, I agree with that. I do too. Relevance for what? That's the question we ought to ask ourselves. What do I want to be relevant for? Well, I want to be fame us because I made a sex tape? No, you're pretty, pretty sure I can get famous if I do that. Pretty sure you can get famous if you do that. Well, is that what you want to be famous for? Eh, I don't know. I'll pass on that one, don't worry.

• 58:02Matthew McConaughey?

  It's, it's, you know, it's, it's a bit out of order and we need to ask ourselves that question. All right, if we want to be relevant, which everyone does, what I want to be relevant for? I think that's just a good question to ask ourselves. And, and, and again, coming off what you said, Kevin Hart said, yeah, we want it for us. But can we be, can we, can we be famous for, for doing something that we enjoy? But also other people, it builds up other people as well. That's, we don't have to. Again, I'm going to go to Berkeley here for a second. You get rich and famous, that's not your, I don't believe it's your responsibility to be charitable. No, it's your choice. It's a choice for anybody. Is it your choice to make or not? It's not responsibility because I'm in a position to? No, I have to make the choice.

• 58:47Matthew McConaughey?

  Now, that may be a more responsible choice by me. That gives me more freedom because I feel better helping other people out. And it makes me feel good selfishly when I see them receive something, go, wow, thank you. Which is a selfish, good feeling. So it has payback that I would say is again, right there, responsibility and freedom. That it's paying me back and it's paying some other people back. Um, I would stick with that. I would just end it on that. We want to be relevant. Ask ourselves for money and success. Look at the definition of success today and the definition in the original Webster dictionary. And it is out of order, especially in America, what we are telling each other to aspire to be, to be deemed successful, to get respect.

• 59:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:31Matthew McConaughey?

  With Donald Trump became president. We were so, I had so many friends that were so surprised. I'm like, what are you talking about? At the very base of it, just the lowest common denominator, what do we tell people to be in this country? Rich and famous. He was that. He was on TV and he was rich. That's what we tell everyone is successful. So it's not surprising he became president. Wasn't to me. That's what we've been telling you, we're telling everyone you need to be to succeed in life. Again, if that's your only pursuit and you disregard certain integrity and you disregard being true, being as true as you can to yourself, that's short money.

• 1:00:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Matthew McConaughey?

  Very long money.

• 1:00:09Lewis Howes?

  Ooh, get that long money, baby. That's why I love your, your.

• 1:00:12Matthew McConaughey?

  Long money.

• 1:00:14Lewis Howes?

  Your Instagram bio, I love because it says husband, father, then actor. You, you lead with the thing that's, um, you know, you want to be relevant for, that you want to be known for, that you, you care about deeply the most, which I really admire and respect about you, even though that may be some small subtle thing that someone doesn't see or recognize. I recognize that that's there purposefully for you. It's not, you know, Oscar award winning, best actor in the world, People Magazine Sexiest Man Alive. Uh, although that's fun too, and you could put that out there, but that's not what you lead with. I think is, and I, uh, my thought of that's very intentional that you did that. And, um, I, I recognize that. So I think I admire that a lot about you.

• 1:00:56Lewis Howes?

  I know I have seven minutes left with you. So I want to be very respectful of your time and ask you a few, few final questions again. I'm going to keep mentioning this. Make sure you guys get this book, Green Lights, because it's truly inspiring, some incredible stories. Matthew goes in deeper on a lot of these topics and gives you a lot of fun, humorous, powerful, emotional stories to tie into to remember as well about these lessons. So check this out. My, my question for you, uh, I've got a few final questions. One is, what is your biggest fear? And what's been the biggest fear you've ever had to overcome?

• 1:01:33Matthew McConaughey?

  Biggest fear? I tell you, my, my least favorite feeling and a certain emotion, feeling that I have constantly challenged and battled with is a sense of significance. And I think a lot of that comes from, and this may go back to my 60 year old self telling my 50 year old self, hey, you could have trusted yourself a little more. But I, I, I, I feel a need so often to achieve and accomplish. At the same time, I know in my heart that as we've been saying, you don't, there's no destination. It's all a verb. Life's a verb. It's a process. You don't ever achieve.

• 1:02:14Matthew McConaughey?

  So I'm trying to reframe that into going,

• 1:02:18Matthew McConaughey?

  keep achieving in the pursuit of the unachievable. I mean, and make steps. So I do want to evolve, but a lot of times I'll emotionally feel insignificant if I don't achieve something.

• 1:02:28Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:02:28Matthew McConaughey?

  And I think it's a, uh, sometimes it's good because it is good to accomplish. It is good to set a goal, get what we want, go after it. Other times, it's like, you kind of need to sit still or just stay in, stay in your perpetual motion and go forward and quit. You don't miss the process for the, for, for, for seek, for the, the clinching seek of the result. And don't let the result tell you, oh, now I'm significant. You know what I mean? Um, at the same time, I've had a lot of better results when I was stuck to the process.

• 1:03:02Matthew McConaughey?

  When I wasn't as worried about the result, when I, the best golfers shoot the best rounds. When they walk off 18, thinking they're going to the next tee box and someone's got to tell them, no, you finished the round. You shot 63. Oh, I did? You know, I've done my best work when we rap and I'm like, okay, see y'all tomorrow morning. And they're like, no, that's it. We rap. The show is over. And you're like, oh, really? Oh, wow. Stay in the zone, in the process, and I've found that more results will come your way. Um, so I've, I've, I've battled that, I've battled that sometimes of making sure to remind myself to stay in that. Because I can get result oriented to an extent that I don't feel a sense of significance

• 1:03:44Matthew McConaughey?

  or a real lineage to my identity if I don't achieve the thing that I want to achieve. And I find out later, maybe it wasn't what I needed to be, what I was really trying to achieve anyway. But I sometimes need a measurement. I need to have more patience with myself to go, that's really not. This is part of the process because there's another achievement down the line that you don't even know you're working towards. You know what I mean? So, so give yourself a break. You're in process. Stay in process.

• 1:04:08Lewis Howes?

  I think, I think this is really powerful for, uh, any goal oriented driven person, whether they're an actor or not, uh, to realize that even you deal with that challenge, that fear that, I don't know if I call it insecurity, but a fear of, you know, am I making, having significance in my work? And, you know, am I still relevant in my work or whatever the thing is that's.

• 1:04:33Matthew McConaughey?

  How am I doing as a father? How am I doing as a husband? You know, um, am I doing as good as I can do in those places in my relationships? Can I be a better friend?

• 1:04:44Matthew McConaughey?

  You know?

• 1:04:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:45Matthew McConaughey?

  Oh, I could have been a better friend. I could have done that better, you know, so.

• 1:04:48Lewis Howes?

  That's, that's beautiful. I'm glad. Thank you for opening up about that. And I, I gotta re-respect your time. I got three minutes. I want to ask these two final questions. Uh, this is called the three truths. I ask this question to everyone at the end of my interviews and it's a hypothetical question. So. You've written a memoir at fifty. You share a lot of your wisdom and truths in here. I want to imagine you're a hundred, you're a hundred fifty, you're as old as you want to be. And for whatever reason, hypothetically, all the movies, the books, the work, the interviews that you've done in your life, they all got to go with you to the next place. So no one has access to Matthew McConaughey's content anymore.

• 1:05:26Matthew McConaughey?

  Okay.

• 1:05:26Lewis Howes?

  It's all gone. Um, with you to the next world, wherever that is. But you get to leave behind a note. A love note to the world that is your three truths, that this is all people would have to remember you by from your content. And it would be the three lessons that you would leave behind to the rest of us, uh, or what I like to call your three truths. What would you say would be yours?

• 1:05:49Matthew McConaughey?

  Oh, great question. Uh, let me riff here to make it.

• 1:05:55Matthew McConaughey?

  Value values. Make sense of humor your default emotion. And remember that you will have thousands of crises in your life and most of them will never happen.

• 1:06:10Lewis Howes?

  Those are, I don't think I've heard those three before. Out of a thousand plus episodes, I don't think I've heard those three. So those are, those are beautiful. I want to acknowledge you, Matthew, for the significance that you continue to make every single day in your life, whether it's a fear or you feel like you're not. I think it's amazing the, the way you show up. You show up for your wife. You show up for your kids. You show up for the work you do, uh, and even. I was chatting with Emmanuel the other day, who you did the second episode, I believe, of Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man. And you show up in moments when the world is uncertain, or when our country and our nation is going through so much unease.

• 1:06:52Lewis Howes?

  And you continue to show up and make a significance in so many people's lives. So I want to acknowledge you, Matthew, for being fun-loving, for living life, for, you know, doing your thing, but also for being a real human being every single day, to the best of your ability. And obviously, we're not perfect, but I see you showing up and you're making a difference. And I really acknowledge that, beyond the awards and the acknowledgements and the acting. So I really, I really acknowledge that for you, man.

• 1:07:20Matthew McConaughey?

  Thank you for saying that.

• 1:07:22Lewis Howes?

  Of course. My final question is coming, but make sure you guys get this book. I'm telling you, it's gonna be a game changer for you. Go get it right now, green lights. You're gonna love it. Get it for a friend as well. It'll be the best gift you get them all year. Final question, really quick. What's your definition of greatness?

• 1:07:38Matthew McConaughey?

  Greatness. Well, you know I love unanimous, and you know I love perfection, even though I don't think I'll ever achieve them, or that either are achievable in this life. Greatness is pursuing that. Staying in the race, committing to the chase, to be a better self, be better families, communities, civilizations, and people. Stay in the race. I mean, America's promise, our country's promise is opportunity and greatness. We're not ever gonna arrive. The top, see, there are a few times that we're in right now, a cultural revolution. We're not gonna come out of this and go, "Oh, now we've found perfect justice." No.

• 1:08:23Matthew McConaughey?

  But as long as we keep evolving, as long as we got an ascension, that's called evolution. Stay in the chase, commit to the chase, stay in the race. And that's greatness. It's staying in the process of the chase. Hmm. Still yet.

• 1:08:41Lewis Howes?

  My man, Matthew McConaughey, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate you.

• 1:08:45Matthew McConaughey?

  Lewis David, I enjoyed it.

• 1:08:47Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate it, man.

• 1:08:49Lewis Howes?

  My friends, thank you so much for joining us today. Matthew truly opened up in a powerful way. It was such a pleasure connecting with him, hearing his stories, hear him share his truth, his wisdom, lessons, experiences. If you enjoyed this, then you know what to do. Make sure to share this with a friend that could inspire them as well. You can just send them the link, lewishouse.com/1022, or you can copy and paste this wherever you're listening to podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc. Again, you have the power to change someone's life by sending them this link. Start to build a connection with the friends you have in your life through this conversation, and ask each other what you got out of this the most.

• 1:09:31Lewis Howes?

  Again, if this is your first time here, please click that subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts for the School of Greatness, and leave us a rating and review. I'd love to hear your thoughts and your feedback about how this has inspired you. And if you want inspirational messages from me to your phone every single week, then text the word PODCAST to this number, 614-350-3960. We send out inspirational and motivational messages every week. Text the word PODCAST to 614-350-3960. Again, make sure to check out Matthew's new book, and connect with him on social media as well. We've got all this stuff linked up on the

• 1:10:10Lewis Howes?

  show notes at lewishouse.com/1022. And I want to leave you with this quote from American poet Cameron Conaway, who said, "Ultimate vulnerability, that's manly." Again, so grateful for Matthew opening up and being vulnerable, and sharing so many amazing insights from his life, and his career, and relationships, and truly revealing himself. So I truly appreciate that. Very grateful for him for giving us time and his wisdom for the School of Greatness podcast. Again, make sure to share this with a friend, and if no one has told you lately, you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter, my friend. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.