Each one of us need to look in the mirror. How can I be a little bit better? What can I do a little bit better? I'd be great to be perfect. There is no best. I can be a little bit better. I can be little more fair. How can I understand that my brother and sister are also hurting, maybe in more and different ways than I am. How can I have a conversation without a condemnation? How can I have more patience?

Take a breath and listen and let someone who hasn't been heard speak more loudly than maybe they need to. But but hero, how do we make this time just a flash in the pan? How how do we be honest for the choices we make for ourselves selfishly are also the best choices for the most amount of people. And then there's not any specific recipe for that. But take that into consideration when we make our choices for ourselves. I'd say this and start off with trying to create more green for yourself and others and see where those two meet and see that actually being selfless is actually a very selfish act.

Creating more for others is actually very selfish for yourself as well. And try to make sure your selfish choices for yourself also light the way for more people as well. This is Matthew McConaughey and this is episode Nicole, Nicole, Nicole, a.k.a. five five five of the Rich Role podcast. The Rich Roll podcast. Come on. That's right, he is here.

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

And I don't take that privilege lightly. And I want to continue to honor this work. And my guess, and most importantly, you guys, the audience.

So my team and I have come up with one way to do that. It's a book. It's a book that will ultimately become a series. And it's called Voicing Change in this book, the first edition of Voicing Change, I'm showcasing some of my favorite conversations in a beautiful publication, replete with interview excerpts, timely essays, timeless wisdom, inspiration and stunning photography. It's basically a veritable printed highlight reel of the podcast, a unique way to revisit amazing people in their wisdom, or if you're new to the show, to learn about the gas you might have missed.

So if you enjoy the podcast, I've no doubt you'll love the book. A book I'm personally super proud of a book you can proudly display on any coffee table and of course, makes for an amazing gift. Voicing Change, Timeless Wisdom and inspiration from the Rich Roll podcast. That's the subtitle comes out November 10th. It's available for preorder now exclusively not on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, but exclusively on my website. To learn more about the book and pick up your copy, visit Rich Roll Dotcom Slash VXI.

That's Rich Roll Dotcom Slash v.C. While we're at it, today's episode is brought to you by calm here to help you get a good night's sleep. As we all know, one of the most powerful ways to improve your overall health and happiness. I don't know about you guys, but when I get stressed or when I get stuck in a social media loophole, it does happen. People I find it very difficult to wind down, but I've learned over the years in such moments that it's important to take contrary action.

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You guys know the movies and has really become in certain respects a sort of national treasure, a modern cultural icon, if you will, but less understood, at least until recent years, is just how wise this dude is. He's sort of a mystic cowboy poet who thinks deeply about life. He's a guy who seeks adventure off the beaten path, somebody who's not afraid of a psyche probing vision quest, and has emerged from these experiences over the decades as a man with a code.

And I don't know that you'd call him a guru, pretty sure he'd bristle at that label. But there is a sliver of truth in that label. He's definitely a guy with a philosophy drawn from experience and somebody with a truly, utterly unique way of communicating truth and wisdom, both personal and universal, that can only be described as one hundred percent. McConaughey So. As most of you no doubt know at this point, Matthew has distilled all of it into a book, Green Lights, which is this delightful, I was happy to discover very honest, but also self mythologising, love, letter to Life, a sort of beat generation inspired pastiche of journal entries, stories from his experiences, lessons learned, all sprinkled with just the right amount of self-help fairy dust.

Truth is, I couldn't put it down. I love this book. That does not happen often. And I know Matthew is making the rounds right now. Not only is he everywhere on legacy media, he's also popping up on tons of podcasts and on YouTube channels. But I think I hope at least that we want a few places others haven't to really better understand the offscreen dude and. One thing is clear from reading his book and having this conversation is that behind Matthews hangdog, laconic persona is a guy who really works his ass off, somebody who fully commits to everything he does with a razor sharp focus and the tenacity of a bull, somebody who understands the importance of perseverance, how to persist beyond whatever obstacles lay in his path.

He is in many ways a master of resilience, a guru to himself and one of the most spiritually attuned beings I've ever met. So this conversation, first and foremost, is about discernment. It's about making critical choices, how to craft your future and the often, at least right now, overlooked importance of character. It's also a conversation about widening our aperture on life, how to consistently grow, learn, transform, and most importantly, how to hone your intuition.

To coin Matthew's phrase, it's about connecting and expanding the autobahn between your mind and your heart. I said enough, too much, probably like most people, I adore this man. This was super fun. It was an honor to talk to Matthew. Hope you guys dig it.

So with that, I give you the afficionado of the intangible, Mr. Matthew McConaughey. Ready to rock n roll. So our point of introduction or inflection was our mutual friend, Dan Buettner.

Mm hmm.

Who pleasantly introduced us and we were meant to go on this backpacking trip in Utah, like this ultralight backpacking trip got canceled because of covid. So I was looking forward to meeting you in person, but that's going to have to wait for another day.

Well, Dan, good man. Dan is good curator of of people with with like but challenging mind. You know, my nickname for him is G.H..

No. What does that mean. Generally heroic. And we just sometimes I mean from four dimensions and three hundred and sixty whichever view you want to take, he's generally heroic. Where did you first meet him. I met him.

We were over I think in in Europe at a at a Google weekend, a Google getaway.

And he was one of the speakers and he was the first speaker I believe. And of the day that so sad day and what he had to say, I remember listening to him just go in, that guy's got the greatest job in the world. Yeah. He goes around studying longevity and happiness in people and culture. And so I chased him down and made sure I got his eyeline and shook his hand and met him and talked to him about some things.

And he continued to call me Bradley Cooper. And then I think, you know, he went up and flirted with my wife and called her Mrs. Cooper.

That sounds like Dan still generally heroic. And now he's rehabbing. He's rehabilitated his latest fall. I did.

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

I told him, I said a pothole in the middle of a street in Minnesota.

It just doesn't fit the meter of a generally heroic Dan Buettner wreck for all the stuff that that guy is done riding his bike across Saudi Arabia and everything for him to get knocked down that way.

But hey, man, happens to the best of us. But I reached out to him and I was like, what should I ask Matthew?

That is, you know, mainly not Google Apple. And he said, some people think that Matthew is is heroic. And a lot of areas, acting, fatherhood, ambassadorship, scholarship, others think he's just generally heroic.

Yeah, come on. That's so most of my boomerang came back. Yeah. Oh, that's all him.

He's he's the bearded G.H. one. He just he calls me many nicknames, one of them, professor, I think because I'm a professor, you know, he's the generally heroic one more so than me.

So you question being what how am I generally heroic or how do you respond to that? Can you take that compliment? How is that land for you?

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

When I got fame and success and started a foundation that we have, it just keep the magical foundation is doing very well. I didn't I chose to do that. No, that's OK. I don't think it's heroic, but what I'm leaning into is this. Some people say it's a responsibility. Once you have success, you it's your responsibility. I don't think that's true. I think it's a personal choice.

Just like, you know, every day the choices we make, I think, should be very selfish. I don't think we make good choices for anybody. And this is personal. So I don't I don't know about the heroic. I wouldn't I would consider myself a hero.

I've been fortunate and had an innate ability and worked my backside off to be at least pretty damn good at some things. I've still got some things in the debit section. I will say it is my favorite job in the world. Being a father, I don't know if being a good father is a heroic job, just being a good father. So I don't know. I don't know what to do with the hero comment coming back. Right.

Maybe it all depends on how you define it, how broadly or how strictly, I suppose, but more a conversation around, you know, how to be a man of character, I suppose, and the man who cared enough to think that we can talk about that all all day long.

And even that is not a responsibility, but a choice. You know, the only thing I ever knew I wanted to be was to be a father in my life. And then I've also learned now that, OK, well, just because you helped make a child doesn't mean you're you did the work for father. Fatherhood is a verb, as in life is a verb. These character choices we make, choices we make every day, our compounded assets for our future or not.

I have been blessed with that long view.

Of life, of realizing early on that in investments in ourselves today can tee up our entire future, can buy us green lights in our future, the choices we make today are compounding assets of our future and Kentz up for success. Hence, the title of the book greenlights. I know. I know for a fact we can engineer Green to. I also know for a fact that I've been damn fortunate. Had some Disfarmer lap. But choices of character are long term choices that deal with delayed gratification.

Yeah, I remember something that Dan told me a while back, which was when he was when he was early in his career and thinking about what he wanted to do and who he wanted to be. He was spending time working for George Plimpton at the Paris Review, and he would go to these fancy, you know, Upper East Side parties with all these monkey marks. And George, although he was respected, wasn't necessarily a man of means, but he had made this decision to live this life of adventure.

And when they would go to these parties, all these people would gravitate around George, because he was the one with the stories. And that's what made Dan inspired to live the kind of amazing life of adventure that that he's lived. And I see a lot of that in you.

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

Yeah, well, look, I think, you know, those Hintze Angels of Truth are around us all the time. It's just we don't always notice them. You know, they're there, but we don't notice. And it's understandable that high frequency life and a lot of noise coming in on all of us. I have learned early on to listen to that spider sense to me that says you need to go get away. You need to go spend some time with yourself, open up the autobahn between your head and your heart, because right now it's a bit of a one way graveled, you know, dirt road for you.

And, you know, your heart, your your heart, your mind aren't really in sync as much in sync as they should be. And then questioning what matters have always questioned since I was 14. One of the things with writing the book, my diary entries when I was 14 were about similar topics that I'm still interested in today. At 50, I've had a pretty good threshold for when I do get that spider sense to say, oh, you need to get out of here, Mekonnen, you need to leave what you're inside and get outside and have a clear view.

You need to leave where you are right now and find out what what do I find out when I go? A memory catches up. Oh, demarcations between events that maybe I was handling. And I'm good at handling events. Just being being in the middle of going press, you know, let's do this pilot on me. I'll be a horse. I'll get through it. But I didn't notice what had happened to me. Like, for instance, when I got famous, I didn't notice what that was until I got the hell out of Dodge and went on a twenty two day walk about myself.

And then I was like, oh, that's what happened. Oh, that's what that event or circumstance are run in with that person was about because they were all on top of each other at the time. I wasn't able to separate things that were going on too much frequency, so I'd have gone away many times on my own. I've learned to enjoy the solitude, not necessarily enjoyed my company in the solitude, which usually the first twelve days. I do not enjoy my company.

I'm shaking demons off my back, feeling regret, loss, confused, trying to figure stuff out. And usually around eight, 12 or 13 I'll have a breakthrough. And usually it's that breakthrough where. All right, come on. Hey, since you're the only guy I'm stuck with and I can't get rid of, which is each of us for ourselves, what are we going to forgive and what are we going to say?

I'm not not putting up with anymore. Figure those two out, shake hands with myself and wake up the next morning. And then those trips are wonderful. Then I'm present, then I'm singing a song. Then wisdom's landing on me. Then I'm hearing those angels and those butterflies of truth that land. And you go, bam, this is on me. I'm hearing it now. How do I personalize it, this truth and ask myself and answer the question why it's coming to me.

How do I preserve it? I have the patience to preserve it. And then when I leave those trips, the big fun challenge is how do I take that truth, the solitary truth, back into the masses, back into the stadium of life and ride that bull, that rodeo of life. And remember, trust that this truth that crossed me, that found me while I was in solitude is true now, then and forever, wherever I am.

That's the hard right.

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

And then the trick, the hard part is bringing it back and not letting it evaporate. But but taking you know, having being able to distill whatever wisdom comes to you about the experience itself, but more importantly, what you learn about your own self and then trying to exude that to imbue it and live your life in accordance.

Yes.

And you're right that the initial reaction to leave and go into solitude is a defense mechanism, is a survival mechanism, is a whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm I'm not feeling grounded here mentally, spiritually. So I need to I don't know what the answer is about. You know, I got to get out of here where I can hear myself think I know I got to get out of here. I can be in a place where I can receive some of the truth then.

Yeah. That fun challenge of bringing it back. And yes, not let it be stripped away, which it eventually does, and it gets stripped away, but even better sometimes bring it back and play offense with it, like go, I'm not just coming back, going to kind of hold on to it. I want to put it into action. I want to I want to know why I'm such a slow reader.

If I read, you know, one of my favorite writings is Emerson. Just say I'm self reliant.

Well, I mean that take that essay, which is about 20 pages long, took me two years to read because though the first paragraph, I'm like, whoa, I got to take that and see if I can apply that life and see what the reverb of life is back to me. If I'm looking through that lens, which takes me a couple of months before I can come back and read the next paragraph. That's the fun stuff I like to read or the fun things.

That wisdom will come to me in solitude that I want to take back into society. And you're right, it strips away. You look up and you go, Oh, I'm falling back into some old habit. I forgot that. I got to go calibrate. I got to go back to school. I got to go break a sweat. I need to go away again. I need to go revisit my diary and look at what I was doing when I was satisfied, when I was successful, when I was happy with myself.

My relationships were good when I did have that Audobon between the mind in the heart. And because I'm in a rut, again, I need to go back and I found clues in my diaries of when I was happy as to what I was doing, who was hanging out with, what was I drinking, where was it going? How much sleep was I get? Oh, I see. Now, all my life, I'm in this bit of a rut.

I'm complacent with some of those things. I'm doing some things that are not feeding myself and so I need to go back. So some of those diaries have been good little maps for me to go back and dissect when I felt successful and happy rather than just go dissect failures, which is more of our our habits, I think.

Do you find it more difficult to pull the trigger or pull the record and split when things are going well or when things are challenging, like as you progress through life and you have more responsibilities and more abundance in your life, it's got to be harder to say I'm going to walk away from this and go try something else. It's different when you're all of whatever you are. Twenty three. Twenty four. And you were living in an Airstream.

Yeah. And having three children and a wife and family makes that a little harder too, but yet more difficult when things are going well.

Because I don't know about you but me. When things are going well I inevitably feel like oh well this is the mean, this is how it's supposed to be. This is how it is. I've got it figured out this way. There's no reason for it ever to dip below this, which of course, it always does. And then I got to go off again.

But I have, you know, part of the inspiration for going away to go write this book was a bit was that I needed a chip away. And not only that, my wife knew I needed it.

Yeah, she gave me a kick in the backside and she'll come to me and tell me, you need to get out of here for a while, go off to, you know, go off, don't come. And I'll call, you know, and she's like, don't even call. Of course. What's that mean? Of course, I'm calling now a much quicker than if she said make sure you call because I don't like being told what to do, but I'll go away.

And like with this, she goes, don't go back to you got something. However long that takes were good. I got kiddos here was a gift she gave me.

I was able to go away on these walkabouts without having to look over my shoulder and go, oh, am I building a debit right now? Because when I go back, am I going to have to do a whole lot of extra work to catch back up for what I missed? She's never been someone who made me feel like, OK, well, now you've been away. Now you need to double up on all your duties. It was always, like, cheap.

She pushes me out the door, as she did with this book.

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

Yeah, well, as the story goes and I don't know how much of this is apocryphal versus true, you took off with your journals.

You went to the desert for something like fifty two days. I read somewhere that that you did it without electricity. But then in the book you at the end of the book, you kind of you were in a couple of different places. Right. Like I'm envisioning you with a typewriter like you don't have electricity. How are you writing this book?

Well, I started off at that election the first twelve days with that electricity and took a generator so I could play my laptop. And that was just, you know, I wanted to go someplace where I didn't email and shut down my account. I want to go someplace with no phone signal. We're only six p.m. each night. There's a certain hill about a half a mile away that I would hiked the top and make the call to check on the family.

And that was it. Other than that, no incoming calls, no incoming emails, no outgoing. I needed to be stripped down to the necessities to go say, how can I best of solitude with me and me of my last fifty years without any outside invitation. And so that was the first twelve days. And I must say I went into it. It was intimidating when no one to go, I thought looking back. At 50 years of my life, I was going to be embarrassed.

There were things I knew there. Things are going to be shamed about their place. I was going to go, you arrogant little prick, what were you thinking? And what happened is most of the things that I thought I would be embarrassed about, I end up laughing at most of the things I thought I'd be ashamed about. I'd ended up forgiving myself for or noticed I already had forgiven myself for. And the part where I was arrogant, I laughed at.

It was also like, well, good on you for thinking you knew it at that point, because following those points in my diaries where I would be so self-confident and all knowing, I always very soon stepped in shit in my life going based off like I am. I absolutely know. And I was happy that at least I had the confidence to think I had it all figured out. And then as life dealt me cards, found out, I didn't I went away thinking that these diaries are going to be much more academic.

And I remember the first four days sort of trying to force it into an academia mind.

And all of a sudden I stopped and I remember I stop when I look back. I haven't even looked at these things, just read each page and see what it is, see what it lends itself to be. And let's just stack up, see if some categories show up. And what happened after about ten days was I had these seven stacks. It was a stack full of stories. It was a stack full of people deck full of places, a stack full of prescribed stack full of poems, prayers and a whole bunch of bumper stickers.

So those were my categories. And then I said, OK, we have some simulants here, some structure of something. Now, what is all this? And that was actually that. What I just ripped off was my original title, Always People Places prescribes poems, prayers and a whole bunch of bumper stickers.

Yeah, not too bad at all, but I then said, now let's read through all these and see if something another central theme or column reveals itself. And that's where the title greenlights came from. I noticed that there were successes in my life that I engineered. I noticed there are successes that I got just plain good fortune and landed in my lap. I noticed that in certain ways, red and yellow lights in my life, crises and hardships.

I believed while I was in then that there was a lesson to be learned in a green light asset within them, not knowing when I would, it would be revealed to me, but trusting just to stick with it, stick with the hardship, endure it. And there is a there's a there's a green light in it. I noticed that some things that I thought like my father passing. How can that be a green? That's an absolute red. Well, I read my diaries ten years later.

I'm understanding how the values incentive that he taught me I wouldn't have enacted them in my own life if he'd still been alive because I would relied on him being there to have my back. So he was passing away, actually gave me a kick in the backside to look the world in the eye and have more courage to go chase down who I wanted to be and be myself. So some of the hardships that I had revealed green, some of the hardships of that, I suppose, have not revealed their greenlights yet and may not reveal themselves.

And they may only reveal themselves to my great grandkids, I don't know.

But eventually the theme of the book is that all the red and yellow do eventually turn green. And I believe that we'll be back in a few. But first, I've got a new obsession track Smith, the coolest Indy running apparel brand out there.

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All right, back to the show. Yes, so the narrative always comes back to this idea of green lights and I mean, first of all, I should say, like I finished the book this morning, I loved it to echo what our other mutual friend, Ryan Holladay said. I think he said something like, I knew it was going to be a good book. I didn't know I was going to be this good. Like you did an amazing job with this book.

It has this really, you know, very McConaughey ask touch to it like it's it's your book through and through. But it also reminded me of kind of the beat poets.

It has that type of aesthetic, and it's this kind of patchwork of, you know, stories from your life in a relatively traditional kind of memoir narrative, but interspersed with your poetry and always with these kind of life lessons and takeaways that are just unbelievably wise.

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

Obviously, the earlier. Diary entries were wise, why what where went house, it was the questions, there was a question mark after everything. So it's always seeking the question. As I evolved and got older, I start to answer some of those questions and could sum them up in a in a in a wisdom bomb or an aphorism or a bumper sticker. Right. But it didn't lead to any fewer questions.

My questions evolved, I think. But as I said earlier, what I was looking at, what I was at, the questions I was asking at 14 about existence and who am I and what's what matters and what life about how the world works, who am I in this world?

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

I don't know. You know, I don't know. And I answer that because. We weren't raised is a very introspective family. We always have our prayer and gratitude as a family. We raise this consistent extrovert. I mean, like I wasn't allowed to watch TV or read because my mom would say, why read about or watch somebody do something that you can go to yourself, get upset is always go, go do it, go experience it. You know, I don't know where my my my family my mom wasn't really a writer.

My dad wasn't. I mean, I was always though early on. The inquisitor of the family, the interrogator, the one who wasn't satisfied with mom and dad, just going because we said so, OK. Well, let's get underneath this. That's why I was going to be a lawyer. I was they like Matthew, the youngest one. You debate things in question, things to the nth degree, and it's exhausting at times. So I was always sort of wanting to get to the underbelly of the meaning of things at a very early age.

So I don't know where that came from. But that's just kind of, I think, always been who I am.

Mm. Yeah. In reading about growing up with your dad, I mean I just, I was thinking most people.

Who have had an experience like that would be, you know, doing a lot of therapy and harboring a lot of resentments, but you really have a lot of peace around it and a lot of love on an honor and a lot of love.

That's the word. You know, I if you look at the stories that open up with a wild story about a monumental fight that my mom and dad had, which got bloody.

But ended up with him making love on the floor. Uh huh. I always when people ask him about the love of my family or love that I have, my parents had for me and my mom and dad had for each other. I always have told the stories of discipline that involve some form of violence or corporal punishment. And I'm on this book, too. I've been wondering why. Because when I tell you the story, you see me light up and people go like on paper, I've got my hand over my mouth going, oh, my gosh, call Child Protective Services.

And yes, that's guy.

You must have been in therapy since then to deal with this trauma. And I'm like, no. So when I tell the story, though, people get Burg's. You see the humanity in the love that I have one. And I think the reason I tell those stories is because they were the biggest test to defeat the bubble of love that we were surrounded with, but they never had a chance of beating. And so I tell those stories because there's like a lightning rod of like, oh, this is trauma.

Oh, this is violent. Oh, this is problem. Oh, this is where it all falls apart.

But it actually never had a chance apart. I mean, my mom and dad divorced twice, married three times. The two divorces, all that lightning rod trying to puncture that bubble of love ended in three marriages, got married when they got us getting punished.

I earned every time everything I got punished for it. And I look back and I go, well, you got your first but open for not answering to your name. Your second for saying I can't. You're third for saying I hate you to your brother in your fourth for lying.

Well, I'm going to go back and do the math. That's for pretty doggone good reasons to get you hooked. Always answer to your name. No, you're having trouble doing something instead of that. You can't do it. Don't hate and don't lie. I mean, like there were values instilled in those. And every time I did it, I remember not the bottle open, but the value that I don't say that word a.. You know, I don't I don't hate.

I do go no top mats, Matthew. You know, I do my best to tell the truth and not lie, you know, so those are good lessons that were ingrained in us. And I think that's why I tell those love stories, even though I can say on paper you agree or disagree with the form of punishment, that was what was being instilled in me and that's what I took from it. Even then, you know, when my mom taught me to swim and threw me in the river and here we come on a waterfall, that if I go off that I'm not going to die, but I'm going to break a bone or two.

And she walks along the bank with her arms crossed, going to swim, swim. When I finally put my head down and saw that waterfall coming and swam to the bank, I was scared, but I wasn't mad. I was immediately proud. And and like, you know, in shock, but they're really proud of it because I was like, Mom was right. She was right. It was time for me to swim.

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

I mean, I agree with you. I think in some ways we can and do deprive our children of understanding how to go negotiate a situation I've been looking at like this. It's like a tree limb. A child's not afraid of heights until they fall well before they fall.

And it's like, I see them on that tree and you go from there. I mean, it's going to hurt, but not going to have to go to the hospital. I think I'll let him keep climbing there, you know, let him go negotiate that and maybe they make it or maybe they fall. Well, then it gets up higher and there's some excuse to go. I mean, if they fell from there, this could be really, really painful.

I think now's the time to go. Hey, right. Come on down a little bit, you know what I mean? Like, what level them do. We let them go out and then we should. I think a lot of society raise the level of that limb a little bit to let our kids go. Yeah, you're going to get bumped and bruised there, but you're going to skin the knees, go ahead and wear those knees out in your jeans and or fall from that limb and go, yeah, you see, that happens.

Yeah. If you don't pay attention. So, yeah, I would say I'm not you know, I don't think we should say the level of the the height of the limb that my parents sort of let us walk out on needs to be the main for everybody. But there is great value in those in those lessons and we never. Were abused, we never were injured, it hurt. Blood was drawn, but we were never injured. There's a devastating hurt and injury, and we were so and we were never abused.

And again, the love was never in question.

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

No, I No. One, I was pretty good with getting away with stuff because I had two older brothers who, as they say, paved a wide, high road for me.

And, you know, my brothers would jack with me because they were like, you, little mama's boy, the golden boy again. And I remind them, well, I got away with stuff. That, too, as I learn that at the same time I was, you know, a bit of a hell raiser, but it was all sort of good. What it wasn't it wasn't too gnarliest.

I mean, you know, I never really got into drugs. I didn't harm other people. I got away with some things that, you know, wouldn't be prescriptive for everyone to get away with, but. I also say this, and someone asked me the other day, do you believe, you know, you you were raised, as I see in the book, Matthew, with a certain amount of fear of your father and mother used to believe in the value of that.

And my answer. Yeah.

So how do you translate that as a parent to three kids now? Yeah, well, differently to my mom and dad did. Yeah, I would think so. I don't choose to and I'm not judging how they did it. Again, I write about this in the book. My parents also their reasoning. Trust me, I went to them before and said, would you please ground me? And they were like, no, I go, why can I go?

Because that would be taking your time away from you. And your time is valuable.

Now, beento we're going to get this over with and then it's over. I'm glad that happened. Like, that's not how I choose to raise my children right now. I'm trying to Camela aren't trying to teach our kids values. We do talk. We do not say because I said so as much as my parents did or most of our parents probably did. We do try to explain things. We try to. You know, we had an instance the other night on the end, this one was was was getting sleepy and popped off and and, you know, disrespected his mother just by, like, walking away from the middle of thing, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Now, look, I'm tired.

Camila's tired. It's late night. We've been out all day with the kids. What do you want to do? You kind of want to let it slide and just go to bed and let me go to sleep? No, no. They're building a debit. We've got to gather up the energy and sit down with our son and go. Do you understand why that's not allowed?

This is your mother, all right. She worked her butt off.

We work our butt off to give you our house, to give you a meal, to raise you and nudge you to be the young man that you can be. And you have to have respect. And what you just did was disrespectful. And if you're disrespecting her, you disrespecting yourself and you do not have the right to talk to your mother like that, it's a hell of a lot easier for your mom and I to let it slide and let you go to bed with that punk move you just pulled.

But we're going to stay up and we're going to handle this right now until you understand why this disrespect and why it's mean and why it's ugly and why you're out of line and why if you continue to do that, you the days will just not be as fun for you. And it took a while because it's a very stubborn son that I was talking to, went on for over an hour and a half and finally he understood it. And the fact that we gave that amount of time to say, no, you're not going to bed yet.

No, we're not going to bed until you get it. I mean, yeah, just sitting there spending the time and your child going like he's mom and dad are still here. An hour and a half later. They're not let me off the hook. OK, I get it. So and then the challenge becomes, how do you have them? How can they remember that so they don't become repeat offenders so quick, you know, right after.

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

Well, I'm on the fear thing again. I know that there's a lot of things I was faced with. Temptation do a lot of things growing up. But I knew I shouldn't do that, I did not do for fear of the consequences. So fear definitely kept me from doing things because I'm like I measured it, wait a minute. If we go, Agnete, that can't do that, man, EPOP, find out about that, oh, my gosh, that's going to be a no risk reward.

I'm. You know, there are just certain things I said. It's not it's not worth it. And I had certain friends that didn't have the consequences deal with that. I would have had to deal with that, did go do it and got away with all kinds of stuff. And some of them didn't never really turn out to be, you know, crappy dudes.

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

And that was part of the initiation. Demanded he wouldn't let us know that what you just said, but that is what he was looking for. So there's a story in there about me stealing a pizza one night with a buddy of mine, Bud Joncour, and got home. My dad's on the phone with Mr. Felker, the father of the guy that I was out with. And we just walked out on the pizza from Pizza Hut. And, you know, you get older, you come home and you've stolen a pizza and your dad goes and you pay for that pizza.

You should know right now that he knows you didn't. But of course, at that age, I'm like, well, no, I mean, I think so, Dad. I mean, well, the girl at Recognized Bud called his dad and said, hey, it was my table. They walked out on the pizza and my dad was just looking for me to go. Yeah, we still the beat and he the gun guy, Danny, son, I've done a lot of pieces in my life.

Listen, next time, get away with it better. But thank you for telling me that you did. Gosh, damn it. Get your ass in bed. Right. Watch it. Well, I didn't. I groveled. I defended myself. I tried to weasel my way out of it. He gave me three, four chances to tell him yes. And I dug myself such a hole that I'm shivering there. The damp spot, my jeans and fright not from him, but at my own cowardice.

Right. And I remember I finally asked me one last year, just tell me, did you know you were going to steal that beat? And I went nuts and he basically backhanded me and I crumbled to the floor in the corner, not from the back end, but because my lactic acid coward, hypocritical legs were numb under me from being such a weasel and not being able to just admit, yes, I did. And that's what broke his heart.

And I was scared because I saw was breaking my dad's heart right in front of me because he wanted me to do is just tell my son, just tell me the truth. Don't lie to me about stealing the damn pizza man. It's not about the stealing the pizza. It's about owning up to what you did and telling your father the truth. And that I remember the tears on my face. We're seeing my dad heartbroken and knowing that I let him down.

Well, it's just one of many rites of passage that he puts you through. And the book is, you know, makes it very clear how important these rites of passage are in your evolution as a human being.

So much so that it seems to me that these walk about adventures that you go on later are your way of creating additional rites of passage.

When, you know, we live in a culture where we're bereft of those, like most people don't grow up with any kind of meaningful rites of passage. And that's something that we're hardwired to need. We have to test ourselves or we need to be tested by somebody else. And if we're not getting that, we have to put ourself in that position.

Yes, we need resistance to find structure, to create form and. For me, later in life, I get successful, I'm famous, you know, too many options can make a tyrant of any of us. And when the world is saying, yes, well, that's where the devil lives. And all the yes is not the nose. And I needed to go. Wait a minute. Is this what really matters?

I have that line in the book, but when you can ask yourself if you want to before you do well, when you're getting all these things for the first time in your life and the world's a big green light and everything is, yes, I want it to go away and see. Wait a minute, are these green lights that are plugged into a battery or are they Eternals, solar powered green lights? Well, I'm getting a lot of them.

Then I was like, oh, these are all kind of plugged into a battery. They're they're impermanent. They're just kind of for now, they're kind of a fad. They're not really a thing. They're stops not staes. And so I need to go away, create that resistent, put myself into discomfort, go without things sort of fast from not just food or drink, but fast from attention, fast from fame, fast from all the yeses that are coming into to me in the world and get some discernment again, as I said earlier, that my memory catch up, who the heck am I?

What really matter what I give a damn about? What was that moment that a real moment or was that just part of the was I just part of the machine, you know? And so to disseminate and and discriminate, make some choices for myself. And that's why I needed those walkabouts and still do. Right.

I mean, when you're you talk about you're kind of hitting your stride, you're making bank, you're in all these movies, you move into the chateau, you're wearing leather pants, you're hit in the club motorcycle.

It's all happening. I mean, most people would just ride that out and just more and more and more, when am I going to get the house up in the hills and just continue to double down for as long as, you know, the industry would allow them to do so until you're twenty seven years old.

That seems to be the going age of all the great rock and rollers. They make it to twenty seven and then they go, yeah.

And they all at the chateau to God bless the chateau where they promote a little bit of mischief. Thank goodness.

And I gave myself some license there. I said, you know what, I'm going to test this out. I'm going to test out my threshold of hedonism.

I'm going to I don't want to be harmful. Don't be mean. I don't I don't want to be mean to anyone else or myself. At the same time, I'm going to give myself a Saturday night party for for for some time. And I did it for a couple of years. And then I just noticed that, OK, this feels revolutionary, not evolutionary. This feels like a stop, not a stay. This indulgence and option to indulge is not I'm not really feeling it an ascension in my life.

I'm cool with where it is. I'm not griping about it. I'm enjoying it. And I'd be silly if I didn't. But I'm not really feeling build an ascension in my life and I want to feel build. So I started to get out of there and go away.

So I knew at that time it was that that was a stop and not a stay. I also, you know, during that time, at the end of that time, really started to question my belief in God and stuff. And so I remember saying, you know, OK, you're a believer, but why and is your belief is your sense of belief, Matthew? You're fatalistic sense of belief that it's all faith. Is it, Zeti, you using this as an excuse almost always in your life to let yourself off the hook?

And I remember going, well, let's just put two hands on the wheel of self-determination here and let's be our own judge and jury, Matthew, and let's call it out and not rely on. Hey, no, you know what? If, you know, it's all been written. And so I went through a very I would called it an agnostic time. And as I said in the book, it wasn't as much of a time where I disbelieve God.

It was a time where I said, you need to hold yourself more accountable, Matt. You need to have both hands on your wheel where you're going because you're letting yourself slide on just bit on a lot of stuff. And I want to go test set out.

I want to hold you. I want to hold you more accountable, Matthew. So I want to hold myself more accountable and went through a couple of years. That was a very good exercise. And my relationship with God, I believe I my belief is that God was smile. I'm going good, I'm good. I'm going to grab a hold of the wheel because I did because yeah, you do have free will and and I don't and it didn't make me think anything's going to change after this life.

But it did make me say, hey, while I'm in it, remember that I've got freedom of choice. I hold myself responsible for my choices.

Well, let's dig a little bit deeper into the faith conversation, because I think that greenlights really is a spiritual book. I mean, just on the subject of greenlights itself, there's this idea that you can catch them by virtue of skill, intent, endurance, resilience, discipline, hard work, all of these things. But the flip side of that coin is this idea that you talked about earlier, like engineering them, and that's about frequency, that's about intuition, fate, like you just said, it's about finding your way into the zone and it's about how you comport yourself in the world.

So you become a magnet for good things as opposed to somebody who's chasing them.

Yeah, look, I say in there in the book, I'm pretty sure the world's times. I'm pretty sure the world is conspiring to make me happy. And then what I mean by that is someone asked me this the other day, what do you what do you your measure of trust. Where they come from and how do you how do you have that people in my answer, which I'd never answer before until it asked that was I come into this conversation just meeting you and you have one hundred percent of my trust until you disprove me, until you give me reason to distrust.

I give everybody have a upmost respect and reverence for four people and believe in the goodness of people and that no one's out to try and harm me. Now, I'm not foolish. My eyes are open. I could listen to your questions and maybe I hear you going I think is trying to weasel in here and trying to do something that's not really true. But until then, I'm going no, 100 percent trust until you prove it. Otherwise, I have learned and do believe in this relationship, responsibility and freedom, the responsibility of freedom and the freedom and responsibility, the choices we make today that compound assets in our future.

You can tear yourself up the more green light with the choices we make today, meaning if I don't lie, cheat and steal, but choose not to. Now, I think it's a very selfish act not to lie, cheat, steal. And someone go, wait a minute, it's a selfish act to lie, cheat, because you get what you want right now. Yeah, is that really selfish, though? I don't think so, because if you do that for the rest of your life, everywhere you go, you got to look over your shoulder to make sure no one's there in the room that you cheated and stole from.

So when you're looking over your shoulder, you're not spending your time. You're spending their time and you're not present. So you're stressed. So you really didn't you really wasn't a selfish act. You bought debits and yellow lights in your future, not the freedom of green light. I'm trying to live a life where I don't leave crumbs and don't have to look over my shoulder, don't owe anybody money.

You know, I don't want to I haven't been perfect, but for what I've screwed up on, I hopefully gone and made amends and probably to have more to make that I don't know, but. I'm trying to make choices where I'm turning myself up tomorrow morning at the very basic level, here's here's a basic green light. Put coffee in your coffee filter the night before. So when you get up tomorrow morning groggy, I just push the damn button because it's hard to make a coffee when you hadn't had your coffee sometimes.

And when you don't put the coffee in the field, you get up the next morning, like, why didn't I tell myself up for this? Why would that kind of my future self here? Well, there's choices we make every day to be kind and cool to our future selves. And the honey, whole of those choices, I think, which is what I'm chasing, is where we make the choices, where what we want is actually what we need.

And what we need is actually what we want. That seems to be the honey hole of heaven on earth right there, where what's good for us selfishly is also what's good for the most amount of people.

That's the that's where that's the ultimate spot, I believe, right out to.

But I'm still chasing it's not dissimilar from 12 steps. I'm in recovery for a long time.

And so much of the steps are about like putting a person through a program that allows them to make amends for their past behavior, redress their character defects so that you can emerge and navigate the world looking people in the eye telling the truth, not being afraid of what's, you know, your wife's going to find in your jeans pockets when she's doing the laundry or, you know, just being able to, like, live congruent, like where your actions are in alignment with your values.

And you don't have to look over your shoulder or worry about, like when that law is going to catch up to you.

Yeah, I've heard that. I've never, never been in or don't really know the Twelve Steps. I know some people that are in them and really enjoy the conversations where we found this animus sort of approach and view on things.

Look and I try to remember it is it is it work man. It's not fun work to try and make up and go to every situation going, oh, wait a minute, who else is involved? Is there anyone to screwed over here? What's the situation. Jeez, minutes stressful. Yeah. And and me, I'm a fan of stress and people that go no stress. I'm like, what are you talking about?

But you're like it's a toxic stress that you carry the time. Yeah.

It's not the right kind. Life's hard enough with that creating extra work for ourselves. That's not constructive. If we're just running around trying to play defense to cover up our past mistakes or busting our ass dealing with stuff that's something that's not constructive or affirmatively moving forward, we're going to run into enough hill uphill battles without having to deal with, you know, sins of our past or things or contracts. We broken our past, man. Try not to gather up too many of them.

And you got more energy to handle the ones that the real battles that are in front of us anyway.

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

So the tool theory that's come to me is this. When faced with the inevitable get relative now, when do we deem a situation inevitable? That's already a relative question. Let's take covid right now, inevitable, it's here, don't deny it. Don't sit here every day getting all excited about maybe tomorrow it's gone because it will be gone tomorrow. So how do I get relative with this? OK, well, for me, for instance, you can persist the situation.

You can pivot or you can raise the white flag and say I give to fight another day. Well, we're in covid, so let's not raise the flag and say we're going to fight another day because we're all in it now. Kind of persist through this, doing it, living and expecting everything that I was before covid. Yeah, I could do that.

But I don't see the the net gain in that because I think it's going to be around here for a while. So I got to pivot now to what I mean by pivot, get relative with this situation, the inevitable covid that we're forced to be at home more and quarantining don't like that and don't like that, but. All right, let me start look at the upside here. I'm doing some more inventory myself. I'm spending more time with my kids.

I'm cooking more with my family in the kitchen. I got my mom with this. So the kids are around their grandmother more than they ever were, and she's eighty eight. So that's a good thing. Maybe spend some more time writing.

Right now, I'm starting to try to find the assets, the green lights in this red light that in.

That's how I'm choosing to get relative with it. That's a choice that we can make with every situation once we deem it inevitable now. If we endure, if you if you if you deem an outcome of something you want, if you say, well, it's it's inevitable, I can't get it. If you say that too soon, we're quitter. But if you say it too late, we're acting out the definition of insanity, trying to bang our head off, trying to get a different outcome by doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over.

So we have to measure those things for ourselves. When do we deem a situation, an outcome inevitable for us or or by getting it or not getting? And then how do we get relative with it? Sometimes I need to back off being so persistent, resilient and say I have to reapproach this the way I'm looking at this. I got to dance up in a different step. I got to throw myself off balance and reapproach this circumstance in my life.

This question, this crossroads, that's an art there that we're all trying to, I think, work out is when did something inevitable? And then once we do, how do we get relative with it?

Is that a little confusing? No, I got it. I mean, it reminds me of the Serenity Prayer, which is sort of very much, you know, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Like, it kind of boils down to that. But I'm wondering, like, does this come?

Is this a muscle that you flexed for so long that it comes naturally to you? Or is there like a daily practice? Is gratitude a reflex, or is that something that you have to cultivate for yourself?

Good question.

Look, I didn't come, you know, it was going back and looking at the 50 years of my life and the thirty six years of diaries that revealed that understanding when faced the inevitable get relative, it wasn't something that I'd written down or thought over and over and over in the past and then tried to practice. Look, as far as gratitude, I will you know, I was raised on you know, if you come in to breakfast in a bad mood, mom said, get your ass back in your bedroom and don't come out here to see the rose in the face and said the dust on the table.

I was raised on your tribe and about not having any shoes. That right. Oh, yeah. You think you got it so bad. Well, let me introduce you to a kid with no feet. Whoa, shit. OK, talk about relativity. We were raised on being thankful that the sun came up another day and that better be enough for you to be happy today. That better be enough for you to stand tall because that wasn't a guarantee.

So what are you going to do with it? We were raised on drop down to rock bottom and be thankful for things that we take for granted every day.

So has that triggered me through life to maybe see and be have thanks for certain things that maybe I should just expect? Sure, probably. At the same time, you know, I've got a pretty I've had a pretty good threshold for taking the context of a situation pretty early in circumstance and going, all right, what's my risk reward here? How do I get what I want here? And is what I want really what I need? All right.

What's the long term long money? Are I on the choice I make here? Am I doing something being eccentric for eccentricities sake? Yeah, well, there's nothing really constructive about that. That's kind of not worth shit. That's a fad that's going to last. What's a lasting choice that I can make here? That's going to be good for me and good for the whole situation that I could sleep well with. It's not going to wake me up in the middle of the night going, oh, why'd you do that?

Well, I'm not going to wake up tomorrow morning and go regret it or think it was a one off flash in the pan trying to make choices that are going to have long money, ones that are going to last, one that are going to going to feed.

My good wolf, instead of my bad wolf, you know what I mean? So. A lot of it, I think, has been instinct, and then I'm just now trying to put it into words, into a theory that I can go, OK. Remember that you can apply that to is that situation inevitable? When do you deem it such and how do you get relative with it? So as a way of just almost academically intellectualizing something that maybe has been an instinct for me that I noticed in looking at my diaries and how I got out of situations and turned some red light into some green light.

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

No, it's more of a I'm not a it's more of a you know, I like to say this way. You know, I've been working on this for about four years now. No audition. It's live. You're in the movie. It's all happening. Life is the movie. You wait up. It's other record button is always on. It's always on. So when inspired, do it. We don't have to. Preparation, preparation. What will it live.

Go now. Do it. Quit talking about it. I mean work it out. A lot of times being live is preparing.

I'm a big prepare for work and preparing for things, but trying to look at it like I've done in my life where I sat there and prepared, prepared, prepared, prepared, prepared, looked up in three years. I don't like it. Never got in the game. You're still prepared in. What are you doing. Go, go. What are you so afraid of failing in the game of life. So yeah it's more of a, it's more of an instinct that I'm just now sort of defining.

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

Yes, I love that.

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

And engage with yourself in a deeper way. I mean, if I. Have a reverence for you, Rich, right now. Oh, my God. Rich, I got you not long, but I want to talk to you, man. I just think you're like the trust.

I'm fighting it right now. Dude, I'm so happy to be talking to you. And it's like the people pleaser in me is what I'm trying to keep at bay so I can just be present and involved in this conversation.

Well, if you succumb to that and you were going to go people place you wouldn't be if you were overly impressed with me, you wouldn't be involved in this conversation to the extent that you can be just like if I had that reverence for you to that that you were above mortality for me, I couldn't actually be giving my true self to you in this conversation because I'm removed from it. So if I have a reverence I noticed it was soon after my father died when this came to me.

Fame, money, people that I was like, wow, my dad's passing gave me the gift to go no all mortal things.

Better look at him an eye level. At the same time, the underbelly of that is all the things you're patronizing, Makani and looking down on and condescending and sloughing off is not worthy, rose up to eye level and the world was flat. I could see wider, further and more clearly. And I stood up straighter. I was a half inch taller and looked at the Ango. Welcome to the rodeo, buddy. Time to get on the bull.

You know, quit relying on Dad to make sure he's got you back if you fall off. That was part of being so it happens, you know. And so how do I do that? How do we do that with full respect? I have full respect for you. You can have full respect for me. But now we can still be involved in the conversation because if one person is on the pedestal above humanity and mortality, you can't be involved with it.

And it's not even fair to that person. It happens in relationships. You'll see somebody in a relationship. And I've been in them where the female thinks I'm Superman and I think she's Wonder Woman. Well, that relationship ain't going to go too far, right, because we're both holding each other on an unlivable expectation, the pedestal that neither one of us can live up to it. And we're neither one is really involved with each other humanly because we have such reverence for the other projection.

Yeah. So I don't mean any lack of respect. I don't have less respect, actually more respect. But respect is a more and more to understanding who are you. And I can engage. But if I have too much of a reverence for you or anyone else, I can't really be involved with them.

And they can't be involved with me, so if if the if the tables turn, so that's that less impressed, more involved is, you know, it's a bit of the, you know, the eye in the sky when you're in there in the palm and the hand of God or the cradle of when you and you think you've got it all figured out. Go to that Google map, Povey, and look at this little bitty dot on this spinning planet called Earth and this whole thousands of years as the sands of time move and you notice how meaningless you are.

And we look at and we go, oh, jeez, none of it matters.

Which is a very liberating feeling, oh, good, take the pressure off, geez, none of it matters. But at that same time, what has happened to me is I'm going, oh, and that's exactly why it all matters. Oh, here we go.

Now we're on the bull. Now we're you know, just when I saw how little I mattered is usually when it's come to me how much it all matters.

Well, there's a humility in that. Right. And I think humility is hard to come by for everybody in certain times throughout their life. But, you know, for somebody who kind of exists in the world at this strange, you know, level of stratosphere, how do you like the connection to that kind of humility so that you can be involved in the world? I mean, is that you always seem to carry yourself with that and you've never not had that.

And I have to imagine that part of that is because you've made this choice to, you know, be in the world in a certain way, whether it's, you know, at the RV park or, you know, on the Amazon or, you know, wrestling in Africa like that keeps you grounded and levelheaded about who you are and where you where you sit, you know, in the grand scheme of everything. Yeah.

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

You know, humility, that's a that's been a word that I've wrestled with all my life because for so long I had the wrong definition of it. Humility to be humbled, humility, we all say have humility, but no one likes to be humiliated. Oh, wait a minute.

What's the nexus of that word? How can I be humble but still confident and how can I be humble but still have identity? It wasn't until a few years ago and I think this definition came. I think it's Jordan Peterson. The definition of humility, which I do purchase, which is admitting you have more to learn. And that definition, I lose no confidence or lose no identity in but a very quick to go. Yep, I got more to learn.

Now if I can call that humility and go into the world every day going, I know I have more to learn. I can move confidently with that humility and be humble, but boy, my early definitions of humility in my mind were almost arrogant, false modesty.

Oh no, no, no, none that I know that you know, and I remember this.

I can tell you that this was a I've harked back to this moment in high school. There's a girl, Raney's Sherman. And I remember I showed up at school one day. I was a junior and she was a friend, a friend of mine. We never dated. She said, friend, she goes, she's come. Because you know what, Matthew McConaughey, you are a handsome man.

And I went, Oh, come on out, Renee. And she grabbed my hand and looked me. Then she goes, Don't you dare give me that.

I don't know. No, no, no, no. Just because you know what you need to do when someone gives you a compliment like that is true. What you just say, thank you.

And I remember going. Oh, wow. OK. And it hit me, but I didn't learn really how to live and understand. Humility was always almost a regressive, feels like the word vulnerability and still wrestling with what that word means and how to feel still feel empowered in that part of what I've come up with that that it helps me understand that my relationship with the words humility and vulnerability is that like I know I want to be in the know, I love being in the know, but I'm still learning to be in the know is also knowing what you don't know.

I want to know what I don't know.

So that's another version of understanding the definition of humility for me that feels like it empowers me, but still has me be humble. Hmm.

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

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

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

Which I would not have thought. So that's that's being vulnerable to admit that you're the one who who crafted that.

And then that's the one piece of the book that my wife still here is you really need to put that not so arrogant. I was like, no, I thought I was a writer.

I'm like, I'm admitting it. You know, I admitted it. It was look, I felt I was aware enough at the time that I run it.

If you gonna run a few films that were that had their relative hits and and made their mark and I was getting some you know, I mean, people people in the interviews are going, man, you're really on a great run here that I really don't agree. And it came to me that this term, like, you're on this great run, great run. And I was in Telluride or one of those film festivals and I said. Being a lover of bumper stickers and slogans like I got to get this like an album of the I love album here, you know, the sound of this little movement I'm on that people are saying I'm on shows like reconnaissance.

I said, well, I can't come forward and say, yeah, I called because I got in this interview and I thought about it just at the moment. The guy went on the interview was gone.

And you've been on the run. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Well, you've been honest. I guess I was talking to a reporter the other day and he actually called it a accent. And he goes, I'm a connoisseur.

So, yeah, he goes, oh, that's great. I love it. My commissar's. You like that? I'm like, yeah. I mean, he said it sounded like comes off the tongue pretty easy. Sounds pretty cool to say I'm with it.

Well he wrote that and then it picked people are gone and because and I just kind of went with it. And so then in the book I decided to say, you know what, I'm the one who planted the seed.

I love that. I think that's hilarious, man. But what's amazing about it, everybody knows the story. They know the movies you were doing and then the movies you ultimately ended up doing.

But that period, what I didn't realize was how much intention and mindfulness went into making that pivot that it wasn't.

First of all, it went on longer than I thought.

And then also that it was very much planned.

Like, if I can't do things that interest me, that intrigued me as an artist and as a human being, like I'm going to opt out purposefully and.

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

No, it wasn't.

And I didn't know how long the sort of sabbatical drought would go on. And I shed a tear on my left shoulder, one with. What I what I was getting from my career and what I wasn't getting from my career, I was rolling with rom coms at the time I was. Rom com of shirtless on the beach and I looked at in the eye and still do and go, you're damn right I was. And those rom coms paid rent for those houses that I had on the beach where I went Schertz.

Get the fact I remember seeing you on the beach one time and I think you were renting a house with Lance for a period of time. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. I was running down the beach and I saw you guys out there.

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

In my life. But my work was like, oh, another rom com, I love doing these, but, oh, there's a new script. I think I can do that tomorrow morning. I think I could wake up and do that. And I was like, wow, that's not bad. But jeez, I want to shoot. I would like to do some work that scares me in the right way.

That makes me go, oh, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this role. And this is going to be an experience. And I wasn't getting those roles. So, yes, I couldn't do all roles I wanted to do were not being offered. So because I couldn't do what I wanted to do, I stopped doing what I was doing. And I remember I called my money manager how to do with the money you've invested. Well, OK, good, because I'm about to take off work and I don't know when I'll get work again.

Call my agent. I talked to Camila about it and she said she repeated my dad's words to me, OK, we're going to do this. Don't half ass it. We're going to you're going to do it. So I said, no more. I'm going. Well, nothing came in. Nothing was offered except Bronkhorst for the first six months after that. And I have that, you know, how puritanical was I? I have that story about getting an eight million dollar offer for a rom com and reading it and going.

It's a good script, but no thank you, then they came back and offered me ten million dollars. I said no thank you. Then they offered twelve point five dollars million and I said, ellipsis, ellipses, ellipsis, nothing.

Then they came back at fourteen point five. You know what I said? Let me read that script again.

I mean, I read it again.

And you know what? It was better written than the original one that I million to offer.

It was had more angles. I saw more opportunities. I saw more ways I could make it work. It mind you, it was the exact same words as the original script. But at that offer it was a better written script. But I said no. And then that sort of seemed to get the signal across Hollywood Mechanise not bluffing. He's really not doing any rom coms or action comedies right now. So what came in for the next year? Nothing.

Nothing. I mean, I check in with my agent every couple of weeks, but it was basically like nothing. You're persona not persona non grata. Nothing's coming in for you. Now, 20 months into the sabbatical, I'm in Texas, you haven't seen me in a rom com, you haven't seen me shirtless on the beach, everything that you expected to see me in that I would add sort of pigeonholed me into only being that and not considered for other roles 20 months into that.

All of a sudden, what I think happened is. Some producers and directors in Hollywood went. You know, be an interesting. To cash for this role in Killer Joe, Paper Boy, Mud, Magic Mike, true detective. Dallas Buyers Club, you know, would be an interesting choice, a novel choice. McConaughey but I would not have been a novel choice for those things 20 months earlier. Right. So way I look at it is that was an understanding time for me.

Again, back to process of elimination. I couldn't do what I wanted to do, so I decided I had to eliminate what I didn't want to do anymore. And I unbranded for 20 months. No one knew who I was. And I wasn't also.

I also was not in your household or on your TV screen or in your theater being what you had expected me to be. And so all of a sudden I became a new good idea. And that was a yeah, that was a sacrifice. And I didn't know when that darn thing was going to end or if it was. And I entertained different career paths. I entertain getting out of the entertainment industry altogether. I thought I might go be a fourth grade teacher.

I thought I might be a high school football coach. Wow.

I'm seriously really that's that's hard to believe. You really were doing that. Yeah.

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

Well, there's a couple lessons in that. I mean, one is back to this idea of of magnetizing the green light like ultimately and the second being, you know, saying no in order to get the yes. Right. Like you had to do. There was this palate cleanser that Hollywood had to endure to get to the point where suddenly you were a good idea when you weren't before. And that required you to say no. I mean, I don't know how many people, you know, have the gumption to say no to fifteen million dollars to do a movie for a couple of months.

Ultimately, it pays off and it shows the power of that. But it takes a lot of fortitude and conviction to commit to something like that and faith and belief to foresee that at some point it's going to pay off. Yeah, well, you look at The Australian Story.

When I was an exchange student for a year, I couldn't even believe that story. It's all true.

Have you have you gotten back in touch with that family? Yeah, every time I do Australian press, they usually show up on screen and, you know, that year, you know, before I went on that year, the Rotary Club who sponsor me wanted me to sign the contract to say I won't come home until a few years time. And I said, no. What do you want me to sign that for? I'm going for a year.

And they go, no, that's what everybody says. But you're going to get homesick, you want to want to come home, and I said, you know what, I'll shake your hand, but I'm not saying anything. Well, they agreed on a handshake and I agreed on a handshake. Well, trust me, you read that year. There are many times and for good reason to get the hell out of Dodge and come back home. But I was like, no, man, I'm in this.

I've got to finish it out. There's something in this for me. There's a green light in this hardship experience that I'm going through, this insanity I'm going through. There's a reason for it to stick with it. Don't pull the parachute. Well, same thing with, you know, the sabbatical of not working, once I was in it, I was like, I'm not going. I'm not. I mean, I almost gained more confidence as I went going, no, this is getting nastier with every day.

You're not an hour. Oh, you're in it now. I'm kind of. Hey, this is this is this is upside down and backwards. Stick with it. There's really something good going to come out. So when those jobs did come out, I wanted to do I was ferocious on those things. I mean, I and my things were long and I chewed them up and went hardcore into them. So, yeah, it was by saying no.

And I have you know, there's great prudence in sticking through, sticking with resistance. You know, I mean, look, let's talk about this with this time we're in Morse code was gone tomorrow, which would have never been here. So I want to preface this next thing I say with that. But as a people. Individuals in a society is their value in it to ourselves, even though we will have more tragedies and even losses of life?

Will we have a greater value and understanding of a green light in the future? If we're in it for longer? Because we paid the penance longer, because we were stripped to our necessities longer, because we went through this resistance longer and we were pulling our hair out of our heads when we come out of it. We don't just snap back to right where we were before because we're humans are tricky, man. We we can we can say we go through change.

We intellectually talk about it.

But, boy, we go right back to old habits like that, even bad habits. We go back to them. And so unless it's the consequences are not for the unrest, the disruption then goes on long enough for us to go. No, my floor has literally been moved.

I am changing my priorities about what I value in life because of this hardship.

It has to go on things. We're sort of our muscle memory switches goes right back to where we used to be pretty quickly.

Unless it's long enough penance to pay, you can't be the Phoenix unless you burn. You've got to burn first. Got to burn.

Got it. Got to be like it's got to burn. You got to look down. You've got to find it blocked and we have to be scarred. Not like, oh, that was hot and not like oh it left a little black mark. Oh shit. No. I've got a scar this year for life from getting burnt. Oh well now I'm really making the change. I mean we're, we're, we're what's the word. We're hardheaded like that.

You know, as people we we intellectualize that these things change, but very quickly we revert right back to our old habits, even if they're bad, unless the has gone on for a long enough time.

Yeah.

There's always opportunities in these setbacks and in this moment of forced repose, you know, amongst the economic challenges and everything that so many people are enduring right now, there's the general discomfort of being still with one's self that's so difficult, right? Like this mirror is up in front of us and it's forcing us to reckon with how we're living our lives because we can't move right now. We have to be in that discomfort and debilitating for a lot of people.

But if you can open your aperture to it, there's so much to be learned from that. And you don't have to go to the Amazon. We're stuck at home on Zoome, but we have that opportunity.

Open your aperture to we are in a forced winter right now and many of us, including me, needed to take one ourselves anyway. Well, now it's time we all got the permit. We're all on it. We got our first winter. It's fourth time to be introspective. Time to do inventory, whether you want to or not strip down to necessities. What do we got? How do I navigate? Who am I? I can't go anywhere.

What's one of our, you know, part of pulling the parachute is all I need to go out. I'm going out. Going out to dinner. We're going to go c'mon, let's go get together. OK, there's some prudence in being forced with self and hopefully we're taking enough of us can take the opportunity that's there in that to revolve. Yeah. Yeah.

How do you feel about this, you know, later chapter in the mechanisms of you becoming like this. Guru, you know, this person of wisdom that I don't know, when it began, maybe it began when you gave that commencement speech, but at some point you kind of went from Matthew, the actor, into somebody who, you know, was was basically imparting life lessons to the world. Like, how do you think about that or how do you feel about that?

Was that intentional or is it just a byproduct of who you are?

I think it started off more of a byproduct and then as gained some intention along the way, you know, to go back to that, it's like we're all in the show, the recording, the camera's on, you know, and ask myself. Are you making legacy choices for yourself right now, Mukhi, are you? Living in a way, live that is useful for yourself and others. Look, I'll say this. I go back to University of Texas and I had an idea for this script to screen class as a professor.

But in my mind, I'm still like I'm talking to students. I feel like I was there the other day. But then I start sharing things with them and they're going like, whoa, that's awesome. Thank you for telling me that. I'm like, oh, that wasn't obvious. And I'm like, no, we didn't know that. And so I started to go, Wait a minute. You got twenty eight years of experience of acting and being on sets.

Matthew Oh jeez. That's right. Add that up. You do have some experience that may be innate to you now that is novel to a student. So you do have something to share, some experience to share, then maybe someone else didn't have. I, you know. The share in this book is got quite a few tools in it for how to find our frequency individually and hopefully as a collective, we're going through a time right now. Great distrust.

We don't know what to believe in. You don't just trust others, do you? All of a sudden you look up, you don't trust yourself, and that little revolution can go back and forth when I don't trust myself. Not really. Don't trust you now. I don't believe myself now. I don't I don't believe in anything. And those are dead end street ultimately. So how do we rebuild some trust? I think it's through values. I think values are bipartisan, non-denominational.

I think those are the solid stepping stones that we need to each look in the mirror and ask ourselves how we can be better out on a daily basis. And that'll be incremental steps out of this time into hopefully a more evolved state that we can get out of and help us look back at. Twenty twenty as an actual red banner year of recreation and recreation and new beginning, I try to share what I know. I also try to show it.

I don't know. I share questions a lot. People, for instance, come to me a lot about, oh, they love the Foushee Dr. Foushee interview. Right? I didn't reveal anything novel in that I like everybody was just saying like. Can I get a bullet point sheet on the tattoos and the not tattoos, and can you just say I'm from real quickly because there's no consensus here, man. Excuse me? Not the not the long version and just a short yes.

No, do this. Don't do that. And so I just went on a rapid fire with him and didn't ask questions that have not been brought up. They just hadn't been sort of for a lot of people hadn't been brought up in a succinct way.

So I said, you know, do I have a platform where maybe someone else already knows that information, but maybe I got a platform where someone else is going to hear it, maybe listen to me in a way they wouldn't listen to someone else or maybe they didn't hear it, right? Yeah, well, let's go have those conversations. The minister of culture work I'm doing right now is a lot based on that. And that's me. You know, saying I'm stepping into playing my favorite character, that's me saying, go play you in the character of you in life, the things that wake you up at 2:00 in the morning that I've been writing down in my diary since I was 14.

It's always about culture, about how do we get along, what's our individual responsibilities, how do we get to freedom? How are we responsible for freedom and how does freedom have its responsibilities? What should I expect of you? What should you expect of me? Can we have a social contract here as humans? You know, because right now social contracts are broke, right? Where am I? Why are they broke? Well, partially, maybe.

I broke my own social contract. Maybe I've let myself slide on things and to go out and have a social contract with you, I'm just acting like one and not being one.

Well, wait a minute. I'm not gonna let that pass. I got to be one. I need to be one that voluntary obligation. We need to make voluntary pledges with ourselves. So what we expect of ourselves so we can expect from others.

And if we get that reciprocity going, then collect enough of us do that, then we collectively make change. The other ideas this. We got to remember we're never going to arrive. There's no destination, and I don't you know, it's it's like our lives. And say, America, the Langston Hughes poem, America Yet? That's what should be we should be chasing, yet we never get there with the Social Cultural Revolution, we're going we're not going to get to perfect justice.

But if we can make an incremental ascension forward that it could stay in the race, commit to the chase and with ourselves, can we just keep chasing our better selves a little bit and then we're going to screw on what can America just keep? We're an aspiration. Our lives are an aspiration. America is an aspiration. It's a chasing of yet. And I think that's what we ultimately ours is individuals we all should be chasing. So what more fun, wild, adventurous thing to chase your life than yourself?

Well, there's a there's a number eyed optimism to that that's infectious and that I love and I don't want to take up too much of your time. We can we can edit on this.

You know, I can't let you go without digging a little bit more deeply into kind of where we're at in this American experiment right now.

We're headed into an election and we are extremely divided communities, families, individuals are having difficulty finding common ground, being able to even effectively communicate.

And there is this, you know, layer of of whether it's fake news or misinformation that's confusing people and driving us apart.

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

Right the ship.

Great question. Solve this problem for me. And here we go for us. Oh, wow. Yeah, right. No, that yeah. Is times of great trust in others in ourselves. Our social contract have broken. Our personal contracts are broken. We don't have expectations of ourselves or others right now. The private sector down to the individual has more power than ever. We can't trust our leadership. Politics is a broken business. What do we want?

People want security. Well, we're all individuals. Wait a minute, what's where's the collective? We got it, we got to all this is being politicized along the way, the body counts are being added up for which side of the side of the aisle wants to win. That's the only numbers. Each side, it's counting. We've got an election year. Are we going to have civil war?

Man Can we just get to January twenty twenty one, which is a symbolic day, but nothing more than a symbolic day. Do we have a ten year restoration? Do we have a 20 year restoration? I don't know how long it'll go. What can we rely on? But the one thing, little amnesty right now, tough time for everybody. I don't know how to make a collective change. I don't know how to make an overall systemic change or a law.

I don't think people want to be legislated like that. I think it again, comes down to each one of us need to look in the mirror. How can I be a little bit better? What can I do a little bit better? I'd be great and be perfect. There is no best. I can be a little bit better. I can be little more fair.

How can I understand that my brother and sister are also hurting maybe in more and different ways than I am.

How can I have a conversation without a condemnation? How can I have more patience to take a breath and listen and let someone who hasn't been heard speak more loudly than maybe they need to? But but hero, how do we make this time just a flash in the pan?

How do how do we be honest for the choices we make for ourselves selfishly are also the best choices for the most amount of people. And then there's not any specific recipe for that. But take that into consideration when we make our choices for ourselves again, responsibility and freedom. We're going to have to build our way out of this time if we're going to have to break a damn sweat for a while. And I think we have to have that long view, that feeling like this is going to go on for a while.

And how can we make that a part of our daily instincts of how we go about our lives? How do we treat ourselves? How do we treat our loved ones? How do we treat our employees? How do we treat people we work with? How do we treat what we're building? And what are we are we just for profit or are we for purposes?

Well, what's our purpose? I'm not interested in politics. I'm interested in some purpose, though. Politics, a broken business. Just so that's what I mean by the private sector down to the individual. You have more power right now to define your future than ever because you actually don't have been where anyone else up there no institution to rely on for that guidance. So I understand them and some are going, well, what the hell, man? Give me a map.

I don't know what to trust in. I don't know what's a consensus here. Some of us are going to do well right now. We can just keep our head above water, just try and make it through. This time it's going to pass. We're going to be moving forward. We are not turning the page yet, though.

When the time comes to turn the page uncovered, when the time comes to turn the page on the Cultural Revolution, the only way it's going to work is if the collective. All of us. Every color you've got, covid, if you don't, every color of skin do it together to some form or fashion, I think you know, as much as we are a nation of individuals and love our individualism, we are failing. And at any sort of collective responsibility, we have failed with the mask of seeing that as a civic duty instead of a damn.

Don't you tell me what to do. Bullshit. It's it's the wrong kind of selfish.

It's actually not a selfish move to to fight those fights. There is a responsibility that we can choose to take for and with each other and ourselves. And those two are not exclusive. My hunch is that in values. My hunch is it lies in responsibility, accountability, risk taking, sense of humor. The list goes on and on and on that we can be a little kinder, a little more fair, a little more empathetic, a little more understanding, a little more forgiving.

Also holding on accountable. No, no. This is going to be a free ride. I'm not in for a world kumbayah now. We've got to come to work. And the greatest thing about America is when America's working right is if you're willing to work at something and educate yourself and go after something, you more so than anywhere else, should have the opportunity to achieve that. But not without the work and the education and the hustle to go do it.

So, you know, I'd say this and start off with trying to create more green for yourself and others and see where those two meet and see that actually being selfless is actually a very selfish act. Creating more for others is actually very selfish for yourself as well. And make sure you're trying to make sure your selfish choices for yourself also light the way for more people as well. Boom, beautifully put. Thank you, man, that was incredible.

I appreciate your time today. I enjoyed super fun, man. Thank you. The book is Incredible Greenlights available everywhere.

October 20 is the day it comes out. That's right.

Over 20th this year, you've been attacking this thing like it's the release of a blockbuster movie. Like all you men out there, man like this is going big and wide. I can tell already well that I'm approaching it.

Look, this is the truest permanent extension of me. That I've ever been a part of. And to whatever extent I'm honored with that and and I and I want to it's the first time, you know, if I look at it like a movie, which I have. I wrote it, I directed it. I had you know, I mean, I did it. Yeah. So I'm not acting in someone else's script, being directed by someone else.

So it's the truest permanent extension of me that I've ever put out. And that's scary and fun and all those things. And yes, I had to have my chin strap on and my mouth guard in while I was writing it.

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

It's going to help a lot of people. I hope so. That'd be great. Cool. All right.

Hope to meet you in person one day. But until then, best best move on with the ill luck with everything.

Yeah. At some point, hopefully, we'll go to that trip with Dan. Good deal. Thanks, dude. I appreciate it, man. That's a lucky person. Yeah. Right on pea soup. How unbelievably awesome was that, could you imagine if Matthew was your college professor? I don't know about you, but I can listen to that silky smooth Southern drawl all day long. I want to thank my pals Dan Buettner and Ryan Holiday for helping connect the dots to make this one happen.

Be sure to check out greenlights available everywhere. While you're at it, make sure to preorder my new book, Voicing Change. In addition, which you can find exclusively rich roll dotcom slash v.c. Let Matthew know how this one landed for you on his Sociales. He's at officially McConaughey on Instagram and at McConaughey on Twitter. And be sure to check the show notes on the episode page Rich Role Dotcom, where you will also discover that we completely revamped the Web site top to bottom, courtesy of Emiri Agency.

Thank you for the great work. Hope you like the new look and feel of the site, which will soon include many more new features we are working on, like our impending subscription offering, as well as categorization of the podcast episodes, copious additional educational resources and much more that we're going to be rolling out in the coming months. Finally, we also have another role on Amay coming up next week. Give me a call. Leave me a voicemail at four, two, four, two, three, five, four, six, two, six.

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