Daily Motivations - Life Is Not FAIR

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Life isn’t always fair, but that doesn’t mean you can’t win. In this powerful motivational speech, Matthew McConaughey shares deep wisdom on embracing challenges, taking ownership, and becoming the hero of your own story. If you’ve ever felt stuck, lost, or uncertain about your path, this message will shift your mindset, reignite your purpose, and push you to take action. Remember: 📌 Life is not fair—so what? Play the hand you’re dealt and make it work. 📌 Success comes from responsibility, discipline, and resilience. 📌 You are the author of your story—be your own hero! Instagram - @daily_motivationsorg Facebook- @daily_motivationsorg

My hero. That's who I chase. Now when I was 15 years old, I had a very important person in my life come to me and say, who's your hero? And I said, I don't know. I got to think about that. Give me a couple of weeks. I come back two weeks later, this person comes up and says, who's your hero? I said, I thought about it. You know who it is? I said, it's me in 10 years. So I turned 25, 10 years later, that same person comes to me and goes, so are you a hero? And I was like not even close no no no she said why I said because my hero is me at 35 so you see every day every week every month and every year of my life my hero is always 10 years away I'm never going to be my hero I'm not going to attain that I know I'm not and that's just fine with me because that keeps me

with somebody to keep on chasing I'm going gonna talk to you about some things I've learned in my journey. Most from experience, some of them I heard in passing, many of them I'm still practicing but all of them I do believe are true. Life is not easy, it is not. Don't try to make it that way. Life's not fair, it never was, it isn't now and it won't ever be. Do not fall into the trap, the entitlement trap, of feeling like you're a victim. You are not. Get over it and get on with it. And yes, most things are more rewarding when you break a sweat to get them. Happiness is an emotional response to an outcome. If I win, I will be happy. If I don't, I I won't and I say if happiness is what you're after then you're gonna be let down frequently and you're gonna be unhappy much of your time. Joy though, joy is a different thing it's something else joy

is not a choice it's not a response to some result it's a constant. Joy is the feeling that we have from doing what we are fashioned to do, no matter the outcome. Now personally, as an actor, I started enjoying my work and literally being more happy. Define success for yourself. Now check this out. I'm in south of New Orleans a few years ago and I went to a voodoo shop and they had this wooden partition against the wall with these columns.

And these columns were all these vials of these magic potions, right? And the headings above each potion defining what they would give you were things like fertility, health, family, legal health, energy, forgiveness, money. Guess which column was empty? Money. Let's admit it. Money is king today. It's what makes the world go round.

It is success. The more we have, the more successful we are, right? Now I would argue that our cultural values have even been financialized. Humility is not in vogue anymore. It's too passive. It's a get rich quick on the internet, riches 15 minutes of fame world that we live in and we see it every day. But we all want to succeed, right? So the question that we got to ask ourselves is what success is to us, what success is to you? Is it more money? Maybe it's a healthy family. Maybe it's a happy marriage. Maybe it's to help others, to be famous, to be spiritually sound, to leave the world a little bit better place than you found it. Continue to ask yourself that question. Now your

answer may change over time and that's fine, but do yourself this favor. Whatever your answer is, don't choose anything that will jeopardize yourself. Prioritize who you are, who you want to be, and don't spend time with anything that antagonizes your character. Don't drink the Kool-Aid man. It tastes sweet but you will get cavities tomorrow. Alright life is not a popularity contest. Be brave, take the hill but first answer that question, what's my hill? So first we have to define success for ourselves and then we have to put in the work to maintain it take that daily tally

Tend our garden keep the things that are important to us in good shape Where you are not is as important as where you are Defining ourselves by what we are not is the first step that leads us to really knowing who we are You know that group of friends that you hang out with that they really might not bring out the best in you? You know they gossip too much or they're kind of shady. They really aren't gonna be there for you in a pinch. Or how about that bar that we keep going to that we always seem to have the worst hangover from. Or that computer screen right? The computer screen that keeps

giving us an excuse not to get out of the house and engage with the world and get some real human interaction. How about that food that we keep eating stuff that tastes so good going down makes us feel like crap the next week we feel lethargic and we keep putting on weight. Well those people those places those things stop giving them your time and energy. Just don't go there. I mean put them down. And when you do this, when you do put them down, when you quit going there, when you quit giving them your time, you inadvertently find yourself spending more time and in more places

that are healthy for you, that bring you more joy. Why? Because you just eliminated the who's, the where's, the what's and the when's that were keeping you from your identity. Like trust me, too many options. I promise you that too many options will make a tyrant of us all.

All right, so get rid of the excess, the wasted time. Decre decrease your options If you do this you will have accidentally Almost innocent put in front of you. What is important to you by process elimination? Knowing who we are is hard It's hard Give yourself a break Eliminate who you are not first And and you're going to find yourself where you need to be.

Don't leave crumbs and the beauty of delayed gratification. So what are crumbs? Well, the crumbs I'm talking about are the choices that we make that make us have to look over our shoulder in the future. You didn't pay that guy back the money that you owed him and tonight you just saw him three rows behind you. Shit. You slept around on your spouse and you just found out that tomorrow she and the lady you're

having an affair with are going to be at the same PTA meeting. Shit again. You drank too much last night, you're too hungover to drive your son to his 8am Saturday morning baseball practice. These are the crumbs. They come in the form of regret, guilt, and remorse. You leave crumbs today, they will cause you more stress tomorrow and they disallow you from creating a customized future in which you do not have to look over your shoulder. So let's flip the script.

Instead of creating outcomes that take from us, let's create more outcomes that pay us back, fill us up, keep your fire lit, turn you on for the most amount of time in your future these are the choices I'm talking about and this is the beauty of delayed gratification. Tee yourself up do yourself a favor make the choices the purchases today that pay you back tomorrow. Residuals. My business we call it mailbox money if I do my job well today and that movie keeps rerunning on TV, five years from now I'm getting checks in the mailbox. It's a heck of a deal.

So whether it's prepping the coffee maker the night before so all you've got to do is press the button in the morning or getting ready for the job interview early so you don't have to cram the night before or choosing not to hook up with that married woman because you know you're going to feel horrible about it tomorrow and your husband carries a gun or paying your debts on time so that when you do see that guy three rows back tonight you don't have to hunker down in your seat hoping that he don't see you get some ROI you know what that is? Return on investment. Your investment. You. Customize your future. Don't leave trumps. Make voluntary obligations. Alright, mom and dad, since we were young they teach us things as children. Teachers, mentors, the government, laws, they all give us

guidelines for which to navigate this life. Rules to abide by in the name of accountability. I'm not talking about those obligations. I'm talking about the ones that we make with ourselves, with our God, with our own consciousness. I'm talking about the you versus you obligations. We have to have them. Now again these are not societal laws expectations that we acknowledge and endow for anyone other than ourselves. These are faith-based obligations that we make on our own. These are not the lowered insurance rates for a good driving record. You will not

be fined or put in jail if you do not gratify these obligations I speak of. No one else covers these but you. They are your secrets with yourself, your own private counsel, personal protocols. And while nobody throws you a party when you abide by them, no one's going to arrest you when you break them either except yourself Or some cops who got a disturbing the peace call at 2 30 in the morning because you were playing bongos your birthday suit That was me An honest man's pillow is his peace of mind and when you lay down on that pillow at night no matter who's in your bed we all sleep alone. These are your

personal Jiminy Crickets and there are not enough cops in the entire world to police them. It's on you. It's on you. A roof is a man-made thing. This may cut a little closer to the bone since the geography but I think we all were there and we will all remember where we were. But in January the 3rd 1993 was the NFL playoffs and you're Houston Oilers for playing the Buffalo Bills. The Oilers were up 28 to 3 at halftime. 35 to 3 early in the third. Frank Breich and the Bills come back to win 41 to 38 in overtime for one of the greatest comebacks in NFL history.

Yeah, the Bills won, but they didn't really beat the Oilers. The Oilers lost that game. They beat themselves. Y'all remember that? Why? Why'd they beat themselves? Or how? Was it because at halftime they put a ceiling, a roof, a limit on their belief in themselves, aka the prevent defense. Maybe they started thinking about the next opponent in the playoffs at halftime, I mean they were up.

Then they came out and played on their heels, lost the middle edge the entire second half and voila, they lost. In a mere two quarters, defensive coordinator Jim Eddy went from being called the defensive coordinator of the year and the man first in line to be a head coach next year to a man without a job in the NFL. You ever choked? Nobody has ever choked. I have. You know what I'm talking about, fumbling at the goal line, stuck your foot in

your mouth once you got to the microphone, had a brain freeze on the exam that you were totally prepared for, forgot the punchline to a joke in front of 4,000 graduating students at the University of Houston commencement. Or maybe you've had that feeling of, oh my god, life just cannot get any better than this moment. And ask yourself, do I deserve this? Now what happens when we get that feeling? Tense up, we have this sort of outer body experience where we are literally seeing ourselves in the third person and we realize that the moment just got bigger than us. You ever felt that way? I have.

And it's because we have created a fictitious ceiling, a roof to our expectations of ourselves, a limit where we think it's all too good to be true, but it's not. And it's not our right to say or believe it is we shouldn't create these restrictions on ourselves a blue ribbon a statue a score a great idea the love of our life a euphoric bliss who are we to think that we don't deserve or haven't earned these gifts when we get them? It's not all right

But if we stay in process, all right within ourselves in the joy of the doing We will never choke at the finish line. Why? Because we aren't thinking of the finish line Because we're not looking at the clock. We're not watching ourselves on the Jumbotron performing the very act that we're in the middle of. No, we're in process. The approach is the destination and we are never finished.

Bo Jackson, what did he do? He used to run over the goal line, through the end zone and up the tunnel. The greatest snipers and marksmen in the world, they don't aim at the target. They aim on the other side of the target. We do our best when our destinations are beyond the measurement, when our reach continually exceeds our grasp, and when we have immortal finish lines. And when we do this, the race is never over. The journey has no port. The adventure never ends because we are always on the way. So do this, do this and let them, let somebody else come up and tap you on the

shoulder and say hey you scored. Let them run up and tap you on the shoulder and say man you won. Let them come tell you. You can go home now. Let them say, I love you too. Let them say, thank you. Take the lid off the man-made roofs that we put above ourselves and always play like an underdog. Here we go. The late and great University of Texas football coach Darryl Royal. If you all remember him, he won a national championship in 69, he won a couple of national championships. He was a friend of mine and a good friend to many people.

Now a lot of people looked up to this man. One of the people who looked up to him was a musician named Larry. Now at this time in his life, Larry was in the prime of his country music career. He had number one hits and his life was rolling. He had picked up a bad habit of snorting the white stuff somewhere along the line and at one particular party after a bathroom break Larry went confidently up to his mentor Darryl and he started telling him a story. Coach Royall listened as he always had and when Larry finished his story and was about to walk away, Coach Royall put a

gentle hand on his shoulder and he very discreetly said, hey Larry you got something on your nose there bud. Larry immediately hurried to the bathroom mirror where he saw some of the white powder that he hadn't cleaned up his nose. He was ashamed. He was embarrassed. As much because he felt so disrespectful to Coach Royal and as much because he'd obviously gotten too comfortable with the drug to even hide it as well as he should. Well, the next day Larry went to Coach's house.

He rang the doorbell. Coach answered and he said, Coach, I need to talk to you. Darrell said, sure, come on in. Larry confessed. He purged his sins to Coach. He told him how embarrassed he was and how he had lost his way in the midst of all this fame and fortune and towards the end of an hour Larry who was in tears he asked coach he said coach what do you what do you think I should do my

coach being a man a few words just looked at him and calmly said Larry I have never had any trouble turning the page in the book of my life. Larry got sober that day and he's been sober for the last 40 years. You ever get in a rut? You know what I'm talking about? You get in a funk? Get stuck on the merry-go-round of a bad habit? I have.

Look, we're going to make make mistakes you got to own them then you got to make amends and then you got to move on guilt and regret kills many a man before their time so turn the page get off the ride you are the author of the book of your life. Turn that page. Give your obstacles credit. You know those No Fear T-shirts that were out? I don't know. You used to wear them 10 years ago. No Fear.

You remember those or just me? I saw them everywhere. Alright. I don't get them and I never did. I mean I try to scare myself at least once a day. I mean I get butterflies every morning before I go to work. I was nervous before I got here to speak tonight. I think fear is a good thing. Now why? Because it increases our need to overcome that fear. Say your obstacle is fear of rejection.

You want to ask her out or you want to ask him out but you fear that he or she may say no. All right, you want to ask your boss for that promotion but you're scared he's going to think you're overstepping your bounds. Well, instead of denying those fears, declare them. Say the fear out loud. Admit it. Give them the credit they deserve. Don't get all macho and act like they're no big deal. And don't get paralyzed by denying that they exist and therefore abandoning your need to overcome them. I mean, I'd even subscribe to the belief

that we're all destined to have to do the thing that we fear the most anyway at some point. So give your obstacles credit and you will one find the courage to overcome them or you will two see more clearly that they're not really worth prevailing over. So be brave have courage and when you do you get, you get stronger, you get more aware, you get more respectful of yourself and that which you fear.