Daily Motivations - The Art of Confidence

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

The art of doing and the art of becoming are one in the same. You need to embrace the growth, the pain, the discovery, and the realization of what it takes to become your successful self.In this powerful motivational episode, Matthew McConaughey shares advice to those looking for how to become their best selves.speaker: Matthew McConaugheyInstagram - @daily_motivationsorgFacebook- @daily_motivationsorg

It's it. Some belief, not just belief in God, but I think it's in short supply and I think more of us need it. And if we don't have more of it, doubt's going to win. If doubt wins, we're all going to lose. And we've got stuff out there to believe in. I think people are looking for it. I know I am. I don't want it because I can get it. Hang on a minute. What is it that I really want? What is it that I really would like? I want to be scared of the role that I'm going to take on because I'm not sure where it's going to go, but I'm going to trust that I'll come up on the other side. We have to define success for ourselves. And then we have to put in the work to maintain it. And there are a lot of men that I know who are looking for that definition.

That doesn't feel like... I've been told what it's not. And now I don't know what it is. Let's say someone has been kicked in the nuts a good bit by life. How do you advise them to sort of become the hero of their own story again? Man, that's a tough one. That's a great question. You know, I sit here with a life where I have the luxury to project, to ask myself and ask others.

No, make a sacrifice today. Sacrifice a plastic ring today for a gold crown tomorrow. Sacrifice something today for more freedom tomorrow. Sacrifice something today for a possible healthier future for your kids. I understand that's a luxurious position. I'm not going to apologize it. I'm in it. But I understand to someone in misery, they're going, good for you, man.

I'm trying to feed family tonight. I'm not thinking past that. I can't think past that. What he asked him to do? My indirect thing I would say and understand is, well, if you don't have the hope or believe in something, you're going to end up, you're definitely got to remain where you are. And if you have hope and faith in something,

I'm not saying it's 100% get out of jail. You're going to absolutely get out, but you've got the best chance to. Yeah, the book's about belief. That's what I'm peddling here. I need more of it. I personally believe in God, but the whole thing is not for people that just believe in God. Believe in trying to pursue your better self. Transcend itself.

If you believe in the future, you believe in your kids, believe in the past, something. Don't know what that is? Ask yourself what you die for. Start there. Everyone kind of believes in something. There's an argument that even nihilists to believe in nothing. Nothing's even something. I've never been able to really live with by hook or by crook.

I'll get it how I can get it. I'll lie cheat and steal to get it. I got the prize, and I'm still okay. I got it. My own shadow chases me down in the middle of the night. And those nightmares do become my own daymairs. I have to, I think I naturally come back. And look, I hustle.

I'm a hustler. I'm not puritanical. I'm not trying to preach an absolute straight and narrow way to go. Things I bullshit my way into things and faked my way into making things. Pulled off stunts. Wait a minute. Now, so we're saying if success is the key, success is the measurement, and you can get it by lying, cheating, and stealing,

and still be rewarded the gold medal, that's what's happening. Are we ready to say that's okay? Are we ready to say, that's just how it is? We have leaders in positions. Now they're saying, yeah, just win. Well, just win, just succeed. But yeah, look how you get there. You did it.

Congratulations. Come to the front of the line. So what are the ethics? I don't know. What'd the winner do? Well, but they, wait, what about rules? Oh, yeah, by the way, the rules, if you follow them, you're a sucker. I started to find myself going, oh, wait a minute.

I'm not ready to wave that white flag. Are we ready to wave that white flag? flag, no. We can see that's what it is, because there's many reasons to do so. And so I'm looking around at people and going, I'm not finding things people to believe in, and I'm finding it harder to believe myself. But although those people might get to the front of the queue and be awarded the medal, the medal that you're awarded or the queue that you get to the front of might not actually give you what you want. And you start by sort of reframing success, which I think is a really important thing,

especially for a young generation, especially for men, who are, you know, the first to want to get to the top of the pyramid in certain pursuits in life. Okay, you can get to the top of the pile, or you can get the gold medal, but be careful what that medal represents, and a medal in what? Right.

Relevant for what? We all want to be relevant, okay, like, relevant for what? We want to succeed, but when we succeed, do we act? Is it worth it if we don't profit? Yeah, you say, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. If more, we're trained to go the quantity is the goal.

That's it. Well, and if that's sacrificing quality or value, what we actually value, what are you really winning? Sometimes you can do everything right and still not get the result that you wanted, and that seems like a really tough pill to swallow for people. I think that's why people become uncomfortable with fully filling. their emotions. Yeah.

So where do you go? What do you think when I really, I gave it my all that I bad myself and I still got kicked in the nose. Yeah. Not only did I feel like I deserve it, I feel like I earned it. And I still didn't get it. Wait a minute, but you said that's the playbook and I followed the playbook. You said these were the rules and the regulations.

I followed it. And I was good at it. I still didn't get it. Is there something that you try to remember about the upside of a crisis during a crisis, or do we just need to ride that out? Zooming out would be so beautiful. And in retrospect, if only you could give yourself the gift of distance, of time. Yeah.

Yeah. And yet you know something hard is going to come again and you're going to be swept away by the wave. I mean, for me, I think it's an obvious dance to both because you can't jump to the objective right away and go, Inshallah, oh, fate'll have it. This two shall pass. I'm fine. No, because then you don't deal with the crisis. I do have a good, I do have a pretty quick threshold for being able to laugh,

like honestly start giggling when I'm in the shit. Because I've found that I'm able to handle the shit better. If I just start, if quicker I start going, are you kidding me? I'll get objective and remind myself things like, you go and die, McConaughey, which gives me that, oh, so what, this is not a good. bigger deal as I thought. If you're going to do it, do it. Say what you can do. Do what you say. If you can't do it, don't say you can do it. Don't over-leverage yourself. Don't over-leverage the decision and then jump in and kind of dip a toe. I think I'll try it out. Now, think if you're

going to try it out beforehand, but when it's time to go, dive. Finish it, find out. Come out the other side. Don't leave it and go, if I just go, uh-uh, that keeps me up at night. I think it keeps a lot of us up at night. When you half-assed something, you just don't know, whether you failed or succeeded, got what you want or didn't get what you want, finding out and looking in the mirror and going, I didn't half-assed, I went all the way, I found out, and that ain't for me, or I found out, and you damn right, that is for me. That's a great place to get to. I think part of the challenges in life is a lot of us are running around half-assing ourselves, half-fooling ourselves, not full of ourselves, not studying ourselves enough, not holding

ourselves to task enough, not patting our own self on the back when we do get what we want enough, not cracking our own whip on our backside when we do get out of line even though we knew better. I wish we were more full of ourselves that way. Someone said this to me before, Matthew, you're so full of yourself. And I, without thinking, I was like, well, who else am I supposed to be full of? that's a good line and I stopped after I was like

that's exactly what I meant and I wrote that down I wish more people were more full of themselves I think we should take some time to be able to look in the mirror and own that thing that we pulled off

and go good job that's what you wanted that's what you got at the same time be able to as we do more often look in the mirror

when we fail and go eh-n-h-bogie you're And not pull that off. Give others and yourself more credit. Happiness, you can't guarantee it, but there is a science to satisfaction. You can look at habits that engineered less pain in your life.

Maybe more pleasure, but at least less pain. And that's a win. So much easier to be supportive and gentle of other people than of ourselves. You know, you will happily bestow this sort of gentle, reassuring pat on the shoulder when somebody succeeds or falls short when they tried their best. Yet, given the fact that you tried your best, you give yourself a kick on the way out of the door and a harsh word to follow you. Yeah, because I got myself in the pickle. Because things didn't go how I wanted it to go or how I believed it could go. Life's the ironic tragedy.

Life is pain. I'm the reason that I stepped in, which is also an asset, even if someone go, why do you give yourself so much credit for screwing that up? We're going to make mistakes. You got to own them. And you've got to make amends. And then you've got to move on. Guilt and regret kills many a man before their time. Turn the page.

Get off the ride. You are the author of the book of your life. There are habits that I notice of things I take care of in my life, health-wise, faith-wise, father-wise, husband-wise. If I'm doing that consistently, there's less valleys. The ironic tragedy is that life has to be lived forward but only makes sense in reverse. When you look back, we can all connect every single dot. It's mathematical, scientific how we got to this table right here. It's all connected if we go back and look at it.

And there's a whole lot of, I thought that was the end. Well, it was the end, but it was the beginning of this thing. What you're leaning into is that mystery going forward, right? That ironic choice that you have something to push off the, well, I don't know what I do want, but I do know I don't want that. You have leverage. Yes. You know, we always say, well, who are you? You know, I want to figure out who you are.

And we ask, I try to ask my kids that now. Well, I want you know who you are. And a part of that who's helped me is Bob Dylan's lines. Like, I don't know what all this talks about who we are, man. We are all just what we create ourselves to be. That gives me a little, oh, that's relaxing. But it's so much easier to figure out who you're not. And if you start eliminating who I'm not, by sheer mathematics, you end up moving toward

who, of what feeds you and who you are. And it's a hell of a lot easier thing to go, how can I get rid of some bullshit my life, than it is to go, well, how do I go to my true self? Do I want to press the accelerator more quickly? or don't want to take my foot off the fucking break. Sometimes the hard work and the endurance and the elbow grease that work harder. We were talking about that hustle is not the way out.

Sometimes it's I need to back up, laugh, have a sip of my favorite, whatever, and dance my way through the raindrops out of this sun. And even looking at the things that are bad and going, oh, thank you. Appreciate that. I think one of the themes of your worldview that I've become familiar with is alchemizing bad times into good ones. A reminder that things that seem bad can end up being good.

How can people, or how do you have more of that perspective during a hard time? I probably start off intellectualizing something that I know I probably should believe in, but don't believe in it, and convince myself even to an extent to trick myself, that, you know, sit here and go, well, you just tell yourself, this two shall pass. Okay, great. Well, what the hell's that mean? Even if it's true. In the moment, you're like, what are you talking about, man? I'm in the debit section. I'm in a warning section. I'm, this, this sucks. I think that how much I'm conscious of it or not, my undeniable optimism

and faith, that this isn't all it is. And if it is, so what? That, that's, okay, well, then really, so what? You know what I mean? What's the big deal? Two, it minimizes, I don't, I seem to have a tendency not to make a bigger deal out of things that other people make a bigger deal. Dramas. I don't like to create false drama. When it comes into a tard, I am affecting. I get the blues. I get sad. I get mad. I'm a shit to be around. I can't get to sleep. I got demons in my own head trying to work, trying to work the riddle out. Why did this happen? That's the other thing that's tough for me is I think that any bad thing that happens to me, My initial reaction is, what'd you do wrong to lead to this? Heard a quote recently that said,

Every man knows reflection and introspection when he's at his lowest. Bad times, you can't do anything other than wallow in retrospective assessment. But one of my favorite things I've learned from you is when things are going well, given that that's presumably what you want to have more of, may be worth deconstructing that. Yes. can I try and bottle some science here to why things are going well? And I did find consistences.

You were appreciating more. You were pointing out beautiful things and not taking them for granted. And so I found a list of things. And when I get off track, I try to remind myself, you've been slacking on some of those. I've definitely found consistences. And I think we all have them if we just notate them along the way, that they're not by accident. Let's cheers. Let's have a cheers on the way for all the things that are worked for when we have going right.

Also knowing that it's not forever, that we will have a mountain to climb here shortly. What's my best advice I need to give myself right now is listen to my own damn advice. You knew that there is something to be extracted from living life. How did you get that frame of reference? Like that's so useful, but I don't think most people have that. You know, I don't know exactly where I got it. I mean, I would say, again, to call back that Australian year where I did not have a choice. where I was forced into that situation and saw the greenlight assets from being alone and quite lonely.

I do think that there's great value in being alone. And if we are alone and we get bored and we don't like the company, ding, may that light go off to say, that does not mean. We need to pick up our phone to get some attention or go to the bottle to ease the anxiety or or go online to get some feedback to entertain ourselves. No, it's actually a great time to say, no, sit here in that discomfort long enough to go, okay, until you come out the other side to go. All right, I'm good with me again. Now, it's part of that I write about traveling in general.

Ideally, you don't go to a place. I always say that, don't, I don't want to leave a place I travel to until I get to the point of going, I could live here. This could be my existence. And as soon as I get to that point, then I'm like, okay, you can go. Now I can go. That's the same thing in the personal journeys.

Stick with it till you get through the discomfortable to uncomfortable times until you go, you know what? I can spend time with myself. I could do this, which I could do this forever. Well, then it's okay to go re-engage, pick up your phone, go see your friends, go have a drink, what have you,

go look for those things that are other relationships in life. But hopefully not until there's great value and not doing that until you go, I'm good with me and me for right now. Now, why do you pursue things that scare you? Why seek the role that's hard? Because it cost me something. Because it costs.

It comes to the price. It's a bit of that line. Don't pick a fight. It's not really a fight unless you can lose it. It's not really a risk unless you can lose the fight. I feel more alive in them. I have an experience in the making of them. I'm nervous every day I come to work.

I feel like when I nail a day and I knock it and I know I did I feel like yes I get I have a measure at the end of the day like you set out to do something you prepared for it you had intention and you did it and maybe even became found some magic in the day that I sleep good knowing that I accomplished that day in building the architecture of a character's arc through a story and then if I could put the whole thing together and it comes out the whole one whole performance turns out to be a beautiful song, an original song of that character. Then I'm like, yes. And I know that I was highly responsible for that. I was not solely responsible, but the most responsible for that. And that gives me pleasure. That gives me gratification. That makes me feel, gives me significance. That gives me confidence. If I don't pull it off, and I do have a day where I'm like, no, you did never. And it was my fault. I still, I would rather, with these kind of roles, I can look in the mirror and go, so guess who's responsible not pulling it off? You, Conahey. In the same way, when I go, guess who's responsible to pull it off? I like knowing who, you. And it was also, again,

work that challenged the vitality of my life. Dramatic roles allow you the actor to have as high of a ceiling or as low of a basement, from love to hate, from happiness to pain, as that particular actor wants to bring to it. That's what's a inherently beautiful about dramas. Okay, you're the part. You're playing the role. How does, how is, are you going to emulate that person through yourself? That is a vital thing. That I feel, that makes me sweat. That makes me sleep better at the end of the day. That gives me a sense of accomplishment. I'm like, yes, I did what I intended to do. I prepared for it, was ready. Oh, the day didn't go how I thought it was going to go. But I called audibles along the way, enrolled and still told the truth

on my man, the character. That gratification feels good. Unbelievable is the stupidest word the dictionary. Should never come out of our mouth. Think about it. To say, oh, wow, what an unbelievable play. It was an unbelievable book, an unbelievable film, an unbelievable act of courage. Really? It may be spectacular.

It may be phenomenal, most excellent or outstanding. But unbelievable? Uh-uh. Give others and yourself more credit. It just happened. You witnessed it. You just did it. Believe it. Give your obstacles credit. That there's a responsibility to freedom and that there is freedom in responsibility. You know, and that earn your way there. We remember the stuff we earn, the stuff we experience, more than what the teacher tells us or what someone gives us for free.

We just do. We broke a proverbial sweat on it, whether it was mental or physical or whatever. built it. We understand we felt how we got it, how we achieved it, how we got what we wanted. Those stick with us. Whether we forget them intellectually, they were written in our lineage, and they build resilience, and they build a healthy, true optimism going forward to know that, oh, no, I've worked for something before and achieved it. Delayed gratification. Oh, there are choices I can make today for myself that will pay me back later in life. So there are choices we make. If you're going to say right now, I'm going to lie, cheat, and steal to get what I want. And I got it.

I got an immediate green light for me. That's a battery-powered green light. That's not a solar-powered green light. Why? Because now, everywhere I go, I got to look over my shoulder to see if someone's there that I lie, cheat, and stole from. And when I'm doing that, I'm stealing whose time? My time. Now I'm not freedom.

I'm not free. I don't have the freedom. I didn't create freedom in my future because I chose to make an irresponsible act that I left crumbs. I've now got reasons to look over my shoulder. And the more things we do to create in our future that we've got to look over our shoulder, the more of our most precious thing we have in our life's time that we're stealing from ourselves. So it's not puritanical. It's just like, it's actually self-servative.

It's a very selfish choice. And I'm a fan of the word selfish. I've helped redefine it, but I believe that there are selfish choices we can make that are the most selfless, that there are selfless choices that we can make that are the most selfish choices. Those two are not a contradiction and we see them that way. Responsibility is appreciation of a past. It's building of a lineage. It's investing in ourselves. It's investing in something we started to build yesterday that we want to take into tomorrow. There's a response. That gives us freedom. I'm going to talk to you about some things I've learned in my journey. Most of our first. experience, some of them I heard in passing, many of them I'm still practicing, but all of them I do believe are true. Now, they may be truths to me, but don't think that that makes them mine because you cannot own a truth. So please think of these as signposts, approaches, paradigms that give some science for satisfaction. They're yours to steal, are yours to share, liken to your own lives, to personally apply in your own lives, in your own way, should you

shoots to. So here we go. Unbelievable is the stupidest word the dictionary. It should never come out our mouth. Think about it. To say, oh wow, what an unbelievable play. It was an unbelievable book, an unbelievable film, an unbelievable act of courage. Really? It may be spectacular. It may be phenomenal, most excellent or outstanding. But unbelievable? Give others and yourself more credit. It just happened. You witnessed it. You just did it.

Believe it. Give your obstacles credit. You know, once you do find your frequency on something, is go forward if you're a non-tireant and don't ask permission. And that's the not giving a damn part. I've found that the world will actually acquiesk and go, yeah, I'll give you a green light on that. If you actually go forward and mean it,

and you're going to do it by hook or by crook and not ask permission. Life is not easy. It is not. Don't try to make it that way. Life's not fair. It never was. It is it now and it won't ever be.

Do not fall into the trap, the entitlement trap, a feeling like you're a victim. You are not. Get over it. Get on with it. And yes, most things are more rewarding when you break a sweat to get them. Sit here in that discomfort long enough to go, okay, until you come out the other side to go,

all right, I'm good with me again. I don't want to leave a place I travel to until I get to the point of going, ah, I could live here. This could be my existence. And as soon as I get to that point, then I'm like, okay, you can go. Now I can go.

That's the same thing in the personal journeys. Stick with it until you get through the discomfort to uncomfortable times until you go, you know what? I can spend time with myself. I could do this. I can do this forever. Well, then it's okay to go re-engage,

pick up your phone, go see your friends, go have a drink, have you go look for those things that are other relationships in life but hopefully not until there's great value in not doing that until you go I'm good with me and me for right now so to any of us whatever those things are whatever it is we look up to whatever it is we look forward to and whoever it is we're chasing to that I say amen to that I say all right all right all right I say just keep living huh thank you see happiness is an emotional response to an outcome If I win, I will be happy.

If I don't, I won't. It's an if-then, cause and effect, quid pro quo standard that we cannot sustain because we immediately raise it every time we attain it. See, happiness demands a certain outcome. It is result reliant. And I say, if happiness is what you're after, then you're going to be let down frequently, and you're going to 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. It is just as important where we are not as it is where we are. Look, the first step that leads to our identity in life is usually not. I know who I am. I know who I am.

That's not the first step. The first step's usually, I know who I am not. Process of elimination. Defining ourselves by what we are not is the first step that leads us to really knowing who we are. South of New Orleans a few years ago,

and I went to a voodoo shop. And they had this wooden partition against the wall of these columns. And in these columns, or 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 vogue anymore. It's too passive. It's a get rich, quick on the internet, richest 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've got to ask ourselves is what success is to us, what success is to you? Is it more money?

That's fine. I got nothing against money. I don't. Maybe it's a healthy family. Maybe it's a happy marriage. Maybe it's to help others. To be famous. Be spiritually sound.

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.

All right. Life is not a popularity contest. Be brave. Take the hill, but first answer that question, what's my hill? There's a responsibility to freedom and that there is freedom in responsibility. you know, and that earn your way there. We remember the stuff we earn, the stuff we experience, more than what the teacher tells us or what someone gives us for free.

We just do. We broke a proverbial sweat on it, whether it was mental or physical or whatever. We built it. We understand. We felt how we got it, how we achieved it, how we got what we wanted. Those stick with us. Whether we forget them intellectually, they were written in our lineage, and they build resilience.

and they build a healthy, true optimism going forward to know that, oh, no, I've worked for something before and achieved it. Delayed gratification. Oh, there are choices I can make today for myself that will pay me back later in life. So there are choices we make. If you're going to say right now, I'm going to lie, cheat, and steel to get what I want, and I got it. I got an immediate green light for me.

That's a battery-powered green light. That's not a solar-powered green light. because now everywhere I go I got to look over my shoulder to see if someone's there that I lied, cheat, and stole from and when I'm doing that, I'm stealing

whose time? My time. I'm not free. I don't have the freedom. I didn't create freedom in my future because I chose to make an irresponsible act that I left crumbs. I've now got reasons to look over my shoulder. And the more things we do to create in our future that we've got to look over our shoulder,

the more of our most precious thing we have in our life's time that we're stealing from ourselves. So it's not puritanical. It's just like, it's actually self-servative. It's a very selfish choice. And I'm a fan of the word selfish. I've helped redefine it. But I believe that there are selfish choices we can make that are the most selfless, that there are self-less choices that we can make that are the most selfish choices. Those two are not a contradiction. And we see them that way. Responsibility is appreciation of a past. It's building of a lineage. It's investing in ourselves. It's investing in something we started to build yesterday that we want to take into tomorrow. There's a response.

That gives us freedom. Be brave. Have courage. And when you do, you get stronger. You get more aware. You get more respectful of yourself and that which you fear. The result, which we know there isn't really one. And we cannot imitate someone else's exact result.

We're going to have our own way to get there. The approach is all. I think that's the best our life can get is one constant approach, or with many different approaches, but knowing there is no result. You know the story of Sisyphus? A man gets cursed. I think he was a demigod, gets cursed to roll a boulder up a hill.

It's a heavy, heavy boulder. He rolls it up hell. just as he gets to the very top. He stumbles and it falls down and crushes him. He needs to walk back to the bottom. Turn around, pick it back up, and Albeckamu's famous line is, we must imagine Sisyphus happy.

That this pointless pursuit, that he finds joy in the process of doing it. So I grew up only knowing sort of the courage of the persistence. You're resilient, endure, get up, dash yourself off, go. The problem with that, the Achilles heel with that, is if you get up and get the courage to keep on going every time and get up and dust yourself off, you make the same mistakes each time around because you never backed up to have what I've now learned and still learning is the courage to go, no, I'm going to let some people pass me in the race right now because I'm going to look at why I keep stepping that damn same pothole and twist my ankle, the same spot. why I keep failing when I try to get that next spot in this relationship or failing in this place to get this product of my craft to the next. Would that be the relinquishing of the rom-com era in a small part for you?

Small part, yeah. Yeah, it was definitely courageous. I did honestly think I'd written myself a one-way ticket out of Hollywood. People close to me basically almost. to everybody besides my wife was like, what is your major malfunction, little brother? You got it made? Why are you throwing a jackknife in this? You're tripping yourself running downhill, man.

You did it. I had my wife and myself to remind myself for that 4 a.m. clarity that I had, in tears, when I was like, no, I'm rolling the dice. I'm sticking. with it. Yeah, man, I did think I wrote myself a ticket out of Hollywood. I did look at other vocations, become a teacher, a wildlife guy. I'm seriously, seriously, look at those things. But over time, and it was about 20 months, it was gone long enough, had found anonymity enough, was not in your living room in a theater in a rom-com, you didn't seem on a beat shirtless. Where is he? Turning down the $14.5 million offer, made people go, oh shit, what's he up to?

You don't just step out of Hollywood unless you turn that down because you've got a plan. You've got somewhere you want to go. And I think that made me more attractive as a new novel idea. But that was, yeah, that risk took a, I think it's fair to say that took a fair amount of courage from me. We often see resistance as a form of failure and something that we should endeavor to avoid.

You think about the avoidance of people building families or even many people consider that we're living in a bit of a comfort crisis. This is slightly a different sort of analogy, but most of the diseases that we have today, whether the diseases of, I don't know, the mind, like people feeling lonely and isolated, all physical diseases, 80% of Americans getting back pain, but no one in the Hadsahdza tribe in Africa getting back pain. They're all a consequence of us continually choosing comfort, which is a short-term friend but long-term enemy.

And the resistance, I think, is something increasingly we can choose opt out of. Oh, and we've out-convenanced ourselves. What's AI going to do to us? Talk about convenience. How much, and I want to keep hearing studies, I wonder if you have an opinion on this, how much of you coming up with an idea and then writing and rewriting it,

thinking about it? No, no, no, no, it's not an ex-word. Oh, no, this is what I really mean in how to get it. How much of that is really valuable to get it beyond just an intellectual idea more valuable than just going, oh, there it is. Because what comes out of AI?

incredibly impressive. My hunch is that, yeah, we can use it for like signpost to help us, oh, that's good, thank you for help me organize. But there's a value to us going through the sweat equity of learning something. But I mean, yeah, I mean, through history, people like Richard Freiman, the physicist has said the best way to learn something is to learn it and then to go through the pain of writing it, condensing it down to a simple truth like you do so often in your new book poems and prayers, and then sharing it with the world. and then getting the feedback. And if the world understood it like you meant it,

like that poem you just shared, you understand it. That's evidence that you get it. Right. So I think AI is going to be great for me saying something to you, but not learning something myself. And I think if you want to defend creativity and innovation and the ability to think,

you actually have a huge opportunity, which is to go left when everyone's going right. Well, now we're going into, I have that, I got that thing in there and say, what's better? Take eight, take eight big, risk in life, sin once, miss the mark once, but get seven, achieve seven out of eight. Or take a hundred risk and achieve eight of them. My hunch is that if there's a God, he's saying, go for the hundred and get eight rather than eight and get seven. If you're not taking, if you're not taking enough

risk to sin or miss the mark, which is what sin means, to fail, what are you doing that? Don't go back with even money. Go back with the safe beds. Which, That can become a sort of recessive. Peace and amnesty, no. It's almost a, I don't think it's what the mystics meant when they were like, be disattached. I think it meant go embrace, but for highs and lows and pains and pleasures, understand that those outward things are not the things to be attached to for your own identity. It's got to be inward first.

Enjoy those. Partake. Don't become attached to those for your measure. without complacency trust that time is on your side what do you mean that yeah man I'm get a header behind it

and I can get in a rush and I haven't found look and I know how to hustle and let's go the clock's ticking we're all behind all hands on deck we got a bust ass

no time for pause there's no sleep no nothing get the caffeine out let's go sometimes we've got to do that but that is usually because an unforeseen circumstance has happened that there's a crisis we got to deal with

or we've procrastinated and I've put myself in that position. We've got to cram. But it's not those two circumstances. We're going to watch ourselves getting ahead of time. And it's on your side. It's a little what I mean about the living longer and living more quality. Time's on our side. And we're forced to think and feel, especially today, with how fast things move.

That more productivity, faster pace, more information, faster pace, that's better. we're ahead of time a lot. It's John Wooden, a great basketball coach for UCLA. Be quick, but don't be in a hurry. That was his note to his basketball players. Be quick, but don't be in a hurry. You will miss things. You know, it's the Lego set, man.

And you sit there and you get in a rush, you don't read the directions, you get to the end, and you've got 12 pieces left. You're like, shit. Because you got in a hurry. You got ahead of time. Instead of just that feeling of them. I've checked out what I need to do, and it's all adding up,

and this thing's built right in the foundation, right, and boom, there's the last piece it fits. Walla. It was with time. Time's on our side. It's not an enemy. The end. Death is not the enemy.

I do believe that part of, you know, not in a rush to get there, and we want to stave it off sometimes, and that it can be a screaming fight, and partially denial can help us get there. I understand that, but still, it's on our side. It's going to happen. And since it's going to happen,

and that's non-negotiable, might as well go, well, I'm not going to rush to try and make more of it than there is. I want to try and spend the time I got as well as I can produce, succeed, achieve, whatever those things are, but also at a pace that I'm me, that I like the dance to. I like the giving the take. I like the reverb. I like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. The cause and effect of how things are happening at this pace. Like, starting out. That doesn't mean times on my side. Yeah, dude. In July.

When it happens, it'll happen. No. I'm like, wake up. Clock's ticking. It's on your side. Now just move with it. Dance with it. Put some soul with the facts.