The Jordan Harbinger Show - 455: Matthew McConaughey | Following Life's Greenlights to Success

Episode Date: January 12, 2021

Matthew McConaughey (@McConaughey) is an Academy Award-winning actor, producer, and author of  #1 New York Times Bestseller Greenlights. What We Discuss with Matthew McConaughey: What the sobriety of grief did for Matthew's attitude about risk when he was dealing with the loss of his father. How Matthew tries to instill the values of self-reliance in his kids. How Matthew learned to cope with imposter syndrome and get his head on straight when he became a household name seemingly overnight. The philanthropic approach to selecting roles that has guided Matthew through his career in film. How Matthew keeps criticism from affecting how he perceives himself. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/455 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, everybody, McConaughey here, and you are listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show. All right, all right, all right. Coming up on the Jordan Harbinger Show. You know, there's that awkward bridge when we left to learn something we're, we have the instincts for. I was becoming conscious of what had instincts to do. To learn a new craft, you've got to just go through that awkward period and power through it because all of a sudden it starts to slip from your head to your body, to your gut, your heart, your loins, your feet.

And all of a sudden, it does become instinctual with working on something with repetition. and working on over over and trying to understand it. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game, astronauts and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists,

even the occasional award-winning actor, Russian chess grandmaster, National Security Advisor, legendary Hollywood director. Each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. If you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it,

we now have episode starter packs. These are collections of your favorite episodes organized by popular topics to help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started or hopefully to help someone else get started with us as well.

I always appreciate that. Today, Matthew McConaughey, I'm not sure how much of an intro this guy needs. 40 plus feature films, multiple awards. I can't believe he almost became a lawyer. Dodged a bullet on that one, eh? We talk about the creative process.

We talk about his career path. He's got a lot of insights. He's a very introspective guy. I'm not going to beat this one to death. You know who Matthew McConaughey is. Now, if that intro didn't do it for you, you don't have to listen to this interview. It'd be a lot cooler if you did.

Oh, and if you're wondering how I managed to book all these amazing folks on the show, it's because of my network, and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free, for business, personal, whatever you want, and also, it just takes a few minutes. today. That's why it's called six-minute networking. It's a free course. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course is where you can find that. And most of the guests on the show,

they subscribe to the course. They're in there. They contribute. Come join us. You'll be an amazing company where you belong. Here we go with Matthew McConaughey. Thanks for coming on, man. And I have this feeling that you're sick of doing podcasts at this point. I don't know. Call it a premonition. Not yet, man. Not yet? Really? No, I can tell you why. do I go write a book it's the most permanent extension of me I've ever put out I don't know how much it's going to translate to people I hope it does it's very personal found out the more

personal and got the more translated to more people so every one of these conversations I have and I've been having them now for eight weeks thankfully the book's doing well the ideas are obviously scaling out because individuals and everybody I'm talking about is a completely different conversation about similar topics so it's a fresh conversation it hasn't been Petitive, even if it's on the similar topic where someone wants to bring up that a lot of people bring up, people are telling me how it's meaning something different to them than it meant to anybody else that I talked to, or how it meant something different to them than it meant to me. So that's kept it fresh.

And look, I've done movies and stuff that I've got to go out and try and solicit them, meaning like maybe I need to, like, tell you, hey, didn't you like the part where so-and-so happened? Then it's a lot easier when you do a movie that's sort of like this book that, hey, it's doing well. It's preceding me. I'm not here to talk you into anything or trying to get you to go to that. Go check it out or say, hey, didn't you like it? It's preceding me. And that makes this a lot easier.

I bet, yeah. You're like the long form, much more than short form. The long form makes sense for an artist, right? Like yourself, or a creator, I should say, because otherwise it seems a little bit too much. You can only hit the shallows, and it's like you need the shallows because it's the structure of the thing. But then you can't get deep and it's a little unsatisfying. It's kind of like a one-night stand of creating something, I guess.

I don't know. Yeah. And then you can't get context. I speak in long form anyway because I like to bring up both sides as much like in our form as much context as possible. You know, short form, you go on a show, you got five minutes. I'm conscious. I've been doing this long enough that you go, okay, if I'm going to throw a greatest hit to one liner out there that I feel like it's probably going to get picked up by the press, this is the one to throw. So don't go into it.

Also, you got to watch in short form, I'm aware of what people are going to make clickbait. You know what I mean? And they'll even pull something out of a, even in long form conversation. You can be aware that. people go in and go, oh, I'm going to pull out and make it short form because I'm going to make something that's going to be clickbait. And you go, well, that's not actually what I said. But I mean, how many people actually go back and listen to the whole thing? Yeah.

Probably not that many. I saw an article somebody sent me. They're like, oh, when you're talking with Matthew, ask him about this thing that I read in the New York Post where he said, Hollywood needs to think for itself. And I said, you know, there's probably more that he said than the one liner where something like, oh, these Hollywood guys, they need to think for themselves. I'm like, that's a zoom in on something that's this big. Yeah, that dog got. walk in a little bit of an irresponsible way, the way they took what I said and broke it down. I said something about the illiberal left, and those of us out west of back in when Trump's elected

four years ago, being in denial of that fact. And I was saying there's extremes on the both left and the right. Well, someone went from the illiberal left that I said and said, well, he's calling out all liberals, and then, which is a step away from the fact. And then he said, now he's eviscerating all of Hollywood. And I was like, wait a minute, you walk that dog all the way out. It's not actually, there's a difference in all three of those things. Yeah, I think people are desperate to find somebody that agrees with them and they think, okay, Matthew McConaughey, probably a pretty popular guy on both sides of the political

spectrum. Let's pretend that he agrees with this small viewpoint that our audience is really going to love. And then they're, you know, it's going to go viral. And it's fun to sit back and see, interesting at least, to sit back and see who picks up what and what stations, you know, and you go, oh, that's a right-leaning media platform, or that's a left-leaning media platform. Oh, I see how they grab that and use that to their side, which in a way, or actually not in a way, literally, it kind of proved my point of what I was saying, the extremes grabbing stuff and either exaggerating them to benefit their side or denying the other half's

existence of any validity and giving any validity to the other side of all. And people love a contrarian, right? They want to be like, this is the one guy we knew we could rely on McConnor Hay to see it our way. And you're like, what are you talking about? I don't even know who you are. Who are you talking about now? And then the other side of that is we make everything such a contradiction today that if one side even says, ah, he said that. So he must be one of us.

Us. That inherently means then he cannot be anything that the other side is about either, which is less than half true. That's the risk, I guess, with a high public profile, right? Is everybody wants to think that you are one way and you don't necessarily, you get to be yourself last a lot of the time, I think. Well, I'm myself first. In the media, though, right? Yeah, well, you know, and how that's packaged.

That just kind of moves like that. But I get that game. I mean, I've got that game, you know, for 28 years. And then you go, that's why, again, why I like long form, why I love question answer in editorials. because usually I'm like, no, I meant to say exactly what I said. And please give me the benefit of reading that entire thing. You'll see that use I'm going, there's a this and of that.

But we don't like paradox in the world today. It's not enough of a car crash. It doesn't give us the rubber neck, you know? Yeah, it's like nuance? Nah, I'm good. I'm just going to take the, I just want to go straight to it. Yes. No foreplay for me.

No thank you. Yeah. Indeed. Love the book, as many others did as well. I heard your wife, he said, she made you write the book. That was the quote I saw. I thought that's a weird punishment. What did he do?

Well, it didn't make me write the book. Okay. So I've been keeping these journals for 36 years in a big treasure chest, and they kept filling up. And everywhere I'd go for an extended amount of time, I'd take that treasure check with me and set it there in my office and go, you know what? I'm opening that up. But I need some time. And I never did it. So then I got the courage to go, you know what, I'm going to do it.

But I want a ghost rider. And I had a ghostwriter come on. I met with him one time. we were going to take that book. But then he got pulled from the project. He worked for the New York Times. He got pulled from the project. Couldn't work on any, I think it was something about working on celebrity memoirs.

So when he got pulled just as I started to go, well, I think I need to find another. I noticed it in the moment. My wife noticed it at the moment. And she looked at me. She goes, you know what this means. I go in. I went, yes, I do. She goes, get the hell out of here.

Don't come back until you got something. And so she did give me the kick in the back side. I was like, no, you just got giving a gift. this is what it was supposed to be all the time. You were always supposed to go right at yourself. You didn't need to have a ghost rider. So there we went. It seems like you took to it pretty well.

I would imagine somebody is a good storyteller as yourself, sits around and goes, I can tell stories, I can write them down. And then you write them and you go, huh, it's not quite the same thing. No, it's not. I thought it would be. You know, many of the stories in there, and I do tell stories. I do the, I perform the stories. I tell them over dinners, campfires, et cetera.

Well, I thought that if I record the best version and just transcribed that to the page, that's the best version on the page. It was not. It was 30% longer than it needed to be. You don't get my innuendo. You don't get a raised eyebrow or whatever that may be. So you've got to find the right word. You've got to find the right sandwich. The biggest challenge was telling the stories, the early stories.

Well, most of the stories, but mainly the early ones where maybe there was my mom and dad fighting. or discipline that me and my brother's got. That on paper, you could go, that's a horror picture. Gosh, you poor boy. But I never felt them that way. So how could I, and when I tell you the story verbally,

and you see me tell it, you can tell I'm telling a love story. I'm lighting up, talking about how we got in trouble. But if I put that on paper, you go, oh, my gosh, that poor boy. Yeah. No, this is a love story.

I'm not judging them. So how could I get, without being able to show you through the spoken word, how much it was a love story, I mean, how could I put the words on a page in a way that you can see the humanity that I see the truth in the stories that otherwise on paper would have been seen as, you know, maybe ugly stories, but they were never ugly stories to me.

I grabbed the audiobook, as I always do. And it's like, you really do need the audio version of this, even if you're not an audiobook person, because the way you tell the story is totally different. You're right. If I read an excerpt from the book in Newsweek or something, I would say, oh, my God, I had no idea he was so abused by his parents and their relationship was so dysfunctional. And then later in the book, you know, you know from the audio book that it wasn't like that, or at least from the sound of it, it wasn't like that. And then later in the book, you talk about how you see your family every year and you've got

your brother, you know, you're still close to, which, by the way, it's pretty intense. There's a guy out there named Rooster McConaughey, right? He sounds like, he is. Guess what his son's name? What is it? Miller Light McConaughey. Stop, no way. L-Y-T, on his birth certificate.

Oh, my gosh. This is the uncle that teaches your kids how to blow shit up and is like, don't tell dad, I showed you this one, okay? No, but he's not. No? No, he is a genius of human nature. And we're one of the smartest people I know. And yeah, if something ever happened, Darjeel, and that's the first place they go.

Or something ever happened with us, he's the first, my brother, is the first place they go. He's an incredible individual. Now, he, all those things to get on paper looked like, oh, this must be the old dumbass redneck from a kind of a brother out in a photograph. This is what seems in a photograph. Yes, he is that same guy that has this dirty wranglers tucked in his boots, half a cigar outside the mouth, a cap on, and a golf shirt with a pocket because he likes to keep his pins,

an extra cigar on the snapshot. He looks like that guy. Now, he is a guy who's also lived in a double-wide trailer paying $162 rent a month at the same time where he was a multi-millionaire. So the looks would be deceiving. with this guy. It's like inverse Beverly Hillbillies, right? Like he's got none of the trappings, but he is the sharp businessman as opposed to the other way around. He's real sharp, yeah. I know your father died making love to your mother, which I mean, first of all, that's a tempting

route to take, but I wanted to focus on the greater message here. Your father's passing encouraged you to take some more risks. I'm wondering how that happened for you, because I think a lot of people, you know, when we lose our dads as men, we feel like we've been unmoored, right? And the safety net's gone and we're just drifting, no matter what age you are when it happens. Well, I was a drift. And I think you do feel unmoored. But how long do you go, oh, I'm lost? What am I going to do? And then when do you go, oh, now it relies on me. I don't have that safety net. Oh, I don't have that crutch. Oh, those values that he was instilling in me that maybe I was doing about 85% of them. I don't have that extra 15% that I was kind of lazy on because I knew he had my back.

He's not here to have my back anymore. So I think what came to me at that time, and I remember I carved it in a tree, be less impressed and more involved. And that's what it was. My father was around. There were still things that I was kind of impressed with in the mortal world and things that maybe I wouldn't take risk because I was too impressed with them. There were also things that I was condescending in life.

patronizing, looking down upon them, oh, that's not worthy. Well, Pop moved on, and there's a real sobriety that comes when you lose a loved one, and in a specific way when you lose a father. What I mean by sobriety is that there's a drunkenness we have in reverence for things in life. There's a drunkenness we have in looking down upon things in life, but maybe we shouldn't. The sobriety is that everything I looked down upon rose up to eye level. Everything I was revering on earth rose down to eye level. I remember writing thinking, boy, the world is flat.

Not literally flat, but the world. Yeah, careful. New York Post's going to grab that one. Click, make, click, me and Kyrie. I remember going, I can see further. I see wider. I see more clearly. My shoulders went back.

My heart got higher. My chin went up. And I remember going, it's you and you. You better be aware of what's out there and where you want to go, and you better buck up and have a little more courage. It's time to turn to a man, basically. How do you teach that to your kids, ideally without dying beforehand? Yeah, right?

I'm a big believer in self-reliance and self-determination. And look at these times where right now. COVID disruption, tragedy, even at our level where our pantry has been full during a nine-month quarantine. And our kids go through, man, when's this over? One, getting their head around, what's this about? Why can't I see my friends? Why I'm having to go without this, that name?

Well, you're learning self-reliance. They don't know it yet. But they've already started to double down on their individual, say, for instance, hobbies that they wouldn't have taken the time to do before if they were engaging in society, you know, in the natural way that we were before this. So they're having to get resilient. Everyone's having to get resilient in a different way. Hopefully, even for a specific example of the time is real right now, hopefully that'll feel. My kids were born into a fluent position, much more important than I was born to. So with that, how do you keep them feeling like an

underdog? How do you feel and keep them like, you know, I'll tell you this, this is a good one about work ethic. When I won the Oscar for Dallas Spirespoe, they said, what's the trophy for? I said, do remember a year ago when Popeye was going to work every morning, you'd wake up, I was already gone to work, and remember I'd get home, you'd say, oh, Popeye's got your neck's like a giraffe, you're so skinny. And I go, well, what I was doing every day at work then, a year later, my peers deemed that excellent work and gave me a trophy for it. So I did delayed gratification came with her head of, oh, you can work today, and do something well today, then you will be rewarded tomorrow. So that was a big kind of breakthrough. And I'm big on pushing delayed gratification

that you can, and as I talk about the book, you know, you can engineer green lights for your future by the choices and responsibilities you take today. They can give you more freedom tomorrow. But you don't do the work. You don't get the freedom. It's got to be kind of tough, right? You got to teach your kids that they've got it pretty good and not everyone else does. But they also kind of have to own that, right, and not feel guilty about it. Yeah. Well, let's talk about what would be if they have a good work ethic and they're conscientious and confident and autonomous young people going into the world as Matthew and Camilla McConaughey's son and yeah I'm a famous and rich and a movie star etc etc all those things but if I didn't worry about their values

or teach them that hey a lot of what I've gotten is because of who I was and my work ethic and all those things I want you to be those were first before I became whatever a rich and famous or whatever that thing may be that people may tell them oh your dad is. If I just didn't worry about pushing those values on them and just said, yeah, you know what,

let's just, when you get out of high school, let's just give them whatever they want right now. Yeah, get some more for Christmas. We don't need to repair that toy. Let's just buy a new one. Here, have another one. You want two, have three of them. I'm going to give you a bunch of money

on your 18th birthday. Am I really giving them more freedom? I think I'm screwing them over. I think I'm being irresponsible to them. So, you know, they get told. They've had people come to school. I bet you live in a big nice house. They've come to us and said, you know, what do we say?

Someone says, because your dad's rich and famous. I said, well, you hold your head up. I said, do not be falsely modest on that. No, no, no, you look them in the eye and go, yeah, we actually do live in a real nice house. You know what? My dad does his best to be as good as he can at his work. And his work pays him well. But again, that came first.

I want to let them know how you get to a place and whatever they're going to end up doing in life. It's amazing how the parents' insecurities then drip onto their kids who then talk to your kids, that then you have to kind of like explain to them how to navigate it. And it is. It's the parents. Yeah, of course. You know that young boy or young girl didn't just come up with that. Hell no.

I'm a dad saying that at home. Yeah. Zero times did I go to a friend's house before the age of 16 or 15 and go, wow, your house is really nice. your parents must be rich. That makes me feel bad about myself. I was just like, oh, you have a pool? Right. Awesome.

You got any chips? You got a satellite dish, that big thing out there, Eresibo? Yeah. Yeah. Nobody cared about any of that. We just figured, oh, when I'm older, I'm probably going to have this kind of money because I mean, I feel like I'm pretty smart. I got an A on that geometry test.

I'm headed for this. You know, it's the parents that go, I work 12 hours a day and we don't live in Malibu. We don't go to summer in France. Yeah. That's that crap that flies through there. And those parents, I would say going back, did you just create more freedom for your child's future with seeing the world that way?

Or did you all of a sudden give them a reason to feel like maybe they're a victim when they shouldn't be? A time to kill. Was that the big, big break? Yeah. Yeah. So I've heard you say you went from like 99 out of 100 rejections you want to do a script to 99 out of 100 yeses.

In 48 hours. That's a very rapid success. So tell me what that week end or that week was like. I mean, did you just kind of like walk down and get a coffee one day and everyone's like, hey, guy I see here regularly. And then the next time it was like, that's the guy from A Time to Kill. It wasn't coffee.

It was a tuna sandwich. And it inverted. I mean, it went from 400 people in the promenade, 395, minding their own business, five of them looking at me. The day before, Time to Kill Open to the day after, the weekend after it opened, it inverted. 395 was staring at me, five weren't. The world became a mirror.

Notice right there immediately, oh, I don't meet strangers anymore. There were people who would come up. didn't know them, put their hand on me like, oh my God, I'm so sorry about Ms. Hud. And in my mind, I'm going, number one, who are you? Number two, how'd you know how to know how to dog? Number three, had you know her name was Ms. Hudd. Number four, how'd you know she had cancer? You just get four things and jump right into my life.

I'm like, whoa. So everyone, the world had a bio on me. But that's years later, I understood, oh, that check is cashed. I'm not going to him and hall about that anymore. That check has been cached forever to some extent. It was a little unbalanced. I mean, look, when all of a sudden, when all the opportunities opened, immediately. Like I said, 48 hours ago, afternoon before Time Kill opened, I would have done

any of these 100 scripts, any of them. Ninety-nine answers were no. Now, here were Monday morning, time kills done well that weekend. I would have done any of these hundred scripts, and now they're like 99 answers are, yes, you can. Whoa, you want me to be discerning? You wait, can I do all of, I can't do it. There's only 24 hours a day. I can't do all of them, but yet 48 hours ago, I would have done any of them. And now you're telling me I can basically do all of them. And then they're going, so what do you want to do? I'm going, wait a minute.

This one looks good. This one looks good. That one will make a choice. I got the hell out of Dodge, man. I said, I got to go hear myself think. I got to go get my head and my heart aligned a little bit and ask myself what matters, read through this new time that the roof has been taken off of the opportunities for me in life and say, what do I care about, you know?

Who am I when I'm being told I can kind of be here? whoever I want to be. And I was 23, 24. Oh, wow. So I checked out, went to a monastery for a couple of weeks, went to the, on a solo backpacking trip through Peru for 22 days, just went off to places where, like that, where nobody either knew my name or wasn't going to speak. I needed some quiet time to hear my own self-think and have a littleocratic dialogue with the M and the 8th. For someone like me, this would result in what's called imposter syndrome, right? You ever heard of that? We're like, do I deserve this? Yeah, I'd heard. There's a story in the, book about the oil of meek where we tried to my dad tried to get this this case for this meek oil

that I put on and his lawyer Jerry Harris is who later on after a time to feel that imposter syndrome came to me and goes probably going to feel something called a non-deserving complex is what he called it small town boy Evaldi texas 12,000 people simple upbringing and now this happens and I was like whatever that term is impostors or yes that yes I was feeling like why me? Do I deserve this? Have I earned this? And it was odd. And that goes back into that less impressed, more involved. I mean, how could I not be impressed? But I was so impressed. I had to go, I got to get out of Dodge to go on my own to understand how I can be involved in this. If not, this whole thing is going to wag me. And I got the opportunity to wag this dog. But right now,

it's going to wag me. If I'm so impressed with, wow, I'm just thankful I'm here, which I was. I'm just thankful I've got this opportunity but now I mean I don't know I mean any of them will be okay thank you thank you but how do I get involved in that and go no wait a minute I got to be more than just happy to be here okay it took a while the next two movies I did

next three one was with Richard Link later which was a no brainer for me because he gave me my first chance in days confused in my first film and the next two I think were contact and amistad those were deeply personal stories to me in my own life so I called those philanthropic choices meaning for instance, contact, even Amistad. They're like, well, why did, McCona, why didn't you take in the lead role in this other movie that could be a lot more potentially commercial?

I was like, no, I want to work with great directors. I want to be a part of stories that I think need to be shared out there that I think will be good and healthy and constructive, almost philanthropic for society. Amistad, that story, a piece of American history and world history that I'd never heard told before. And boy, if we can practice that in an entertaining piece with Spielberg. and instead of having to go through a history book and reading it a boring way, great, I want to be a part of that. Contact, this battle between, you know, God and science. Jody Foster was the science role. I wanted to take the believer role because I thought that's a story that should be exposed.

Again, to show that they're not really this, that they are more of this. I come out of that, you know, understanding from my belief, science is the practical pursuit of God. And that ain't God's backyard's a whole lot bigger than I thought it was as a believer. It tackled a subject that I've been interested in since I was 15 years old. I wrote papers about it in college about the confluence and where science and belief overlap. So those were ones that I was like, no, these are interesting to me. As a person, Matthew, these are stories I want to be a part of,

and I'd be honored to be a part of sharing with the world. You're lucky that you didn't throw hurdles in your own way. You see a lot of people, they get some success, and they go, oh, I don't feel like I've earned this. Let me screw it up somehow, so I feel like I'm working harder. I chose certain resistances that were not probably the ones that I needed. I talk about that in the book, The Art of Running Downhill. When I'm cruising downhill and that old imposter syndrome or non-deserving complex comes on,

I've definitely been guilty of tripping myself and face planting, boom, by no one's doing other than my own, where I'm like, did you really need to do that? Could you not handle the grace? Because what you learn later on in life, which I did learn is you better damn well appreciate running downhill. you know, because the uphill's coming. It'll be there. It'll balance itself out. With any ambition, you'll create an uphill for yourself.

If you don't, the world will. So I did learn be a little more graceful, be a little more. And I'm not a big fan of that word deserve. I am a fan of the word earned. And so I had plenty of times where I was like, boy, I like to call it, yeah, have a point to prove, but don't always be trying to prove a point. I initially would try to almost ugly sabotage. some of the affluence and success that I was having.

Nothing bad, but just made it harder on myself because I was just trying to sit through what really matters. And all this wine and champagne and red carpets, and I love you, and access, and yes, you can do whatever you want. Just a little bit of, I needed resistance. And I was awkward and creating some resistance on myself sometimes. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show

with our guest Matthew McConaughey. We'll be right back. And now back to Matthew McConaughey on the Jordan Harbinger show. I know you stopped doing rom-coms, and I think a lot of people were kind of surprised about that, right? This is a while ago. First of all, panties are dry across the Midwest. Ohio's having a drought. Matthew McConaughey is to blame, right?

And then you're thinking, do I become a teacher? Do I become a lawyer? That's got to be a tough transition, right? Because you didn't even get work for a while. There's like this gap where you must have been sweating a little bit. Two years. Hell yeah, I was sweating. Yeah.

I didn't know, man. I took a one-week ticket out of Hollywood and left the lane that was, my green light lane in Hollywood, I was the rom-com go-to guy. And the movies I did want to do, the subject matter I didn't want to do, the dramas I wanted to do. I was not even in the discussion for those.

No matter how much I would take a pay cut, no one wanted to finance those movies with me and them. I also think that my audience wasn't ready for me in those either. I was having so much success with the rom-coms. Well, don't go play that guy. No, no, no, stay here, do this. You know, be this role in the rom-com. But I remember at the time,

we had just had our first son Levi and Camilla and I were falling in love and my life was extremely vital meaning like I laughed harder tried harder got angry harder just all my emotions were the meaning of my life was very clear and dynamic but the work I was doing was like it's not near as vital is the life you live in or the character you are in your life and I said well you know what that's a good thing it's got to be one way the other I'm glad your life feels more vital than your work kind of like okay but can't we'd like to do some work to see if it can challenge the vitality of the life of God. Well, that work I want to do it.

They're not giving me. So I'm going to stop doing what I was doing and see what happens. What happens? Nothing but rom-com offers come in for the first six months. You know, I would read the script. Nope. Nothing but rom-coms. Nope, nope.

One came in like a $5 million offer. I read it. I said, no. They came back for an $8 million offer. I said, no, thank you. came back to a $10 million offer. I said, no, thank you. They came back at a $12.5 million offer.

I said, ooh, ellipsis. They came back to $14.5 million offer. I said, let me read that thing again. So I read it again and ultimately said, no. Now, that did send a bit of a, I think, a clear sort of lightning bolt in some way through Hollywood that they said, okay, McGahn is not bluff. He's really not doing rom-coms anymore.

We thought we could really bait them out of this. thing. And he said no again. So then nothing came in for the next 14 months. And yeah, I did. I thought about maybe I have a teacher, a wildlife guide, an orchestral conductor. I don't know. Maybe I took my one-way ticket out of Hollywood. And that was it. I've done. And what happened was after 20 months of not being in a rom-com. So it wasn't in your face in a new theater or in your living room in a new rom-com. It was also a time where I had moved to Texas so you no longer saw me shirtless on the beach, Rossi shots, right? Because those two had become sort of like, oh, McConaughey's living the life of his rom-com guy in real life and shirtless on the

beach. And I was always like, yes, you're damn right. I'm shirtless on the beach. And those rom-coms pay the rent for the houses that run shirtless on the beach. Yes, thank you. No, I had no non-deserving imposter syndrome that I was like, you damn right. And I was enjoying my life. But I've then moved to Texas, no beaches and given no rom-com. So then it became a little bit of a, I guess, and I learned this on hindsight, is where is McConaughey? what's he doing? Hell, nobody knew where I was. I was forgotten.

So in being forgotten, I found some anonymity. And through the anonymity, all of a sudden, 20 months after saying no to Hollywood and rom-coms, well, now I became a new novel, interesting, good idea for Lincoln lawyer, Killer Joe, Paperboy, Magic Mike, Bernie. the true detective Dallas Spires. I became a new good idea because people hadn't seen me. So I unbranded to then 20 months later rebranded.

Because soon as those came to me after 20 months and those scripts came to me, I was like, this is exactly what I want to do. And so with that success and I put it this time, that round, I wasn't like I was 96th time to kill. I wasn't like, oh my gosh. I was like, no, I know I want to do this.

And watch this. And I remember also saying this, F the bucks, I'm going for the experience. That's got to be tough though, man. I can just, you know, some days you're just standing in the mirror going, you know, damn you're six-pack abs pigeonholing my career, you know, like you don't know if you're going to get another check. No, and hey, you know, you're sitting around, I got to work for a sense of significance.

So Camilla and I talked about it before I said I'm going to take all this time off, and we didn't know how long it could go. I was like, I'm going to get wobbly. I mean, days are going to feel like too many Saturdays in a row can make a tyrant out of any of us. You know what I was going to keep my feet on the ground, you know? how do you keep from going, oh, maybe it's time for a drink. And you're like, no, not yet. It's getting earlier.

Slow down there. Whatever that is, the days were long. Many days were long. What I had, though, again, fortunately was my newborn son had property to piddle around on. I was falling in love with Camilla. And we also had a family crisis come up. One of those family crisis where you drop whatever you're doing, I got to go handle this. And that clarity gave me quite a bit of purpose.

You know, because I was looking for, give me some clear, I'm in limbo right now. You look for some clarity. So I didn't, I found identity and going, I need to, for however long it takes, go help handle this situation with my family. And so actually when those scripts did come my way, 21st later, I hadn't even been thinking about going back to Hollywood. I was going back, getting my career going to Hollywood again was like third or fourth in line of my priorities at that time.

How do you decide what to say no to now? because there's got to be not only you're juggling your own priorities, but you've got to resist the influence of other people who want you to do those things. Like your agent's like, man, $14.5 million. He's thinking about his beach house now, you know? Well, I don't have any one of my life that, as far as I know, that everyone that I work with knows me well enough that that number, cash money is never going to be the thing that sways me.

I like a good number. You damn right, I do. That excites me. Like I said, that 14.5RV. Let me read it again. Better script this time. Glows, hovers above the table. But it was a better script. It was more well-written, man. I found more angles. I could make this work. Same words is the first script, five-mill, but it was better written for sure.

You know, I'm at a point where I don't really want to do, I'm not interested in doing one-offs like I used to do, meaning go off work. It's a one-off. It has a payday, but it's that thing, and it's not in the line of the vision and the direction I'm heading. So I would say, call that a legacy choice. Choice I wanted to do is go, okay, could this choice have legs? Even if it's work of acting, which I'm into other things as well now, will it have legs? Will it be something that 10 years from now that could still be alive? Can I build something that's not just encapsulated, putting a screen in front of you one off? And oh, yeah, that was that picture you did in 2020.

Now, what does it have legs? There's so many different ways that my life and my life's work are connected. I want them all to be interrelated now going forward. So how can they stay alive throughout the rest of my life? How can I create a green light, which I'll call a solar power green light that make choices that will shine after I am gone? So I'm thinking much more long term now. I'm sure you know, 51. I've got three children and family.

My life is not all about I need new goals. I need new things to do. My life is already quite full with saying, no, how can I have the roots grow wider and deeper with what I've already built? these things are evolving as a parent, as a husband and a family, our foundation. These are things that I've built that I'm not going to be foolish with because they can grow deeper and wider. It will be one of those solar-powered greenlights that's talking about. So it's not always about new things. I'm the place now where I feel like I've got enough established in my direction from where I want to go that.

It has to be something that feeds into the lane I've already created for myself, which is a pretty wide lane. But still, he's a feed to it into that. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. It rings true for me personally. I have a kid. He's 17 months old. So I'm a new dad. It's weird because, of course, everyone says, it's going to change your whole life, man.

It's going to change your whole life. And you go, yeah, yeah, I know, because everyone tells me. And then you have the kid and you go, this is what everyone's talking about. I don't care about, I don't want to leave for four months and go do something because I'm going to miss all this stuff. And I had a nightmare before this interview because I always do that. And it was about interstellar. And I go, that's why that scene is.

so important because he's missing out on his kid growing up. That's why the scenes, when I watched it, when I was, I don't know, 20-something, I was probably like, oh, yeah, that's a bummer. He's stuck in space, right? But it's about missing your kid's life. That's why it's tragic. Yeah, exactly. You know, so your life does change.

I mean, look, it's one of those, I don't know about you, but do people give, you married? I'm married, yeah. Okay. People give you and your wife a lot of books. Yeah. Did you find that a little condescending? Yeah, especially when it's from somebody who's like on their, third marriage and stuff and their kids hate them.

And I'm like, why are you giving me this book? This did not work for you. I mean, we had stack books. I kept going, I think the rule ought to be that the mother and father ought to should be able to ask. Just coming up going, sit down. I want to tell you why this book, you must read about parents. And then your mind goes to those things.

You're like, their kids kind of misbehaving all the time. I'm not sure whatever that is. But then you have a child, and I want to ask you this because I found that. that first six months, if not longer, after the first child. Now, this is your first one? It's my first and only, yeah. Okay. So far.

A man never feels more masculine than at that time. I think it's what you were just saying. You just know all of a sudden, whatever your priorities were, you have literally one thing. One, you've just become immortal, biologically, too. You just hand off the baton started for immortality. But two, it's very clear. It's not an intellectual exercise. It's clear instinct so that you now have something that depends on you.

Well, then your wife, Phoebe. Your wife? She'll be all right. She was going to make it. She was doing probably okay before she met you, and mine was too. No, you have something now. You're like, no, I have real responsibility here. And this creature, this living being relies on me.

So that thing that maybe I held it up top, a career was in one, at least goes down to two, maybe down to three. And what I found is that's when I got better at my career, that when it moved down, when it wasn't the top of what I saw as my responsibility or my identity or purpose, when it moved down the ladder to number three, I became better at it. Why do you think that is? I think it goes back a little bit to that original thing we were talking about, less impressed, more involved. When you hold something in such a reverence, are we really as involved in it as we can be?

Is it easier to say no? The power of saying no. I'm not going away, you just said it. I'm not going away for four months. You gain power in that. And whatever industry you're surrounded into your competition, you gain power when you go, I'm not doing that for much. Your representatives, other companies, sponsors go, whoa, okay.

Jordan's like, he's kind of saying this is where his ship's going. He knows his identity. He's got his purpose. He's going with or without us. Yeah, I'm not doing rom-com. This is not negotiable. He did not ask permission. All of a sudden, they're like, whoa, like this guy.

Your equity just went up. Also, your power of choice. I found I started working smarter, not hard. Now, again, I don't think you can, this theory, I don't think you can throw it on just anybody, because if somebody doesn't have a work ethic and you tell them they can put that priority of their job down to number three, a lot of people go, ooh, all right, take it out. You know what I mean? But if you're like, no, no, no, no, no, I still want it as much as I did at number one,

but I just have other things that I know I need even more. It's sort of like that, and there's a name for this. When you're doing a simple motor skill, the thing you say you drive, I get my best ideas on the road. Oh, yeah, the default mode where you're in a shower and you're like, I got this. You got it. Because you're performing a simple act. For me, it's driving. Got my hands on the wheel.

Didn't think about the last time about staying in the lane. Got my foot on the pedal. I'm going on the speed limit, but hadn't even thought about it. But those two things, release a simple motor circuit, release a certain creativity. In a way, moving it from priority one to three, and you have things that you know that you have response for and that needs you, all of a sudden can release that a lot of identity, creativity. Have you seen that chart where it's like they show Mozart and Albert Einstein all these geniuses Thomas Edison And it shows you what percentage of the day they spend walking and it's like every single one was 45 to an hour and 45 minutes a day walking and they all write about it in their journals like on a walk today.

I thought of this light bulb. Literally the light bulb in Edison's case. Yeah. No people I get asked all the time. So when you know, will you think about this? And I go, well, I think about it. I'm not going to go up from this conversation and go to my office and sit down and go, it's time to think.

I am going to walk around and go through things in my day and have this on my mind and see how it pops up with different perspectives that I have in the world, see if it keeps coming to my mind in different ways. But I'm not going to go away and go, okay, I have an hour now. I'm going to think about this. That's a dead end for me. Again, I have my former walk. My wife's always like, you will not sit down when you're on the phone. I was like, no, love pacing backboard, love cruising, love putting on the headphones and skaking.

walk. Yeah. It's impossible for me to get anything of consequence done, sitting still. I don't know if it's just the way I'm wired or what, but it's absolutely true. When you are, when you're acting, when you're playing a part, do you go in having a very strong vision or idea for what you're going to do in the result that you want? Or do you just sort of, does it come out of you in the moment because you've prepped for the role so well that, are you becoming that person? Are you becoming that role somehow? It's a combination. And not just with acting roles, but I've had a lot of success by writing the headline first and then heading towards that headline. I also had a lot of great success in going, I'm prepared, but now I'm going to jump off the cliff and figure out how to fly

the way down or jump in the proverbial pool in the pitch black and go, I don't know what's down there, but I'm just going to trust that I come up the other side with something. Now, I come in preparations where I think a lot of the reason and whatever aspects I've gotten ahead or done work that one would deem excellent work is because of the preparation. I learned that lesson the hard way. I'd always had a good work ethic, but had an odd idea years back that I wouldn't prepare at all because I felt like I was over preparing, but actually what I was doing, I learned in hindsight, I wasn't preparing the right way. So I decided I wasn't even going to read the script, read the scene, just go be my man in this scene. And it kicked me in the face. It was an incredibly

embarrassing moment. That was a Scorpion Spring or something like that? Is that what it was? Yes, sir. So what happened there? because this is a pretty funny anecdote of not preparing. So I was going through a little time earlier in my career where I just, about for a year, I wasn't getting the gigs. I would get the first audition, get a callback, maybe the third callback, but then not you.

And I could tell every time I left the audition, I was like, ah, you left something in the bag. You had that moment. You could have taken that risk. And because you thought about it and tried to get contextual with it and got objective on yourself, in that time you missed the opportunity.

It was open. So that kept going on. So I also, for the first time, started dabbling in, learning what acting was, which I never took acting classes. I had instincts for it, didn't know what it was. So I get this bright idea after I get this blind offer for this one-day role in this movie Scorpion Spring.

And I didn't have to audition for it. I got the job. And I tell myself, I said, do you know what your problem is, McCona? You're thinking too much. You're starting to now, starting to intellectualize, trying to intellectualize what you've always distinctly know how to do, and you're getting in your own way. You need to go back to how you were in the beginning. when your career first started in a film called Days Confused

where you had three lines written in the script and you ended up working three weeks because you knew your man. You just did what your man David Wooderson would do and you just were pulled into scenes and would just act normally and it was so easy. It was music. So my bright idea is I'm not going to read this script

of Scorpion Spring. I'm not even going to read the scene. I'm just going to know what my man is and I'll just do what he would do. I show up on set. I'm dressed in character. All I got was the log line of the character. All I studied was,

there was a drug runner on the southern border. The coyotes are bringing drugs over. He, instead of paying him, kills them all, takes the drugs, and goes, that's all I knew. So I was like, I'll just be that guy, do what that guy would do. Now, cut to us live.

I'm on set. On my mark, we're about to shoot that scene. I've not read the script nor read the scene. Right before we're about to do the tag, the production system walks by and goes, Mr. McCahne, would you like some sides, which are a miniature version of that day scene. And evidently, I was starting to feel a little shaking my boots about my grand plan of not preparing it all because I said, yeah, I love to see some sides.

So I get some sides. And my thought was, I remember thinking this, well, well, if it's written well, I mean, that's obviously what my guy would say and what I was going to say anyway. And if it's not written, well, I'll just do what I would do to be my men. I'll open up to page one, page two, page three, page four. And then I looked up into no one in particular and everyone in particular on the set. I said, can I get 12 minutes? My thought was 12 minutes would not be enough time to inconvenge the crew. My other thought was 12 minutes might be enough time to learn a four-page monologue in Spanish.

Well, I was right on the first part. I was wrong on the second. It did not inconvenience the crew, but it was not enough time to learn a four-page monologue. monologue in Spanish, even though I had taken Spanish in one semester in the 11th grade. But I came back and did, I don't know what I did in the scene. I don't know what I did, but I do remember the beat of sweat going down the back of my neck and the embarrassment I felt of not being prepared. And from that day on, is when I learned, no, you overprepared. You know, there's that awkward bridge when we left to learn something we're, we have the instincts

for. You see it athletes all the time. You're bringing a new defensive coordinator with a really heady book of the defensive schemes. Pretty good bet that that team's not going to have a good defense that first year. Because you see players thinking. What they instinctually knew how to do, you see them thinking. And if you're thinking on the field, the whiteouts past you, right? Well, that was the same way with me. I was becoming conscious of what had instincts to do.

But what I learned is that to learn a new craft, you've got to just go through that awkward period and power through it because all of a sudden it starts to slip from your head to your body, to your gut, your heart, your loin, your feet. And all of a sudden, it does become instinctual with working on something with repetition and working on over over and trying to understand it. So it took a couple of years to get past that. And then I found a mentor teacher who I worked with for 19 years, Penny Allen, who I continued to work with weekly for those 19 years while she was alive in my career. How do you avoid

letting what other people think of your work? So movies, even this book, affect the way that you perceive yourself. It's easy to spout some platitudes here and say, right? Like, you got to be your own man. That's always easier said than. It's always easier said than. done, especially for somebody in the public eye. Look, we all do this, but if you're a CPA or a nurse or something like that, you're still doing this. You don't have to be an actor. We always conflate our body of work with our identity. Maybe not all of us. I certainly do. I mean, yeah. I mean, look, I talk to my kids who are wanting to get into social media and asking about this and that and the other. And we're like, yeah, I'm not sure yet is the time. Because now what do we do?

gets can put something of their own out in the world, then wait, anticipating, well, I get a bunch of thumbs up. I'm going to have a great day because I'm confident now. And they all like me. Boy, I get a bunch of thumbs down. Now I'm depressed all day. That's not the place to go to get your identity. But it does affect them. And I've had asked myself, does a good review make me feel better than a bad review? You damn right, it does. Does it make me feel more confident in certain ways? Sure. Does it validate? Sure. I did do this about 15 years ago. I got my public. I said, look, get all my reviews. I don't want the goods.

All the bad reviews. Every movie and every performance I've ever done. And I took them away for a weekend with myself. And that's all I had with the bad reviews. Oh, man. And what I did notice is that I could tell usually from the very first line if the person had it in for me anyway, that maybe it didn't even matter if they saw the movie.

They were coming in. I don't like this guy. Then I saw some that didn't like my performance, that I was like, they were very constructive about that. It wasn't about snark. You can sniff snark. You know that person's got it in for you.

And hey, snark sells. But boy, it's really good constructive criticism. And we go, huh, I get it. Yeah, maybe what I was intending to do in this performance was not actually what I did. And even if it was what I did, it's not how it was recorded and received. So there's a gap there.

And I started to notice that, those gaps, between intention actually doing what's being recorded and how someone receives it. I've always wanted to be on a goal of how do we decrease those gaps where the intention is actually what is being received. Not only in movies and acting, but in life in general, because there can be huge gaps in those. Look, the good ones, I've enjoyed, I usually enjoy reading my reviews. I do like the good ones better than the bad ones.

I've learned to laugh at certain bad ones. And then also try to go, okay, what are they getting at? They're on to something. What can I learn about this? Here's the thing with news today, though, is it goes so wide, so rampantly, so fully. This is what's odd about it. It may not as much change how I feel about myself,

but gosh, dog, when I walk out the door and go into the world and can feel a consensus of people looking at me differently because I'm like, or they clicked on that date. They didn't read that whole article. They clicked on that clickbait, and they took that. And boy, my reality, what I intended to do and what was received, there was a gap because somebody in the middle rearranged it maybe or told the fifth one. You know what I mean?

So now I'm like, damn it, you just trespassed. I just got my life trespassed on by somebody not telling the truth or lines we were talking about earlier, grabbing a piece and rewording something. But then it's just like to say if someone doesn't like it. Then that's easier. That's easier. If something just goes, not for me. Then I know. You know, then I know.

I mean, look, my favorite word is unanimous. It's the word I'm chasing and will always chase, knowing that there ain't no way I'm ever going to get. But I want to continue to chase it. So it pinches a little bit when you, you know, a bad review or what have you. And sometimes it's like, oh, what I wish I could explain to them. That ship's already sailed. You can't really explain it to them if it didn't need something put out in a true way,

doesn't need explanation. But then I think just deciphering who's out of the snark. Who didn't like me anyway going in, and then who actually is giving constructive criticism when they're given a bad review? That's kind of how I look at it. It's got to be tough not to blend those worlds together, especially when if you're bringing the work beyond your intellectual mind, right? You're bringing it into being in order to really crush the role. That seems like it would blend everything together even more because before if you're just like rom-com guy or something and you're like, eh, and they're like, I don't like it. It's cheesy.

You're like, well, yeah, it is. It's kind of cheesy. But that's the point. But if it's like, you know, his work is that I just didn't find him believable at all in this role. And, you know, they just pick the wrong guy and you're just like, shit. Right. That's me the up there, though. That's, I'm not playing.

I'm not a Marvel character up there. That's me up there. You got to unpack some of those things that we were talking about earlier, like when I said, with the wrongcom guy. You know, I get asked about, like, Dallas Pires, but they're like, how did you lose all the weight? I was like, what do you mean? One, it was my responsibility, too, I'd have been embarrassed.

If I look like I do now and you see the opening scene in Dallas Spires, you're out of the movie. You're like, bullshit, he ain't got it. You're out of the movie. That's on me. That would have been my fault. All right. Well, do that work, then hopefully, you know, act well enough that you go,

oh, I'm into this because I'm into this guy Ron Woodruff. Oh, and McConnor is playing one on Ron Woodruff. But if, oh, I'm seeing McConaughey, I just don't see who's this character's going to again? Well, uh-oh, we got off on the wrong foot. You know what I mean? So, again, I like it when it's unanimous. I know it's not ever going to be.

But I'll say, look, I'll say this, the more selfish and personal that I have gotten in my work, the less I've asked permission, the better results I've gotten, better reviews I've got. And because I wasn't going after approval, because I wasn't going after, oh, I hope they like this. Oh, I think this can really be, no, I just had my head down in it and was like, I'm doing this for me. I'm doing this for me, for my own experience. I ain't checking in with everybody else. I don't give a damn how it lays. I'm playing this game for me. More people related to it.

That's another thing that I think we often see is a contradiction. And whatever our life or career is, even personal relationships, it's got to be personal. We should go even more personal sometimes. But we think that, oh, if you get too personal, then you're too selfish, then you're being self-less. or then you're being callous to the rest. No, no, not really. There's a place where actually the more personal you get is the more self less you're getting.

The more personal I've gotten in my work, the more people related to it. We talked about earlier offline with the book. You're like, how you're enjoying the book to? I said, man, I am. It's eight weeks in, but people are having a different take on the subjects that I've written. So it's a new conversation each time.

A lot of people are relating to it. The more personal I got, the more related to what it became, the more individuals outside of myself were able to make it personal to them. That's the beautiful reciprocity right there. But if you go in going, well, I want to do something to make sure the audience likes it. If you're going in from that objective point of view and you're really dropping your anchor on that, you can pull it off.

I think there's great value in knowing who your audience is and what are you selling and what do you want the outcome to be? Yeah, I've pulled things off like that as well. But if you're sitting in that objective place, well, one, usually the audience can sniff it. They can tell. Ah, you came in pandering to me. I already said, I didn't want you to pander to me. I actually liked it better when you didn't even invite me in. Made me kind of want to see what you were doing a little bit more.

You know, so I don't know, it's a constant balance. But I mean, you know, I like to talk about this subjective and objective. And now where we can live in the third person objective more than ever. So as we talk about our social media, our life is a jumble. There's a jumble tron around all our lives. It's not just me as a faintest person. That's why I'm a fan of speaking in the third person. I go, what is it is?

It's another form of awareness. It's like, oh, let's get in a third eye and have a look back down and see how we're looking, what our landscape is. But what I think we do sometimes, and I've done it too, is I'll stay there too long and not come back to the subject where blinders are on. Don't give a damn about what it looks like. I'm doing it. Press record. No, I don't want to go to the monitor and have a look at what I just did. I did it.

Move on. You tell me later on. So I don't want to get objective. So I think we live in the objective too long sometimes. And I don't think we should do that at the expense of coming back to this objective where you're going like, I'm in the process. I'm in the game. I don't know what the score is. I didn't ask permission.

I'm not planning on where I'm going to go celebrate after the victory because I'm in the game. I don't even know when the damn game's open. You know, that's where I've found that we get. I find that we get more results. This is the Jordan Harbinger Show. with our guest Matthew McConaughey. We'll be right back. Thanks so much for listening to this show.

I work hard at creating it. My whole team does. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going. We put all the discounts, all the deals, all the codes in one place. If you want to buy something you hear about on the show, go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. And please do consider supporting those who support us and make this all possible.

By the way, we've got worksheets for every episode. The worksheet for today's episode is in the show notes that has drills, exercises, any major takeaway from a guest, all in one place. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Now for the conclusion of our episode with Matthew McConaughey. You've got this concept that your own, that your hero is you in 10 years. Can you discuss that a little bit, talk to that a little bit? Because I think there's brilliance in that, but I want to know how you set it up.

Are you actively planning who you'll be in 10 years and how are you doing? You're writing it down. What's the process? No, I'm not, this is not one of those who I've been. the headline written down. I don't have a headline written down for me. I'm 51 now. I don't have a headline written down at 61. It's more of a very active engagement with ourselves. If our hero's always us in 10 years, we're not a day closer tomorrow. Bump to 10 years from tomorrow and so on and so on and so on. It's based on a theory I have

which is chasing yet. It goes back to that word unanimous I was working on earlier. Favorite word, no, I'm never going to get there. So look at it personally. and maybe look at us as a nation, the United States. We're all chasing yet. We're not going to have perfect equality in America. We're going to have this utopia that we hope and dream of. And that's what we can do a little bit better in small increments each day and have a small ascension and evolution in our lives as individuals, as people, as a nation.

And if we can get a little bit better and keep chasing that, knowing we're never going to arrive, that never will be unanimous. It never will be the utopia. We never do have the ta-da, I've got it, moment. If we can go, well, that's the point. You never get it. You just keep chasing it for as long as you can in this, get your eight seconds in this rodeo bull ride called life.

And that's as good as it gets. So that's what I mean is that it's an aspiration. Our life's an aspiration. We're individually at aspirations. America is an aspiration. and we've got the opportunity to chase yet, that's it. Stay in the race, commit to the chase of chasing yet. That's as good as it gets.

That's the game that we're all in. But shake hands with, we never get there. So when you get to that point, too, we'll go, oh, then what's the point? We'll go, well, let's look at the alternative. The alternative sucks. That's it. You stay in the race. You never win the whole game.

That's life. You're an introspective guy, right? You've tried to, I hate this phrase, but I'm going to use it anyway because I can't think of anything better. You try to find yourself, right, by going to Africa. Find my frequency. Find my frequency. Right. Like, it seems like, I wonder, you grew up, you know, a believer, you still are.

Did you feel restricted when you were younger and when you got older you needed to break out of that? What kind of got you thinking, I need to find my frequency in the first place? Like, spiritually? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I did have felt restrictions earlier. It's what I mean about that in the theory I've got in the book about conservative, early liberal late. Yeah.

Learn to block and tackle before you go play wide out to use another sports analogy. Follow these rules or else the consequences. Ooh, you know, more the old testament. Oh, my gosh. Consequences. Fire, brimstone. Oh, my gosh. Fear-based.

There was value in that. Later on, then I think we all, in a metaphorical term, become more too new testamental. We then become individuals that go forward and start to look for affirmations and, hey, what are going to be thankful for? Instead of doing something that of like, I don't want to do that or fear of, we find things in life to go, no, I want to go towards that for the pleasure of or for the need of or because I want that.

So that's a little more analogically, if that's a word, that's a little more New Testament. Through up Methodist, we were about gratitude and a lot about thanks and always. And, you know, I had my agnostic years where I said, uh-uh. But they were less for me about saying, I don't believe in God and more about me going, you quit letting yourself off the hook, McConaughey, because every time you screw up, you drop it into this fatalist sort of like, well, forgive me, so I'm forgiving. And I'm looking at myself, going, well, you, why do you keep being a repeat offender, man? Because you get to go on Sundays and go, oh, I'm freaking, and, who, can clean slate again?

No, I'm tired of you letting yourself off the hook because you're kind of taking advantage of this. So I was calling myself out to go, you better put your damn hands on the wheel. And I had to say, don't rely on belief. Don't rely on faith. Don't rely on fate. Be a self-determining, self-reliant, use your free will. It's on you. What if this is it?

What at the end of this life is we are racing to the red light, man, full stop. And spent quite a few years in that place. and those are very healthy few years. I got more self-reliant, put myself on the stand, I judged myself. I figured, I decided what I'd forgive myself for and what I was going to say, no more the buck stops here.

We're not doing that anymore. I consider myself an optimistic, mystic in life now as a believer. I also, my feeling was when I've prayed and spent it and had quiet times or not even thought about it, that God I believe in was actually up there going, there you go. Good boy. Good boy. That's right. Because a lot of people maybe rely on me too much or go, you know, inshallah. Say it's laity. If God wills it, well, now, wait a minute. A lot of us quit things or go take our hands off the wheel to find solace and safety and going, God's the goddess. The plan's written. Well, now wait a minute. He wants our hand. I believe God wants our hands. If you're a believer, I believe that God, once our hands on the wheel. If not, go run every red light out there and see what happens.

It's that analogy of the parable of the person who's drowning in the ocean, right? And prays. It's a tornado. Get it. Quit praying, we'll run. Yeah, exactly. The boat comes by and he's like, no, I'm waiting for God to say me. And it's like, I sent three boats that parable.

I'll have to get it for the end of the show because if I try to get it now, it's going to be a disaster. It's a good one. What's this I hear about you getting into a cage with a mountain line? When I heard that story, I went, did that happen? Or is this like the psychedelics happened? And then that story happened somewhere. Was there a cage? Was there a cage with a mountain lion?

Yeah. I mean, it was a big one. It wasn't like a caged small mountain lion. It was about 25 feet long, 10 feet high, about 15 feet wide. So he had room to move. I wasn't struggled in there with a mountain lion. I did get into that domicile with him, though. And it took about an hour and a half, two hours for him to,

slowly pace, just as just cat will do, slowly pace, slow the pace then, slowly inch closer, slowly, inch closer, slowly, he's closer until he came up. And at about three hours, two and a half hours, I had that son of gun purring in my lap. You're lucky to be here telling that story, I think. Yeah, it made sense at the time. It's one of those ones that, but I was, I was not under an influence of any kind of drug that had made me, you know, get out of reality. not in the influence of any kind of drug that made me, was making me feel like I was Superman. It wasn't that.

Now, mind you, on paper, I look back to that and I go, damn, kind of, really? Did you do that again? Well, I don't know. I sure wouldn't go, this is what I do. I'll go practice it down. No, that was a time and place where at that moment and in that day and in that circumstance,

that felt like something that I could pull off and did. But not something that you go, okay, well, show me. Do it again. No, no, no, wait a minute. It was a special set of circumstance. Yeah, hell of a party trick, but no thanks. Yeah, probably a one-time performance. Yeah. That kind of thing, psychedelics and the internal exploration, that stuff is sort of trending right now, and I'm of two minds, right? I really enjoy exploring those things. I think it's a

great thing to be explored and studied. But I also, there's a part of me that worries that people are using those instead of doing hard work or they're using it to cover up. They don't go on the walkabout. They just go in someone's basement who's a stockbrook. and on Saturdays he's a shaman. Yeah, or I can become a shaman at 50 minutes online. Or a priest and like, hey, you want to get married? I can marry. I can marry.

Give me 15 minutes. I can become here for that right now. It's a little bit bastardizing the healthy use of some of these things. Like I in Mexico went on the walk with ayahuasca with a shaman. We went for at sunrise for a five-mile hike of a mountain. Another thing, the old thing, walk the dog. He disseminates me in very small bits. Like every mile would stop.

And we were doing a physical activity, which is very good. Your circulation is going. You're sweating. You got drinking water. You saw my body was clean. My purer was going. And so that was that. It's not something you want to go, hey, Saturday night, throw a big bunch of peyote and head out of town.

No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not the, I hear you, man. I mean, a lot of, I know people, too, that look at certain psychedelics as entertainment or, oh, I want to go deeper into the, and fine. And okay, probably now with all this COVID and people cooped up, people are looking for new, the assets of them as like a Joseph Campbell or someone would talk about. They can sometimes give you help with a new perspective, a new way of viewing certain things in your own life, which can be healthy. But I think they do need to be done. I think it's much better to do them responsibility and figure out where and how because it's probably not a great experience or the experience that. you could get from them if they're not done that way.

Yeah, I feel like it's easy to have great experiences on them until you don't. And then that might even undo all the benefit that you've received. Well, that's kind of the problem with all drugs, isn't it? Yeah. So many times it's not what somebody does on them. It's what they become off them. And you're like, oh, we used to do that once every six months of Vegas. Now I needed it every time before I think about it once every three months.

Then it once every month turns every month. Then it turns it once every week. That turns into a while about Saturday nights. And Friday's a good night too. Well, I'll tell you what, for off work Monday, maybe we can go Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Chunk it in there when, you know, it just starts to compress. They don't have residuals, you know. And yeah, when someone is not on them and starts to feel the discomfort with a sober reality

is when it can really become problem. Yeah, you definitely, did you feel like you were in any danger of overindulgence, not any particular substance, but there's this 18-month stint you spent at Chateau-Marmont that you talk about in the book that I think a lot of people probably talk about even in Hollywood. And it's funny, I was telling a friend about this, and he goes, what would you do with Chateau-Marmonne for 18 months? And I was like, a lot of eggs Benedict. A lot of eggs, Benedict. They got a great pasta there, too. I would hate to be housekeeping at Chateaumarmont, cleaning up the McConaughey suite, just hollandaise sauce anywhere. No, I kept my sweet high in tight. My sweet was high and

It was me and my dog and I had actually a very small suite and my suite was not the party suite. Other sweet sometimes, but my suite was pretty much usually that was my own particular stuff that I kept. My bed was made. Yeah, I think you probably had to have that in order to stay grounded at some level, right? Did you feel like, all right, I got to stop this because there's no more to this? I guess I'm asking because a lot of people... It was just time to turn the page. Yeah.

You know, I gave myself the freedom and the leisure to say, hey, go ahead. See what no resistance feels like. See what? No curfew. Anytime you want it feels like. See what if you want another one, have another one feels like. I was, I'm the usually the toughest judge on myself and could be hard on myself. And I was at a time where I was, I thought maybe being too hard on myself, not present enough.

thinking too much, projecting too much of maybe who I wanted to be, where I was like, paralyzing myself personally and was like, man, I was kind of becoming puritanical about some things that I felt like I went too far on and became too puritanical where I wasn't even, didn't have a good sense of humor. And I was like, let's just unchain ourselves here for a second. Let's just, I don't become that, that guy. And so when I unchained myself, I gave myself a license. Like I said, let's get them.

Let's live in downtown Hollywood. Let's get the lettuce. Let's get a motorcycle. sit here and go, hey, let's be it. Let's think hedonistically for a while. And I always knew it wasn't going to be a stay. I knew it was a stop, but I gave myself, I was like, give yourself leisure for like, not for doing this longer than a week and going, okay, that's enough. No, just dive right into it. It was a really fun time. I was a long staying transient. It was a transient time and one that I quite enjoyed, but I knew going in, it wasn't going to be like my existence,

you know, going forward. But it was a wonderful. wonderful 18 months and had loads of fun, a lot of dance, and met a lot of really cool, interesting people, and some really great artists. I would imagine that that's a, there's like before Chateau Marmon and after and during, you had to get out of your system, right? It's like a young, how old were you back then at that point?

I don't know what I was, I was like 20s. It's a good time to do that, right? Because then you meet your wife and you go, I've done the stuff that I, like, even if you're thinking like, oh man, you know, I gotta shake it up a little, You just think back to then and you go, I've had that for my, like, my lifetime. I'm good. Yeah.

I mean, it wasn't as extreme of an exit from responsibility as maybe the story in the book makes it sound like. But I wrote that section differently, too. I wrote that in a slinging it from the hip rock and roll way anyway. The verbiage all through that section, the riddles, the rhymes, the way it was written. I wrote them that way on purpose. But yeah, I mean, I've, when I met Camilla, it wasn't like, oh, now that's part of my life is done. It was just very natural to me to be like,

well, this is now someone that I want to spend the rest of my life with. This is someone who might make children with someone who has a moral bottom line that I'm like, boy, I'd love for me. That's the kind of mother I'd want my children to have. This is someone who understands me in a way that this could be my best friend. You know, so I didn't have a really inhabit, really felt a sort of a choke back. I wish I could. But yeah, I mean, in my, you know, days old,

that was a fun 18-month-chat. You've been kind of fun now. I was an exchange student, so I particularly resonated with the story about the Dooley's, which is in the book. There's so many great stories in the book. The Dooley's story had me cracking up because I think a lot of us spent a lot of time

on our foreign exchanges reading Lord Byron, if you know what I'm saying. Yeah, right? I mean, who, just to find a baseline. You know what I mean? Just to get a little clarity. this to sit there and, oh, clean things up a little bit. Press reset.

Yeah. Yeah. Those people, though, like looking back now as an older, you know, not being 18 or whatever you were at the time, looking back now, you realize these were crazy people. There was something not right in the household. What do you think when you look back? Because you did take lessons from it. You're not thinking like, oh, man, I wasted my year in Australia.

You actually took quite a bit of positivity from it, which I think is not easy to do when you have experiences like that. So what do I think of them looking back? Of your experience looking back? I mean, it's kind of clear what was going on there. But like, what do you think of that experience looking back? It's one of my favorite stories I've ever heard or told. And I'm the subject in the middle of it.

And I'm the one with egg on my face throughout it. The joke is on me. So, I mean, I do believe I wouldn't be sitting there talking to you with the life I have if I wouldn't have had that year over there with that. family where I was forced even more so than in a different way that when you, as we talked about earlier, when you lose your father, I was forced to rely on self. And what's so great and funny about the stories, it's 18 to 19 years old. I'm 18 to 19. That's a right of passage time for any young man. But then you throw that young man off in the place that I was in the middle of some questionably

insanity and no one or no thing to bounce reality off of. Oh my gosh, it was hilarious. And then the things I did to sort of maintain my sanity, to whatever extent I could and didn't, I look back at him and I just laughed my ass off. I mean, like I said, there's what I was doing with Lord Byron. There was six-mile runs a day. There was celibacy.

There was vegetarianism without doing it right. There was, I'm going to be a monk. These sort of things, these disciplines that I need to create in my young mind, to have some sense of identity, some sense of reality, something to check off and go, I did that today. I know I did that today. I ran six miles. Whatever that was, it was very awkward. But I'm kind of happy, pretty honored with how I went about it because I did try to take the high road.

I did have a hunch the entire time that there was a lesson I was supposed to learn this. And I was never, ever going to pull the parachute. I was never, ever going to say, I'm out of here. Because you read the story and you go, what are you talking? talking about dude get the hell out i was never going to do that i was on took a one-way ticket into the adventure and i said i'm staying the year man i'm staying the whole year by hooker by crook and of course i didn't think it would be by crook i thought it's going to be like woohoo it is austria el mcpherson here we go no none of that that's not the australia i went to um so i needed to be

forced to put in the middle of complete confusion complete confusion and just see one how long could I endure it. There was value in just the endurance. There was value in having, again, no one to bounce anything out, not a friend, not a phone, not a job, not a girlfriend, nothing, no parents to bounce. Hey, is this all right? Is this how this is this how it's supposed to do? I didn't have anything. And so I'm in the middle of it. And I never felt in any grave danger. I was psychologically in a very tricky place. That's for damn sure. I want people to go and check out that story. I know you told it on a couple of podcasts.

It's in the book, and as a fellow exchange student, it is hilarious because we all kind of have our version of the dulys, whether it was our host parents or just something that happened during our exchange year where we're like, no one's going to believe this. And it's going to change my life. And I'm not sure how. But I'm going to be telling this story in 20 years, and people are going to be like, sure that happened. You know, come on. And isn't that sometimes, do you ever feel like in the middle of a situation?

you're like, this at least is going to be a great story. I know there's certain things like in Africa with the wrestling. When I got challenged, one ear I'm hearing this year is, are you kidding me? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And the other year is like, dude, if you don't, you're going to regret knowing what happened. That ear won very quickly and all of a sudden I accepted the challenge. But also think, again, I popped out in that objective side of like, and this is bound to be a great story one day. The story thing has gotten me in trouble before, but usually it's worth it, I think.

There is a right of passage, like you said, for men especially, or I shouldn't say especially. I can only speak for men because I've only been a man and a boy in my life. But there's something about us that we need that, right? Like, you just, you have to go through that, and you just happen to have yours on the other side of the world. Some of yours. It's a right. Rights of passage are big for males. If you're not having them or sometimes you've got to create resistance for yourself,

if you don't have the world doing it to you or someone that can parent or something that can do that for you, a father or mother. And then sometimes we're not looking for them and they're just, we're in a position where we're locked into one. And you go, okay, got something I've got to get through here. I don't know what is on the other side. Sometimes you get through great rights passage just by sheer endurance. We are possibly going through right of passage as people in the world right now. I think so.

And during this last 10 months, this could be very healthy for us in the long run. No, I think you're right. I think you're right. I think viewing things that are challenging as a test is also a healthy way to look at it because otherwise it can break you. Nobody wants to fail a test. Right. Right.

There's an inherent dare in them. You know, and you got to watch it when you choose because you got to, there's good fear and there's bad fear. You don't have that not fearful of something you should be fearful of. Like a mountain line? I had zero fear in me that day. I covered about 10 feet in about 90 minutes. That's how slow I moved.

I had zero fear that day, not that time. It's incredible. It worked out. Could have lost the moneymaker, man, for sure, if not more. Thank you so much. This is as good a place to leave it, I think, as any other. This has been a super enjoyable conversation. And I know you've done like 100 of these, so I appreciate you pretending like you haven't.

That's always nice. conversation. First one of the day I've had. We've got a trailer for our interview with Robert Green, one of the most acclaimed authors of our time. Robert's insight into human nature is second to none, and there's a reason that his books are banned in prisons, yet

widely read by both scholars and leaders alike. Check out episode 117 of the Jordan Harbinger show. If we just sit in our inner tube with our hands behind our head and crack open a six pack of beer, the river of dark nature takes us towards that waterfall of the shadow.

So when we're children, if we weren't educated, if we didn't have teachers or parents telling us to study, we'd be these monsters. We're all flawed. I believe we humans naturally feel envy. It's the chimpanzee in us. It's been shown that primates are very attuned to other animals in their clan and are constantly comparing themselves. Your dislike of that fellow artist or that other podcaster, 99% percent. sure that it comes from a place of envy. For sure. You are not a rational being.

Rationality is something you earn. It's a struggle. It takes effort. It takes awareness. You have to go through steps. You have to see your biases. When you think you're being rational, you're not being rational at all. You go around, everything is personal. Oh, why did he say that? Why is my mom telling me this? And I'm telling you it's not personal. That's the liberating fact. People are wrapped up in their own emotions, their own traumas. so you need to be aware that people have their own inner reality.

People are not nearly as happy and successful as you think they are. Acknowledging that you have a dark sight, that you have a shadow, that you're not such a great person as you think, can actually be a very liberating feeling. And there are ways to take that shadow and that darkness and kind of turn it into something else. If you want to learn more about how to read others and even yourself, be sure to check out episode 117 of the Jordan Harbinger show.

Now, I got to admit, when he said Sess La Vie, it took me a minute to figure out that he meant Say La Vie, and I just didn't throw it in there because I don't even know how long it took me, but it was not relevant by the time I thought of it. So if you were wondering what the heck he meant when he said Sess La Vie, he meant Say La Vie. I'm pretty sure. If anyone else has any insight there, go ahead and correct me if I'm wrong. I also asked him a little bit about how he gets into character on set,

and he says that he has these launch pad lines, right? Something like, all right, all right, all right. That stuff comes naturally, but it also helps him get into character. He also asks the writers and the directors what the movie poster will look like for the movie that he's doing. So he will see if it's a close up of the main character of him, then he knows it's more focused on him and the character. And if it's a wide open landscape, it's more focused on the story.

And then, of course, he does the whole thing and then they change the movie poster. but I thought that was an interesting strategy. He's getting the picture, at least in his mind, up front of the vision that the director and the whole team has. He's also a pretty introspective guy. At least that's what it seems like from his book. I wonder if he'd always been like that. Now, he takes a lot of stock in the day-to-day and what makes him happy and gives him

ROI in his life. He's been keeping a diary for 36 years. And I asked him if he only went there during dark times or if he actually writes in it when he's flying high as well. And he said that he does. He said, actually, most of us dissect failures, but not many of us dissect where and who we are when we're actually feeling the most happy and the most satisfied. And journaling allows us this.

If you only write in it when you're miserable, it's just like writing letters home when you're miserable. Your family thinks your exchange year or whatever is horrible. But really, you have to write when you feel good and when you feel bad. That's what gives you that 2020 hindsight, the actual clarity that you're looking for. He's also big on getting a vision of where you want to go. You said you have to know where you're going first before you can aim in the right direction. No deep wisdom there, right? Because if you don't know where you're going, having a bunch of green lights in front of you,

the book is called Green Lights, and it's kind of about this, and having a bunch of green lights in front of you could actually be a big problem. You could have your foot on the gas going in the wrong direction. All you're doing is racing towards nothing or misery even faster. And channeling my inner Ryan Holiday here, there's probably some quote from the Stoics about sailing and wind on ships or whatever that would apply here. In fact, I think it's something like if you don't know which port you're headed towards no wind is favorable. And if I just made that up, well, maybe I'm a philosopher now. Who knows?

Last but not least, Matthew mentioned that he's been really good recently at simplifying his life, something I'm going through these days at well, deciding what you want to do. And the story he told about this, this is in the book. He said the phone rang in his office and it was somebody from his production company. And he went to answer it and he paused and he thought, I just don't want to deal with this. And that same moment, that same day, he wanted to shut down his record label, shut down his production company, and he said, look, I got to focus on this because I'm making Bs and five things, and I want to make A's. And I'm with you there, man. You know, I want to make an A as a family man, as a father. I want to make an A in this podcast and interviewing. I don't need to be

a live events coordinator and a product maker and a life coach and a dead and a podcaster. I see people doing that, and I see a lot of sort of vanilla content that's clearly put together by an outsourced team that's not really that great. Nothing world changing there. You know, a lot of vanilla a lot of make me famous on social. And I just, I don't want any part of that. The vanity's tempting, but as I get older, I realize it's just not for me. So big thank you to Matthew McConaughey. The book title is Green Lights. Links to that will be in the show notes. Please do use our website links. If you buy books or anything from any of our guests, it helps support the show. Worksheets for this episode in the show notes, transcripts in the show notes. The one time we don't

have a video going up on the YouTube channel is this time because the video crash. It happens once every two years the video crashes, and my backup also crashes. And I just got a new, whatever, the reason doesn't matter, but there's no video going up on YouTube. So you're just going to have to imagine me having a grand old time with Matthew McConaughey because that's what happened. So just get that vision clear in your head, and that's exactly what it was. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or hit me on LinkedIn if you want to connect with me. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using the same systems and tiny habits that I use every single day. It's over on

Six-minute networking course. The course is free. It's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Dig the well before you get thirsty. Most of the guests on the show, they actually subscribe to the course and the newsletter. Come join us. You'll be an amazing company where you belong, baby. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My amazing team is Jen Harbinger, J. Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Ian Baird, Millie Ocampo, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends, when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who's into Hollywood acting

or just a big Matthew McConaughey fan, throw this episode their way. Hopefully you find something great in every episode. Please share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard,

so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think,

the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches

that I want to understand how people in the world really work, itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.