Matthew McConaughey: The Silent Crisis No One Is Talking About! The Harsh Truth About Living Without Faith

Steven Bartlett (0:01)

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Matthew McConaughey (0:30)

I think too many people quit too early. And we give ourselves the options in the parachutes and things like relationships and work, self-help. And we pull that stuff when we can still be flying. Even though maybe Rocky Flight, we pull it early. And okay, it's a safe move, got down to the ground. What I was building didn't last. But most of the time, it could if you'd have hung in there. But if you have any ambition, resistance is gonna come. And so own that.

SPEAKER_3 (0:53)

Matthew, Matthew, Matthew McConaughey.

Steven Bartlett (0:56)

You've been able to climb to the very top of the mountain again and again and again. Is this natural talent or is there anything transferable?

Matthew McConaughey (1:03)

First, look at what's in your DNA. Like I wanted to play basketball, but no matter how hard I worked, I was not the fastest nor the biggest. So look at what do you have an innate ability for? Then what are you willing to hustle for? And this is very important because some of us have innate ability, but we don't work for it. We grew up hardcore on hustle, hustle, hustle. Sleep was sin in my household, in no TV. Mom would always say, why are you going to watch someone doing something when you can go out in the world and do it yourself? And then number three, endurance. I remember this one time when I told my agent, what I want to do is dramas, no more rom-com, and this $8 million offer comes in with comedy. I read it and I said, no thank you. I come back with a $12 million offer. No thanks, $14.5 million offer. I said, let me read that again. I ultimately said, no, I just wrote myself a one-way ticket out of Hollywood. About 20 months after the offer came in, would those have come if I had never stepped out? No. Now, number four, if you do this, you're most likely going to have some success in life, and that is you.

Steven Bartlett (2:00)

What about Admiral Bill McRaven?

Matthew McConaughey (2:02)

So he shared great wisdom with me when I was seeking out male mentors.

Steven Bartlett (2:08)

We reached out to Bill and he wrote this letter for you. He said, Dear Matthew. Are you able to share what you were seeking guidance from him about? Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning in to the show week after week. Means the world to all of us. And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show.

You're a particularly surprisingly artistic, creative, wise, yet materially successful individual. And it wasn't until I dove deeper into your story that I started to understand why that was, why you are to me in my mind, such an anomaly, because you are, you seem to be several things that don't often appear in the same place. So my first question to you is, what do I need to understand about your earliest context to understand who you are, the values you have and the perspective that you view the world with?

Matthew McConaughey (3:50)

Fun question. Earliest on. Basic values of respect yourself, respect others. Give a damn about yourself, give a damn about others. Combined with a mother that wherever we went, in the world, we might have been a little nervous to take a risk at. She was like, don't walk in there like you want to buy the place, walk in like you own it. So, a sort of boosting up of what you could say is massive ego, but also you were not allowed to walk on your proverbial toes in our family. You were brought down and if anyone in our family, if anything, I would say going back, I think mom and dad maybe could have been a little more lenient with the successes that we had and when we did parade, when my brother did win the track meet and walk through the house like this to allow him to do that, and you weren't allowed to do that. You were immediately humbled no matter if you were coming right off a victory or a win or a box office hit, you weren't allowed to. At the same time, you were raised up once you were humbled.