Most Replayed Moment: Matthew McConaughey - The Comfort Crisis Is Destroying Your Potential!

**Matthew McConaughey** (0:05)
Do you remember these? Yes.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:07)
You wrote this roughly around the same time in 92, roughly actually when I was born, funnily enough, I saw the date on the top and thought, oh, it's a few days after my birthday.
And again, you put fatherhood number one, but there's a series of other things on this list of your 10 goals in life which you wrote in 1992 As you reflect on those goals, do you wish you hadn't written any of them? And is there anything else you wish you had written?

**Matthew McConaughey** (0:30)
No, I wouldn't change a thing about it.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:33)
10 goals in life, become a father, find and keep a woman for me, keep my relationship with God, chase my best self, be an egotistical utilitarian, take more risks, stay close to mom and family, win an Oscar for best actor, look back and enjoy the view. Just keep living.

**Matthew McConaughey** (0:51)
I don't know what I'd add to that.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:54)
One of the things that you've talked a few times about is this idea of like needing resistance. You've said it two or three times. And we're going back to what it is to be a man and what it is to be a well-orientated stable man.
Needing resistance. Is that a goal to aim for?

**Matthew McConaughey** (1:12)
I think it's just a necessary necessity for us having more than just an individual life at the top of the high rise with money. If you're successful, do that. I mean, I'm supposing that whether it's different words, your friend went to Christianity for a very similar reason.
It's like a certain amount of guilt is very healthy. It helps us, keeps us, it's boundaries.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:48)
Boundaries.

**Matthew McConaughey** (1:49)
Without any shame, without any embarrassment, without any guilt. Tell me it's all just four-dimensional. Where's the form?
Where's the art? It's four-dimensional. It has no form. You got to have gravity to have form. You got to have some resistance to have some form. You got to push off of something to go somewhere. You got to be, it's very hard when you're just floating and no gravity and no resistance to actually pursue a North Star. You have no leverage. You're floating. Where's the art? Probably more anarchy than art. So resistance gives form. Heard great artists say this, limitations reveal style.
Resistance. Something to go, or else, it's like in greenlights. Life's just nothing but greenlights. You got no yellows and reds, no reasons to pause or crises that stop you. Resistance?
What are you, just go in circles? Do you run out of gas? You get dizzy?
I don't see that. How do we evolve or devolve without resistance? Now, picking the right resistance is an art in itself. It's challenging. I've been clumsy with it in my life. When, especially when I got famous and got success. Man, enough people telling me I love you and the caviar and the champagne. I was like, what the shit? Why me? I don't deserve any of this. What did I do? I things up on purpose just to say like, I tripped myself running down hill so I could bloody my own nose and go, oh, now I can feel. Okay. Okay. Now my heels are on the ground. I need it. It's clumsy. So I don't think we need the kind of resistance that we create that can harm us or get in our way for getting in our way sake, because I've come to learn and I think we all are. No, when things are going really well, resistance is going to come. If you stay with, if you have any ambition, resistance is going to come.

**Steven Bartlett** (4:08)
We often see resistance as a form of failure and something that we should endeavor to avoid. When you think about the avoidance of people building families or even, many people consider that we're living in a bit of a comfort crisis. This is slightly a different sort of analogy, but most of the diseases that we have today, whether they're diseases of, I don't know, the mind, like people feeling lonely and isolated or physical diseases, 80% of Americans getting back pain, but no one in the Hadza tribe in Africa getting back pain. They're all a consequence of us continually choosing comfort, which is a short-term friend but long-term enemy. And the resistance, I think, is something increasingly we can choose, opt out of.

**Matthew McConaughey** (4:49)
It's a choice too. I mean, can I hit a little point on this subject? It's called Tips Included. And I wrote this based on participation trophies, entitlement. How too much of something can be just as harmful is not enough.