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

[Music] Do you remember these? Yes. 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, "I was a few days off after my birthday." Yeah. And again, you put "Fatherhood No. 1" 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? No, that wouldn't change the thing about it. 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, you tell it to. You tell it to. Toitarian. Take more risks. Stay close to Mum and Family. When an Oscar for Best Actor. Look back and enjoy the view. Just keep living. I don't know what I'd add to that. One of the things that you've talked a few times about is this idea of like needing resistance. Yeah. You 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-irontated stable man. Needing resistance. Is that a goal to aim for? Is that. I think it's just a necessary necessity for having more than just an individual life at the top of the high rise with money. If that's if you're successful, do that. I mean, I'm supposing that whether it's different words, your friend went to Christianity for this very very similar reason. It's like certain amount of guilt is very healthy. It helps us keep us. It's boundaries. 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. It's very hard when you're just floating in no gravity and no resistance to actually pursue a North Star. You have no leverage. Floating. Where's the art? Probably more anarchy than art. So resistance gives form. I heard a great artist say this. Limitations. Reveal style. Resistions. Something to go. Or else it's like in green lights. If life's just nothing but green lights. If you got no yellows and reds and no reasons to pause or crises that stop you, resistance. This is what do you just go to go in circles to be running a gas and 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. And 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?" And I fucked things up on purpose just to say like, I trip myself running down hills like a bloody my own nose and go, "Oh, now I can feel." Okay. Okay, now my heels are on the ground. I need, 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 safe because I've come to learn, 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. We often see resistance as a form of failure and something that we should endeavour to avoid. You think about the avoidance of people building families or even many people consider that we're living in a bit of a comfort crisis. This is slightly a different sort of analogy, but most of the diseases that we have today, whether the diseases of, I don't know, the mind, people feeling lowly and isolated, all 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 or opt out of. It's a choice, too. I mean, can I hit a point on this subject? It's called tips included. Now, I wrote this based on participation trophies, entitlement. How too much of something can be just as harmful is not enough. How we all need good fortune, good fate, and charity sometimes. But we shouldn't rely on that. Called tips included. When extra credits included, credit doesn't get us due. When more gives us less, the exchange rates gone as急. When amnesty is offered, going into the crime, we're more bound to commit it, because there is no fine. We start playing to tie and said, "Going for the win." When participation is the trophy for every cow in the pit. If I stay on the porch because you picked up the slack, when you look over your shoulder, I can't have your back. If there is no curfew, we're going to stay out all night. No tab at our bar, we're going to get drunk and start a fight. All these long lenses got us losing our sight. You keep lifting it for me. I'm going to lose all my mind. When a four-star duty suits a six-star rate, we take our hands off the wheel and rely on fate. Eat and all we can eat, buffet gives us a 3.8 education and a 4.2 GPA. We steal from ourselves and get away with the scam. What's the measure of merit with less give a damn? These unlimited options sure have me confused while all the conveniences are keeping me properly lived in this red light district with the horror of inflation. The ROI's math don't pay for vacation. So let's just admit it, this extra credit is quite a fluffer. Because when the tips included, the service will suffer. But it's about that. The conveniences, the long lenses, everything's like, oh, and we've out conveniences to ourselves. What day are you going to do to us? Talk about convenience. How much, and I want to keep here and study, so I wonder if you have an opinion on this. How much of you coming up with an idea and then writing and rewriting it? Thinking about it. No, no, no, no, no, it's not an X-word. Oh, no, this is what I really mean in how to get to. How much of that is really valuable to get it beyond just an intellectual idea, more valuable than just going, oh, there it is. Because what comes out of it? Incredibly impressive. Our launch is that we can use it for like, signpost to help us, oh, that's good. Oh, thank you for helping me organize, but there's a value to us going through the sweat equity of learning something. How do you feel about it? I mean, exactly what you've said, but the studies have just come out using different things like chat to be to you have actually proven what you've just said to be true. That when people use AI to produce a piece of work, not only can't they recall what they've made, but they also start speaking in language more like the AI, so they start to lose their own voice. But I mean, yeah, I mean, through history, people at Richard Fryme and the physicist have said the best way to learn something is to learn it and then to go through the pain of writing it, condensing it down to a simple truth like you do so often in your new book poems and prayers, and then sharing it with the world and then getting the feedback. And if the world understood it like you meant it, like that poem you just shared, you understand it. That's evidence that you get it. Right. So I think AI is going to be great for me saying something to you, but not learning something myself. And I think if you want to defend creativity and innovation and the ability to think, you actually have a huge opportunity, which is to go left when everyone's going right. And it goes to what you were saying there, you were talking about, be careful when you mess with incentives. Like be careful when you choose the easier road, be careful of the unintended consequences. And AI is a prime example of an unintended consequence of you taking the easier road today. Yeah. And you know, I just actually made a video about this fun enough, just warning my audience about when something appears to be like a short-term friend, it's usually a long-term enemy. Like when you choose easy today, you choose hard tomorrow. And there's always a trade-off. Right. But you think if you choose hard today, you usually get easy tomorrow. I mean, there's obviously a ton of nuance to this, but in many contexts, yes. So for example, I think of what I was thinking my father, my father would never have, he would avoid conflict at all costs. He would avoid the difficult conversation. And when I zoom out over the decades of his life and marriage, I get, "Man, that costs you big time." - He caught up with him. - Oh my God. And me inverting that in my own life and continually just confronting it head on has had the complete opposite effect. You never. You know, like when you were talking about being a young man and making that decision 'cause you had that voice and you had saying, "Law might not be my thing." And you made that phone call to your father. - Yeah. - Like what I hear you did is you realigned yourself to you. Now if you hadn't made that call and you'd let a couple more of those bad habits, you would've got to fall in bed like, who the fuck is this guy? - Right. - What is this life? You would've looked around and said, "Who is she? Who are they? What is this job?" - Right. - And that's that course correction that I think requires you to do the slightly harder thing today. What do you think? - I agree with you. That's the resistance. Do you choosing, you know, look, I still gotta learn how to take a vacation. (laughing) Because, you know, there's sometimes when the winds are back and we've earned it. There's sometimes when it's easy to treat and it's like, "Yeah, don't interrupt this man. This is a sweet ass song. Trust that the hill's coming." Again, don't be so impressed with this and don't, well, I have to do it so fallen to when things are going really well. And I go, "Ah, there it is. That's the mean." That was not, not with any ambition, it's not, or not with life happening, it's not. But my hunch I want to see what you think about this theory is, you gotta shoot for an A and make a C rather than shoot for a C and make it an F. Now, so go for perfection. Reality always comes in under it. But in that moment, when you see the inevitable reality, the outcome, the result. How quickly can we go? Okay, but I got so much more out of it, the job, the person myself, because I went for perfection. Then if I'd have just gone for, nah, do you just give me, you know, just past class. It's again, that little bit of the owner's renters mentality. And what can be hard for me sometimes is, it can take me too long to come down from, oh, it didn't hit perfection. And maybe it takes me a week to go, "Dude, now do you finally realize that, of course you weren't gonna get perfection, but you got so much more out of it because you went for perfection." Yeah. So be pleased with reality, because you got a good grade on it, man. That was good. That piece of art wouldn't have been that true. If you wouldn't have been, I don't know, like I obviously saw the time, and I never mean this in a disrespectful way. I've never done a movie or a performance that lived up to what I thought it could be. 'Cause I'm thinking it can be divine. It comes out, maybe majorly inspiring, may speak to masses, or even have some magic to it, but I'm just divine. That's resist, that's tension. Yeah, yeah. Unclosed gap. And I think everything that's ever been built, that's great, or creatively brilliant, has come from someone who has a big expectation gap. And of course, did a very definition of that. You're never gonna close it. And actually, the probably the reason you then are motivated to move to the next thing, and pursue divine again, is because it wasn't divine last time. Maybe there's still something left on the table, and that's, means you never arrive. Right. You talk about a right a lot in the poems and prayers as well. I also was reflecting on your mother's words, where she had a very young age to you, position life as a dichotomy of being humble, but like, know that you're the shit. Yeah. And it's the same thing. It's like strive for protection, perfection, but also know that nothing will ever get there. And can you be okay with that dissonance? Right. And there's a moment. And I think it's where the, one of the arts of living is, if you are gonna prescribe to go shoot perfection, there's that moment when reality comes in, when you had to declare, and the cards speak for themselves. And it's under. But you, because you oversaw it, it's the thing I got called oversee, 'cause you oversee, expect the best, this divinity out of people and art and of yourself. And then it always comes in under. How quickly can you go, ah, nice reality. Can I ask you a question about that, then? If you had aimed for something to be perfect, and then it delivered itself as perfect, exactly how you had imagined if it all possible, without have made you happy, which you've been-- I don't know. (laughing) You're right. I'm gonna meet you scared, both probably, because look, I've had moments. Let me tell you one, in Africa. I'm in Mali, Africa. Dog on country, me and my guy, he was a buddy now, ESA, we're hiking from village to village in the Banjigara. Each village is 10 to 15 miles away. I went over there, meeting my anonymity under the name of David, and I said, I was a writer and a boxer. Well, they called me Douda. Anyway, I, they didn't give them back the writing part, but they were very interested in the wrestling part. So each village, I would go to, it was to catch up to me, the strong white men named Douda. And they loved the wrestle over there. They loved the wrestle, it's kind of a form of entertainment. The boys just walk up into Tart wrestling. I get to this one village when I've been to Mali too. And I'm laying there to 40 miles, to get there on the lane on the ground, stretching the village just all kind of come up around. They're talking in chatter, and all of a sudden I hear this chatter, and that's sort of at me. I can just hear it, and I look up and see two boys, they're about 18, and they're boom, boom, boom, poppin' at me, and I can be like, and I know enough in the tone. I don't know what they're saying, 'cause they're speaking in bombada. I'm like, are they talking to me? And ESA goes, yes. He goes, they are the resters of the village. They say they are the best resters of the village, and they are challenging you to wrestling my, so I'm like, oh, they are. I was like, (laughs) Well, they sure are talking a lot. I go, I don't know if they mean it. Y'all have this thing over here. We have a thing in America where if someone talks too much, they really don't mean he goes, yes, we have this. We have this. And just as that happens, you hear the crowd, wah scream, and I look up in the two boys bam, run off. Why? Because the real champion wrestler of the village, Michelle, five foot nine, tree trunk legs, about 220, burlap bag wrapped with the rope-runnies waist, he showed up. He doesn't say a word. He just stands over me, points to me, points to himself, and points over here. I look over where he's pointing, and there's a big dirt pit. My heart starts racing. There's the challenge. As my heart's beating going, oh no, I start to get up. Because as this year's saying, oh no, I'm hearing in this or here, if you don't, you will regret this for a rest of your life. You've gotta go do it. This would at least be a great story to tell. So I get up, village goes crazy. Well, I'm about 80 people have gathered now. The chief comes out, I'm standing in the middle of the pit, and I'm not sure how this is supposed to go, where are the rules? Chief puts his hands on his heads. Michele grabs me by the waist, mimics to me, I grab him by the waist, then he burls his forehead down into my clavicle here, and I burrow him on into his. So now we're like two bulls like this, and the chief puts his hands on our head, and then raises them and goes, stop! And the crowd goes wild. Ding ding is what? Stop, man. So we start going around, man, and I'm thinking, okay, I get some leverage on this guy's legs. He's like tree chunks, I'm like, oh, I ain't getting them down low. I push crap and grab her boom, and I get him over, bam, flip him on his back, he flips me back over. I back-flip him off my back at summer salt, and he comes in, gets me in a freaking leg lock that I can barely breathe, I almost got to tap out, from my shimmy, that thing, all of a sudden, Chief comes in, separates us. I'm hyperventilating, man. Crowd's going crazy. He's got to split Michele on this side, me on this side. Are these talismans that were in my beer? They got two of them, they got torn out. During the rest of the magic, I got blood running down me here. My knees are bleed, my ankles are bleeding. I'm hyperventilating, covered in sweat. I look over at Michele, who's just staring at me going. Barely a glistening on him, and that's when the Chief goes, "Dup!" And I go, "Oh shit, here we go." Boom, boom, boom, boom. That's my way, spot, spot, burles, his head, I burrow my head, we're off. Goes around again, pretty damn good match. Strong, I flipped him, he pinned me, I could be out up, got moving. All of a sudden, Chief comes in, separates us. Raises both our hands, the crowd goes crazy. Ah, as soon as he loads our hands, Michele runs off. Everyone sees him go, and they come in and grab me and put them on the shoulders, "Dow, duh, duh, duh." I go over, now I'm a big man in the village, which means they give me the best chance. that has the least broken sort of, you know, a straw on the seed, which means the village boy finds me the biggest chicken and plucks it, and they cook it for dinner for me, which means they take me to the cleanest spot and the river and I come back that night, we eat, I get on the roof of the hut, what a magical day. I lay back. I see the Southern Cross for the first time in this guy. Like it was in neon lights on a black backdrop. It was, you could not see it. It was so bright, staring me right at the face. I laid there 30 minutes, I'll 29 shooting stars. I'm going. I might have a direct line. I might be the chosen one. Wow. Just as I'm about to shut my eyes, I got a little, in my throat. So I sit up, go to spit out over the, often to the, off the top of the roof. Lugie plastered to my face. I forgot I had put my mosquito net on. (laughing) I was like, oh, perfect. Just when I was thinking, I might have the direct line. I just bit a Lugie in my own face and there became the humor. Now, to finish off that story, the next morning, when I left the village, remember Michelle, who ran away? I got to the edge of the village about to make the 14 mile walk to the next village. And there behind the first tree, passed off the property, popped out Michelle. Not a word. Looked at me, bowed, grabbed my hand. He walked me the 14 miles to the next village, got to the village border, the next tribe, bowed and walked home. I went back, unannounced six years later. Did the same trip, ran into the same people, the kids at Chrome six years old, everybody. We get to Benji Amato, there's Michelle. He's had five kids and he broke his hip. So he's got a limp, right? So we all agree, not another wrestling match. We have a great dinner that night. We talk, we tell stories. There's speaking bombata, I'm speaking English, but we just understand each other sort of charades now. Get up the next morning, go to leave, find that same tree. Out pops Michelle, bows, reaches out his hand, holds my hand and 14 miles to the next village. Stop, bows, turn around. I ask, East, back then the first time in 99, after that night when I wrestled Michelle, and he walked me the first time, I got there. I was like, what, tell me about what happened last night? I'd do all right, he was, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You do very well, you see. When you accept the challenge, that is when you were a big man in this tribe. It was not about the win or the lose. You accept the challenge and didn't you wrestle Michelle, who's not only champion of this village, but of this village and tree village back. And you handle Michelle, handled was the word. And when we lose, it's handled. He goes, you come back. We make money. (laughing) That's what he told me then, went back six years later and had that experience and that experience with Michelle, the respect we had in future, he walked me, broke an hip and all, 14 miles to the next village. You accept the challenge. Accept the challenge. That is when you were a big man in this village. 'Cause I was like, put me on the shoulders, man, what was it? It was a, oh, you were a big man when you accepted the challenge. He said, whole village stink. Michelle going to have strong white men named out on back in 10 seconds over. But you handled Michelle, not when I lose. Handled. But you were a big man when you accepted the challenge. Beautiful. And then he's there six years later and walked me the same way. I mean, I think your question was on, you know, when we, when we know or how confident, or feel like we're on the right path, which that was a time when I thought, I was so much, I was like, I think that might be the, you know, a loogie in my face. And that to me was God going, you're doing good, but not that good, but. What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you wanna listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you. (upbeat music)