Matthew McConaughey On: His Morning Routine; When To Take Risks; How To Bounce Back From Fuckups; And the Dangers of Cynicism

25:07Put up the walls, let's maintain. I don't want to sit there either. Although I do love to prepare and I do love to measure, you know, and preparation has been one of my greatest assets. I also, on the flip side of that, don't want to prepare myself until death, you know, for a lot of things. Right. Yeah. If there's been a decline in risk tolerance post-babies, where do you find that showing up in like oh well I'm not gonna maybe I don't do Dallas Buyers Club this time maybe I go for something safer is it artistic choices is it something else

25:49it's not really artistic choices I don't think unless it's dealing with amount of time I'm gonna need to go be solo for instance writing that's a solo experience for me I'm not any good at going, oh, after this, Dan, I've got three hours in the afternoon before my next appointment. I'll go right. I don't know how to do that. I have to have no curfew on the backside. At least eight to ten days on the backside of knowing I have, there is no clock. I don't have to have a return ticket back at all to step out if I'm creatively turned on. So time is some, but I'm also very fortunate when I go to work for over more than three weeks, the kids and the family come with me.

26:33So I'm not missing out on them. The risk of roles, no, it would be no problem. Like a Dallas Buyers Club to go, hey, we're going to do this. It's going to be five months. I'm going to be on a militant diet. That's not a problem. It's a good question. What is the answer to that? Where I take risk of who to bring into my life, who to share our life with, what areas to expose the kids to as since they're usually with me and Camilla. I think it's those. Because when you have more to protect, you gotta, I try to watch that. I don't want to lose trust, but I also, with success, you got a lot of people coming for you.

27:14And some of them are very good at hiding their transactional motives and try to be as wise to that as possible. But at the same time, to measure those things, stunts a creative process because a creative process works on, yes, embrace, carry on. Yes, come on, have another. And so balancing that out, and my wife has probably a more skeptical, watchful eye than I do, but it's how much to share. And then in 24 hours, not two. Some of the taking the risk is about obviously bringing on new things, but it's also, on the other side, a greater risk to go, no, don't bring on new things. Put more logs on the fires you've already got going.

28:03And don't let those just be, oh, that was a fad. Oh, I'd worked on that for a couple of years. No, keep building the fires that are already built and see how high they can go, how wide those flames can go. And so it's measuring those. And plus without, I can have a tendency to over-leverage myself and look up and go, damn it, I got eight campfires on my desk again. I'd rather have two bonfires. I'm feeling pulled left and right. I kind of feel like I'm not able to give a hundred percent. I'm half-assing this over here. I'm half-assing that over there. I'm feeling quite incomplete. Can I get six more hours in a day?

28:35Nope. They're not giving them. Okay. What do I need to do? I need to pull a few campfires off. And that's probably the greater risk for me now is to probably pull some campfires off, to use that wood to put in the one, the bonfires that I've got going. That is a huge problem for me personally. I know what drives It's my overcommitment. It's usually fear, like a fear of missing out, fear of not making enough money. What drives it for you? Finding out. I love to find out. Most times in my life when I thought, oh, I don't have time for that. Yeah, you do. Go do it. And I found more time and I found more energy to go think I can handle it and handle it and actually handle it.

29:16But can I do that while keeping my health intact, while keeping my husbandry intact? by keeping my fatherhood intact, by keeping my faith intact, by keeping those relationships intact. Sometimes one of those goes into the debit section if I'm going to take on too much. And I've found that as much as you may say, hey, no, just need your name on the board. Just need your name on the invitation. I don't know how to just be the name. If I'm going to do it, I'll look up and if you ask me to read a script, you say, Dan, you say, Matthew, I got the script. I want you to read it for me. Give me some notes.

29:50I'm going to say, Dan, are you sure this is the one? Because I know it's 120 pages. Think it's going to be an hour and a half read. No, it's not. It's going to be an hour and a half read, but it's going to take me eight and a half hours because I'm going to be taking notes along the way. And then I'm going to assemble them. Then I'm going to get them and get back. That's going to be my whole day. So are you sure this is the one you want me to read? I'm not good at, and I guess I'm glad I'm not good at. I'm not good at just dipping a toe or going, yeah, I'll be affiliated with that. Yeah, you can put my name on it because I'll end up getting into it.

30:19And once I'm into it, I will exceed all of my contractual obligations and all of my relations. The other thing you mentioned a couple of minutes ago that intrigued me was knowing when to trust people. You're a very well-known person, public figure. You said, and I really like the way you put this, some people are really good at hiding their transactional agenda. How do you know when to trust people? I go in with a pretty high measured openness of trust on Howdy. I go in with a great reverence for most everybody I meet. Nobody, including myself, ever really lives up to the reverence that I give them.

31:05And I know some exceptionally exceptional people. But in the same way, no movie, no character I've ever done. I've slipped up to the divinity that I dreamed it to be. And I've done some excellent stuff and been a part of some excellent movies. And I'm not over here boo-hooing them. I'm saying they were pieces of art or they end up being, people end up being more mortal than maybe I on howdy was believing they could be. So I go in with a lot of trust. I am not foolish with that. I don't share numbers and open up my account in books. That's usually what snakes are after. And I've been burned many times on the first chance.

31:43I was like, oh, okay. I didn't get the reciprocity that I see with that. That was a singular transaction. Okay, okay. Measured, not repeating that. So I don't give it all on the first chance where I can squander what I have. I'm not foolish with, but I've got many times where I've given my time and gone, oh, that was way oversold to me. And that actually benefited them, but didn't benefit me at all. Let's mark that. I've got people around me that help. If I'm going to engage with something, I'm like, yeah, this guy's great, or she's great, or let's go into this project. I've then, before I say yes, allow my team around me to go, let us do some work here and study and see if everything's what's being said.

32:22If everything you're being sold is actually what the facts are. Then we assemble and I tell that person, I get back to you, I've got to do some diligence, that sounds great. And then I assemble, I get my facts together, measure it against time, what I've got to do. And sometimes I'll come back and go, I just did this yesterday. Not going to do a deal, but I tell you what, you wanted 10, I'm going to give you two for free. I don't want to be part of the deal. I like what you're doing. You got two for free. Do what you want with them. Market. You can use my name, I'm a voice for that. Go market.

32:53See if you can get more. We're great. That's all I can do right now. Coming up, Matthew talks about his morning ritual, his morning routine, how he prepares for the day. We also talk about sins, cynicism, and what to do when things get shitty. Matthew's take on the current state of the world, misconceptions about good and evil, and why belief is punk rock.

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36:06Again, the book's called Poems and Prayers. And one of the things that Eleanor and I, again, Eleanor, the producer of this episode that we honed in on is your morning routine. There's a bunch of parts to this, but I'm going to read one little passage and hopefully get you to unpack it a little bit. Then there are other aspects of your morning routine I want to talk about. But here's the first one. It's called Living Life to a Tune. Some mornings I wake up with a certain musical meter in my mind. If I like the sound of it, I'll do my best to move to the pace of that rhythm throughout the day, to exchange the cadence with everything I see and do.

36:42If I keep that meter in the way I think, see, and move, the world around me often responds in kind to my calling, making every interaction I have a rhyming verse in the song that is my day. Can you say a little bit more about that? Yeah. A lot about writing comes from a musical meter. There's quite a few poems in the book that I woke up with.

37:11And I woke up and I had it and the line was in my head and it fit that meter. And I slowly walked to my laptop and I started writing to that meter. And all of a sudden, six hours later, have 40 pages. And now I go back and go look and go, let's see if anything that's worth a shit. And, you know, do some editing and look at it. I go, hey, some of that is, some of that's not. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. The same way to start my day, do you drink coffee in the morning? I have panic disorder, so I can't have caffeine. Okay, so no caffeine. So if you did, you would be sped up ahead of time, right?

37:45Yes. Okay, and your discussion with me or the world, you'd be ahead. Maybe you wouldn't listen as well. Maybe you'd be over-anticipating what's the next answer and you wouldn't be able to be present. All of a sudden this thing, we would kind of be off musically, right? Well, same with me. If I don't have anything, I'm going to be maybe a little bit slow and not using the right amount of words and then feeling anticipation because I'm going like, geez, sharpen up. I wake up with a certain meter in my head of an exchange short of dance that I'm going to have through the day with how my day is going to start.

38:16That starts with, though, the night before having a look at kind of what my day is laid out. I've got six destinations that I've agreed to be at. I've got this breakfast with my wife. I've got this 10 a.m. meeting. I got this one. I got this two. I got this three. I got this four. And then I'm going to my son's football game at seven. Let's lay that out. All right. What do I need to be prepared for what? Well, to start off the day, the first one's going to be easy. Let's ease into the day. Hell, maybe I'll meet my wife over a cup of tea and we'll do a few pieces of a puzzle just to catch up on the day.

38:48But then I'm going to start getting cranked up for the nine and the 10 because I got to be on there an hour. I got to compartmentalize. I got to be sharp. And then by the end of the day, when can I take the big exhale? right before I'm going to leave the last meeting to go to my son's football game. It's another meeting, but it's not, I don't have to be on. That's already, now I've got three acts of a song of where my energy is going to go through the day. And that started with looking at my plan from the day before. I'm also going to run into a few things I didn't expect. I'm going to hit the traffic jam.

39:18So I'm going to be late for the two o 'clock, which is going to make me late for the three o 'clock, which is going to end up. Can't make me late for the son's football game because that's non-negotiable. I'll have to leave the four o 'clock early to get to that one. So I'm pinching, but I'm still, I like to leave on time so I can take my time. I don't like to be in a hurry. I don't like to be in a rush. I like to have it sorted so I can saunter in, be on time, be present, and saunter right out. I don't want to get there early and hang out too long in your green room. I don't want to get there late and let's try to hurry up and rush and get what questions in we can in 40 minutes when we really need an hour.

39:52That's a meter. That's a meter of how I'm planning my day. That's a meter of how I'm going to move. That's a meter of how I'm going to talk to some people in passing because I'm on my way to where I need to go. No, I can't stop every single time because I've got this thing. I've got this plan. I've got a dance I'm doing and where I'm going. That's also, hey, happened to get there early, ran into Eleanor outside, got in a conversation with her for 10 minutes before you and I started to talk because I was there. It's all in the same rhythm, but it's from the rhythm of the plan I looked at the night before.

40:22And if I can keep that cadence, there's a rhythm to the day. there's a rhythm to the work. It starts to rhyme. Or in the words of T-Bone, Burnett, like a song, if you just keep at it, you'll eventually write a song. And it's also realizing that the bumps, that the traffic jams, that the F-ups and the things that didn't go as planned, that's part of the same song. Don't lose your rhythm there. That's part of the same song. Don't let that throw you out a rhythm like you got a new song. It's part of the same song. I really honed in on in your book, this balance that you've just been talking about between wanting to have a kind of smooth, laid back saunter through your day, but also to get all the shit done.

41:07And it sounds like to me what part of that for you is, as you referenced, preparation. Preparation. We all feel we feel stress, right? What is usually the things we have to do in front of us, the amount of unresponded, unreturned emails, that number gets bigger. They start to mount vertically on our shoulders. It's a vertical mount. Shit. How am I going to get all that done? When in reality, usually we go do it and you're like, oh, geez, it wasn't as much weight on my shoulders as I thought. But what happens when we're prepared? All those things aren't as on our shoulders. They're actually laid out in front of us laterally.

41:47And when they're laid out laterally and you're like, I'm not looking at these, there's all these appointments I got to make. I see it. And they're lily pads that I'm going to saunter and dance to each one. And I'm calling each one a swing by. Just sometimes I've even that idea of looking at my busy day and go, these are swing by is not appointments. All of a sudden I'm like, oh, okay. And I'm better in the appointments because I've been like, you're swinging by, man. And that's because I see them laterally in front of us. And it gets off that vertical stack that we put on ourself that puts the pressure because you can't see them.

42:24They're stacked on top of you. And after the few on your shoulders, the ones up top, you can't see the damn things. And you're intimidated by them. And the weight gets heavy. But when they're laid down in front of us and you go, oh, I see. I go there. Then I'm going to go there. Then I'm going to swing by over there. Oh, yeah. Then I'm going to come back over here and pop over. Yeah. It's a great way of looking at it that takes the pressure off and takes the weight off because you can see it and it's not on your shoulders. So it's a lateral way of looking at all the plans that we have or all the appointments or responsibilities that we have.

42:52And you can see them. I like that. Another key part for you seems to be like you don't leap out of bed in the morning. Like you take a beat and check in. Try to. Yeah. You know, we're trying to go through the house. There's a big cardboard, very artfully drawn message in the kitchen. No devices. or mobile devices for the first hour you are awake. And at the bottom it says, that includes you, Popeye. That's me. Oh, geez. I get it. And my day does start better if I give myself enough time to not check in with what's happening in the rest of the world. And to just stay in my cocoon of, hey, how am I feeling?

43:38Oh, good, good. I hear the kids down there laughing. Good. I'm going to catch them before they hop out to school. Let me go down and hang out with them. And like I said, make a cup of tea, check in with my wife, talk about the day. If I've got the time, a real luxury to do a few pieces of a puzzle. Simple, you know? It's like I think what Wordle does for people. Just to get the brain active in a slow way before I'm going to engage and get in too much of a rush or have to move quickly as sometimes I have to do. That's how I like to start my day. Sometimes I wake up with an idea and I'm going to go put it down in my notes.

44:12And my notes are in my phone. pretty damn hard to put a note in your phone when you see, and you also cross those extra numbers in your email box. How do you keep from checking those, but actually going into the phone to use your notes? And that takes a bit of discipline and I don't always pull it off. But I do like when I start my day that way, much better than when I've come down stairs to greet the family and start my day when I'm already thinking about, if I've checked my message, I'm already thinking about everything I've got to take care of that day. And now I'm not as relaxed with them.

44:46I'm not as present with them. I'm a little bit in a rush. What I've got to do later on is more important than what I'm doing right now. So let me, just a second. No, I'm listening. No, I'm not. Yeah, yeah, just a second. Yeah, I know. I hear you. I'm listening. Bullshit. No, you're not. Put it down. So I try to buy that time in the morning for myself. And for the most part, pull it off. And I'm happy when I do. I've done something similar and I found it to be really helpful. And it also sounds to me like you have some flexibility, some grace to fuck it up. Yeah. Look, there's some times where it's all hands on deck.

45:21I need it. It's timely. It's now. And they don't have to put an exclamation mark and all caps, all red, to let me know that. I know that this is something I got to go. And I'll later and go, this is something I got to handle. Let me get a quick kiss. Hello. Love you too. Have a great disco. I got to go handle this. I'll see you this afternoon. I know. Don't give me shit about it. We'll laugh at that later. I'm going to do this. I'll trust me. I got to handle it. Bam. Got to get into it. Yeah, there's some grace in there. And I got to allow that grace with my wife. And she allows it with me. And the kids allow it with me.

45:48And what's my excuse? When they go like, well, I didn't do it. I'm like, yeah, the message you got to return ain't paying the rent. Mine is. But whatever that is, that can be my excuse. I've tried that. And I've gotten some harsh looks and response. Yeah, I haven't gotten a good response to that one either. just on this on this note of fuck ups there's a another matthew mcconaughey quote here i like if we're not missing coming up short or sinning enough yeah maybe we aren't trying hard enough to sin it comes from it's an archery term to miss the mark i love i'm a prescriptionist i love going back to the original meaning of words.

46:33And that just opens that up for a lot of people who may not believe in sin or may not believe in God or what have you. So which the word sin is usually connected to. Yeah. You know, I'm curious as a believer, when and if I get to, if there is that so-called pearly gates and judgment day or whatever, what's better to have shown up taking eight great risk and pulling off seven or have taken a hundred great risk and pulling off eight? my hunch is that if there's a god he's going i'll take the hunt eight out of 100 where you go that's my hunch but i don't mean being reckless with those things and just being a repeat offender of bad things but i believe that to take the effort to try and try again to take the risk is in my belief god saying yeah i didn't i didn't want you coming back here with even money, but there's a great story in the Bible about that, about the two sons and father gives them money and one buries it in the backyard and the other one goes away to the city and spends it on gambling and whores and everything else and comes back broke and crying.

47:42The one who buried it was like, see, I'm the good one. I'm the good one. And he throws the party for the one that came back and goes, yeah, you just buried yours in the backyard. At least this one went out and tried, you know, that leads to me to another thing I wanted to talk to you about from your book, which is courage, which seems to be a real theme. I want to read you another passage and let you talk about it on the backside. There's a passage called Man Up. So much of life seems to come back to courage, doesn't it? Being willing to go one more step before you quit, one step deeper into your relationships, one step further in being faithful to yourself, to your God.

48:16What if everybody took one more step to salvage their marriage, to secure their own character, to not sell themselves short? One more step by enough of us can change the world. Ooh, yeah, I believe that. And I know I'm, as a lot of my friends tell me, boy, you're trying to change behavior. That's a big square rock up a hill. Well, I don't care. I think that's where it is. I think that is the way forward. You know, are there times and how we learned and times, and I suppose this is a very Buddhist quality to let go. You know, no, it is what it is. Let the wind blow where it is. and hey, that's how it is.

48:56Yes, there are definitely times for that kind of grace, forgiveness and letting go, pivoting, moving on, changing direction. But I also believe that the larger problem that we could solve is quitting too early. Not only when things get hard, even when things are going really well. You know, Icarus in reverse is what I think we need more of. I think a lot of us turn back because we think it's getting, we're flying too close to the sun. It's going to melt our wax on our wings. And it's 50 degrees Fahrenheit, man. You still got a beanie on. It's not even close to melting the wings. Keep going. Who do you think, you arrogant son of a bitch, you thought you were kidding, thought it was getting hot?

49:44There's a lot more room to go. So on both ends of the spectrum, when things get hard, I've done it. I don't know a lot of people that do it. got friends to do it. Responsibility adds up. Path of least resistance, sneaking out the back door. Uh-oh. Uh-uh. That's not good. That's stuff that you didn't finish. It didn't go, it didn't disappear. Now it's getting double wide for tomorrow and it builds up and people end up going, I'm out. And I see it in relationships. I see it in marriages. And I believe there are some divorces that are absolutely necessary that were good for both people. A hundred percent.

50:19I'm not saying every one of them, but I do see some divorces from the male and the female going. It's kind of hard. So we checked out. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Now what? No, no, wait a minute. Or yeah, it's just how the world goes. I just go along with it. Whoa, that completely goes against your character. Stand up for that. Don't quit. Partially what I'm trying to do with this. I was, you know, belief. I don't want to quit believing in my God and myself and others. And I felt myself getting a bit cynical. And I swore to myself a long time ago that cynicism is a disease that we choose in life.

51:00And it's a way of dying early while we're still walking on two legs. And I'm not going there. And I see other people asking that same question and in that same battle. In moments when you're feeling cynical, is there a go-to move that helps?

51:18humor, humor, because the doubt that comes with cynicism and the disbelief that comes with it. I'll let myself sometimes have the, okay, put a period on into that clever, smart, right on fact, maybe, but it doesn't end there. Now, hang on. We're not going to say that's just how the world is. We're not going to apply that to everybody. You're going to apply that to everybody, that kind of disbelief starts to come back at you in the mirror. Hang on. So humor to go clever. McConaughey, good one. You got my laugh at the cocktail party, but I don't respect you as much as I did before. Ah, okay. Okay.

52:07It's an easy way out. That's the thing. It's such a cop out and it's too easy and it's clever and snark and it can like i said can get the the chuckle at the cocktail party but i but i it's definitely not a way forward as far as i can see what's your take on the state of the of america and the world right now wow well that's a big question seems i was talking to a friend the other day and he used a really cool word which i think It's a good one for this answer. We're in a great time of disorientation. Where do we fit in? How do we fit in? AI. Oh, I took my job. Oh, yeah, go to college, learn this.

52:53Guarantee that's the best way of the future. Oh, shit, you're not hiring for that anymore? That's not needed? Oh, where are we oriented in this? Where are we humans oriented in this? Where are we oriented with this? And the AI atheists are like, well, no, this is evolution. This is the next link. We're going to be extinct. That's great. I'm not ready to go there. And I hope that's not where we're going. The way we, I was reading something this morning, the way we label people. I've got a poem in there about condemn the act. Don't condemn the person. Condemn what they did, but don't label them the liar, cheater, stealer, if they happen to just get caught one time lying, cheating, or stealing.

53:40Give them the chance to go, no, that's not who I am. That was an aberration. I hid it out of bounds. My bad. Let me come back. But we label someone completely if we disagree with their politics or we disagree with their point. We label them as a bad person. And we've gotten into a place, even politically, where we're not talking about good and bad. We're like talking about good and evil. I don't know that that's always our place to be labeling people good or evil. Sometimes I'm like, I have it in that poem, Blessed are the Peacemakers. Sometimes there's time to say, let's let God deal with that.

54:15There are good and bad. We should have judgment. We should have discernment to say, I choose this over that, but not condemn an act. Don't condemn the person or label a person as evil if they don't subscribe to your own personal politics, so to speak. Again, I think it's an easy way to go. I think politically, our far extreme rights and left are much closer than they realize. I think there's a massive majority in the middle that just needs to take the mic back because they've let the pirates of the extremes on the right and left come over the edges and kind of take over the ship. But that place is not going to reveal itself, all right, if it is sold or understood to be a passive meat in the middle.

55:04That place, the masses are going to have to understand and behave, I think, like it's a punk rock rebellion. Moderation is becoming punk rock. Belief is punk rock, I believe, right now. It's not old school, gray-haired white man at the pulpit saying, this is what you should do. No, I think it's absolutely, when I say in the beginning, let's sell Sunday morning like a Saturday night. This is a rebellious thing right now. I see so much distrust. I see so many transactional relationships. So many so that people aren't even that good at hiding them that much anymore. I'm like, dude, you could have tried a little harder to get away with that.

55:42It was very apparent. You're trying to pick my pocket. I mean, you're going to have to be better than that. I almost want to help them out going, no. That was bad acting even. But it just seems to be part of, oh, well, you caught me. Cool. That's just what we do. No, in the name of progress. which is not a bad word. It's a great word. And the right's got to shake hands with that progress is what we all want. Just what's the definition of that? Now, we all have to understand the youth in us has to understand that that does not mean casting out everything that was in the past and saying yes to everything in the future.

56:18That's not progress. There are certain things, truths and traditions that have worked over time and no matter what happens in the world need to still be maintained. And there's certain values that need to be maintained. Carrying on those and being open to changes, but not accepting every single change is a battle I go through every day. I think most people do. But carrying on, taking those from the past that are non-negotiable into the future, that are adaptable to changing times, that's where true progress lives. Much more with Matthew McConaughey coming up after this.

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58:20Whole Foods Market Summer Fruit Fest is your invitation to eat the season. Fresh, organic, and bursting with flavor. Start your day with peaches and organic blueberries and yogurt. Build a grazing board with fresh fruit, prosciutto, and artisanal cheese. Then fire up the grill with no antibiotics ever proteins and fresh produce. Savor the season. Shop Summer Fruit Fest at Whole Foods Market. it when you say belief is punk rock which i think is an awesome formulation what do you mean specifically by belief okay difference between hope and belief hope i hope i win this if it happens like somehow kind of got lucky because i just hope for it it's like relying on fate Well, if I hope, if I just think about it, I'll manifest it.

59:16If I just say it out loud, it means it can happen. Dream it, you can do it. Bullshit. What a horrible thing to tell somebody or for someone to believe. That's the first part to have at least something that you want to achieve or get to or see, but you got to deal your way to that. Belief comes with the engine to deal your way there. So I call belief the original dream. You can see it. There's a way to get it. It's why we got to work on the American dream. The path there, people are very confused on what is that? Well, I thought if I did this, was responsible, got a job, did my work, and did my work well, that that would be a path to that.

59:52Well, people are saying, no, maybe not rewarded for that. Is that changing? Is that how much of the American dream an illusion? We got to make sure we're defining that and that there's rules and sort of regulations for how you can pull it off if you do it that way. Belief, though, you see the path. The path is there. Now you got to put in the sweat equity to go get it and make it happen. Yeah, you hopefully probably got to get fortunate along the way because there's no guarantee. The only guarantee with the American dream or belief is that you have the opportunity to fail at it. But you can be in the game and you see how to do it.

1:00:24You see how you can pull it off. You're going to run into adversary. You're going to run into major obstacles that you didn't expect. But it all played well. You won while you were on PlayStation, didn't you? Now you got in real life. Oh, it's a little bit harder. but belief, you can still see the path there. And if you don't get it, you can still believe in that path and go, I'm gonna get up, I'm gonna dust off, I'm gonna try it again, or I'm gonna back up. I'm gonna learn a little something. I got a new tact here. But you can see the path to it. I don't think people see that path right now. I think people are looking around and kids are looking around and going, this is who I look up to because.

1:01:00These are people that I look up to because. I think they're confused where it is. When we see liars, cheaters, and stealers winning the jackpot, where you get success rewarded minus the profit, where quantity is the only measure. Forget the quality, bro. Quantity is the measure. Nah, that's success, but that's not profit. So success have to meet profit. What? That starts with going, do I want to make more money? You're damn right. Well, how do I want to make it? How I make it has something to do with it. and I don't think we should just be giving the gold medal to anybody just because they crossed the finish line first and they got picked up in a car at mile two and driven the next 20 miles and got out and ran the last four.

1:01:43We should give, okay, you crossed the finish line first. You're not getting the medal, bro. It's cheating. And we do that. We reward that quite a bit. We even say, or starting to say, or we have been saying, but we even are saying, so what are the ethics of life? What are our expectations of each other, ethically and morally? Well, I don't know. What'd the winner do? The winner cheated and pillaged on the way here and lied and cheated and stole. You're saying that's it? They won. There's your ethics. That's dangerous. I'm not ready to say that's how it is. And I don't think most of us are ready to say, well, that's how it is.

1:02:21So belief, though, is very different than hope. And belief, and I say this punk rock boy, find something to believe in right now and grab a hold of it and go, that's a North star for me. Religious or not yourself, each other, something to believe in, what you would die for, believing in that, living for that. I think it's in short supply. And I think if people grab all that is punk rock, that's Saturday night at the rave. That place is going off. Also that lane on the highway, there's not a lot of traffic on it. And it's a beautiful Autobahn. There's room to get after it. And it's right there waiting for us.

1:02:59Let me say this back to you just to make sure I've got it. Here's how I would put it back to you, but you'll correct me where I go wrong here. Just when I think specifically about America, and you and I are of a similar age, I think both quite patriotic. I'm just making an assumption. Yes. And this is a tough time in the country. I'm interviewing you the day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Yeah. You're interesting to me for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that as far as I can tell, you seem to have equal appeal in red America and blue America. And when I ask you, like, how do things look and what can we do to make things better?

1:03:36It seems to me your answer is like, hey, why not turn the volume down on the cynicism and turn the volume up on the risky, sometimes embarrassing move of earnestly, wholeheartedly believing in something and committing to it. Yeah. I would subscribe to that. Now I'd also say this, Dan, I hear this the other day. You may know more about this than I do. Is there some term that the new young generation, there's a term about the distaste for any earnest or saying, oh, you meant to do it. There's a term going on that that is out of fashion to be earnest and like really mean it and try hard. That's like, that's the term.

1:04:17It's a try hard. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm going to go online here and saying I'm not being a dinosaur for saying I think that's bullshit.

1:04:28Now it does illuminate something. They're not seeing what's clear to believe in. If you disdain for someone trying hard for something, it looks like, well, you don't, you don't believe in what they're trying for. So therefore you don't believe they don't, If you don't have anything that you're trying for that you've been seeking meaning for, to expand the value of in your own life, you're not seeing things in your life to believe in and mean it for it and try for that. So it does illuminate maybe somewhat indirectly what I'm talking about and a lack of belief or knowing what to believe in. Sounds like that's where that comes from?

1:05:05Well, I don't think that's a recipe and it's a sad one, but I don't think that's a solution. If it's fair to say that I think everyone would like to look for some solutions in their own lives and collectively, I don't believe that saying, trying for something and putting in effort and seeking meaning and meaning and believing in something and being earnest. Yeah, I don't believe that not having any of that is a solution for what is it then? Nihilism? Is that what they're saying? Is that what they're saying? That nothing matters? I'm not going to argue with them. I'd rather spend time on going, why do they feel that way?

1:05:45Huh. What are they not getting? What are we not giving them as adults, as leaders? What are they not seeing? or what do we have that they don't feel like they maybe can get? Or what do we have that they don't want? I don't know. That's fertile territory right there. Yeah, I asked kids what it was like being a teenager last night. They brought up the Charlie Kirk thing. They said, police officers shot in Zilka Park this morning on the way to school. Charlie Kirk got shot in the throat. Utah State. they were like, it's all over school. We're not supposed to have phones, but yeah, we all have phones.

1:06:29We go show each other. I didn't want to see it, the Charlie Kirk shooting, but everyone had it. And I couldn't take my eyes away, and I saw it. It made me sick to my stomach all day. Felt like I was walking on glass all day. Everyone's kind of punchy. Everyone's not sure where they're going. The whole school, people were just kind of bumping into each other. You could kind of, everyone just had an edge. But like, it's confusing, not just from today, but it's confusing being a teenager. Nobody knows who they really are. We're all trying to figure out who the hell we are, and no one really knows how to get there or where we're going.

1:07:01That's running parallel to that feeling we're just talking about of the disdain for the try-hards and not having or understanding what's worth believing in. Now, obviously, part of that's growing up, right? We try to teach our kids delayed gratification. Shoot, a lot of us adults need to learn about it, too. the idea that, no, it takes work and continuous work. It's not immediate gratification for things you believe in. There's certain sacrifices we make today to get more tomorrow. There's things that we believe in that we take care of that are non-negotiable in the masses. Well, you're younger.

1:07:37Kids don't have as many of those things. It's easier to say as a father and a husband and a person with a career. But I think it starts with us as parents to show and be examples of those things for our kids of these things are worth believing in. These things are worth standing up for. This is even more dangerous to sometimes worth standing against and being unpopular, taking one on the chin, proverbially. Yeah. Parents, leaders, brothers, sisters, big brothers, big sisters, mentors, teachers, we can do a better job of showing each other and especially are you what things they're worth believing in it kind of leads me to the the last thing i want to ask you about and this is personal so you can take a pass on it if you don't want but there's a story i read about you your family of origin in a profile of you in the times a kind of searing early memory of you watching your parents fight and your mother breaking your father's nose with a telephone and then they made up and had sex on the kitchen floor.

1:08:47And so I read that. That definitely meets the qualification of an adverse childhood event. And I wonder how you carry that into your own parenting or try not to carry that into your own parenting. Well, let me prequel this with, yeah, that's one of the opening stories of my book of Greenlights. do I practice the same sort of tough love that they had for each other? Thankfully, no. It's not really for Camilla and I. We still love each other. You know, I was also, was that an adverse circumstance for a child? Sure. And I'm not defending this. I'm just telling you the straight truth, not once. Was it scary watching it?

1:09:39Did I, yes. Did I understand very soon when it was completed that that was how my mom and dad loved each other? That while it was bloody, while there was a knife pulled, while there was a phone across the nose, that was the way they loved each other that night in that moment. That was a wild ass story that I put in it. It was true that eyewitness that was, that didn't. When people hear that, a lot of people come to me after the book, and oh, I'm so sorry about your childhood. I was like, don't, what are you, whoa, whoa, you're trespassing there. Don't apologize. I didn't have a bad childhood. I had a wonderful childhood.

1:10:17That story wasn't like that happened weekly, monthly, yearly, or ever again. I mean, the amount of love that we had in our family, the hands in the family were the hands that healed 99 % of the time. That was one where it was much more awkward and corporal and physical. The love was never in question in our family. I just want to make that extremely clear. And that's not me defending my family. That's even in my five-year-old mind. It was never in question. It was dramatic. It was a freaking circus sometimes. But the love was never in question. My way of parenting, if I have to raise my voice, I'm automatically backlogging, trying to figure out what did I not handle to get to this point.

1:11:05And I think usually that's probably not fair for me to put on myself because it's not just me. What do they, I couldn't have been there for everything they were going through and what they didn't say, I didn't say. I can't read their minds. I mean, sometimes it just gets to that point, but I'm already backlogging going, why did we get to this point? We talk out a lot more things like I think a lot of more parents do today. You know, the old adage of I was raised on, if you got into the argument of why, the answer that stopped the conversation was because I said so. And that ended the conversation.

1:11:35That one doesn't really fly as well anymore. That one doesn't fly anymore. Okay, well, why? And I feel obligated and Camilla does go, okay, well, here's why. And we will explain. And so we have much more discussions. You do have to watch when the kids know that you'll discuss it. They start working you. but they're already wise to why they just want to keep on see if they can kind of noodle it you got to go stop it you know exactly why quit playing dumb now you know what i mean my parents had a really interesting read and i think it was a great one now whether you agree with how it was done or not you're still open for discussion and most people today would not be in agreement with it their point was the reason we got you know we got in trouble mind you this every time we got in trouble, we were guilty.

1:12:23Yep, I tried to get away with that. I didn't. Yep, that was me. There was never a time when we got in trouble. It was like, but I didn't. No, we knew it and we did it and we admitted it and we got in trouble. It's been so fun to talk to you. I'm just gonna sneak in two last questions here. One is, is there something you were hoping to get to that we didn't get to? Hmm, nothing sticks out to me, Dan. Final question then. Can you just remind everybody of the name of the book and any other books that you've written that we should know about? Yeah, well, I wrote Greenlights a few years ago. I was real happy how that translated.

1:12:58And then I've written now my latest one's Poems and Prayers. It's basically selling belief. And that's not just a belief in God, but that's a belief in ourselves, others, and tomorrow, whatever it is, our better selves. And I think beliefs in short supply these days. And as far as I can tell and what I hear from others, we could use more of it. Because if the doubt wins, we all lose, right? this is some of those forms and prayers of mine. Some of it's serious. Some of it's not serious at all. Some of it's real fun to read. Some of it may get you thinking. Either way, whether you sit down and read it all or just have it next to your bed or well than any other place you sit down and just open up a page or two over time.

1:13:35Hopefully it'll be an enjoyable ride. Well, it was an enjoyable ride to talk to you, Matthew. Really appreciate your time. All right. Thank you, Daniel, as well.

1:13:47Thanks again to Matthew. check out his book, Poems and Prayers. Don't forget to check out what we're doing over on danharris.com. Our Monday and Wednesday episodes now come with custom guided meditations to help you pound the learnings from the conversation into your neurons in a much deeper way. Paid subscribers also get live weekly video guided meditation and Q &A sessions every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. The next one is on Tuesday, September 23rd. I'll be doing that one solo. Sometimes the Teacher of the Month does it with me. Also, if you want to meditate with me in person, don't forget what I mentioned earlier about the events I'm doing first on September 21st at the New York Insight Meditation Center.

1:14:26And then later in October, a meditation party links to both in the show notes. Finally, thank you very much to everybody who works so hard on the show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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