#1000 - Matthew McConaughey - The Art of Living a Courageous Life

26:57And I haven't thought of it when thinking about aspirations with people and things. But the result, which we know there isn't really one, and we cannot imitate someone else's exact result. We're going to have our own way to get there.

27:15the approach is all i guess that's that's the best our life can get is one constant approach or and with many different approaches but knowing we never there is no result that's when i always say my metaphor life's a verb um but that's that's really fun to go no no no don't study the result what was the person doing when they got there and every buddy who's achieved something great was some sort of outlaw. Yep. Some sort of hustler. Out of balance, out of whack, dark times. Woo. Airstream. Still wakes up in the middle of the night and glad they weren't a mouth guard because they'd have chipped all their teeth through that fucking nightmare they were having about those things they did back then.

27:59I'm one of those. Well, another question would be, what virtue is there in balance if there was no such thing as imbalance to fight against? Yeah. Oh, I just reached equanimity. Right. You know, I walked out onto this tightrope. Yeah, exactly. And I don't know, it just, I didn't wobble once. Well, now we're going into, I have that, I got that thing in there and said, what's better? Take eight, take eight, eight big risks in life. Sin once, miss the mark once, but get seven, achieve seven, seven out of eight, or take a hundred risk and achieve eight of them. my hunch is that there's a god he's saying go for the hundred and get eight rather than eight and get seven if you're not take if you're not taking enough risk to sin or miss the mark which is what sin means to fail what are you doing don't go back with even money go back with a safe bet which that can become a sort of recessive piece of namaste.

29:00No, it's almost a, I don't think it's what the mystics meant when they were like, be disattached. I mean, go embrace, but for highs and lows and pains and pleasures, understand that those outward things are not the things to be attached to for your own identity. It's gotta be inward first. Enjoy those, partake. but don't become attached to those for your measure. There's an idea from Isaiah Berlin called the inner citadel. He says, when the world denies us that which we want, we retreat into ourselves in a kind of spiritual depth into a sort of inner citadel. Basically, if you can't get what you want, you teach yourself to want what you can get.

29:42Okay. So, for instance, you damage your leg in a battle, and you can try to fix the leg, in which case you're fine, or if you fail, you chop your leg off and announce that the desire for legs is misguided and must be subdued, right? This is a retreat in spiritual depth. This is asceticism on steroids. By not trying to play the game, there is no risk of failure. And I think that the not making any bets, I see this a lot. I've been very obsessed with emotions since we last spoke a year ago. I've been very obsessed with emotions, with feeling feelings, not trying to. and i get the sense that feelings are one of these strange bets emotions investing ourselves not holding a bit back not putting one foot out like putting it on the line opening up yeah exposing ourselves and that feels like a retreat in kind but one that's plausibly deniable when we just have one foot out i didn't fully commit myself to this project this relationship this friendship this this uh self-transformation i kept one foot back well you know i might i might not be able to do that right now because i've got this this challenge or this this restriction from before this relationship like i'm gonna hold a bit back i'm gonna keep a bit for me this is my bit and it means that if failure comes along it doesn't hurt as much but it also means that success is less likely and if success comes along you know that you didn't really earn it you didn't really win it because you played the game and that's fine in some areas of pursuit and at some stages of life right early in life i don't think you can be left as culpable you're 12 years old you don't know what you're doing right in business the outcome really is what matters that is what you're optimizing for some people business is a personal transformation vehicle masquerading as a wealth making pursuit but for the most part you're there to do the business yeah but in relationships and friendships and the way that you show up for yourself in your personal transformation in your relationship to whatever you believe in i don't think that we should be having our inner city that'll really play anyway hard to pull off um but i've it's leave it similar to what i write out when talking about an owner's mentality versus a renter's mentality.

32:05So many people have the renter's mentality. Relationships, businesses, transactional. Yeah, well, flip it. Get it. Flip it. And they never give the relationship the chance to possibly be a friendship, to possibly be a long-term relationship, to possibly be a great mate, great partner. They never give the real estate, the house a chance to actually maybe become a home. And that's I think it's if the word's better that to go in with an owner's mentality meaning have you ever hired someone that you were like probably just need you for a few months you have okay you have see I I have only hired or people that I was like I'm hoping this is going to be a lifer I'm hoping you're going to provide what I need and I'm going to get, you're going to get from me what you need that this could work out forever.

33:06Barely any of them do. Got a couple, a few. But that's how you entered the relationship. But I want, I wouldn't have known or I wouldn't have got out of them and they wouldn't got out of me. And if as much, if we wouldn't have gone into it with an owner's mentality. People can tell this is transactional or transient. Let me ask you this though. So isn't, all right, basically every, I know it's transactional, transformational. Those seem to be the two. It's transactional. Every relationship is transactional, but not only transactional. Some transactional relationships can become transformational, but I mean, we're all using each other in a way that I can get this from you.

33:43You give this to me. My wife gives this to me. I give this to her. It's a transformational relationship, but we're always transacting. So I don't have the problem with the transaction. I have the whole back when it's like, oh, it's merely for transaction. Oh, it's merely for use. And how many people don't even try to hide that? Or they're just straight up going like, that's all it's for, what are you talking about? I mean, I see it in Palo Alto. Man, they raise all kinds of, the startups are everywhere and everyone invests. You flip and it falls down and they don't even blink. And you work for somebody and you become their CEO and they fire you and da, da, da, da, da.

34:24and hammer you and see it in politics. They hammer your name and drag you through the mud. And I'm like, yeah, dude, that's how it is. No problem. Hey, Bob, how you doing? That's the guy. No, that's fine. It's just business. It's just politics. I'm like, hang on a minute. So that was that transactional, that's water off the duck's back for you? And for so many it is. I'm amazed at how people do it. They're built different in the same way as doctors and nurses and firefighters, people that need to deal with trauma. you are dealing with interpersonal trauma. You are a soldier on the field of interpersonal battle if you're in politics or if you're in business.

35:02Yeah. You also don't necessarily do what you believe. You do what's expedient or successful or efficacious. You, efficacious, what's that mean? Effective. Okay, yeah. You betray a lot of people. A lot of ideals, including yourself.

35:30That doesn't sound like very much fun to me. Not that betrayal part. I wonder if it's inherent, or if that's me reading it from the outside and saying, no, that could be different. I wonder how much of that is people optimizing for the wrong outcome and only getting to see a very narrow aperture of other people's outcomes too. Or this person seemed to step on some toes and break a couple of arms on their way up. They were okay. Everyone seems to be all right with this. You go, you don't know what the texture of that person's mind's like when they go to bed at night. They might not have spoken to their father in five years.

36:16they might never feel peace they might permanently be anxious they might hate themselves might not be able to get an erection you want that? you really want that but you want this you want the outside success the price that people pay to be somebody that you admire is one of the most fascinating questions I think

36:39yeah

36:43yeah trying to think i'm going through my head right now where have i sacrificed my own character to get ahead so then to be perceived as and i know i've done it many times

37:00part of that hustling part i said i've done you know and i've been that's the rise you know yeah and being a marketeer too you know gotten away with stuff played games and kiss the fire and walk away whistling a little uh icarus light yeah we talk about icarus last time no no i think i think we're more in need of icarus in reverse meaning i i think you know oh don't get too close to the sun it's getting hot it's gonna melt that wax i think most of us are turning back and it's 45 degrees fahrenheit i think he's on i was like dude what where do you Where do we get the arrogance to think that it's actually getting hot?

37:43We're not even close, man. Not even close to getting hot. Maybe that close to the sun. It's way up there. Arrogant pricks you are thinking that you're that close. You didn't make it near as far as you thought you did or as you could go. I wish more people, I'm going to flip the word, were more involved with themselves. Embrace your icarus. Instead of self-involved, that has a bad term. I wish people were more involved with themselves. I think that's where we're more deficient.

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39:27That's drinklmnt.com slash modernwisdom. right in the face. Yeah. You thought you could hide back there, didn't you? No, no, no. I see you, man. You know the story of Sisyphus? A man that was cursed to roll the boulder up a hill for the rest of time by the gods. Huh.

39:50This man gets cursed. I think he was a demigod. Gets cursed to roll a boulder up a hill. It's a heavy, heavy boulder. He rolls it uphill and just as he gets to the very top, he stumbles and it falls down and crushes him. and he needs to walk back to the bottom, turn around, pick it back up. And Albert Camus' famous line is, we must imagine Sisyphus happy. That this pointless pursuit, that he finds joy in the process of doing it. I wonder if we can imagine Icarus happy. I wonder if we can imagine the guy that is flying toward the sun as, well, he had a view that nobody else got from up there. and he only did it once and the wings melted but right what if he'd run that experiment a few a few times and what if he had a little parachute that could have sort of brought it down yeah yeah you might have realized that that was just a one-off and actually i think you can get closer right right yeah yeah we must imagine icarus happy i think is a cool yeah and you know he regulated his breathing as it got so hot and sweaty and he learned somebody swung by and he He had a backpack with water on him next time.

41:01Yeah, he's the stronger glue. More feathers. Yeah, he stitched it. You know what I mean? Came down a little more tan than the time before. I've always relied on logic to make sense of myself and the world. I've been finding that tougher to do lately. Seems to me the facts have become unreliably overrated. How so?

41:27what is a fact where do we go for the facts

41:35what's the truth where do we go for that that's probably a bigger question than what's a fact I think a fact I think the facts are an underdog right now and I'm not sure where to go to find them

41:48the math doesn't seem to be adding up I'm not looking around so much. And part of the reason I wrote this for my own spiritual therapy, I was going, I found myself getting cynical, looking down my nose,

42:04not giving people the benefit of the doubt, stereotype and objectifying full group people in groups.

42:13And then the scary part was I started to entertain the idea of Damn it. It may just be how it is now. And that scared me. And then I got angry at that, and I'm still in the midst of some anger with that. Which is a bit of that rage thing, which makes me act upon it and go, bullshit. I'm not conceding, and I don't think anyone really wants to concede that that's just the way it is. And if it is the way it is, and the reality is not enough to get off to, let's go to the dream. Let's flip that script. I always have gone from nonfiction to say, let's make that the dream. Just keep living. Art emulates life.

43:03And that's, in the recent years, it's starting to pay me back less. How much does that just do with my own eyes? Probably quite a bit. But whatever it is, still seeing it and I want to fight against it. So I flipped it and said, let's go to dreams. Let's go to poems, prayers. These are pursuits of an ideal beauty. These are in between the lines. This is in between the math. This is not academic. This is not intellectual. These are ideals that we pursue. The beginner's mind that we have as a child before we know worse. And I don't want to be ignorant. I don't want to be foolishly optimistic. Let's look to those and believe that we can still make those real.

43:44let that bring rhyme to the reason instead of looking to the reason to find the rhyme let's get the rhyme communicating with the reason because life around us is all like reason reason reason neck up man so i want to pull some weeds here on this pathway open up that this one lane dirt top road with potholes and it's a one way going the opposite way which way i want it to go it's going away from the heart yeah clean that up a little bit and go let's get you to communicate a little bit uh-huh you're not gonna win every time bud because we got we we like our reason we want to mind ourself but we make a decision we have any kind of certainty or we make a judgment let's let's have this let's have our heart be a two-factor authenticator before we make that decision.

44:36And that goes for the compassionate side. That also goes for the consequences of saying the buck stops here with ourselves and others. How do you advise perennial overthinkers to get below the neck? Perennial overthinkers. Get below the neck. Oh.

45:01Record themselves. All overthinking. Have a listen back. I do it. I overthink a lot. And when I've heard myself back, I'm like going, dude, you're kind of seeing so much significance that none of that shit's significant. Every detailed frame, you're giving it a proper name. oh if everything's significant there's no significance at all man some shit's just like i don't have the capacity to deal with it i don't really care it's just how it is don't some of the inevitables and sometimes you got to let those ride go on i'm not trying to that's just how it is i'm going to deal with that now i'm going to deal with what i can deal with i i get the mental meditations on that and i listen to myself back and i'm like going whoa you need to get some sleep.

45:57You need to have a drink. You need to relax. You need to, you know, I got this, uh, funny point in here. It's called barbiturate logic. Where's barbiturate logic. Can I find this for a second? Uh, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, there it is. I need to call my brain to have half the thoughts per hour. 50 % of the neural fragments, and therefore twice the power. And one doubly meaningful story with half the words. You know, sometimes the snaps, it's just too much. It's all treble. And if everything is significant, you're like, you miss the main thing. I'm missing, so focused on the drop, I didn't realize it was raining.

46:45It's the force for the tree thing. So that's the overthinking. When I've recorded myself, I can hear that there is some lanyard, et cetera, in my talk. And some of it is babble. Some of it may be succinctly fine-tuned and wonderful. Then I have to go, is that useful to my understanding? Is it useful to the story I can tell? Is it useful to my application in life? And a lot of times I'm like, no, it's clever. It's like smart shit. I don't want to spend too much time in that head because that sounds like, you know, you broke a sweat. in places you weren't really getting exercise mentally spiritually or physically um so that can sometimes listening listening back has helped me baseline some things again slow the brain down man you're missing me give more meaning and you hear the smartest people man i love hearing the wisest people their stuff's short bro it's quick and you go oh and you're like waiting for more and you're looking around and they're like looking at you You're like, oh, that's it.

47:51And you're like, perfect. My dad telling me when I wanted to go to film school and still law school, and I thought he was going to go, you want to what? Him taking that pause and saying, is that what you want to do? And I said, yes, sir. And him going, well, don't half-ass it. I was waiting for so much more. That was it. And there's no, that was it. Nothing better he could have told me at that time.

48:17Yeah, it's also, I think, remembering when we overthink things or over explain things, you're stealing a lot of times in moments that you think maybe you're teaching, even ourselves, especially others. You're stealing the dignity of leaving the truth in the asker's kitchen. like letting someone come up with have a conversation but you're letting them come up with the answer it's like what the best directors do in films they don't tell you what to do they talk about and get you to go oh oh yeah so it's and they go it is as you say man we got ownership then that's our idea whether we were manipulated into it or not we're got going thank you it's mine now we got fire now we got purpose now that you get the great performance in front of the camera and i think in in life more too when person feels like they came up with the idea i always tell directors i mean i'm easy to direct just don't tell me what to do and if you can trick me into thinking all this shit's my idea yeah yeah there's a wonderful insight about why we like people that's similar to that so uh inverse charisma uh a lot of the time we think that we want to be more charismatic because that would make us more likable we want our stories to be engaging and our aura to be electrifying and our presence to be magnetic and for us to walk into a room and for everybody to sort of look up be compelled and then I looked at the friends that I liked spending time around the most and they're interesting but that wasn't really the common denominator.

50:10Some people are interesting and some people make you feel interesting. And there's this wonderful story about Jenny Jerome, Winston Churchill's mother, and she gets to meet Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone on consecutive nights for dinner. And she leaves the first dinner, says, I left that feeling like he was the cleverest man in all of England. She goes to the second one. She says, I left that dinner feeling like I was the cleverest woman. And this wonderful idea that some people are interesting, some people make us feel interesting. and kind of the same with this idea here, that allowing the conclusion to be arrived at

51:04is often the best solution. Yeah, I have to continue to watch it. I love being in the know. I love giving advice. I love sermonizing. My kids would be like, can you give us another TED Talk, Dad? I'm like, yeah, shut up. Sit down. No, no, no, no. I've got slides. Let's get a presentation. I'll let them find it. I had a cool trick. And it was just so simple. But one, in talking and sharing something that you've learned that you think may be applicable to other people, the use of I, you, or we, to use the we. like you is dangerous because people are like you're talking at me you're telling me what to do i is safe because well it's your that's your experience maybe you invite maybe people see themselves or not but to say we it's it's it's closer to platitudinal because you're going like are you speaking for all of us but it does welcome everybody in and it says that and i always like this when i'm talking about things with people i'm like when i when i say we i'm including me all right because i'm not we includes me yeah we includes me i'm not i'm working on this shit too man you know um and trying to and like i have to be reminded don't don't be afraid to ask the question that i'm asking for myself that can open up someone else to go well i got an answer to that what do you got did with the similar with the kids last night instead of saying vita levi livingston how are you doing it's a tough answer tough question to answer i said and her friend gave me this note said hey what's what's the life of a teenager like these days they took off and talked and shared all kinds of stuff because i wasn't putting them on the spot or they didn't take it i found it so much more about how they're feeling by asking It's a broad question.

53:03Broad question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah, it's funny how we need license for that. Yeah. In a strange way. Yeah. To be able to talk about, is a lot of times how we best talk about ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. But couched with enough distance. Yeah. Yeah. I have noticed. I have seen it. Yeah. It's the, I'm asking for a friend. Yeah. Justification. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you think about the role of courage? in life you know we've talked so far about the balance of doing it yeah not doing it we've talked about dreaming big and maybe dreaming even further and then we've also had this idea of a little bit of relinquishing of control yeah as well as we've got to apply the effort we've got to have the vision but we've also got to know when when we're going to let let go a little bit yeah it seems to me like courage the ability to feel our convictions and yeah commit to them is a little bit of a common thread that sort of runs through those yeah so i grew up only knowing sort of the courage of the persistence be resilient endure get up dust yourself off go the problem with that the achilles heel with that is if you get up and get the courage to keep on going every time and get up and dust yourself off you make the same mistakes each time around because you never backed up to have what i've now learned i'm still learning is the courage to go no i'm gonna let some people pass me in the race right now because i'm gonna look at why i keep stepping in that damn same pothole and twisting my ankle the same spot why i keep failing when i try to get that next spot in this relationship or failing in this place to get this product of my craft to the next level.

54:56Would that be the relinquishing of the rom-com era in a small part for you? Small part, yeah. Yeah, that was one. It also has to do with when I got married. My son comes to me at four years old and says, why isn't Mama McConaughey?

55:15I'm going to go and tell my head, you're fucking four, dude. I sat there and I was like, God. Did your mom put you up with this? It's a great question, but I mean, we're not, because we're not married. When you get married, you switch your name, okay. And then he just kept there and listened, and all of a sudden he goes, what, are you scared? I was, I'm fucking four years old, dude. I can. And I'm like, yeah. I guess I am. I remember going to a pastor and talking to a lot of different elder men who had had long-term relationships and were married for decades and stuff. And my pastor goes, let me just ask you this.

55:51Mr. Risk Taker, what's the bigger risk? Carrying on? Might get going? And it's going well. Or taking the deeper dive into the sacrament and covenant of marriage. It should be a covenant between you and her and God. The trilogy will go forward. That would be a whole new adventure in itself. What's the bigger risk? I was like, oh, the getting married's a bigger risk. He didn't say another word. That was part of why I made the affirmative action and was what I was looking for as a way to play offense. with that choice. I didn't want to do it because, oh, that's what you're supposed to do. It's time.

56:25We've been doing it for this long. We got engaged. I didn't want to do it by the book and I was looking for the offensive reason to do it and that did help me with that.

56:38The rom-com time, that was definitely

56:43me doing the work I was doing and only being able to do the work I was doing and offer the roles I was getting the rom-coms was eating at me. because I felt like I could, life is good, man. I make good money. I feel like I can roll out of bed and do one of these tomorrow morning. Well, that's cool. Man, I'm kind of number one. I'm the go-to guy for this. But I wasn't, I was countered by, I had met Camilla, fallen in love. She's now pregnant with her first child. So that, my life was extremely vital and I was alive cried harder, laughed louder, felt more joy, all those things. But my work was like, all right.

57:26And I was like, well, I wish my work could be as challenging or as vital as my life. And I remember looking in the mirror going, well, be glad right now. Appreciate that it's not the other way around. But can I have my work challenge my lifestyle in this vitality? Yeah, if I do some dramas I want to do, well, those aren't coming. All right, if I can't do what I want to do, let me quit doing what I was doing. Now that was, I think, yeah, it was definitely courageous. I did honestly think I'd written myself a one-way ticket out of Hollywood. People close to me, basically almost everybody besides my wife, was like, what is your major malfunction, little brother?

58:08You got it made? Why are you throwing a jackknife in this? You're tripping yourself running downhill, man. You did it.

58:21I had my wife and myself to remind myself of that 4 a.m. clarity that I had in tears when I was like, no, I'm rolling the dice. I'm sticking with it. And I did think I wrote myself a ticket out of Hollywood. I did look at other vocations, become a teacher, a wildlife guide. I seriously looked at those things. But over time, and it was about 20 months, it was gone long enough, had found anonymity enough, was not in your living room in a theater in a rom-com. You didn't see him on a beach shirtless. Where is he? And then I think I told you the story. Turning down the$14.5 million offer made people go, oh, shit, what's he up to?

59:10you don't just step out of Hollywood unless you turn that down because you've got a plan you've got somewhere you want to go and I think that made me more attractive as a new novel idea but that was yeah that risk took I think it's fair to say that took a fair amount of courage from me A quick aside if you've been feeling a bit sluggish your testosterone levels might be the problem they play a huge role in your energy, focus and performance but most people have no idea where those are or what to do if something's off which is why I partnered with Function because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to understand what's actually happening inside of my body.

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1:00:19So get the exact same blood panels that I get and save a hundred bucks by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. For a lot of people, their work feels more vital than their life. Yeah. Is that a shiny object mirage that they need to rid themselves of?

1:00:47if you can and you're willing to, yeah. look, that's part of why I started writing. The script flipped on me five years ago. I was like, I was feeling like my work was more vital than my life. I felt like I was going through the motions more in my life, but I was really getting major life experiences through my work. And I had the same question. I was like, well, let's see where I can challenge myself more in the documentary, the one life I'm living rather than the characters I'm going to play that somebody else wrote, someone else directing, someone else is lensing through their camera and editing.

1:01:26What are we doing on this one take that we've had since the day we're born and we cut the day we die? And so that was a challenge to myself, which led to the writing, which was a more direct experience, kind of put a word down without, it's my script and without my performance on it, without music, without pictures. And, uh, so that was an inward journey that I'm, that I'm still on. And now I think I'm trying to want to do both of them. I just did a couple of movies. Jeez, I was reminded how much I love it. It felt like fricking vacation going to act again, to have a singular obsession like that.

1:02:06It was a vacation for me and I did good work. I don't mean like it was laying back with a pina colada. I would get into what I wanted done each day and collaborate with somebody they'd like to collaborate with and building this thing and building the character within the movie and being done. I was like, that was so much fun. That felt like a vacation, much more so than the two months I just spent in Europe. It felt like more vacation than that. Which has led me to question myself, maybe I need to learn how to vacation differently. That's also a skill. Yeah. I hear True Detective season two. Maybe coming back.

1:02:41That would be season probably five. Season two with you. Well, Nick's got an idea. Pitchal out of the creator. And he's brought it up to Woody and I. We've talked about it. And he says he's got a line on it. And we both said, awesome. Show us. That's as far as this has gone. I think we've talked about that. I missed that. I loved that series. It was my favorite thing to watch on TV. And I happened to be in it. But I just was, I loved it. I watched it every Sunday night like everybody else.

1:03:17And in this series, it was the first time, especially now, because things are getting abbreviated. The first acts of stories are getting abbreviated more and more, I'm finding. And I don't know if this is because, oh, people's attention span are shorter. Just introduce characters and let's get on with the conflict. But act two starts on page 12. It used to start on page 37, 38. And now it starts on page 12. And I'm like, man, the actor's favorite part is act one, because that's where we're going. Okay, maybe you've seen it before, but you hadn't seen it with me. You hadn't gone on this journey with this character.

1:03:49Let me introduce you before the conflict arises to this world and this character and my behavior, my relationship. So you can go on a journey with us, with me, like you've never gone through this before. Well, those are getting reduced. The series of True Detective, eight series, eight hour episodes. But man, I got three hours. I got 190 pages of an act one. That's a luxury and a beautiful thing to have. Okay. And it took me a lot of patience because I almost made some choices. I remember sitting there after a month in thinking like, I think what I'm doing may be really boring. And I was like, no, trust.

1:04:31Trust when rust becomes crash. It's going to flip. trust getting there but i was sitting there and i was going to nick and carry on it is this boring what i'm doing they were like no stick with it okay i go you see stuff bubbling underneath they're like yeah it's like okay because i'm getting antsy you know

1:04:54so if that came along it was the right script be a great collaboration again tell you who i had on the show last week in london bugsy malone and uh he was telling me a few stories about what he learned working with Guy Ritchie. Yeah. What have you learned working with Guy?

1:05:12Guy is great in the moment. But you ask Guy to work on anything or talk about what we learned for dinner tonight, and it may be six o 'clock. That's too far in the future. That son of a gun. And he wrote the script. And I go in and my character had great monologues and great things to say. And it takes a lot of work to work on those things and work and understand them. And I'd show up on the day and we'd always sit down and let's hear it. And he'd be over there listening. And all of a sudden he'd be like, oh, God, what did you say? Oh, geez. What was that line there? Oh, God, that's rubbish. Who wrote that?

1:05:53Well, you did. He's like, oh, God, that's shit. You know what? And he starts spitting out different lines. And he's rewriting on the day, like right before you're supposed to do the scene. not the morning of and definitely not on a Sunday before the week. I'd ask him to meet me on Sunday to go to the script. He stood me up every time, every time. But you get on set and now he's in it. And the stuff he comes up with live, where I went from frustration to like, oh, because 95 % of the stuff he comes up with live is better than what was there. And so I started to go, okay, it's a meter. it's a musical meter of speech patterns that he's hearing and pop pop and there's no ums in any of his stuff it's sharp you know it's it's it's noun verb non-verb noun verb maybe an adjective adverb and they're somewhere period bam pop pop pop pop pop pop and he hears it on the in the moment and again he's funny he'll call out something that you'll think i thought was some of this genius stuff he wrote and he'd be like oh god that shit who wrote that like what you did he's like well that's rubbish throw it out and he's like the uh he's like the freestyle rapper of the director world yeah and i i loved after i got past frustration i mean i enjoyed him and working with enjoyed him before i enjoyed working with him and then i understood the way he worked and continued to enjoy him and enjoyed working with him i really enjoyed working with the guy and the way his mind works his attention when it's live when it's time now we're in it now we're at the table we are all here to shoot the scene let's sit down now and read through this and how it sounds but you want to do this an hour before you want to do this back in the trailer

1:07:37that's exciting that's like a tightrope yeah so i had to go between you know what's worth learning anything in the damn script to no no no no you know there's certain of course you're reading this thing the night before thinking i know 50 of this is going to be thrown out tomorrow 60 you know um but like i said when you look and you hear it and you go in the moment you go that is better yeah and the hard part is right after you hear it's better and you agree it's better it's like okay let's shoot it and i'm like well hang on i'd need to it was a lot let me have a look at it you know what i mean let me try and at least memorize some of it yeah apparently you've shot at stravesta before did you have a cactus did you have a i had many cactuses in many places that had a cactus i was telling a story to someone a couple days ago i think it's the picture on the back of the book where my airstream is there i believe that's in utah and i remember that place because i pulled off the side of the road about 5 p.m one afternoon and i went on this dirt road through this camp that was crystal meth they were hacking it up in And the wandering eyes and the twitches, they were all out there watching me pull in.

1:08:55And I'd learned from being on the road enough that it was me and my dog, that when you go and, you know, some possible danger in the people that are around, you've got to watch how you get out. You've got to watch how you drive. You've got to watch how deliberately you back that thing up. You've got to watch how you get out of the car, how you walk deliberate, how you get your shoulders back. and you also it's a good idea to grab the baseball bat and do some stretches with it with your shirt off everybody you know and your dog's out and while you know they're over there half mile away with the binoculars you just just enough to hopefully have them go well maybe let's pick the next guy you know what i mean and that night i slept there and went to bed and i woke up at 4 a.m to this sound and of course i already had on my mind in case they come down to break it wasn't them.

1:09:43I, unbeknownst to me, it pulled up six feet away from a rail, train rail. And a train came by at four in the freaking morning and I was six feet from it. And that's what I woke up from in that spot. So you do feel at home. We just need a train going by. Train would be right on the backside. Yeah, right on the backside. In deserts, you know, you got me in the desert. This is my, this is where I feel most at home in deserts. I don't know what it is. deserts are like cats they're so feline you know everything's incredibly clean there's no mildew there's no uh the moisture's not there if something rots it dries it doesn't there's no bacteria and i just love the cleanliness of a of a desert i get a lot of energy in the desert what's the difference between a nice guy and a good man yeah um right about that in there but A nice guy gets along.

1:10:43Yeah, I'll do that. Yeah, I'll do that. They don't necessarily have discernment or judgment, not sure what they stand for or stand against. It's like, yes, yes, yes, sure. Yeah, hey. A good man has ideals that they stand for and they'll stand against. And when they're tested, a good man is not a nice guy. That's in the chapter of Manning Up. you know that's i was that time when i was doing the rom-coms that's all i could do i was feeling like my work was just me as a nice guy and in life i was not just a nice guy like i said camilla's pregnant i got a child coming i was i was feral with masculinity and in my work maybe i was feeling a bit neutered and i was like well i'm i'm i'm a good guy and a good man in life but i'm just a nice guy at work can i be a roles that can be a good man and that was dramas because dramas you can stand for stand to get something your ceiling for pleasure and your basement for pain are up to you how do you feel about it and no direction go that's too much or that's not enough you got too angry there.

1:11:55Oh, you meant that too much. That didn't come in a drama. Those come in a rom-com, right? Because the emotions and how you feel are compressed to be in a buoyant level and a threshold that's up bouncing from cloud to cloud only. Dramas are as much pain, as much evil as you want to go, as deep, dark you want to go, get there. Let's see how far you go. How high you want to fly, how close that sun you get before you get burned, go. Let's see how far you go. That's what you get in drama, much more like real life. And so, you know, good guys, being a good man is a lot harder for good reason. I'm not going to be most popular.

1:12:37I'm not going to be always most affable. It also doesn't mean you got to be a dick or an asshole. It just means sometimes you going to go, I believe in this, this is for me, and that is not for me. And because that is not for me, if you do trespass into my space upon me and my family, I will do my best to cause consequences. And I'm going to let you know that. I hope that's apparent because I'm not going to intrude on you, but if you trespass that, I mean, I'm going to stand up for it. And that we can talk our way out of that great no it doesn't always work that way you know a good man's not looking for trouble you know but if it comes and if he or something he cares about and loves were susceptible being trespassed on by trouble a good man does what he can to do to stop that so Aaron Bugsy um tells this story.

1:13:45He famously had his house, a robbery attempt occurred on his very nice house in Manchester. Manchester's got some spicy individuals in it from the gang culture. And there is a CCTV video of him. Now, by this point, this is I think 21 or 22. So he's been in the first movie he has had multiple huge albums world tour rapping done all the things but most played fire in the booth freestyle in history all of this stuff right uh so you might think even though he came from below the streets sort of he came from the sewers uh as a kid he has a public image to keep up maybe he's got soft yeah the sort of velvet prison yeah Silk pajamas problem.

1:14:34And he told me this story. And his girlfriend rings. She's in the house. These men are trying to break in. There's a barricade. So he's driving back with his sister in the car. He's driving back. And there's a guy by the side of the road. And he can see he's got a brick in his hand. So Aaron stops the car, opens the door, and immediately says, mate, is that you? Blue shirt. That's such a nice blue shirt. And he's moving toward him. He puts his hands in the air like this. He's moving toward him. He's moving toward him. He's moving toward him. Hits this guy, brick drops, finishes him off, gets back in the car.

1:15:06And this bit's captured on CCTV. And somebody overlaid it with the call to the police. So there's a 999 call going on from, I think, his mom, who's in the house. These men are trying to break in. And you see him pull up in this Mercedes. This guy, been in movies, done all the rest of it. And it's a van of dudes. It's a van of men. Trying to break in. Yes. Yeah, you're trying to rob his house. And see, it's rich. he's got something that we want he's already dealt with one of them he might have dealt with another one of them as well and he pulls in in this fancy mercedes you see this guy who has got kind of world at his feet opens the door to his mercedes pulls his shirt off and just sprints at this van and he it was fucking electric bro he told me this story is so electric and that's on CCTV.

1:16:00That's great. Best video he ever made right there, huh? So hardcore. It's so hardcore. But yeah, that's, you know, good man, not a nice guy. We'll get back to talking in one minute, but first, Momentus make the highest quality supplements on the planet, and I have fallen in love with their whey protein powder. It is grass-fed, and each batch is exclusively sourced from EU dairy farmers whose cows are free of hormones, steroids, and all of the other junk. So if you have been struggling to hit your protein goals, which let's face it is everybody, Momentous' grass-fed way is a super convenient way to get super convenient way to get extra protein into your diet, lean muscle mass, muscle growth, supports recovery, post-exercise, etc.

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1:17:17I guess, are there any principles or have you learned when it comes to the masculinity thing, are there any principles that you refuse to compromise on?

1:17:35Let's define, let's have fun trying to define masculinity here. I think we've rightfully so come out of the chasm that macho is masculinity. I think through certain perceived and not perceived and realistic overcompensations of say a Me Too movement that some men felt shamed to be masculine. Good men. Not that way. I know for a fact, and again, I want to say to all the women out there, this has nothing to do with being exclusive of the rise of the rights and power of women. But in that over conversation, there are a lot of men that I know who are looking for that definition. That feel like. I've been told what it's not.

1:18:38And now I don't know what it is. and fuck, I just opened the door for her. Shit, I'm done. Certain... And I bring that up and sometimes friends are like, oh, that's frilless. No, but it's part of it. It's one example of like, that's not what Me Too meant in the over-conversation, especially when they said, come one, come all. And Aziz Azari got thrown up there with Harvey Weinstein. It's the same crime. and you're going, no, that's not the same. Hang on a minute. Not the same. There are a lot of men trying to understand what that is. And like anybody, they're not going to go down. You know, anything to be corrected, everyone overcompensates.

1:19:24You know what I mean? But there's men looking for a redefinition of what masculinity is.

1:19:34And there is a difference. There are some wonderful, beautiful differences between men and women. thankfully biologically um not always exclusive of each other you know but there's nothing that i see this because it's right up there at the top what's one of the best thing for women all over the world is more good men and And a masculine, truly masculine man is not an oppressor. Truly masculine man is not macho. He's not chauvinist. But he's damn sure masculine. Most masculine I've ever felt. After the birth of my first child. Never were my head, heart, and loins in such synchronicity. And the power that I had.

1:20:30was, I mean, he's probably the best husband ever at that time too. Men want to be, and I don't know if this is biological because I'm not saying women don't, but men want to and are looking for ways to be relied upon. And so we say, yeah, but you always want to be the savior and you always want the solution. Okay. Cool. Cool. Is nothing wrong with wanting to find the solution to things? Great, let's work with that. Thank you, women, for saying, glad you got the solution, but just listen to me for a second, Lauren, because I'm not looking for a solution. Actually, I just want to talk this out and I'll probably answer my own question.

1:21:16You know what I mean? Doesn't mean don't be the male side of you that wants to find the solution or wants to be relied upon. it's being redefined now and there's a lot of I talked to them and a lot of young men and middle aged men that are looking you know part of this role I got to play in this last film The Lost Bus it was not visible to me that I was also representing a large group of men who were middle aged who woke up and looked around and I'm like oh shit this isn't where I thought I'd be oh shit I haven't built anything. Failed marriages. Failed jobs. Some of them did it all right, too.

1:22:03A lot of them, when things got tough, they smacked out the back door. Got the divorce. Didn't go one step further. Didn't show up. And that caught up with them. But that's also a large group of the demographic of men going like, what does masculinity mean? How and where can I be relied upon? That gives me dignity. To be reliable. That gives me significance. Call it what you want, but if you think that's true, and I do, there's nothing wrong with that.

1:22:38So, what is masculinity? You know? I'm not going to, you know, skip past the... What are some of your definitions of understandings of what masculinity is? If we were going to say, men, here's something that you should expect of yourself and pursue as a biological male. It seems like a lot of the definitions converge on similar sorts of traits. Emotional composure tends to be one of them. Competence tends to be another. the ability to be decisive is another of those so we're starting to build this sort of suite of traits that it is but as soon as you start to try and alter the edge cases so I mean you know you're going to have somebody who's got emotional control that even slightly at its extreme is a denial of emotions and no vulnerability right sort of uh all the bad bits of stoicism with none of the good bits right uh and then okay you want uh sort of competence well that very quickly sort of turns into a single-minded progress at all costs regardless of what anybody else thinks and decisiveness turns into being domineering and certain yes yeah yeah i don't I don't need to listen to you.

1:24:14So I think it is a very delicate balance. And I think it's a good point to say Me Too was an important rebalance to men being able to use their positions of power to get access to women in ways that they shouldn't have done. And the goal of Me Too was to sanitize the toxic elements of men's behavior but instead it just sterilized all of them it sterilized all of the elements of its behavior i think it and i think it's when it became so many movements are right on when it's a rifle but as soon as they become general admission it becomes the shotgun spread and it's like well we gotta yeah come on yeah i don't know you tell the truth oh it doesn't matter yeah it stops that's it it stops being the opportunity to rebalance something and it starts being an opportunity to grind an axe and continue to sort of put your foot on the neck of somebody else so i think um yeah you end up with this this strange situation especially around me too this is a pattern i mentioned to you last time about type a people with type b problems and type b people with type a problems and the theme of that is advice that's given en masse is sometimes right, even for the majority, but will be absorbed asymmetrically.

1:25:38If you give everybody the same supplement, some people will be hyper responders and some people will not respond at all. And sometimes the hyper responders are the people who didn't need it already. Right. So an example when it comes to the Me Too thing is the men who really needed to heed don't be pushy are precisely the men that that message will not work on and the men who are most likely to take it to heart right are the ones who probably needed a little bit more encouragement right to go up to that girl in the bar so if you're the type of guy who's who's a little bit more insural and a little bit more concerned and you didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable and you had approach anxiety and then like believe all women do not the toxic male gaze.

1:26:22You do not need to do the thing. You're going to think, oh, I knew, I knew all along that that was the case. I must not, I must not do this thing. Whereas if you're the sort of guy who was already being way too pushy, unfortunately this advice is there are hyper responders and those that aren't. And unfortunately, a lot of the time, the people that are most likely to respond to bits of advice. And this is the same thing when it comes to men should be vulnerable. men should show their emotions more out of the panoply the full spectrum of men who do you think is most likely to take on board the message men should be more vulnerable men who are already already vulnerable but they've got a disposition to be more vulnerable the guys that have got the denial of emotions you know boomer absent father fucking generational trauma passed down thing they're not taking that on board and uh it's just i think it's a fascinating challenge that we face when you say the people who most need to hear a message are often the ones that are least likely to hear it and when you scattergun it across everyone you can actually not reduce down the in the bad incidents you're trying to get rid of yeah and further reduce down the good that you were hoping to hold on to it's a solvent that works in reverse and it strips away the stuff that you were trying to keep right and doesn't get rid of the bad stuff you wanted to evacuate so what can we all learn what can men learn and what can women learn like okay what can we learn from that heavy me to era where it was a toxic access that was people were getting away with it and all of a sudden uh-uh and i agree but not to emaculate the good men or not have the ones that maybe were not offenders but boy right you know a little bit more macho to have them not puff the chest out more and go well i'm gonna double down on the macho to push that back yeah because i i'm probably see it as a little more progressive of a time in the way that I agree, the ones that maybe were shy or trying to receive were now going, holy shit, I was right.

1:28:50But I also do think that it did chop down the top of the tree and reminded a lot that we're on the edge of the go, you better back off, better back down, boy. A hundred percent. Yeah. A hundred percent. That's not me saying it's all bad, obviously. But it's thinking about the asymmetry of absorption when it comes to stuff like that. Yeah. I think

1:29:14one of the things that I would hope we've learned from that situation is, you know, the idea of Chesterton's fence? No. Okay, so G.K. Chesterton talks about a liberal and a conservative come across a fence post, two fence posts in the field. Here, right in front of us. Is there a fence here? No, I don't have a fence, but you can imagine. There's a fence here. Yeah, two fence posts with a little bit of why between them. And the liberal would say, I see no reason for this fence. We should break it down. A conservative would say, hey, hold on a second. Someone put that there. Maybe it is there for a reason.

1:29:55And the tension between innovation, novelty, adventurousness, openness, and respect for tradition, stasis, status quo. On the other side, this is the perennial push and pull. How much should we throw out these old traditions and how much should we? And I think we learned a lesson to maybe temper the throttle a little bit, to just sort of feather it, as opposed to whitewashing. And you made a great point, which is women want eligible men. And this is why a zero-sum view of empathy, that if you give a degree of empathy toward the plights of men, despite the fact that for most of human history, they had some benefits that women didn't apart from like the war and the death and the homelessness and the drug addiction and the, you know, so on and so forth.

1:31:00Um, if you say we can't give empathy to these people because it'll take away empathy, which is not how empathy works. No, it's not exclusive of the other. That's, that's, it's not zero sum. It's not a limited resource that we have. Um, if you say uh boohoo poor patriarchy sad

1:31:25complaining in the same breath uh men do not deserve sympathy they've had it good for so long we don't need to raise them up and in the next sentence saying where are all of the good men at is mating logic seppuku, right? And yeah, I just, I get the sense if any group has an issue, almost any group in society, we spend billions of money in taxpayer-funded dollars to set up surveys and initiatives. We don't tell them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. If men have a problem, it is treated in a very, very unique way. Anybody else on the planet has a problem. we say what can we do to fix society but if men have a problem we say what is it men are doing where they don't fix themselves and this is just a price that we need to pay as guys it's a price we need to pay i've kind of given up on fighting against it right but i certainly think after the last few years maybe we can let's settle here okay we've exorcised that demon let's fucking start anew right yeah i'm with you know i i one of the things i was questioning a lot of my friends of mine and some many of them females that were around the leaderships in the me too movement was when are you going to start inviting the good men you know to these gatherings well come on that's it's not it's you're not it's not a at the end it's not a battle of the sexes it's a behavior that you're getting saying hey no more of that that the male was doing great now that that's understood there's a lot of men that agree i i remember you know it's like a lot of people in my industry men and they were like would tweet out when it first happened after the wine seat stuff well i just want to go on record and let you know i don't i don't believe in right either and i was like what are you doing dude you're kind of setting it up like was that questionable before and then it was if you didn't write that or something like that at it was like it was the what about you the black square of me too i was never yeah the black square of me too yeah yeah i was never i was i i i wasn't on the fence about it before you know um and that you know that that was not it was more than different than just funny but i remember that being an odd reaction um yeah so yeah i hope the dust settles and i believe it is settling now because i know um uh that uh a lot of people women included that are friends of mine that were a large part of the me too movement would i think in some part agree with what we're saying going we don't want to we're not talking about canceling men you know i mean that's not that was canceling masculinity and that would be not a good thing to do for men or women correct it's It's creating the exact dearth of eligible male partners that they say that they're looking for.

1:34:31You've got this great line where you say, so many people are obsessed with how to live longer instead of how to live better. How do you come to think about that? Quantity. Success without the profit. Ooh, how much more can I get?

1:34:50I'm for it, the longevity. I'm for it. But in the pursuit of it, are we measuring quality of life along the way? Some people aren't. And I personally don't want to have the highest number, but then go, oh, I need fun. Or I didn't enjoy that. Or I didn't, that sucked. I'm just trying to remind everyone that just like in business, when I say success without the profit, we have plenty of people that succeed. If you got the most money, the most toys, you succeed. And we talked about those people earlier that have, at the end of the day, have problems with their relationships or they can't sleep or they can't get the dick up, whatever.

1:35:32They didn't profit. They're not profiting with their success. Profit measures quality with the quantity. So I'm saying real success is when you have profit. Well, really great longevity would be for those quality years, quality time left in this life. I also say that because while I'm not looking forward to it, I'm not really afraid of death or dying. I'm not looking forward to it. Shaking my boots if I'm face-to-face with that great white. You know what I mean? I'm not looking forward to it. But I see it as a – obviously, it's inevitable. And obviously, I personally see it as hopefully a comma, you know, not a period.

1:36:16So – the number, the higher number. I don't know. I just watch being obsessed with that at the expense of quality of life. Is it the trade-off or do the two work in tandem? It's what the trade-off. Obsessed with how to live longer than how to live better? Do you think it detracts? No, I don't think it necessarily detracts. But it can. I do think inevitably you might be, if you're so obsessed with the projection length that you're going to miss a couple of really, really worthwhile parties now where you may learn something, have the great love of life, take a certain risk that, oh, you may not make it out of that, but we're going to do it anyway.

1:37:09And I'm all for projection. It's a lot of my jam. How far can we project in the future? Boy, the further we can project, the further I think we can see in the past. The more we have the ability to invest in ourselves today to get that more ROI tomorrow. I just think an obsession with the number can sometimes get in the way of seeing more of an obsession with the quality and the meaning of what we're doing right here, what's now and tomorrow. Is there something you do to remind yourself to inject more fun into your life? oh i mean i've got some simple tricks you know if i'm not sure how to respond try to make the default emotion humor and i'm a big fan a big fan of of humor and i wish we had more of it um and i think it's how we're going to get through a lot of these things that we have um is we're going to have to giggle at a few things and go yeah and also at ourselves to be I'm still learning and getting better.

1:38:10I have to giggle at myself when I bogey. You know what I mean? Just go, yep. And to not be afraid of that failure. To be able to fess up and go, yep, that was me. Oh, geez, that didn't work. Laughter. I think it's taken as being discompassionate sometimes or it's being insensitive. And flippant. Yeah. Like you're making the crisis benign. You're not giving the crisis credit. No, I'm giving the crisis credit, but I'm saying the crisis has happened. And now we got to deal with getting through this son of a bitch. So it's going to be tough. So can we giggle our way through untying this knot? I'm not patronizing the crisis at all.

1:38:57I just want to go out and have a, you know, it's why, you know, the greatest comedian, you know, Chappelle, Well, he says stuff while the wounds, people go, you can't say that now, the wound's too fresh. It's why he's so smart and why he's so funny, because he says it beforehand and calls it out. Jimmy Carr's got a bit about that, where I think he says, saying that there is a topic too sensitive to joke about is like saying there is a disease too serious to treat. Okay. Okay. I like that. Wow. Yeah. You know, yeah, and humor as well as a learning and a teaching tool and a true humility with our own selves of what we can learn and how we can learn, what we know and what we don't know.

1:39:51And it's a great way to not convert. It's a great way to help someone understand. it makes it it's why i'm rhyming in here it's why some of these are ditties that's why i'm saying let's sell sunday morning like a saturday night let's let's let's let's have a beer on the way to the temple and i mean it's it's more digestible we can dance to it and the broccoli actually does more than tastes like candy it is the candy what's that uh you got a poem called life and Candy Crush? Is there a parallel between the two? I love that game. I love Candy Crush. As I said it, if you're out there, you can send me some free lives or a whole bunch of prizes in there.

1:40:39Yeah. My kids always bless me for playing Candy Crush. I'm like, this is a great game and let me tell you why. So I decided to put in there what I've shared with my children, what I've noticed. What you've learned from the great game of Candy Crush. that's funny I'm interested in where confidence comes from as far as you're concerned yeah

1:41:01well

1:41:05it definitely comes from belief

1:41:12not hope it comes from

1:41:20pulling something off comes from oh i i i think i got an ability to do that let me work on that let me prepare to do that oh shit i'm not sure bam i'm in the game action cut life or movie ah i did it i felt it too i know i did it and you who are the observer go you did it i got confidence I personally felt it and it translated Subjectively, I felt it and objectively you went, yep Confidence, I make a big plan I write something out, a plan for the day, the week An event, a circumstance, a scene I write out all this stuff, what my intent is or what I want to do What I hope comes from this And I shut that And a year later, I do that scene or I'm at that event And someone comes up afterwards and goes, you know what that was, man?

1:42:12That was bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop And I'm like, that's exactly what I wrote a year ago. Yeah. It's what I wanted to do. Pulled it off without saying one of those words. That's what you got from it. Yes. Confidence. Identity. Testing it out and it can work. Confidence to go, I'm going to try and pull this off. Maybe get away with it. Maybe it won't work.

1:42:46pulling things off, translating without saying the word or without manipulation, feeling when I am something that we have, when I have an innate ability for something that I believe I have the innate ability and I learned to the reason behind that instinct and how to, how to, where's the right time timing. Oh, it'll work. I think right here. Who's the audience I'm talking to? Oh, yeah. I'm going to make a plan for that sell, if it's all sales, for that transaction or whatever it is. And bam, it hits and it lands like I wanted it to. Dogs, damn it. Was that deja vu? It happened. That's how I saw it.

1:43:29That, I get confidence from that.

1:43:36um I'm still working on and you know now I think even more in this I'm not gonna say second half whatever the 50s humility while still maintaining confidence I had a really tough relationship with humility the definition until I heard

1:44:02I think it was Jordan Peterson's definition Humility is admitting we have more to learn And I was like, oh Whoa, I'm in I can get on board with that Let me sign up Because before that Humility to be humble To be humiliated My shoulders would sink I would be Small Passive And wouldn't speak up Or there's the opportunity And I miss it And I was like, man, I don't think that's what it means but I don't know how to get around it. Isn't it funny how we need the definition of words to change a little bit like that? And that can be a 180. You know what I heard the other day? I heard a fantastic new definition of vulnerability.

1:44:43What was it? It said, vulnerability is saying your truth in spite of the consequences, especially when they're scary. Oh, see, that sounds fun. Get on board with that. That sounds fun. that's a that's a different kind of surrender you say what's true in spite of the consequences especially when it's i'll be damned especially when it's scary yeah especially when it's scary ah i like that it's got offense to it yeah yeah i feel like i'm on the front foot yeah yeah i feel like it's something that's noble yeah all right and it's the same with this rework or perhaps the original work of humility yeah i guess i mean it takes courage i can i can step forward into this i'm not stepping back right away from it and i think specifically uh with men i think uh it's a a perhaps a a very smart way to do a super secret squirrel technique yeah you know jedi mind trick to go so this is not a step back it's actually lexically brazilian jiu-jitsu this into you're going forward now um but yeah i i think and and and and dare i say women out there did you hear that manipulate us to feel that way oh yeah go for it happily manipulate all day into that and call us childish for wanting and needing that play it man we'll see we'll take it these are the these are the cheat codes yeah let us lay them out in front of you yeah you know one of the best best bits of advice that I heard, this sort of reframe that's similar to that.

1:46:16This guy was talking about he was in a relationship with a lady and he had to be clean shaving through the week and would leave his facial hair to grow over the weekend. By Sunday evening, you know, he's got enough stubble to really scratch. And his ex-partner would say, I just hate on a Sunday where your face is scratching me in my mouth. I'm so red and raw and it's so annoying. and needless to say, that relationship didn't work. And then he moved into another relationship and this new partner had the exact same preference but said to him, honey, I find it so sexy when you're clean shaven. I think that's just the hottest thing in the world.

1:46:58Incentives, incentives. Follow the incentives. Oh, just lay out that little breadcrumb in front of us. We will chase that carrot, man. We're lead pipe cinch. It's so easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, without complacency, trust that time is on your side. What do you mean? Yeah, man. I'm going to get a header behind it and I can get in a rush and I haven't found. Look, and I know how to hustle and let's go. The clock's ticking. We're all behind all hands on deck. We got to bust ass. No time for pause. There's no sleep. No, nothing. Get the caffeine out. Let's go. Sometimes we've got to do that. But that is usually because an unforeseen circumstance has happened that there's a crisis we got to deal with, or we've procrastinated and put myself in that position where we got to cram.

1:47:44But it's not those two circumstances. We got to watch ourself getting ahead of time. And it's on your side. It's a little what I mean about the living longer and living more quality. Time's on our side. And we're forced to think and feel, especially today with how fast things move, that more productivity, faster paced, more information, faster paced, it's better. We're ahead of time a lot. And, but time's still moving at the same speed. And they're not giving more than 24 hours a day, even though me, like a lot of people are looking for more. There's just not, there's not any more unless you just want to change your workday.

1:48:26And some people do. Me, I need my nine and a half hours sleep. If I want to say I'm getting four hours sleep and get five and a half hours more of a workday to be more productive, I would, but not to making that trade off. it's on our side and when we're feeling like we're dancing with time i know i'm usually getting as much or i'm getting more done at the same pace than if i'm it's the john wooden a great basketball coach for ucla be quick but don't be in a hurry that was his note to the his basketball players like be quick but don't be in a hurry, you will miss things. You know, it's the Lego set, man.

1:49:07And you sit there and you get in a rush. You don't read the directions. You get to the end and you've got 12 pieces left. You're like, shit. Because you got in a hurry. You got ahead of time. Instead of just that feeling of, I've checked out what I need to do. And it's all adding up. And this thing's built right. And the foundation's right. And boom, there's the last piece. It fits. Voila. It was with time. Time's on our side. It's not an enemy. The end, death is not the enemy. I do believe that part of, you know, not in a rush to get there and we can stave it. We want to stave it off sometimes.

1:49:39And that it can be a screaming fight and partially denial can help us get there. I understand that. But still, it's on our side. It's going to happen. And since it's going to happen and that's non-negotiable, might as well go well I'm not going to rush to try and make more of it than there is I want to try and spend the time I got as well as I can produce succeed, achieve whatever those things are but also at a pace that I'm me that I like the dance to, I like the give and the take I like the reverb, I like the cause and effect of how things are happening at this pace. How are we orienting ourselves now since time is speeding up so much faster with AI?

1:50:30I want to ask you this with AI. And I mean this, this is an objective question. With AI, with all these podcasts, with all these wealth of information that people can get at all times and no one's listening to music anymore. They're listening to everybody talk about this and reading up in this and they're finding out the answers and in 10 seconds, that would have taken them 10 days to get before. Do people sound smarter to you? No. Me neither. They don't sound dumber. I do think, so we were talking about if everything's significant, nothing significant at all. I do think that I talk to some people that feel like they're hyperly punching their information.

1:51:09Absolutely fucking great. Just splashing out. But I'm going, fuck, dude. What was the theme there? Did you have a bass guitar in your band? You need a bass guitar. Or at least somebody on percussion hold it down. Because I didn't hear the theme. I didn't hear the thread. It was digits. Where was the soul in that story? Which goes back to the quality with the quantity, the quantity of information, but can we have the soul in it? To where, ah, I hear the rhyme. Ah, there's rhyme to that, those digits. There's rhyme to those facts. Oh, I see how they add up. Oh, but what if you put them in this order?

1:51:41Ah, they add up to another thing, or actually they may add up to the same damn thing. Interesting. Now I've got a rhyme. Now there's a song. That happens when time's on your side and you're looking at it. And I still offer, I open that up without complacency. Like start now. That doesn't mean time's on my side. Yeah, dude. Enchila. When it happens, it'll happen. No. I'm like, wake up. Clock's ticking. It's on your side. Now just move with it. Dance with it. Put some soul with the facts. Matthew McConaughey, ladies and gentlemen Dude, you're great You're so fantastic Super fun talking to you Do it for hours Did we just do that for an hour or so?

1:52:25Two and a bit Did we, really? Yeah, and again, it flies It flies when you're having fun New book Points of prayers That's it, some belief Not just belief in God But I think it's in short supply And I think more of us need it And if we don't have more of it Doubt's going to win If doubt wins, we're all going to lose. And we've got stuff out there to believe in. I think people are looking for it. I know I am. And I think it's something we need. I know it's something I need. And then I'm enjoying talking about it. I'm kind of saying this is sort of therapeutic, spiritual therapy for me because I'm getting to talk about it.

1:53:03I'm getting to talk with smart people about it. I'm getting questioned about it. I'm getting to repeat some of it so it's becoming mantric for me. And then I'm going to go put a lot of this to music. I hit the road. got some great musicians coming out to join me on stage and they're playing scores behind some of my reads it's gonna be fun unreal yeah thousand episodes thank you for joining me it's a really special one you're welcome my pleasure so you're a airstream connoisseur yeah yeah so the originals this is the first time that i know that they partnered i think there's somebody based out of san francisco and they said hey let's modernize it up just a hair.

1:53:42So these were new. This was a new design. Just a little cleaner. This is the one original one I had. I called it the Canoe. And that's the one I've mainly been on the road look for about three years. When? I think it was early 2000. Okay. It was me and my dog just traveling around. And if you and I are meeting a director or someone to work or to meet. I'd be like, what, next Tuesday? Let me see, man. I'm heading to Albuquerque. I'm kind of moving this direction. I tell you what, flying to Albuquerque airport, I'll pick you up at night in the morning and then how about if I'm driving that direction, I'll drop you off in Lincoln, Nebraska.

1:54:25How about, you know, 6 o 'clock at night, you get to 6 o 'clock out of Lincoln. We'd have our meeting on the road while I was pulling the airstream. And every one of those meetings was a great meeting. I bet you was. It was like, yeah, and it was like, some people stayed the night And that was all my means. That's when we had a Blackberry, not the fungi I have now, but I was all over North America in this. And I took this out, built my own table in Louisiana with a carpenter. I got given a paddle. The reason it's called a canoe is I had this. I stayed with the Indian Squamish Nation Indian Reservation in Vancouver, worked on a film, Two for the Money.

1:55:01And on that reservation, there was a paparazzi that had moved in. And he was like, you know, hiding behind trees in the trailer park. And it's the Squamish Nation in your reservation. It's their private property. The chief's name, no shit, was Mike Hunt. Chief Mike Hunt went and his brothers went to this guy and said, you are not welcome here. He's like, get the free contract and stay away. He goes, no, no, no. If you're disturbing someone in our tribe or making them any way uncomfortable, you're out. They kicked him out. The guy got the boot for just taking pictures. And I would, they would catch, I had ribeyes, right?

1:55:38And they would catch their co-salmon in shopping carts down the river. Set up the rocks where it would funnel the salmon into the shopping cart. They'd come up with the fresh salmon. And I would trade them cooked ribeyes for their salmon. It was our barter. And he gave me the paddle when I left. He said, in our nation, as we travel the rivers, the ore is the compass, the rudder for our canoe. And as you travel the rivers, highway rivers of North America, may this keep you in your heart. How cool. Yeah. That's sick. Well, you might not have noticed, but there's balloons because this is episode 1000 today.

1:56:19Oh, all right. You are episode 1000 on this show. Come on. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Look at that. I know. Let's get going. Let's get started. Love it.

1:56:30Thank you very much for tuning in. Usually I have something to sell you. Typically another episode at the end of episodes. But that is 1 ,000 episodes of Modern Wisdom, the end of the first millennium. And getting to do it again with Matthew here on this video wall thing is really cool and beautiful. And it's very meaningful to me. And doing a thousand episodes of anything, doing a thousand of anything at all is a pretty big ask. If it wasn't for the fact that they were all numbered and I'd recorded them, I would have imagined that it was closer to 300 or 400. So I've just compressed down time over the last seven and a half years.

1:57:12But I want to say thank you very much for following me, for supporting the show. Obviously, this has been a labor of love. So as much as I whine and complain about how tired I am, I wouldn't change it for anything else. I don't want to do anything at 2.23 p.m. on a Thursday in the middle of Texas than sit down and have this conversation. So thank you for joining me. And here's to another thousand. All right. See you next time.

1:57:47If you're wanting to read more, you probably want some good books to read that are going to be easy and enjoyable and not bore you and make you feel despondent at the fact that you can only get through half a page without bowing out. And that is why I made the Modern Wisdom Reading List, a list of 100 of the best books, the most interesting, impactful and entertaining that I've ever found. Fiction and nonfiction, real life stories. And there's a description about why I like it. And there's links to go and buy it. And it's completely free. You can get it right now by going to chriswillx.com slash books.

1:58:18That's chriswillx.com slash books. today.