Ask Yourself These Questions To Change Everything | Matthew McConaughey EP 209

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation show.

0:10I firmly believe that taking charge of your mindset allows you to be in the driver's seat of your life and unlock your potential. And that's why I'm thrilled to share that my new book is out right now. It's called The Greatness Mindset. In it, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book that I wish I had 20 years ago. It's everything I've learned in the last decade with the research and the science to help you unlock your mind. Make sure to go to lewishouse.com slash 2023mindset to pick up your copy of my book, The Greatness Mindset, today.

0:55Your father put a big impact in your life. He passed when you were, I think it was five days in shooting your first movie. Is that correct? And you were 20. So I'm 20, 92, 22, I think. Something we have in common is when I was 22, my dad got into a near fatal car accident. He was in a coma for three months and we didn't know if he was going to live or die. He's still alive today, but he's a completely different man. He's not there physically and emotionally like he was. It was almost like I lost my dad that day, emotionally, mentally. We can have conversations, but there's a lot of amnesia. It's a lot of asking who I am and things like that in the past.

1:40But that moment for me made me, it was a rite of passage. You talk about rite of passages in your life as a man. And I would not be where I am today, doing the things I'm doing today, without that experience of essentially losing my father emotionally and mentally. and you lost him physically at the same age as I did, where do you think your life would be if he was still here? Do you think you would be able to have the impact you have on humanity? Or would things be different because you don't have what you call in the book that safety net? It's a great question. I don't know what else I would be doing because this is just what I've done, and I've only done it once.

2:19Him passing on and that year in Australia are two moments that I do often question. Would I be sitting here right now talking to you with the life I have? I'm very confident that I would have had some sort of enriched life that I felt satisfied and felt joy and living if I'd have been doing something else. But at the same time, those moments, what I can really speak to is that I'm I'm I'm manned up when he moved on. I don't know how you felt when you when you when you didn't lose your dad physically, but emotionally, I, you know, a father for me was he was my safety net. Those values that he was teaching me, I still had in my hip pocket that, oh, if I only kind of use him 85 % of the time, I'm good because he's got my back.

3:02He's above law. He's above government. He's my safety net in case I really need him. So I'm kind of half-assing these values he's teaching me. Or maybe I'm doing pretty good at him, but I'm not committed because I got him. And then he was gone. And I remember this. I write about this in the book. I remember this was something that came to me. Just Keep Living came to me, which was about keeping his spirit and what he taught me alive in life after he's gone. But also, this four words, less impressed, more involved. I remember things, right after he moved on, things that were mortal in life that I had reverence for.

3:39Fame, money, success, people. While I still respected them, instead of looking up at all of them, they came down to eye level. Looked them in the eye. They were mortal. I had full respect for them. I could be involved with them. I'm looking them in the eye. Things that I looked down upon. I was condescending, patronizing. Ah geez, I don't like that. All of a sudden those things rose up to eye level. The world was flat. I could see further. I could see wider. I could see more clearly. And I was standing taller. My head was higher. My heart was higher. And this is how you need to see the world. You need to have the courage to follow through.

4:15That is always not the most popular decisions. Quit half-assing yourself. Quit doing things just to get along or if you disagree with it. We're not going to be that guy who makes the joke at the party that makes more people laugh but everyone walks away disrespecting you more. It was the beginning of understanding what are the choices you make. Again, the compounding assets that our choices, the choices we make, the compounding assets for our future. How do we be more true and kind to our future selves? How do we start making some more choices, make choices that you can look in the mirror if it works and go, yep, I'm responsible.

4:48And if they don't work, you can go, yep, that's on me. Quit living in limbo, you know, straddling a fence here or there. Be smart. Don't be foolish. Don't dive in. Courage to take more risks. Courage to get uncomfortable with that fame and be able to go, the world needs you here right now. The studio wants you to pick out a picture. You're as hot as can be, but I don't care. I got to check out with you. Go spend some time with me to figure out this. The curse to do those things. I don't know if I'd have done those things because maybe I would have still been stuck in. No, I'm so happy to be here.

5:20I'm so impressed to be here. I'm so thankful I have these options and these possibilities for success. Thank you. Well, if you're so impressed with something in your life, even our relationships, You can't really be involved in them. If you're overly impressed with me or I'm overly impressed with you, you and I can't even have a real conversation because one of us is holding the other on a pedestal. Look at our relationships. Our girlfriends, our wives, our friends, if we hold them up on a pedestal, it's unfair. We don't really have a relationship with them. We've got them in this immortal bubble of being a superhuman or a superwoman.

5:55It's not fair to them. And then what happens in the reflection of their eyes? They see us the same way. then we're both we're both for rent we're both not not leveling we're both too impressed with each other to be actually be involved what do you think of the five things we should all eliminate to live a better life first get ready we got to quit hanging out with those those people that that sort of only turn on our most banal selves it sometimes you have the easiest people to go to places hey man geez why do i have a nasty hangover every time i go to that bar i don't know is it the drink? Is it the people?

6:30Is it what? Whatever it is, I just don't, I don't. Every time I wake up the next morning, if we go into that bar or that place, I feel, well, eliminate that. Quit trying to make that place work. We got to eliminate this thing, this habit we all have at society right now, which is, I raise me up if I put you down. It's false. It does not have a return. There's no ROI eye in that. There's this false sort of impetus that, oh, I'm taller. I win if I make sure you lose. That's not winning. You know, there's room for us both to win a blue ribbon. We love to dissect problems. Well, start dissecting success.

7:11Start looking and deconstructing your life, your choices, those people you're hanging around with, those places. is when things are going well, when you're like, ah, I feel like I finally caught a groove here, because there's a habit, there's a science, there's some science to satisfaction. And we don't just get there by dissecting our failures, and when we're in a rut, we need to be confident enough to go, well, things are going well, and I can't take this for granted. What is it I'm doing? Look at the definition of success today and the definition in the original Webster's Dictionary. And it is out of order, especially in America, but what we are telling each other to aspire to be, to be deemed successful, to get respect.

8:04Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

9:00Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the daily motivation show.

9:15Thank you.