From TEMPTATION To TRANSFORMATION: How A LOVING PARTNERSHIP Helped This A-Lister Find DEEPER MEANING Beyond Fame & Fortune! | Matthew McConaughey EP 639

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

0:11One of the things I respect and admire about you is, yes, your career is incredible, but the fact that you have been in a loving, committed relationship for 16 years, you've got three kids, and you have found a lot of fulfillment in the richness of living, not just in making money in the career and the success and the fame. you could have been the bachelor forever yeah where do you think temptation would have led you or do you think you would have made the same decision with the sand on the ground or was it having a committed conscious loving relationship and partner and teammate that allowed you to have the courage to act with that line in the sand well the only reason i pause here is because i'm I'm trying to wonder how little of credit to give the relationship.

1:03Because I'm not going to say it's 100%, but it's up there. The relationship, having her and now about to become a father, which was the only thing I ever wanted to be, had great resonance for me. I, one, had a relationship which gave me just singularly with Camilla, gave me more of the license and courage to fly. But now I'm going to become immortal, so to speak, with a child coming into the world. It's one thing I ever dreamed of being, become a father. That's at the top of my list since I was a kid. Now I'm like, well, this is what I'm doing. This part of life has always taken precedent for anything I did since.

1:44Got famous, won this or won that. My career was always in front of a Hollywood career. I've always wanted to have a life that I'm leading first and I became an actor and movie star and famous but not oh I'm an actor movie star and famous so now what do I do how do I live my life according to that no one to keep those in order if you didn't have that relation at that time what do you think would have happened that's a good question what would have happened yeah the nights would have been even longer the the the the I think it would have It definitely got more wobbly. I might have run off to the monastery and still be there.

2:27I had very somewhat reliable temptation from people very close to me going, what's your malfunction? My brothers and family were like, what is your major malfunction? What are you doing? You own this land in the mountain, but why are you making a straight line crooked, which is the line on the other side? why are you making this complicated do you know how many people would dream dream to even be doing this so i did have that understanding which i bring up with the book about being less impressed and more involved i was very thankful i was never disrespecting the rom-com i was just like i don't know i didn't make this up this feeling in me yeah you're in a new season one more and i yeah there's a new chapter to come so i don't what would i've been doing what i'd be doing now i don't know that That 20 months would have felt like 20 years if I'd have stuck with it.

3:18And would I have had the patience? Would I have the fortitude? Would I have been able to stay still in the long, lonely nights where I didn't feel like I had purpose, where I didn't feel significant, where I didn't have a newborn child and a relationship to look at and go? Because I knew then, I was like, you put time into that, you cannot go wrong. I looked at my newborn child, I looked at him, I was like, You put time into this, you are in the black. There is no debit, no matter how much. You can't overdo that. So that gave me something. If I didn't have that, no, no, no, I'm not sure. There's a lot of men that are driven men.

3:56I'm in LA, so I see this in LA, where they feel like they need to be single for a long time, or they need to jump from partner to partner, or have multiple partners at the same time, all these different things. There's no judgment, no right or wrong here, but I'm curious, what have you learned about 16 years in a relationship that has taught you about how much more successful you can be in other areas of life versus single life when you're also extremely successful, but maybe there was something missing emotionally or spiritually. Well, I'm going to piggyback on where you first started. I've got friends that are poly, and I've got friends that are perpetually single.

4:34to see them when they do pull it off and still have a healthy spirit and healthy body and healthy mind I've fought it right on I have seen a lot of them have to oh I gotta recalibrate I got off I got spread too thin a bunch of little campfires but no bonfires you can do it I think a person can do it on their own. I think a person can do it in solitude. I think a person can do it even with a relationship with just themselves. It can be done. But when you have a relationship that you're committed to, that you want to make work, that it's part of your decision, especially when you have a child that is not committed to you, is dependent on you, that goes to the top of the value system.

5:30and so career choices can go into the two hole or maybe the three hole now i would argue that i got better at my career when it went to the two and three hole it wasn't in the one hole really and i feared this i was like whoa i was having a family and the fact that when we had kids my wife said if we have kids are one condition matthew when you go we go so my family comes with me she said that to me i remember going through my mind wait a minute i'm an artist i'm a lone wolf when I go to work, I'm in my Airstream all alone. It's me and my dog, maybe. But nobody else, and as I'm saying that in my head, this other little smarter voice comes in and goes, Nodja didn't say, yes ma 'am.

6:07And I said, yes ma 'am. It was the greatest decision I've ever made. Because seeing my kids, or leaving when they woke up and seeing them when I got home after work was a beautiful energizing reset for me at the end of the day that filled me up with real life and made me more creative just going into work the next day. to tell a child when you're doing something like True Detective and they go, what was the scene about today? And you go, I better tell a good parable because I can't tell them the real thing. It's some heavy R stuff, right? So I became a better storyteller in how I'd make it a nursery rhyme or something.

6:40But you're living for someone else and something more. And for Camilla and I, I'm living for the covenant that for her and I to do what we can to stay together to keep promoting each other and ourselves in a relationship and then to have the kids. I'm living for something else. And that empowered me and made me better as an individual. And when I go out the door, I have more courage because I know I've got that stability at home.

7:14Thank 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.

8:04Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.