Matthew McConaughey: The Oscar Dream He Wrote Down Before He Was Even Acting

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0:38Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to The Daily Motivation Show.

0:49How do you at 20, 21, write down a goal of winning an Oscar when I think... And I wasn't even acting at that time. That's nuts. You didn't even do the first movie yet? No. why did that come in your mind? Why was that even a thought, a dream, a goal? So this is, I believe, right after I had, soon after I had called my father to say, I don't want to go to law school anymore. I want to go to film school. Now I'm looking back. And he said a great line back to you. He said a great line. He said, don't half-ass it. Don't half-ass it. Yeah. Which was three or whatever, four, however many words, it's the best words I've ever heard from the man who I ultimately really wanted my ultimate approval from.

1:28and he didn't give me, he gave me a lot more than approval with that line. He gave me a kick in the backside, privilege, freedom, responsibility, kick, go do it. And I suppose, I know consciously, but probably subconsciously too, there's things that I've done where I wanted to let something slide and those words came to my mind. I was like, uh-uh, no way. Uh-uh, that'd be half an accent. So those words have lived with me.

1:56I decided I want to go to film school. And I went back to these journals and I find something like that. I was like, dude, you always wanted to be an actor. Oh, interesting. Like you just wouldn't admit it. And I remember always being sheepish about someone go like, well, you just want to, why don't you perform? I don't know. Something about it in my head felt fraudulent then. And something about being behind the camera to go to director school, learning story felt like, well, that's my. I'll sneak in the back door to the acting, right? But that's the better way. And I'm glad I went that path.

2:34But I think I wanted to. And I've talked to my buddy, Rob Vindler, who I bring up often in this book about it. He was like, yeah, you were wanting to. He reminded me of talks we had late night. And he was already at NYU Film School. He was like reminding me, yeah, you were already wanting to. at this time when you first went to film school. So I write that down to myself. I'm not afraid to write it down to myself, but I'm afraid to say anything like that out loud. I'm not afraid to even say I'm interested in going into acting at this point. Wow. But yet I write down, I won an Oscar. That's crazy.

3:11Wow. So when you saw this paper, you had already won these goals. You know, for the first time after, I guess, close to 30 years, you'd won it, I think, six, seven years prior to that. Yeah. What did that feel like when you read this and you saw win an Oscar for Best Actor? Oh, Jesus. I read it. I was like, ah, you can't get out of here. Camilla, check this out. Are you kidding me? Wow. And then I went right back to the night. And I remember sitting in the top bunk. We'd just come from the arcade. Me and Monty Wills, our roommate, he was in the bottom of my car. I was in the top of my car. Like a two Thursday night, I'd been journaling.

3:54I wrote in this little journal. I remember that night. Other people were actually going out for a later, we'd been out kind of partying, other people went to the next party and I decided to come home and sort of Monty. I love the top punk, I compressed my teeth, went up, put them shorts, got in bed, kind of cover set up there and a little window right here and I'm a little diary on the little windowsill with a pen. Bunk bed. Yeah, that we made. We made these bunk beds. We were the first bunk beds in the Dell house and pulled over and I wrote it. And I think I had it. I think I even a form of a headlamp.

4:32They even had headlamps. I loved it. I still do love headlamps and written that and I wrote that down. Wow. Curious. If you didn't create this contract for yourself, Do you think you would have accomplished all ten of these goals and dreams for your life? Or would some of them maybe fall through the cracks because you didn't create that, turn the invisible contract into a physical written contract and make it real? I don't know. I mean, I have to believe that writing them down subconsciously led to me actually. I knew what they were. I couldn't recite it to you because I never looked at them again.

5:09but I knew what they were.

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