The Power of Standing Up For Your Values | Matthew McConaughey EP 361

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

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1:13Why do you feel like values are so important for you? And what did that lesson at that moment kind of standing up for your values against authority of a place that had you welcomed in, feeding you, housing you? How did you learn all that? I was in Australia for a year. Two weeks out of high school, I went over there. And for the first time, I was all alone. I was in a foreign place. I was forced into great introspection, existential questions of who, what, where, when, why, and how. I didn't have a crutch. I didn't have a car. I didn't have a girlfriend. I didn't have a job. I didn't have money.

1:50I didn't have my parents. I didn't have friends. and I was lost in trying to find a bit of a compass and an anchor. And some odd things were going on for me and my relationships with some people there where I was questioning my own sanity. And I was kind of going along with everything. And that moment where I was asked to call someone mom and pop was a seminal moment because in my chaotic life and my anarchic brain that I was living in at the time, that was the first bit of real clarity that I was like, no that is not open for discussion all these other odd things that have been happening to me I've been tallying up to oh it must be a cultural difference it must be a cultural difference this was something that I went culture my backside bent I don't care place time whatever that's not negotiable for me so I said no um and it was very clear and it gave me clarity it gave me some identity that the values are inherent in that but that that helped me that really helped with my sanity to have that sort of that sort of something that was so clear to me that was black and white i needed that at that time in my life it's hard to find those things in life in general you know and how many times do we call you know the compromise a shade of gray when actually the right kind of compromise is the eye of great light and truth.

3:14At the same time, we need, we feel like we need as humans something to grab a hold of, something to grasp a hold of. It can be very good for us. It can also be very dangerous for us. Look at what's happening now in our nation. The divide is people running to the extremes because they need something to hold on to, to have an identity, to feel like they have a purpose, to have a foot on the ground. And these chaotic times we're in. But the values of family, what that means, the values of loyalty, the values of accountability, responsibility, the responsibility of freedom, the freedom of responsibility, fairness, those are things that I was raised on that I've found that are never going to go out of style.

3:50And I actually think we could all double down on them personally and as a society now. You talked about identity. Is there ever a moment in your life after that moment where you lost your identity? I've never lost it fully. I have a pretty good threshold and a pretty good quick trigger for if I'm not feeling fully myself, I need to go remedy it, which may be taking a walk about myself with a backpack for 22 days to Peru or Africa or meditating or praying or going and sitting still for a while or going back to what I know I can rely on, family and sitting there and clear in my head about all this other ambitions and that I may have in my head.

4:30I've never lost it fully. And if anything, I've been, it's been a nice, I would say a good trait of mine that my trigger is very quick for if I'm starting to feel imbalanced or lack of identity, not understanding exactly who I am, my feet are maybe not on the ground. Maybe my head and my heart and my spirit, my loins are not aligned. When we're really rocking, we have an auto bond between our head and our heart and our spirit. Just boom. You know what I mean? Sometimes that gets blocked and you start going, wait, it feels like a two-lane highway. And that's now down to a one-lane blacktop. I need to take a minute.

5:02I got to step back and clean it out and widen up the lanes here and get aligned again. So never fully lost my identity, but have calibrated and had to recalibrate and had many walkabouts to go check back in with myself, let memory catch up and end up forgiving stuff and then saying enough's enough with this other stuff. and you're the only person that I'm stuck with McConaughey. So we better figure out how to get along.

5:33Thank 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 wanna 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.

6:28Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.