In short
The Marie Forleo Podcast: Episode 354 - Matthew McConaughey's Success Tips Will Change Your Life
Episode Overview In this episode, Marie Forleo welcomes Matthew McConaughey, an Oscar-winning actor and bestselling author, to discuss his philosophy on success and personal fulfillment. Matthew shares insights from his book, *Greenlights*, emphasizing the importance of living authentically, embracing both green and red lights in life, and the transformative power of choices. This episode outlines actionable strategies to help listeners align with their true desires and create a life they love.
Key Themes and Concepts
The Nature of Green Lights
- Definition of Green Lights:
- Green lights symbolize opportunities and positive affirmations in life that lead to success.
- Matthew identifies two types of green lights:
- Engineered Green Lights: Achieved through thoughtful choices and self-investment.
- Mystical Green Lights: Unpredictable moments that occur due to being in the right place at the right time.
The Role of Yellow and Red Lights
- Yellow Lights:
- Represent caution and the need for introspection.
- Matthew suggests using yellow lights as opportunities to slow down and assess life choices to avoid repeating past mistakes.
- Red Lights:
- Symbolize crises or hardships.
- Matthew emphasizes that red lights often lead to growth, providing lessons and prompting personal evolution, even if the lesson isn't immediately clear.
The Art of Living
- Navigating Life's Challenges:
- Matthew discusses the importance of making conscious decisions about when to persist, pivot, or concede.
- He emphasizes the need for self-reflection during tough times to determine the best course of action.
Wanting vs. Needing
- Desire for Authenticity:
- Matthew shares a critical lesson learned early in his career: the distinction between wanting something and needing it.
- He reflects that operating from a place of wanting leads to authenticity and freedom, while needing creates pressure and anxiety.
Responsibility and Freedom
- Interconnection of Freedom and Responsibility:
- Matthew discusses how true freedom is rooted in taking responsibility for one's choices and outcomes.
- He emphasizes that preparing and tending to responsibilities allows for greater freedom in life experiences.
Key Takeaways
- Self-Investment: Make choices today that benefit your future self.
- Embrace Challenges: Recognize that both positive and negative experiences contribute to personal growth and should be honored rather than ignored.
- Mindfulness: Practice introspection during yellow lights to prevent falling into negative patterns.
- Authenticity: Separate your wants from needs to cultivate a genuine approach to life and career decisions.
- Freedom through Responsibility: Understand that taking responsibility for your life is crucial to experiencing true freedom.
Upcoming Event
The Art of Living
- Date: April 24th
- Participants: Matthew McConaughey, Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, and Marie Forleo.
- Focus: Exploring the principles of *Greenlights* and providing actionable strategies for personal growth and fulfillment.
- Registration: Free virtual event at [MarieLivin.com](https://marielivin.com)
Conclusion This episode serves as a powerful reminder that life is a series of choices, and embracing both successes and failures can lead to a more fulfilling existence. By learning to recognize green lights while understanding the lessons that come from red lights, listeners can navigate their paths with intention and purpose.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00I was betting on an immortal finish line in my mortal life. and it was a truth, you know, the truth that came to me and was true when I was alone in bed at 2 a.m., cold and shivering, going, what am I doing? The truth was still sitting there going, dude, this is not negotiable. You are in line and on time. And this is a truth. Trust that. When it gets loud, when you get wobbly, trust that.
0:35Hey, it's Marie Forleo, and welcome to another episode of the Marie Forleo Podcast and MarieTV, the place to be to create a business and life you love. And today, something special is going on. Not only do I have a very special guest in this conversation, awesome, but we've also got an invitation for you that I'm not kidding, can sincerely change your life. Here we go. Academy Award-winning actor, number one New York Times bestselling author, and storyteller Matthew McConaughey is a married man, father of three, and a loyal son and brother. He and his wife Camilla are the founders of the Just Keep Livin' Foundation.
1:14McConaughey is a professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin, minister of culture for the University of Texas and the city of Austin, and owner of the major league soccer club Austin FC. Greenlights is available wherever books are sold, and his upcoming children's book, Just Because, is released in September. Matthew, thank you so much for being here. So Greenlights, right? Debuted number one New York Times bestseller list. I think last I read it was on there for like 55 weeks, which is awesome. Last I checked, it had over 66 ,000 stellar reviews. I just want to say, first of all, congratulations, because this, my friend, is a beautiful piece of work.
1:54It's amazing. And today I want to actually do a little dance with you. There's so much wisdom in the book, and I know you've talked about it a lot over the past few years, but there are a few things that I just need to highlight because I know folks in our audience will get so much out of it. And then I want to dance in what I'd like to call going beyond the book and talk about how you've taken this beautiful approach and turned it into a process. And then, of course, we've got this amazing free live event coming up, The Art of Living. We'll talk about that more, too. But first, for anybody watching or listening right now, if they have not read the book yet, can you tell us where the idea for Green Lights came from and what is a green light and how do we catch more of them in our lives?
2:39So I've journaled since I was 14. I finally got the courage to go away and see what the heck I had in those journals. So there's 35 years of writing. I had always kind of my out was, oh, when I dive, Camilla or somebody will go back and have a look. And that was an excuse. So I packed them all up, went away and had a look. And I found themes in them. I found habits and choices that I made in my life that measurably led to successes and me getting what I wanted. I saw times where I was in a rut and noticed, oh, you got off track with choices you were making. You were approaching life differently.
3:21You were trying to skate by on some things that you knew were tested and true for you, but you were trying to see if you could get by without them. And they were measurable. I also noticed, and that would be the science of satisfaction. Greenlights, you can engineer them through your choices. You can be cool to your future self by choices you make today. You can invest in yourself, pass on a plastic ring for a golden crown tomorrow, so to speak. That's the ones you can engineer, the science of satisfaction. I also noticed, and more than I thought was going to be true, is that a lot of my successes were sort of mystical green lights where, man, it didn't have any reason.
4:03It just had rhyme. I was in the right place at the right time. I was five minutes late, but oh, so glad I was late because I ran into the person that gave me my next job opportunity in the right place, maybe to meet the woman I fell in love with. You trace him back and go, you didn't know at the time, you know, that night when I met Camilla, if her car wouldn't have been towed and I wasn't able to give her a ride, would we be here now? Would I have the family at? So these things that don't have any reason to them or rhyme, I call them mystical green lights. And that would be more of the art of living.
4:36How do we find those and put ourselves in a place? I do believe that we get to the art of living through the science of the satisfaction, the knowledge, the choices where we can engineer green lights for ourselves. And that's basically what a green light is, being cool, whether you know it or not, to your future self. Yeah. And I love the notion too of mystical green lights, because those are some of the most magical, they're unpredictable. I think that, you know, for anyone who's excited about achievement, which is a lot of folks in our audience, and I know I've been there and so much of my life previous has been engineering things, right, and control.
5:10And honestly, the more I've reflected on that for myself, like I haven't kept journals since I was 14. I wish I did. But I have kept journals for for some decades now. And often I see these little recipes for myself like, oh, when Marie does X, Y and Z, she's happy. She's fulfilled. She's producing and creating. And then I leave these notes for myself usually when I do like a year ending review. And I'm like, hmm, Marie loves to party, but she parties a little too much with this. And, you know, I can watch the cascading effect of where things start to fall apart. But that mystical side of green lights, I think, is you talked about that so beautifully in the book.
5:49And I think that that is personally part of our next evolution, just as a collective, in more faith and like, yes, please. We want to. We seek to. And I think we can more than we do so far. But can we at least communicate the metrics of those mystical green lights? Because they don't make sense. You're looking, you know, we're going forward in life. It's a mystery. Looking back, even the dots of the mystical green lights we connected, they add up. You see exactly how we got here, whether it was red lights, failures or successes. The dots connect. Can we sell a constructive measure of the metrics of those mystical green lights?
6:30Because they are measurable. They just don't necessarily make sense at the time. They're not math. That's right. to the logical mind. And I love this too. And I want to dig into this a bit because this is important. You say green lights can be disguised as yellow and red lights, yellow and red lights. You have this from the book. So I'm feeding your words back to you. Yellow lights slow us down or stop our flow. They're hard, but they're sometimes what we need. And this was something I was just listening to my research, like all the reds and yellows eventually turn green. I believe that. And I was thinking about that literally how when I'm in my car, I'm in New York City.
7:06So driving my car around the city, driving out, you know, and sometimes you're like itching to get someplace in life. And then you got to wait and you got to have patience. And those red lights and those yellow lights do turn great. So tell me more about that because I think there's so much juice in the yellows and the reds too. There is. Well, look, the yellows are in the most like life because there's a choice to make. you know you either put the pedal to metal and blow it and just blow through it because you go I'm not going to heed this caution I'm not going to give this caution credit which is a valuable thing to do many times then also the second choice of the yellow light is I'm going to slow down I'm going to tap the brakes I'm going to gear down I'm I'm going to heed this caution I'm going to take a pause because I need to do a little inventory I need to look over my shoulder and figure out why I can step in the same pile of that, you know what, every damn time around the bend or every time, just once a week on the same exact time I keep doing it.
8:06Why am I a repeat offender? You know what I mean? And if we don't pause at the yellow light, we are repeat offenders of what can become bad habits. And we just start to say, well, this is how it is. I step in that same pile every day. That's just what I create in my life. And that's what I do. Slow down at the red light, red, yellow light, take a little inventory. A few people in the catching green lights may pass you by, but that's slowing down at a yellow light is where we evolve. It's an evolution. It's where our life begins to have an ascension, where we are someone, we are, we've evolved today more than we have yesterday or last year.
8:41So then there's the red lights, which nobody likes. Crisis, pain, real hardship. And this is a question I get a lot of Like, what do you mean there's a green light and there are red lights, man? I can't, you know. And I like to bring up the story of my dad passing away. As big of a red light as I've ever had in my life. But what happened in his passing was I immediately, on a spiritual and mental level, felt, oh, you don't have that crutch anymore, buddy. you don't have that person to fall back on, to rely on, to catch you if you fall. So you better quit acting like the man your dad's taught you to be, and you better start becoming that man.
9:29So it kick-started me to have much more courage, to much more quickly figure out what I stood for and what I stood against. where if he hadn't passed away, I'd have probably kind of cruised along at 75 % knowing, well, I got him. If I really get a pickle, I can lean against him. So that was the green light, one of the green light assets of my father passing away. Now, some people go, whoa, whoa, whoa, are you just blowing over a tragic death? Are you not giving that crisis credit? No, I felt just as much pain and went through the mourning process and felt the loss and still do. But I believe in that realization that came to me.
10:08I didn't go looking for that realization. It came to me. But to grasp that and then say, yeah, that's a gift is actually honoring my father who's now moved on. So sometimes finding a green light in that red light or when it lands on us accepting it is honoring the red light. So sometimes it's not about denying that red light. It's actually to honor it and you, you upsell it. You, you, you come on the other side of it. You don't delineate it and say, there's not a problem. I'm numb. There's not. No, sometimes there is, but there's a gift in it and there's a little lesson learned. And again, that's how we evolve.
10:47Yeah. And it's, and it takes time too. It's like those red lights. It sometimes takes a little bit of time for that to eventually evolve to a green. You might not be able to see the green in a second, right? Or a week or a month or even in a year, but it's going to come. Marie, I don't know. I think sometimes we don't even see him in this life. Yes. I think there are certain red lights that have happened to us now that maybe it's only our children or their children's children will render and notice. And we can trust that, you know, that delayed gratitude. We can project that far forward to go, there's a gift here, but it's not even going to come in my lifetime.
11:22That's some nice long-term thinking. And I loved, again, in getting ready for our conversation, I had so much fun, not only in the book, but listening to other things that you've done in other conversations. And one of the DNA traits that we share, like I, as a person, I love long-term thinking. I love thinking about the long money and the long run and this notion of how do we invest in ourselves today or how do we make conscious choices today? We're not going to be perfect, but that can pay us dividends over time. And it kind of feeds into what you were just saying. It might not even be our receiving of the dividends.
11:55It's going to be the next generation. You know, I love this too. you write again, I'm going to be feeding some of your words back to you because they're beautiful and they can tip us off into these great conversations and riffs. Navigating the Audubon of life in the best way possible is about getting relative with the inevitable at the right time. We either persist, pivot, or concede. The secret to our satisfaction lies in which of these we choose to do when. This is the art of living, no G. So speak to us a little bit more about how we get relative when we deem a situation inevitable and start making an upside of what could be perceived as a crisis?
12:32Because it could come, you know, any moment, any day, the shiitake hits the fan, you step in the shit, whatever happens. So, and I think when I'm doing this best and I see people doing the best, this is a trait that I think that a lot of us have when we are catching our green light. So get relative with the inevitable. When do we deem a situation inevitable? The outcome. Inevitable. That's it. This is the reality. I've got no more time. I can't prepare for it anymore. I'm in the room. It's live. Okay. Now it's time to get relative, whether how prepared you are, how unprepared you are, or if the power goes out, you know, Now it's time to get relative.
13:16You go quickly. Can I do something about this? No. Prep time's done. So how do I make the best of the situation? That's the get relative part. We run into a challenge in life. We talk about sometimes we have to just endurance is the answer. Sometimes we just quit too quickly. Oh, it's getting hot. I quit on a relationship, on a pursuit of a job, on an ambition. sometimes it's not about persistence sometimes we're just persistence means we're banging our head on the damn door and what we need to do is pivot and back up and go oh shit there's the key let's go unlock the damn thing you know what i mean other times it's the white flag you gotta go uh this is the wrong fight i'm gonna live to fight another day and battle something different.
14:10This one's not feeding me. I do not see an outcome from any angle where it's going to pay me back. This is not for me. Okay. Made the wrong choice. I'm going to pursue something else. But how quickly do we get relative with the inevitable? When we're really in the flow, it can happen in the moment. You can measure it. Yep. This is all that can be done about this situation. I'm on the upside of this now. I'm going solution orientation right now because any hemming and hawing or, oh, I can't believe, is just going backwards. We're just regressing. We're getting further behind. We are not being constructive to solving the problem, and there's nothing but a problem to solve right now.
14:49So it's how quickly can we get constructive, and that's the relativity. So if you do it too quick, if you get really – this is the problem. The challenge is you don't deem the situation inevitable too early. That means you didn't persist long enough, right? That's right. But also don't wait too long to deem the situation inevitable. That's the pivot side. That's the, if you wait too long, it's like you've been banging your head on this inevitable situation for years, man. It's that timing. The art is when do we deem it inevitable for us? And that's where the art comes. Because if you're on time and in line with that decision to say, this is now inevitable, that's when we get relative and make the choice.
15:32And that's what I mean by the art of living. Yeah. And it's the creativity, right? I feel like for me, at least in my own experience with that, well, first of all, so I love that you love slogans and bumper stickers. And you know what I mean? When you got a pithy statement, I live by that. As someone like years ago, I got diagnosed with ADHD. I'm like, my brain can go in a million different directions at once. And that's a gift. That's an amazing gift. And so something my mom taught me, and this is my motto in life, is that everything is figureoutable. And so when the shiitake hits the fan, I actually, I wrote a book with that title of it back there, but it's that notion of like everything is figureoutable, but it doesn't mean that I need to figure it out.
16:06And it doesn't mean figuring out sometimes doesn't look like walking away from it and having the wisdom, right? That inner wisdom to say, I did this as far as it can go. And now my life energy is better spent moving on to the next adventure. I love that. I love that. My dad had the dirty word in our house was C-A-N-T. Oh, and I came in, I was trying to start the lawnmower to do my Saturday morning chores one morning. And I was not starting. So I come into him and I go, dad, I can't get the lawnmower started. And I saw his molars meet. And I was like, oh, geez, I said the word. He got up slowly, walked out, came out, tried to start the lawnmower.
16:45It didn't start. Got a toolbox out, did a few things, started it. And he started it. And as it was running, he came over to me and got down on his knees, put his hands on my shoulders and said, you see, son, you were just having trouble. And I remember going, I realized in that moment, what you said, sometimes we are unable, but we can seek help to get a solution. So it's same lineage as your thought there. Yeah. I love that. Actually, I want to talk more about that. I was going to ask you about that. I'm glad that you teed up that story. So you're actually the first person, Matthew, that I've ever known that has parents that have gotten divorced twice.
17:25And so yours married three times. Mine have gotten married twice and divorced twice. And I literally call them. So they're mid-70s right now. I love them. They're crazy and amazing and awesome and fiery and all the things. And I was like, y 'all, did you get married again? And my mom, she's like, we're actually, we need to do it. Like I need to do it before we're, before we're done. And it was, it was just, it was so wild because when I tell people about my, they're like, wait a minute to each other. I'm like, they're addicted to each other. Like they've been together since they were 17. They can't quit, but it's been fiery and like the plates and you know, it's like, yeah, plates were thrown to my, like, that's what I grew up with and your parents and filled so many values of you.
18:08And I loved that story with your dad, with the camp, I got to tell you. So, um, More stories from the book. So Josh, my partner, we've been together for 20 years now. We were in the car and I was telling him how much I love the book and when I was getting ready for today. And one of the stories that I can't get out of my head, Matthew, is about you being on Don Phillips' couch early in your career and that uber powerful distinction that you learned about the energy between wanting versus needing. Can you tell us that story and walk us through that? because I feel like it's so valuable for all of us, whether we're at the beginning of our career, starting a new business, or you're just starting that next chapter of your life.
18:48Yeah. So I'd done my first film, Days of Confused, between my junior and senior year in college. I then went back, graduated. And after I graduated, the movie had just come out. So now I graduated. Now I've packed up my U-Haul and my 2 ,000 bucks and I'm heading west, young man. until I get to the ocean and take a right and go up 12.6 miles. And I'm going to pull in front of Don Phillips' house, the only person I know in Hollywood, the man I met in the bar a year before who cast me in Days to Confuse. And I'm now moving out there. And I do it. It was a Saturday night. I pull up to his place. I move in.
19:30I'm sleeping on his couch. Well, I go out there with$2 ,000. I'm out there. It's been a couple of weeks. some down to maybe a little bit below a thousand. I'm like, so Don, you need to meet an agent, man. And I need, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta find some work. I need to meet an agent. And Don snaps at me and he goes, let me tell you what you need to do, McConaughey. What you need to do is get the hell out of Hollywood, get the hell out of here and go off and do something where you You forget what you think you need to do. Because if you go in and meet an agent right now, needy like you are, they will smell your need and you ain't got a chant in this business.
20:15I was like, whoa. He's like, yeah, get the hell out of here. I don't want to hear what you think you need to do. This place will sniff that and you're done. You'll never get in the door. So I did. I went off with my two buddies, Kalaz and Rory Cochran. We packed a backpack, 500 bucks and got a cheap ticket and went to rent some motorcycles. Luckily, there's a story in the book. The guy gave us the motorcycles for free and rode through Europe for a month. And I came back and I had not thought about getting an agent. I had not thought about getting a job. I didn't know how much money I had in my account.
20:48And it wasn't much. It was just a few couple hundred bucks, maybe. And I'm cruising around through the day, enjoying the day, being light and cool and being present with everybody. And that goes on. And we have our dinner one night. and it's a week later after I've been back. And all of a sudden he goes, you're ready. And I go, for what? He goes, tomorrow morning, got you a meeting at the William Morris Agency. Brian Schwarzman, Beth Holton, 9 a.m. I was like, cool. He was right. And you see my whole reaction? I was, before I was, man, I would have gone to that meeting like going, you know, so, I mean, you saw him rolling.
21:22I can do this. You know, I need it. And I would have been out in the first 10 seconds. but I went in, I was present. I wasn't any less prepared. I was actually able to more relaxed to be able to be myself in the meeting and go, yeah, well, who am I here? What do I think I can offer? Here's what I think I can offer. And here's what I hope you can offer me. You know, I was, and so it was great advice. Perfect timing. When I read that story and I was thinking about it and my partner's an actor, he's been in, you know, countless things over the years. And I feel like that energy for any of us that you can, you want it, but you don't need it.
22:02Like, do you feel like when Don said that to you, it changed you on a cellular level? Like you got that download. You got that message because it, I think for what you've done. Yeah, please. It was, it was a little scary though. And it wasn't, I wouldn't say until probably 20 years later that I think I really got it. And I was able to trust myself with wanting and not necessarily needing because from later on, there were times where I was like, I need this. oh wait, don't need it, you need to want it more. But if I don't need it, will I put in the work? Will I give the same amount of effort if I just want it?
22:34Is want too lazy fair? Is want too, you know, will I be lazy if I just want? So it took me to my 40s to trust that, no, nobody, if you just want it and you don't need it, you'll work just as hard. You know what I mean? You'll Trust yourself, you know, that you'll do that. But that took another couple of decades for me to trust myself fully.
23:01Now, I've covered for that. I've needed some things many times where I went ahead and said, like, get your want face on, man. Get want. Just want this. Don't need it. If you need it, you'll blow it. If they can smell you needing it, you'll blow it. If you need it, you're going to be trespassing. You're going to be interrupting. You're not going to be listening. You're going to be looking for the result. You're going to be trying to land it on hello. Doesn't work with relationships. Doesn't work with career. So can we sit back and go, I really want to. This is what I really want. You're what I really want.
23:38This is what I really want. But also going, look, children take it from a need to a want. Family, all of a sudden career goes to the two hole at least, maybe the three hole. I was, did I have a little fear again that, oh, if my career is not my full identity, what I need for my identity and sense of significance, will I try to do it as well? Will I work as hard at it? Will I try to be as great as I can be at it? Well, actually, I found when I got the family stuff, I got better at it, even though it was maybe third priority of what I needed for self-fulfillment, for my own fulfillment. I want you to say more on this.
24:21I think this is so big. This is so, so big and so important, especially like I know in my own head, as I look at myself and say like how much of my life and how much of me has been driven, like, you know, that desire for significance and achievement. And some of it comes from a really beautiful place. And some of it comes from a very fearful place. And some of it comes from a very insecure place. You know, there's all that, all the mix in there. And I love what you said, because there are a lot of folks that tune into our show who they're overachievers. You know, they overwork, they overstrive and the career or the business or, you know, the accolades, that thing becomes number one.
24:55And I think I'll at least reveal the own fears in my own life, that if I expand my identity of who I am a little bit and the career or the business starts to come down a notch, right? And I let other areas of my life start to take a little more shine or a little more space. Am I not going to be as good as I was? mm-hmm well we want to be i know for me i think this is true when we are achieving or even overachieving part of the great pleasure is it's great freedom to be obsessed with something i love it that's what i love about a performance it's what i loved about writing the book i'm on an island.
25:41I'm on vacation because I have a singular obsession. And when I'm hitting it, I'm like, bam, bam. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. More deeper, higher, go, scale. It's happening. It's an emanation. And I am the subject of it. Nothing objective about it. I'm not even hopping out, checking out how I'm doing. It's just happening. And the green lights keep coming up. People are going, yep, check, carry on. It's beautiful to be in that place.
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26:15Now, I don't want to lose that place when I am chasing down something in my career or going to work or going to write the book. because though I spend more time with checking, checking the quality boxes of my identity with my family and my relationship with my wife, we pick our zones. I'm, you know, day to day, I'm attending them and my children who are dependent on me and where we're going as a family and choices and my relationship with Camilla and, you know, I've got, I've got an office and I do some work and things like that. But when it's time for me to go, okay, ding, ding, you're in the ring.
26:58It's time. She goes, I go out the door and she goes, don't look over your shoulder. Got this. We're handled here. We did the work to get to this point. Go. Do not, go be obsessed. Go come.
27:14Now I say that to people and I'm, and I'm not surprised, but so many, most of the people go, oh my gosh, really? you have someone in your life that does that with you. And I am happy to say I do. But she couldn't do that for me if I wasn't attending. I don't believe she could do that for me if I wasn't attending her and the family. And if I haven't, if we haven't as a family built up enough equity before Popeye goes down the rabbit hole, if we got to build up equity to go into it so when you come out of it your family is not back in the debit section it's not it's not in the red you know what i mean so you got you got it in that preparation and family time you got to do that projection again oh i'm about to be a little more unavailable for the next two months i'm about to get singularly obsessed i'm about to go do 14 hour work day six days a week i'm about to see y 'all at the end of the day and i'm gonna be toast yes tired crispy and we're gonna share a few stories and hugs and i'm gonna have a drink and i'm gonna go to bed again and again and again that's what it's gonna take yeah so before we go into that what are we all gonna do so we can fill our so we can fill up ourselves as a family and i love and what we got going and how they gotta cancel this stuff my schedule i need to go to my son's game i need to go to my daughter's play we need to hang out we need to have that weekend No, we don't want visitors.
28:47We need to get, let's get strong as a family because we're about to go and Popeye's about to go off in the desert. You know what I mean? So filling that up, I believe on the entrance to when we go get obsessed is part of what makes it quite more manageable, I think. Yeah. No, it definitely does. That, I had to learn that the hard way a couple of times. And I think, you know, that's one of the best things about getting older is all the times you F up and then you're like, oh, I don't need to do that again. again. So we talked about you love bumper stickers and slogans. I do. I love mantras. So mantras is one of the ways that I just keep myself on track and they're fun.
29:25And one of my favorites is simplify to amplify. So those three words have changed my life so many times. They continue to because, you know, as a creative human being, it's like, oh, we could do this. And what about this? And oh, this sounds real fun. And my spirit wants to do that. And then all of a sudden, you a lot of complexity. So take us back to the time when Camilla was six months pregnant and you got a call from your production office and you did not answer it, but you called your lawyer instead. Yes. Simplify to amplify. It's a good one, right? So it's really good. And I knew exactly where you were going.
30:01As soon as you said the line, I was like, oh, I know. I think I know where I've got a story of that in my own life.
30:09career was good life was good successful I was making movies particularly I was making a lot of rom-coms at the time they were fun they paid well I was enjoying them had a house in Malibu single was healthy had a production company five, six employees really nice office down in Venice
30:32in Texas and the phone rang It was not a cell phone. It was an office phone. And I went to pick it up and I saw the number. It was a 310 number. It was from my office. Office called all the time. I always picked up the phone. This particular day, I looked and as I reached out and saw the number, I don't think I thought about it. I think my hand stopped first and then I thought about it. My hand stopped. I didn't want to pick up the phone. I remember looking at my hand. that's weird. I've got my facilities about me and nothing's wrong with me physically. No, it's a choice it just made not to pick up the phone.
31:13And I looked at that number and I let it ring and I held my hand there. And after I quit ringing, said with my hand still up, I was like, okay, this makes no sense. You got an office calling you that you pay the rent, you pay the salaries, you pay the overhead, and you don't want to pick up the phone from there? What do you investing in? I then lowered my hand to the phone, called my lawyer and said, you know what? I want to shut down the production company. I got this music label. I've been spending a lot of time off. It turned into time on. It's turned into more than a hobby. It's taken up a lot of my time of day.
31:49I'm not really getting it. I want to cut that out. I want to have my foundation, my family. I want to be an actor for hire.
31:57He heard the clarity of my voice. We worked together long enough. He was like, I got it. I'm on it. All of a sudden, not the following Monday, it took a couple of weeks to kind of clean everything up and cut the weed from the chafe there. But what happened is all of a sudden when I had on my proverbial Monday morning desk, I had three things instead of eight. And I noticed that, oh, what I did have with all the things in the production company and the development and the writing and then on the music label, I had like eight little campfires on my desk and they were all blazing, but there are these little campfires.
32:34And soon as I got rid of five of them. I had three. And all the flame from the five that I got rid of hopped into the three and the three were big bonfires. And man, I was like, ah, 24 hours in a day. And I got 14 of them. I'm going to go to work. I was able to have each one of those three now, family, foundation, and active fire, had much more meaning. They had more gravitas. I had more ambition. There was clarity. There was more purpose in each one of them because I made room. It's a little of that. Ryan Holiday said this to me the other day. Sometimes he has to say, be rude maybe to an acquaintance or a stranger because he needs to go spend time with his close friend or his family.
33:27Because to spend time, too much time maybe with the acquaintance or the stranger at that time when he's busy would actually be being rude to his good friend or his family. Yes. And so Simplify to Amplify, I was spending more time on the quality of the things that I really cared about. and got rid of some of the excess, cut off some chafe, got rid of these little campfires so I could have three fires that were Valhalla and they were burned. They were big flames. They were giving me life and I was giving them life. It's so good. It's so good. And I love Ryan, by the way. Ryan's a friend. He's so smart.
34:04I remember I had him on the show and there was this question. He's like, I just have to say this just because A, I love Ryan and B, it was a question that stuck with me. He was like, Marie, he's like, I'm always asking myself, Like, how can I be grateful for what's going wrong? And do you know, like when somebody says something to you, you're like, I'm like, Ryan, that's good. And you know, we're going deep on that. But that notion though, I love that you had all these little campfires and it was like, I think you wrote about in the book, like you're getting B's in a lot of these areas in your life because you're - I was making C's.
34:34Oh, there you go. In eight classes. I was making C's in eight classes, little campfires. And once I cut them down to three, all of a sudden I was making A's in the three. And isn't it interesting too? It's like, I feel like in our, in our culture, in our society, like there's just so much of this, like push, like more is better, more is better. And it's actually really not. And we're going to talk about that. We'll talk about that. Yes, yes, yes. But I want to take us because we're in a, we're in a timeline sequence in terms of, I need to read these words to you. I'm not kidding you, Matthew. I laughed.
35:04This made me laugh out loud four times yesterday when I was retyping it into my notes. So hang with me for a minute. I think my audience will love this. So it's about really evolution and your experience of unbranding. You write, my career path and the characters and films I was getting offered and doing were not satisfying to me anymore. Bored with the rom-com roles and the worlds they inhabited, I'd been going to bed with an itch butt, waking up with a stinky finger for long enough. I don't know. I think I'm always going to be in junior high because I will never not laugh at the idea of a stinky finger and an itchy butt.
35:44One of my favorite things ever. But it's also lead us into this incredible story of what you went through. And I feel like I'm just seeing this now in my themes of everything that, you know, there's so much that resonated for me in green lights, but it's like you have this tremendous sense of faith and I feel inner guidance that you're tapped into. Or if you don't feel tapped into it, you go get relative to it so it can come and enter and be present. But talk to us about this time of a stinky finger and an itchy butt and just so you're like, I'm done. Back to that repeat offender stuff, right?
36:25I wasn't sleeping well with my career. And it coincided with the time I was doing rom-coms. I was the go-to guy for rom-coms. I enjoyed doing the rom-coms. Like I said, they were paying well. I was enjoying them and I was the guy. But rom-coms are built to be very buoyant. You're supposed to float from cloud to cloud. Don't drop an anchor in a rom-com. They're supposed to be light, lightweight. My life was getting heavyweight. Met the woman I'm falling in love with. She's pregnant with our first child. The only thing I ever wanted to be was a father. Whoa, life is getting major capital V vitality.
37:17I'm feeling strong and clear. I'm crying harder. I'm laughing louder. I'm smiling bigger. I'm feeling more joy in my heart than I've ever felt. More pain at the same time. This is drama. Real life was happening. And I remember saying, oh, man, I wish. I remember doing this, looking in the mirror going, so you're feeling more alive in your real life than you were. And I remember going, well, congratulations, because we've all been there where it's the opposite, right? You know, we're only alive at our work in real life. We're like, oh, geez, I'm numb. So I remember going, congratulations. But I said, look, if my work could just challenge the vitality maybe of my life.
38:01But those roles that I wanted to do, which happened to be dramas, Hollywood said, no, no, no, McConaughey, stay in your lane. And I was like, oh, but I'll take this pay cut. You don't have to pay me eight. I'll take one. We said, stay in your lane, McConaughey. Stay over there. Were you getting meetings on those? Like, were you telling your agent and were you going after scripts and they just kept shooting you down? A lot of them didn't even, wouldn't even make it to a meeting. A lot of them were, here's the interest and we're not interested. I'm showing interest, but it's very clear from them.
38:31We are not interested. So we really don't need to even take that in-person meeting. Okay. So I'm like, okay. Well, if I cannot do what it is that I want to do, I think I'm going to quit doing what I've been doing. And I remember calling my agent. I'm not doing any more rom-com. His name was Jim Tull. And he very quickly after I said, I'm not doing any more rom-com. He goes, okay. And I remember going, what do you mean? Okay. I go, what's your boss going to say on Monday morning when you go on the Monday morning meeting at CA? And he goes, well, God, he's not doing rom-coms. I know the dime on the dollar tithe commission that I've been bringing you on.
39:16It's been a nice number. And I'm now, one of your horses is saying I'm doing it. He goes, I don't work for them. I work for you. I went, okay. So I've moved to Texas. I'm with Camilla. She's now pregnant with her first child. and I've now told my agent and let the industry know I'm not doing rom-coms anymore. Don't even send me anymore. All that come in was some rom-coms. Pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass.
39:48And about six months go by. Some other rom-coms, everything. All of a sudden, they start to slow down. They're not even coming in that much anymore. I call my agent. I'm like, anything? Is it sniffing? He goes, I remember this. He goes, Matthew, it's been two months since I even heard your name. I'm going, oof. Okay. Now, I'd made this decision to do this with Camilla, and there was a lot of knees bent on the spiritual side of this choice. I knew that it was a big risk, and that was possibly writing myself a one-way ticket out of Hollywood. I questioned. Look, the rest of my family, my brothers and stuff were like, what is your major malfunction, little brother?
40:31you are you are paralysis of analysis here you're rolling man over here in the wrong place you're making a great living but now you're going to step out and say no i'm not doing any of that what are you what are you doing but i had to and camille understood i had to make the choice and did you and i'm curious so you camille is so supportive you you knew it you knew it deep down but did you have the monkey mind keep going like did you f this up mcconaughey do you know what i mean like like is this too long is this so am i making the fatal one decision was made i was never going back on it i was going to ride that out with the understanding that i might look up and go that was bad there was a better way to go about that but i said i'll try and i even started to look at other vocations i thought of high school football coach i thought of conducting orchestras I thought of becoming a high school teacher, a wildlife guide in Africa, moved the family over.
41:33I thought about and I was seriously considering these things, thought about getting back into law. And then year goes by, I've kind of got a daily routine, but I don't have work. I'm trying to stay spiritually in shape and physically in shape because I need I need these things to achieve each day. and I've got, thankfully, a newborn son. That was my North Star to go, hey, Matthew, you get wobbly. That old bottle over there starts looking better earlier in the afternoon. Look right there. You cannot go wrong. I remember telling myself, you cannot give too much attention to that, your child. I go, if you lean into that at any time, you're in the black.
42:19You're in the asset section. I remember telling myself, you can't do too much of that. So that kept me a bit of a rudder. My son did and fall in love with Camilla and being parents for the first time. But on personal level and achievement, I did have a large sense of it. I was gaining a large sense of insignificance. I was like, what am I doing? What am I going to sit around here and start making chimes? you know i don't i don't i'm not gonna become a pothead i mean what i got ambitions i want to do let's go um but no i'm not going back i gotta wait 18 months go by and now i must say at 18 months similar to the australian story which is in the book i'm gaining a little bit of pride about my endurance even though with each day i'm further away and Hollywood's not calling.
43:18I'm getting something about going through, oh, should I go back? No, I'm not going back. Over and over and over. I've got some armor. I've got a little pride and honor that I'm in this, I'm paying my penitence and I'm on this pilgrimage. The longer it goes, yes, yes, I'm getting, you know, 18 months and this script comes in my mind. It says it's a rom-com actually coming but it's really really good man you gotta check this out and it comes in an eight million dollar offer and i read it it was good but it was still in that genre not the one that challenged my lifestyle and i read it and that ate me and i said no thank you they came back immediately with the two million dollar offer i said no thank you they came back immediately with the 12 million dollar offer i said no thank you they came back with a 14.5 million dollar offer And I said, let me read that again.
44:20So I read it again. It was the same words as the$8 million offer. But Marie, it was better written. It was more well written. It was funnier. Magic. It was magic. I could see. I think I might just be the guy for this.
44:38I ultimately said, no, thank you. And I don't have proof of this, but I've got a pretty good hunch a lot of this is true. Me saying no after 18 months of being not working in Hollywood, not doing another rom-com, but me saying no to that$14.5 million offer, I think really sent sort of an invisible lightning bolt through Hollywood going, oh, not only is McConnell not bluffing, he's got something going on. he's not he's not running from us he's gotta he's he's honest to say no to that amount of money what do you what what are you up to made me interesting i think maybe a little novel yes like well okay he just drew a big line in the sand and we've thought by now we really pull them back in.
45:31And he said, no, thank you. Gracefully. That's when I think I became a novel idea for maybe you'd be right for Killer Joe, Mudd, Dallas Buyers Club, the true detective, all the things that I did that I went on a wonderful run there. That's what I was looking for 20 months before. That was not even part of the menu for me. And then they came and I just went and jumped on them and started just doing them back to back and loved it. So that unbranding, I had to unbrand to rebrand, really. And I'd say no to what it was that I was doing because I couldn't get what it was I wanted to do.
46:25Are you loving this conversation? Well, Matthew and I have an incredible opportunity for you. Coming up on April 24th is a free one-day live virtual event called The Art of Living. So it's going to be with Matthew, Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, Trent Shelton, and myself. And together, we're all going to explore how we can all get more of what we want in life. So the event is totally free. And you can go get registered right now at marieliving.com. That's M-A-R-I-E-L-I-V-I-N.com. Go grab your seat, reserve it, and I'll see you there.
47:05You know, for me, when I hear that story and because of my partner and our friends who are in the industries, I get to see and listen and witness so many different experiences of projects and green lights and stuff falling apart when the funding was there or not there. I loved this story so much because, again, it brought me back to this notion of your inner wisdom. For me, these are my words, of you tapping into something greater than yourself, that source of wisdom. This is not there's something better out there. And you wanted, but you didn't need. And thank you for telling that story, because I think, you know, folks listening, they're not an Oscar winning actor.
47:50but every single one of us has something in us that we are hungry for. And if it's not what's being served right now, and it's not what people are considering you for, or you've kind of, you know, been known for something, reinvention is possible and unbranding is possible. And so just thank you for sharing it. And know, as you said, you are going to want to pull the parachute.
48:21And, hey, I don't know, man, you might have to.
48:27But I don't know. Whatever was wise about it or whatever spiritual about it, I was betting on an immortal finish line in my mortal life. And it was a truth, you know, the truth that came to me and was true when I was alone in bed at 2 a.m., cold and shivering. going, what am I doing? The truth was still sitting there going, dude, this is not negotiable. You are in line and on time, vertically and horizontally. And this is the truth. Trust that. When it gets loud, when you get wobbly, trust that. And that helped me go, don't negotiate that. Stick with it. So part of the navigating it, though, is when do we give ourselves those non-negotiables?
49:23That does help with the navigation in the hard time, the hard, the barren times when we're wanting to pull the parachute. If we give ourselves some non-negotiables and go, well, that's that I'm not negotiating with that. There may be another way I should go about doing this, but this is a non-negotiable in my life. I'm not going back. There's a freedom in that. Yes. You cued me up perfectly. I'm keeping my eye because I try to be a good partner. And I see we only got a few minutes left. So there's a couple more things I want to say. And then I want to make sure we talk about this incredible event that's coming up.
49:55You said the word I'm going to next. So my number one value in life, what I know to be true about myself, this soul, is freedom is my number one value. It's for whatever reason, in this incarnation, in this body, that's what I'm here to explore and get curious about and experience in all different ways. um talk to me about responsibility and freedom and the freedom of responsibility yeah i love this one i keep because i keep coming back to it you know um and i'd love to hear your definition of freedom but freedom without responsibility seems to me to be to be a chaos chaos anarchy it has no form it's four-dimensional and it flies it doesn't have meaning it has no lineage That one thing is not connected to the next.
50:41We don't build in something. We don't tend to something. When we're responsible for something, we tend to it. We care for it. We give value to it. It has meaning to us. Meaning that is qualitative, deeper, wider, and higher. And when we have, we wake up in the morning with things that we care about. We see them. They're in front of us. And we maintain them. And hopefully we can do more than maintain them. We can maybe help them thrive and grow. And, you know, we've got to pull the weeds to make sure we're not procrastinating those responsibilities. Pulling weeds on that is like as a parent, much easier to say yes to your kids about everything than no.
51:23The no is the tough part. The no is the part we've got to stay up late and go through this. And I just want to say yes, okay. Oh, but that would let a weed grow. I'm going to, in my child's life, no, spend the time. Be responsible for that. that be a responsible parent or responsible preparation for my career or a day's work, allows me to whatever happens, hopefully when my kids move at the house at 18, I can go, man, hey, Camilla, I think we did the best we could. Not guarantee, but did you leave anything in the bag? I didn't leave anything in the bag. Now we're free. And hopefully they're free.
52:04Go to work. take the responsibility to prepare and get prepared. Then I go to set and your partner will know this. Then you chunk all that away. And on the set, you're playing. You're not working. You're free. That's right. Why am I free? Because I worked on the playbook. I took the responsibility of my vocation as an architect and a person in construction on a character in this scene on this day to be prepared so I can now go be free. I took the responsibility to now I'm going to fly. Now chunk the rules, chunk the rule book. Now I'm calling audibles. Let's go. Because I know the game plan. That's right.
52:41That responsibility gives us freedom. The other thing, I've chased down freedom without taking responsibility. And I regret it. Tell me more. What do you mean? Well, like that Scorpion Springs story. Yeah. You know, where I decide I don't need to study my character. I don't need to know about the scene. I'm an instinctual actor. I'll get there and just wing it. That almost made me throw up in my mouth when I read that. I had so many, Matthew, I had so many. So in a previous earlier part of my career, I taught dance, hip hop, all different kinds of dance. And I would have this reoccurring dream of being up in front on stage with like hundreds of, you know, people there ready to learn.
53:24And I had no choreography. I had nothing. And when I read your story, and by the way, everyone listening right now, like if you have not gotten this book yet or read it, I don't know where you've been, but you need to get it and read it because we're going to be teeing up a lot of other things. But that story, Matthew, I literally, I had to close the book for a second because I got that sick. And it was in Spanish too, right? That was like - Yeah, the story, I show up and I haven't looked at the script because I'm just going to do what my man would do. Right idea, McConaughey, way to go. Not a good one.
53:57And I show up and right before we're about to do the take, I decide, oh, show me the sides. I may have a look. Because in my mind, if it's written well, I'll be like, well, of course, that's what I would say. And if it's not written well, I'm going to be like, well, I'll just say what I would say anyway. And I look at it. It's one page, two page, three page, four page monologue by my guy in Spanish.
54:21And I got the media, the bead of sweat came up on the back of my neck, starts tripping down. And I remember saying, for whatever reason, can I get 12 minutes, please, to the crew? And in my head, I thought 12 minutes was a short enough time not to really inconvenience the crew. And also maybe a long enough time, because I took a semester of Spanish in the 11th grade, to memorize four pages in Spanish. It was not enough time. So I came back. I don't know what I did. I spoke some spangles. It was embarrassing. Blah, blah, blah. I straight faced it. I acted like what I was doing was intentional. Got through the day.
54:59Pulled dog through. One of the hardest, worst days of my life. Travel home. Pulled over on the side of the road after I got about five miles from the set and pulled over and just in rage of tears. Beat the steering wheel and told myself, never again do that to yourself. Never.
55:15Embarrassment. Wasn't freedom. Oh man, it was the longest day of working day of my life. I was just trying to keep from sweating. I didn't keep from sweating. I remember they came up trying to clean up the sweat. I was like, no, my character just sweats because I knew I was just going to keep sweating. I was just trying to get through it. It's still going to get to me. It's still going to get to me. I'm telling you, I'm going to wake up tonight and be like, Matthew, it's game to me. But you're right, but it's not freedom. and the freedom, the responsibility of freedom and the freedom of responsibility.
55:50It's, it's, that structure creates our freedom. It really does in so many ways. Yeah. For you were saying like, so one of the things I've been exploring for myself, this notion of freedom for me, slightly different lens. I've been looking at it as this equivalent and I don't have this figured out yet, but this is what I'm exploring. The sense of peace, freedom for me and peace have this connection in me. And if I'm making choices and setting up stability and surrender and stillness in my life where I have peace, there's this incredible sense of energy and freedom that comes to me. And when I'm making, if I make decisions from my egoic mind or that wanting to get ahead or, you know, anything like that, it's like no peace, ain't no peace.
56:32And my body starts to revolt. That was the other thing too. And then I want to get onto this incredible evolution that is coming out of this approach book. And we're going to turn it into a process, which you've done so beautifully. I want to talk about that. But the other thing I just want to acknowledge you for, and this is something I'm super passionate about, and I think that it's on tap yet in our culture is the wisdom in our bodies, like the wisdom in our physical bodies. You went on so many incredible adventures and you continue to do that. And I think that's one thing that's beautiful about artists and performers and dancers.
57:05When you move your body, there's so much intelligence and wisdom and that channel opens up and you get ideas and, and just this intuitive knowing that I have, at least for me, doesn't come through this thing. It does not come through this thing.
57:21I mean, I think it's a combination. That's part of the dance, the mind, body, and the spirit, because sometimes there's great movement and being, as you've talked about, having that complete stillness. I know for me, I do need to break a sweat every day. I need to let my brain get going, get the synapses, snap it, get sharp. It creates new ideas. My creativity spikes. My energy spikes. My patience spikes. Two more alive. It's definitely led to quality and health in my life mentally as well as spiritually. um it i mean
58:09when you're like when you tell you when you're at peace how much of that for you does that have to do with actual movement or how much does movement lend to that stillness or do you feel like you're actually in movement when you're physiologically still in those peaceful moments they're different textures and tones so it's different experience Like when I dance, there's a class out here that I do. It's the closest thing to being a club. I was a club kid. So I have glow sticks, like all the things, party until. And so beautiful, different stage of my life. Been there, done that. But there's a place here in New York City called Forward Space.
58:48And it's actually someone that I used to dance with and teach with back in the day. And she's got this beautiful experience. And you go in a class and it's so dark and it's like you're in a club and there's bodies that are moving in sync and the music's dope. The movement's dope. There's a repetitious meditative but party thing happening. And, you know, it's 10 a.m. You know, it's like it, but it's fantastic. And so there is I get so peaceful and emotionally free that sometimes I start crying and there is no sadness in me. It is just a pure release. I don't know where it comes from, but I just let it happen.
59:23Then there's other times in stillness for me personally, if it's like a meditation where it's just like I'm able to somehow find this moment where I am connecting to something I don't understand, quite frankly. I don't know how to give words to, but it feels incredibly fluid and like there's a lot of movement, but I know my physical body is still. So I definitely don't have it perfectly figured out, but I find a sense of great peace and freedom in both of those experiences. Same thing with me with sweat. When I'm sweating and moving and doing, man, I feel connected. I go there with music, I think, and the djembe or the congas.
1:00:12Yes. Um, and one of my great mentors, Penny Allen for 19 years, very early on, just like you take, take, take your djembe to every single set with you before you go on. And whether it was a, for instance, a Wolf of Wall Street, that's me getting into a rhythm to get out of my head and get on a higher sphere that doesn't make sense. No. Remember, we've already done the playbook. We've already prepared. Now let's get into the rhyme. Fuck the reason. Whenever you go action, here we go. That's a rhythm thing. And I still practice that. And that's what music reminded me of when you said like you get in that dance where you get a rock and rhythm and all of a sudden it's freeing because you're getting out of your mind.
1:01:04And that's the body. That's the body rhythm. Talk about frequency too. Like find your frequency for me. That is like, that is vibrating. That is tuning in. That is connecting on a whole other level. And it's, yeah, music, movement, sweat, dance. Okay. So, and I feel like now we're starting to dip our toes into the pool of taking approach and going into process. So as we wrap up, let's talk about what's going to go down on April 24th. So for everyone listening, there is an incredible event that Matthew has put together. I'm super blessed and excited to be a part of it. But before we tell people how to get involved, Matthew, can you give us a little preview of what this is, where the inspiration comes from, what folks can expect?
1:01:53Yeah. So on April 24th, we're going to get together, myself, Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, yourself, Trent's going to come with us. We're going to get under the hood of this Greenlights approach we've been talking about. Tony and Dean came to me months ago and said, we love the approach you've proposed here in Greenlights, the perspectives. And I heard over the last couple of years, people come to me and go, ask certain questions and say, oh, this is how, what it gave me or how it helped me, in this perspective. But can you give me more, Matthew, about like, what do I know to trust the green light I'm in?
1:02:33Is it a solar-powered one or is it battery-powered? I don't want the battery-powered one, right? Or what do I do? You know, I know it's hard to make those decisions at the right decision at the yellow light, but how do you know? Can you give me something more measurable for like what I can measure at the yellow light for what decision to make? And though the red light, we talked a little bit about earlier. How do I know when to trust and live in the red light and let it become green? And how do I know when sometimes to go ahead and not wallow in it and not be victimized by it, but still give the pain, the crisis, the credit that it's due?
1:03:13So what we're going to do is get under that hood and start talking about, okay, from approach to process, what are some tools that we can go, hey, here's a measuring paradigm here where I can go, oh, I can look at it this way and this way. And both may be true, but I'm kind of equipped with some arsenal of how I can handle a red light. What can help me make the right decision at the yellow light? And what can also, if we are in the left lane of life, catching those green lights, what can keep us understanding there's an art to running downhill to actually double down while we're over there because we know that it doesn't last forever.
1:03:48So let's make it count while we're there. and let's not get nervous and go, oh, it's too good. Let's not become victims of Icarus in reverse. Oh, it's getting hot. A wax is going to melt. No, it's not. It's still 60 degrees Fahrenheit, babe. Keep rolling. You're in the left lane cruising. It's easy right now for a reason. Don't make a straight line crooked. Let's roll. And we all do that. I think we all suffer from that sometimes when we go, Oh, I've had it. Imposter says, is this too good to be true? No, it's happening. So we're going to talk about tools that can hopefully be transformative and more personal to people.
1:04:31Or they can go, oh, I see the decision-making paradigm toolbox I can use for me in my life when I'm faced with these. Oh, oh, yeah. I saw your red light or yellow light or green light, but now you're defining something that I have in my life. And oh, that's practical. Yes, I have. I didn't think of that. Thank you for reminding me. Oh, and here's what I could do? That's what we're going to get into. I love this because I've been spending like the past 22 years of my life. I'm obsessed with human potential. I love seeing people win. And I'm also an action-based human. Like I love, okay, great. This sounds awesome.
1:05:10But how can we put this insight into action? Because insight without action is worthless, right? What are you going to do with it? So this is happening April 24th for everyone listening in my audience. We've got a special link for y 'all. It's marieliven.com. That's L-I-V-I-N-O-G. And it's totally free. It's totally free. Like this is good. I'm so excited. And I got to say, Matthew, so I've known Dean and Tony for a super long time, right? Dean known forever. and he's sometimes seen totally like, hey Marie, come speak at this, come speak at that. And for whatever reason, the dates never lined up.
1:05:43And Dean and I have been wanting to do something for a long time. And it was, I forget what it was, a couple of months ago, he's like, hey, I think this is actually, this thing and I happen. I was like, looked at my calendar, I was like, this is awesome. And I will tell you, like I'm a very body-led kind of person. I always trust my heart and my soul. And when I heard about all this, I was like, this isn't, it was an instant not even thought of yes. Remember when you were talking about how the phone rang and your body, it just did its thing. That was the same thing that happened when those guys texted me about this.
1:06:12I was like, I don't even know what it is, but my body is saying yes, because this feels like in alignment with the exact kind of stuff. And especially because you know what? I love one of the other things about this notion. It's like, yeah, sometimes there's the red light. Sometimes you got to go sometimes and it's not always going to be the same answer. It's not an easy answer. I feel like the notion of this is equipping people to get more in touch with their own inner wisdom and to know how to play those levers and to have that, the art and that perspective to be able to hang back for a second and consider rather than out of fear or something, just always push it ahead.
1:06:48It's like, no, no, we don't do that. There's more intelligence that's available to us. So that's why I was super pumped. I was so excited. Thank you. Yes. I'm glad it felt that way. It's going to be, it's going to be a lot, a lot, a lot of fun. And I hear what you said, you're obsessed with human potential. Me too. Yes. And you know what? If we're all obsessed us have some, some form of obsession with our own human potential. We've all got job security. That's right. Forever. So yes, it's so right. So I just, a, I want to thank you, congratulate you again on this book. Um, again, for everyone listening, you got to come, doesn't matter.
1:07:19Even if you're hearing this is because it's going to go up and it's going to stay up for a while. Even if you're hearing this after April 24th, you can still go MarieLiven.com. You're going to still be able to take advantage of all the incredibleness that Matthew and all of us are going to put together. And we're going to explore this together. We're going to explore this together. It's going to be amazing. So Matthew, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. It's awesome. We're going to have some fun. Yeah, have a great time. And, uh, and I'll see you very soon. See you there.
1:07:44Thanks everybody. Come on now. Wasn't that amazing? I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. And one more time, you need to come join us for the art of living on April 24th. It is totally free. It's going to be phenomenal. You can go to marielivin.com. That's marielivin.com to save your ticket. Now, as it relates to this episode, I'm super curious. What is the biggest insight that you're taking away from this conversation? And most importantly, how can you put that insight into action starting right now? As always, I really appreciate you for tuning in, for watching, for listening.
1:08:24And until next time, stay on your game and keep going for your big dreams, because the world really does need that very special gift that only you have. I'll catch you next time.
1:08:40Oh my goodness. You're incredible. You're still listening. Now look, if you enjoyed this podcast, I think you're going to really love my free audio training called How to Get anything you want. You're going to learn three strategies that'll give you the clarity and confidence to build your dreams on your terms. Just Google Marie Forleo, how to get anything you want, and you can download this audio training for free right now. Enjoy it.
From the publisher
Want MORE from your life? Today, the iconic Matthew McConaughey is on #MarieTV to share his secret to finding your frequency and getting in rhythm with life. So you can stop settling and create massive success — on your own terms.
Matthew is an Oscar-winning actor, New York Times bestselling author, philanthropist, and devoted father and husband who's known for his dogged determination to stay true to himself. Click PLAY now to learn McConaughey's best advice for a satisfying, successful, and authentic life.
Plus, if you want more of me and McConaughey, I'm speaking at his *first-ever* one-day live event on April 24th. Grab your FREE virtual ticket here → MarieLivin.com
