Re:Thinking with Adam GrantMatthew McConaughey on writing, acting, and self-doubt | ReThinking with Adam Grant | TED
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
30 min read · 6,189 words- 0:00 – 1:21
Writing to rebuild belief and stave off cynicism
- AGAdam Grant
Now you're publishing four decades [laughs] worth of poems and journal entries that you wrote down to forget. Why?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Because I need to remember. Writing this book and this tour I'm doing is definitely for me. This, this is helping pull me out of my own doubt. [upbeat music]
- AGAdam Grant
Matthew McConaughey, welcome to ReThinking.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Hey. What are we thinking about?
- AGAdam Grant
I don't know. What are we gonna be thinking about? I think that's up to you.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Ah. Belief, I hope. Think it's in short supply. We need to think more about it, pursue more of it, which is part of the reason I really wrote the book. I found myself falling into a little more doubt than I was comfortable with, um, in, you know, myself and God, others. And, um, I also started to notice I was becoming a bit cynical. And I've already shaken my hand, uh, a long time ago and said, "Buddy, if that disease of cynicism comes on, you stave that son of a bitch off. You can go be a skeptic, but don't go into that little disease of cynicism. It's an early death, buddy." And I felt it coming on, and, uh, and I wasn't ready to wave the white flag and say, "Oh, so this is just kinda how it is." So belief.
- 1:21 – 2:16
Where self-doubt comes from: the gap between aspirations and reality
- AGAdam Grant
Wow. Okay. Fir- first of all, I'm sorry. Matthew McConaughey, you're the, you're the ultimate avatar of confidence. You experience self-doubt?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Oh, yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
When? Why?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Well, doubt comes for me when there's a gap between my aspirations for myself or what I want or who I'm trying to be and wanna be and who I actually am. And I have doubts of feeling like a fraud. I have doubts 'cause I don't believe I'm mi- meeting the mark. Which actually, did you know, is actually the, the definition of sin? Sin comes from, from archery. It's to miss the mark, m- to miss the aim, to aim wrong. And that, to hear it in those practical engineering utility, utilitarian senses makes me go, oh. Just takes the onus of the agnostic side of me of going, "Oh, well, how do you... Such... So religious." No, it's, it's very practical.
- AGAdam Grant
I, I'm picturing you holding a bow trying to shoot an arrow and [laughs] missing a bullseye.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
[laughs]
- 2:16 – 4:34
Work–family tension: guilt, priorities, and “front-loading” connection
- AGAdam Grant
Wh- when did that happen recently?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
I mean, yesterday. I'm getting ready to head, head out on this tour with the book. I'm gonna be away from my kids for a while. And looking at the calendar, "Wait, how many days can we minimize or not away?" And, and I had work to do yesterday, and I'm running out of days to spend with them now before I hit the road, and I'm being overly self-indulgent to do the work, personal work I think I need to do while my kids are in the house. I'm like going, "Ah, you're missing the mark, man. Shut the book, McConaughey. Get in there with the kiddos." Um, you know, that's a, that was yesterday.
- AGAdam Grant
So talk, talk to me a little bit about [laughs] what you do in those moments, 'cause you're not gonna cancel the book tour.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
No, I'm not gonna cancel it, no. So what I do is I try to front load. I try to get ahead. [laughs] I try to get into the, into a really good spot with family, uh, with my wife. Thankfully, my wife's coming with me on the tour.
- AGAdam Grant
Okay.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
But with family and the kiddos and catch up on really what's going on with them so we're, we're solid. We know... We, we, we're gonna leave on solid space, our relationship with e- with each other, where they are in their life, where I am with mine, them understanding where I'm going and why. So, you know, when you're solid like that, you're not racing against time as much, you know? You kinda go through the day and you go, "Oh, I'm under the same sun as my dad." And it makes it easier when I return home, be closer to just picking up where we left off rather than, "Okay, we gotta do something really special together and meaningful to catch up." And we have to do that sometimes, but nobody, I think, ideally likes to do that. So that's how I deal with it, you know? And they, and, and I also understand that as much as I revere fatherhood, and they un- and they understand that too, they know and understand now in their age that, that, that papa has to go off and, and create and do, and, and, and do work and, and try to get what he wants and conquer things and et cetera. And I think that's also a good thing for our children to see.
- AGAdam Grant
It's a really great antidote to the guilt of working, is to remember, "Hey, this is part of being a role model for my kids."
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Yeah. And I don't think we sh- can overlook that, you know?
- 4:34 – 8:19
Skepticism vs. cynicism: discernment without disbelieving
- AGAdam Grant
So let's, let's talk about the, the hopeful skepticism that you mentioned earlier and-
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Hmm
- AGAdam Grant
... it's, it's so strange for me to hear you say that you fell to any cynicism because you just exude optimism. [laughs] Your, your, your energy leaps out of every room.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Glad to hear that.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- MMMatthew McConaughey
And I am an eternal optimist. But, or and skepticism, discernment, being discriminate with your choices and judgment. That's wise things. Cynicism is looking around at reality and the evidence and the facts, the things we're all susceptible to, the news feeds, the whatever, and you're going, "Or do we have a compass? Doesn't seem like we have an expected and agreed-upon compass here." So cynicism came from me going, "Well, maybe that's just how it is. Maybe that's as good as it gets." And yeah, we know the cynic, man. They're clever. They get to laugh at the party. They're, they're terse. It's academic. It's, "Wow, that was, that was, that was good." But they also don't believe. They live in, they live in doubt of so much, if not everything, and I think that's an early death.
- AGAdam Grant
As I was reading and as I'm hearing you now talk about cynicism, I was thinking about the psychology research on the cynical genius illusion, where people assume that cynicism is a sign of intelligence, and, and you alluded to that. You said, you know, "It's clever." But it actually turns out to be a defense mechanism against being exploited. In this, this particular paper, data from almost 200,000 adults across 30 countries, people who have poor reasoning skills are more likely to see the worst in human nature, to assume that people are selfish and untrustworthy, and that's how they protect themselves from the people who are, but they overgeneralize it.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Okay. It's protection.
- AGAdam Grant
Exactly.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
And so I'm curious, knowing that, w- what were you guarding yourself against as the cynicism was creeping in?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Guarding myself against risks, curiosity, romance, mentorship, real fulfilled love, trust. Probably protecting my heart as much as my head.
- AGAdam Grant
Do you, do you have a view on how to self-protect without getting cynical? Because I think what the cynic does is they, they assume the worst in others, and therefore they end up avoiding the worst, but they also miss out on all the upside and all the good that people are capable of.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Yes. Look, the skeptical side, we, it, it, it keeps us, gives us a compass and an identity and a discernment and a judgment of, oh, I prefer this over that, or I'd like to hang out with these people over those. But you still make a choice. Skepticism still make, still gives you the chance to make the, the right and more positive choice, but you believe in it. Cynicism doesn't, doesn't allow for the belief.
- AGAdam Grant
I, I love the sharp distinction you make between skepticism and cynicism because I think a lot of people don't, they don't see that discerning is different from disbelieving, and that you can have a high bar for, for what you believe while still being open to believing, and that's where the optimism comes in.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Yeah. Yeah. There's more than one way to be right. I mean, to be curious, to still go, "Well, I don't know." And that's what belief is. That's what faith is. I don't know God exists. I don't know there's a heaven. I do know and believe that heaven or not, pursuing and believing in something and chasing it makes this life better while we're here.
- 8:19 – 12:20
Chasing “divinity” in art: aspiration, reality, and recovery
- AGAdam Grant
I, I wonder how far that goes. Like, what, what was it like when you won the Academy Award?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Right. Well, that exceeded... Because I didn't even have an, I didn't have an imagination. All I was, I was in there just going like, I looked at all the names and I was like, "My name's the only one that starts with M. So if you hear M, they called your name." [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- MMMatthew McConaughey
And I heard M. So that's a situation where I didn't have a higher expectation. And I mean this in the most respectful way. I've never done a performance or been a part of a movie that met my expectation. And I've been a part of some good ones, and I think they'd say I've given some good performances. I'm not saying I look back and go, "Oh, if I could've gone back and done these scenes differently." I'm not saying that. But I look at them going like, "Boy, the idea that I had about what I could do or what the film could be was so divine, and that's the reason I did it." And it comes in, and maybe it d- didn't reach divinity, but ooh, it moved. It was art. It was true. It was omnipresent. It touched mythology, past and future, and rose. Those are all awesome things that I don't think I would've experienced if I wouldn't have gone in and imagined divinity at, uh, uh, at the outset. The challenge is that moment when reality comes in and you meet its measure and you see it came in below. And the overcompensation problem is then we go, "Oh, man, sh- nah." No. It's that moment, how quickly can we go, "Uh, d- d- d- okay. A minus. Wow, pretty damn good. [laughs] I went, I tried. I didn't ace it." You know what I mean? It didn't meet the magic of divinity, but, uh, it, that was, that was something. That's the, that's the gap where I've even, sometimes I get hung up on that, where thinking, "No, no, no, no, no. How did that not meet the mark of divinity that I was going for?" Ah. And you can hang onto that too long and be, and, and, and bang your head against a wall and go, "No, no, no." You gotta come back. There is a time to come back to reality and realize that it wouldn't have been what it was, it wouldn't have reached the heights that it did had you not been chasing the divine.
- AGAdam Grant
Am I hearing you right that [laughs] the Oscar itself exceeded your expectations, but you were disappointed in aspects of your performance?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Not disappointed. Now I'm not saying disappointed. I wanna be, yeah, be clear on that. I wasn't d- I thought Dallas Buyers Club, I thought Jean-Marc Vallée did an incredible job directing that movie. I thought performances across the board were great. Everything. I didn't think there was a false moment in it. I thought my performance was excellent work. Wouldn't change a thing. It was still, I think, a, a great piece of art. I think it came alive. I think it felt relevant. I think it felt urgent. A massive amount of emotions going by just viewing it. Many people did. It became a mortal thing, though, a mortal piece of art, and it is still in a capsule, and it, it, it's, it's there for all time, but it, I don't think it was divine. I don't think it became, well, a movement, a life, a way of life for humanity.
- AGAdam Grant
So the gap, the gap is not so much between your effort and your performance. It's between your performance and the potential for impact.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Well, not a measurable impact like, well, how'd the, how was the box office? [laughs] I'm not... Or what, did it win the Academy? I'm not measuring on that. Those are mortal measurements. I'm measuring off of my idea of what it could be is alive and effervescent, and as I said, deific, and it's n- it's a m- it's a more an immortal measurement.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. Yeah.
- 12:20 – 13:27
Belief vs. hope: building an engine and a pathway
- MMMatthew McConaughey
A mythological measurement. And that's, I think, part of where my optimism comes from. A belief in the potential, the possibility. Ooh, stuff I don't even know, but believe in it could be. Ooh, it smells like it. It feels like it. Ah, what if? [whistles] Art, people, myself, God. A belief in that. And belief is very different than hope. Hope is like, doesn't have a pathway, you know? Doesn't have an engine behind it. If you gotta get what you hope for, the dream comes true that you were hoping for, some form or fashion you got lucky or fortunate, right? But if this dream comes true that you believe in or you get to that destination, that's 'cause you saw it, you believed in it, and you made one step at a time to get that. That old, that old term, dream it, you can do it. Oh, geez, I don't like that.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- MMMatthew McConaughey
I'm like, don't tell people that. It's what a horrible thing to tell people. Dream it, you can do it. What? No, no. [laughs] No, no, don't tell someone that, man. [laughs] A lot more than that.
- 13:27 – 15:10
Keeping aspirations high while expectations stay modest
- AGAdam Grant
Now, okay, so you're, you're kinda laying out this paradox for us that on the one hand, high aspirations drive you to, to excellence. On the other hand, high expectations can drive you to misery. And we want the best of both worlds. The way I've always thought about this is to say, I wanna keep my aspirations high, but my expectations modest. So I almost... I, I go into a project with two goals. I have a, an ideal outcome that would be, you know, best case scenario, and then I have a minimum acceptable outcome where I can say, "Yeah, that was good enough. It wasn't as great as it could've been, but I'm not gonna be disappointed if I get there." H- how does, how does that land for you? Do you do the same thing?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Um, that lands, that lands really well. That's a g- it's a good simple way to say it. It lands really well. And I'm getting better at myself doing a form of that, of look, the aspirations are high. That, I'm, I'm firing outta bed every morning, man. I'm doing everything. I'm covering all my bases. I'm turned on, man. Let's make sure, da, da, da. Whether you call it preparation, what- whatever it's gonna be. And then as soon as I step away, then I go, "Doesn't matter. Let's, let's see what happens, man." I mean, I, you know... Does it feel better if it does well? Yes. Do you wonder if it doesn't do well, is there something I could've done? Could I rearrange? Is there another way I go about that? Yes. But I'm trying to get much better at going, it lies where it lives. And I've also learned, and can take a little, uh, give myself a little amnesty, in that sometimes things pop up and li- re- be- live their greatest life years down the road.
- 15:10 – 16:07
Delayed recognition: when art finds its time
- MMMatthew McConaughey
You know? Dazed and Confused, no one went and saw that when it came out. It's a cult classic, you know? Sometimes little movies, pop, boop, pop up. Look at what, look, look, talk about films. Interstellar did really well in the box office, but boy, it had a little 10-year resurgence. Like, it became, like, a new movie that everyone wanted to see for the fourth time. You know, sometimes art pops up later on, and you find something's found. An album, music is found, a book is found, that all of a sudden goes, "This is really relevant." Sometimes it's just the right timing. Sometimes it's the wrong timing. Sometimes the tornado or the hurricane came in last night, and you declared this morning, and it took your front page, bro.
- AGAdam Grant
I think about this all the time. I think about all the artists who didn't even live to see their success, and h- what a tragedy it is for, [laughs] you know, somebody to say, "Well, my book only sold a million copies." [laughs] You're lucky you got to see any of those sold.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
You're right.
- 16:07 – 19:37
Embarrassment, journals, and learning to laugh at past selves
- AGAdam Grant
Okay. So I wanna ask you then, do you ever look back at your past work and feel embarrassed by it?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Well, not in film. No. Like you, I, I, I'll sit down and have a hoot and holler at Texas Chainsaw Massacre Next Generation right now. It's fun, man.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- MMMatthew McConaughey
I got a mechanical leg. It's hilarious. [laughs] And I was never embarrassed about that, although, and the reason I bring that up is when that was being released after I had done A Time to Kill, I did have people around me going, "Oh, you don't want this out right now." And even then I was like, "Why not?"
- AGAdam Grant
Because it's not-
- MMMatthew McConaughey
I did that
- AGAdam Grant
... serious enough art?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Yeah. You know what I mean? And the choice was like, no. That, that's, that's, that's part of the, the living resume. I was quite embarrassed when, you know, to write Greenlights, I had this t- treasure chest full of journals. And I mean, I could go look over and, you know, peek at something and go, "Oh, geez." Uncomfortable, shame, guilt. And I went to Camila, my wife, and I'm like, "Hey, got this trunk full of all these journals. I think there's some good stuff in it, you know? When, when, when, when I die, will you, you mind going through that and seeing if it's worth putting out?" And she goes, "You do it." [laughs] You know?
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- MMMatthew McConaughey
She goes, "I'm not doing that. Don't put that on me." And then she got me, helped me to load up the back of the truck with my steaks and my journals and water and tequila, and head off to the desert for two weeks alone. You know, I went off, and trust me, the first eight days of sitting there looking and reading journals, the stuff about me, I was... It was hard, bro. I was going, "Are you kidding me? You egotistical little prick. Ah.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Can't believe you did that. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da." Just trying to shake guilt and shame and embarrassment. But after about eight days, those same stories I started to giggle at. [laughs] And I started to go, "Well, at least you tried." You know? Or, or those stories where I was embarrassed about would be followed up with me eating shit or me, me, me, me falling on my face, eating crow. And then I would be like, "Oh, actually, if you weren't the cocky little shit Mr. Know-It-All you thought you were, you wouldn't have put yourself in a position to get humiliated, McConaughey. Oh, okay. That's cool." And then I started to go, "Oh, there's a rhythm here, these guffaws, these things where you did not meet your expectation. Oh, okay. [snaps fingers] Good. Yeah. It's part of life. Everyone does that. Don't edit that part out."
- AGAdam Grant
It's so fun to hear you narrate that arc of learning to laugh at yourself because I think, I think so many people look back at their past mistakes and they're embarrassed by them, and they're over-identifying with their past self, as opposed to saying, "Look, the stupid things I did in the past, those are not a mark that I'm incompetent. They're actually a symbol that I've grown, and now I can see those limitations and realize that I've transcended them."
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Yes. And then to carry on and go, "God, I hope I have the courage to do some stupid shit in the future. I hope I don't now say, 'Oh, that's enough to learn. I've got my cozy secure walls now. Don't take any chances. Maintain.'" And I'm at a time now where I'm like going, "Maybe you need to sh- scoot some things off the proverbial desk. Maybe you need to put out a couple of campfires and double up and lean into these ones that mean the most to you."
- 19:37 – 22:08
Making positives plural: feeding the good wolf and resisting victimhood
- AGAdam Grant
So this reminds me of something you wrote that stopped me in my tracks when I was reading the book. You wrote, "The negative is singular, the positives are plural."
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Please sell them as such.
- AGAdam Grant
That was so interesting to me because in psychology we see the opposite. People are so good at pluralizing the negative. One way that jumped to mind right away is, like if you look at the, just the vocabulary the average person has for negative emotions, the list is a mile long. There are all these nuances and, um, and ways of capturing different kinds of, of unpleasantness. On the positive emotion side, people are like love, joy, maybe amusement, serenity. [laughs] And I'm running out of terms pretty quickly here. So talk to me about reversing that.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Well, for starters, it's more fun. Compounding assets. Why not try and be great at what we're good at instead of working so hard to be better at what we suck at? Speak of the negative in the past tense and you will block its prophecy in the future. In there is an internal optimism, but I think it's more than that. I think it's an internal pragmatism. It's, I'm gonna go back to belief. We got good wolves and bad wolves, man. Both are hungry. Which one we feeding? Feed your good wolf and more goodness will come. More value will come to your life. You will see more value in others. And in seeing that in others, they many times more than we give credit for will respond in kind. It's also how we wallow in crisis. Don't give the crisis credit. It's looking for credit. It wants you to wallow. It loves company. Misery loves company is a very true statement. We, we somehow feel like, oh, what is it about where w- when we like to feel like the victim? When we want the victimhood? What is that? And we need to watch that and catch ourself and go, "That's not feeding me." That's how you make the goodness plural, the positives plural, and the negative singular. Block the negative's path to prophecy and ask yourself who or what you'd die for. Start there. Then you're gonna find yourself living more for what you believe in, and that's gonna make positives plural. It's a selfish act ultimately, I believe.
- AGAdam Grant
Partially at least.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
The ultimate selfish act I believe is also the most selfless act. There's a place where what is best for us is what's best for the most amount of people. The egotistical utilitarian, I call it. It was a, wrote a paper on it in college, I remember. [laughs]
- 22:08 – 23:42
Gratitude without entitlement: one-way giving and grace
- AGAdam Grant
I love it. So, uh, I guess something else that I was curious about around the making the positives plural. You've talked a lot about and you write a lot about gratitude. Uh, let me, uh, let me read you two, two lines of yours that, that particularly struck me. First one was you said, "The thanks you expect will hold you entitled, but the gratitude you give will breed f- freedom."
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
I've run into so many challenges with people who give with the expectation of gratitude coming back to them and then feel slighted or disappointed. You obviously have a [laughs] an antidote to that. Talk to me about that.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Well, we all know it, and we don't necessarily do it. I know it. I don't necessarily do it all the time either. The unconditional gift, the unconditional giving, the unconditional gratitude, it ties a bit into you were saying the high belief-
- AGAdam Grant
Yep
- MMMatthew McConaughey
... but then l- m- m- realistic expectations. The giving has to be a one-way, and if you're playing quid pro quo about, oh, I gotta get the same back, but now we're competing, now we're playing tit for tat. We've seen relationships blow up because of that shit. We've seen divorces over that stuff. We've, I've lost girlfriends over that stuff because we were competing. You know, tit for tat, tit for ta- Uh-uh. Not a way to go.
- AGAdam Grant
Oh.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Doesn't allow for grace either.
- AGAdam Grant
What, what's tricky about it is, you know, in some ways gratitude is, is feedback that you made the difference you were hoping to. And so [laughs] when it doesn't come, in a way that's, that's somebody telling you, you missed the mark.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Mm.
- 23:42 – 27:02
Daily gratitude rituals and the power of humor to unlock sincerity
- AGAdam Grant
That goes to the other thing that you, you captured. So you said that you like to begin your prayers with gratitude. Is that a, is that a daily habit for you?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Yeah. It came from certain, just a certain practice of before meals we went around, "Hey, say your thank yous." And everyone says thank yous. And we still practice it a lot today, and it's wonderful to have friends over. Again, some of my friends are non-believers. No one has any trouble going, "Hey, thank you for this." They may not preclude it with, "Dear God," but it's really becomes a healthy thing. And if you try it out there, it at least- ... makes the food taste better.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- MMMatthew McConaughey
It really does. Um, gratitude I think is a great place to start. Look around, most of us can find something that we're thankful for.
- AGAdam Grant
I was surprised when I first read some research showing that people who are randomly assigned to make gratitude lists weekly got more of a happiness boost than those who did it daily. It seemed like for the daily people, they were either [laughs] running out of meaningful things to be grateful for, or it just became a chore as opposed to something you paused and really marked the moment with. How do you think about that?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
I'm betting you it's the second, and I've done that before, too. When all of a sudden it just becomes, you know, the prayer becomes a mantra. Bless this food on our table, good Lord, please help us, amen. Uh, what? What'd you say? Do you even know what you said? I think it's because it be- just becomes a chore and a habit that doesn't have the thought or originality behind it each time, and that can take a moment. You know? And we also don't, we always don't make that moment. I always don't make that moment. But it does mean a lot more when I do make that moment. I wanna tell you this great story. We had this foundation, Camila and I, Just Keep Living Foundation. After school, the curriculum we did this, this gratitude circle. And I, they're high school kids, so I noticed that to sit around in a circle out loud and say something you're thankful for ain't cool, right? So everyone's just like, "Uh, thank you for the Just Keep Living program." And the next person goes, "Uh, thank you for the Just Keep Living program."
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- MMMatthew McConaughey
And it went like that, and I was like, telling Camila, I was like, "This ain't g- this ain't working." And so I remember we went on Halloween, right before Halloween one time, and I was like, "I gotta, I gotta loosen these gang up." And it got to me and I was like, I said, "I'm gonna start this off." I said, "I'm thankful for the kiss I got from my wife this morning with tongue." And they were like, "Ooh! Ooh, ooh, ooh, yeah." I was like, "Yeah, I'm thankful for that." And they're like, "Aw, man."
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- MMMatthew McConaughey
All the sudden they opened up and they started going, "Man, I'm thankful it's Halloween 'cause I'm gonna get some candy." Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. All this fun stuff. Cut to two weeks later, they're sharing things like, "My grandmother got out of the hospital," that, "My dad got a job," that, "My sister graduated." Oh, but it unlocked. The humor unlocked everyone to go, "Oh, it's not, I'm not, I don't have to be shy and precious about this." And I'm big on humor and, and, in, in our... It un- I think it unties a lot more knot, knots than it binds, and, uh, I don't think we give humor enough credit and, and as a means to get through crisis or as a means to find gratitude.
- AGAdam Grant
I hear the humor in it. I also hear a little vulnerability goes a long way. That you're not too cool to [laughs] to appreciate a kiss from your wife.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Right.
- 27:02 – 28:11
From writing to forget to publishing to remember: art as therapy and confession
- AGAdam Grant
I was struck by something that you, you wrote in Greenlights that I think is echoed now in Poems and Prayers. Uh, you wrote, "I never wrote things down to remember. I always wrote things down so I could forget." And now you're publishing four decades [laughs] worth of poems and journal entries that you wrote down to forget. Why?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Because I need to remember. Writing this book and this tour I'm doing is definitely for me. This, this is helping pull me out of my own doubt. So through this process, hopefully I'm gonna have and will strengthen my own belief and faith in myself and others, me as a believer in God. I want that. And to have this conversation with others like this, I'm so damn excited about that, and am I gonna connect with myself in new ways along the way? I already am.
- AGAdam Grant
This is in part your therapy, then.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Sure.
- AGAdam Grant
And your confessional, I guess.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Yeah, yeah. Put 'em all in there.
- 28:11 – 33:38
Lightning round rethinks: acting craft, space, catchphrases, parenting access, and learning by doing wrong
- AGAdam Grant
Okay, I wanna do a lightning round. What is the worst career advice you've gotten?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
There's a lot of people that see acting, and a lot of actors that believe, that our, when we do our craft well, we are just supposed to go inhabit another. But that's only half the journey. It's about seeing yourself in them, the common humanity, and then coming back, because when we perform it's always, always extremely personal, and should be and is.
- AGAdam Grant
All right. Y- you've been in, in two epic space movies, Contact and Interstellar.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
How did your view of outer space change from starring in those two movies?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Um, God's backyard's bigger than I thought, and that's me growing up, you know, small town. Uh, I had a principal who told me kindergarten that that cloud in the sky was as big as the world. And so when I said, "If that's as big as the world, then I can see the outskirts of it," it's so far away I'm not even gonna think about outer space. I'm just gonna look down and deal with the ground. And so I didn't dream, I just learned to deal. Then, of course, you grow older and you get on the first few flights, and all of a sudden your plane's in the middle of that cloud, and p- all of a sudden my l- idea of the backyard and how you can look up and how space travel and possible life out there, wow, that would be awesome if there was. And yes, that's an explorative place. But before then I was always like, "Nope, I'm a sailor before an astronaut. Don't even talk to me about being an astronaut. It's too far off to deal with." But I'm much more of an astronaut's mind now.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow. How do you really feel when people shout, "All right, all right, all right," at you?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Pretty damn good.
- AGAdam Grant
Really?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Pretty damn good, and here's why. Dude, I got to... I walked on the set of Dazed and Confused in this, on a Thursday night in the summer of 1992, and there were three lines written in that script for my character, and I wasn't supposed to work that night. I was just doing a hair and makeup test. And Richard Linklater comes up and circles me and is like, "Yeah, right on. Cool. All right, this is Wooderson. Yeah, you da-da-da." And I go, "All right, man." He approves and I go to say goodbye and he goes, "Hey, hang on a minute. I got this, you know, this girl Marissa Ribisi who's playing the redheaded intellectual over here, and she's got her kinda nerdy friends in the car. You think Wooderson would maybe go pick her up?" Yeah, man, Wooderson likes all kinds of chicks. Boom. Next thing you know, I'm in the car getting a lot layer mic. We go up. Opening of that scene, I say those three words, and they were three affirmations of what my character did have. He had his car, he had rock and roll, and he had a doobie with Slater, and he was going to get the fourth thing that he liked, which was going to pick up the redhead intellectual. So b- in my mind, I was like, "Oh, I got three out of four. Going to get the fourth. All right, all right, all right." First three words I ever said on camera. And if you see the film, it's not even on camera. It's a wide shot above.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
First three words I ever said. And look, Adam, I didn't know if that was gonna be this little hobby one-off thing I did one summer for a week in Austin and never did it again, and it turned out to be a career. And that's the first three words I said, and they precede me to this day. Sh- I ain't arrogant enough to not, not enjoy that.
- AGAdam Grant
That's awesome. I love your perspective on that. Never gets old.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Nah.
- AGAdam Grant
What is something you've rethought or changed your mind about lately?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
I talked to a friend of mine, Bart Naggs, who's successfully raised three daughters. And as my kids are becoming teenagers, he goes, "McConaughey, just do whatever you can to maintain access to them." So before that, if they shared something, I would interrupt and go, "Whoa, hey, hey, hey. You shouldn't be doing that." I would make judgment and then speak it. We do that, our kids will start to not share things with us. So what, to hold my tongue when they're saying something and sharing something that maybe they shouldn't do, to hold my tongue and just listen and go, "Mm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm," and withhold judgment and then talk about it. And then maybe at the end cast, "Well, you know, if you do that, this could happen." It's helped us maintain access.
- AGAdam Grant
I think that's, that's powerful.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
Okay, so you wrote in the book, you said, "I'm not quite sure how to do it wrong, but pretty damn sure I didn't do it right."
- MMMatthew McConaughey
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
What's that about?
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Oh, geez, what's that not about? It's just a flip on the, you learn how to do it right by doing things wrong. It's just, it's just a, a little, a little, a little amnesty that we can have with ourselves for kinda fucking something up. [laughs] You know what I mean?
- AGAdam Grant
I've had those moments a lot. It, it made me smile when I read that. It reminded me of when we were on stage in Austin a few months ago, and, uh, at the very end, that this thought popped into my head, and I, I, I think I thanked you for making sure we don't get it all wrong, all wrong, all wrong.
- MMMatthew McConaughey
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
And somebody came up to me afterward and said, "Congratulations, that was a solid dad joke."
- MMMatthew McConaughey
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs] And I was like, "No, I wanted it to be-"
- MMMatthew McConaughey
Freaking dad joke, man.
- AGAdam Grant
"I wanted it to be a real joke."
- MMMatthew McConaughey
That was a freaking dad joke. I mean, if you'd have said, "All right, all right, all right," might've got a laugh, but then it'd been like, "Well, why'd you say that? The author's sitting right next to you, Adam." But you flipped it, and you made a joke. "Oh, don't let, make sure we don't get it all wrong, all wrong, all wrong." I, I b- I bought it. I purchased.
Episode duration: 33:48
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