Joe Rogan Experience #1552 - Matthew McConaughey

(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) Hello, Matthew.

Hello, Joe.

What's going on, man? You got a book out?

Got a book out, called Greenlights.

(laughs)

Trying to catch them, trying to get 'em.

What makes a guy who is successful as you as an actor, what makes you wanna expose more of yourself? 'Cause that's kinda what you're doing by writing a memoir, right? You're exposing your thought process, your, your, your life, your lessons.

Another mo- another way of communicating. Uh, you know, what I do in my day job as an actor, um, it's got four filters from the raw expression. There's what I've ... There's my raw expression, there is what's being recorded, there's what's being edited, and there's what's being put on the screen. Um, I wanted to do something where I got rid of the filters. Writing a book, there is one filter, 'cause it's the written word. Um, what you do, what we're doing now, when you do standup, that's no filters. You know, that's the direct, it's live, the sh- the he- the Big Show is always recording, uh, sort of ultimate goal. But I wanted to, uh, I wanted to put it down and say, "Hey, I want to..." I'm part of these movies. They're usually s- written by somebody else, directed by somebody else, edited by someone else, financed by someone else. I was like, "No, I wanna go direct my own movie. I want to produce my own movie." Well, how do I do that? I wanna put the words on the page and I'd been writing for 36 years, so I had a lot of content to go through and see if it was something worthy of sharing.

Yeah, so you've been keeping a journal for 36 years?

Yep.

What made you start doing that?

I think probably the, in the beginning, the usual reason someone writes in a journal, you know? "Well, my heart's broken, Gretchen Donnelly broke up with me."

(laughs)

"Well, why do I have all these dimples on my face? Why do I only have peach fuzz over my pecker and everyone else has-"

(laughs)

And then, in my early 20s, um, I remember I was, I was kinda rolling. I was in college, I had a job, I had money in my pocket, I had a, had a nice girlfriend, uh, making my grades, my relationships were good. And I remember going, "Oh, you hadn't been writing in your journal near as much. Uh, noticed you don't do that so much when things are going well." And I said, "I think you better start writing down things when things are going well." Being, my go- my idea was that, "Hey, you're gonna get in a rut again. You'll lose your frequency again in life. You might want this to go back and look at, to help you recalibrate." And that proved to be true. Um, you know, so many times we dissect failure and, and, and, and hardships in life, but we don't dissect success. And going back in those journals, I found that there were times when I got in a rut later and I was able to go back to those journals and go, "What were your habits when you were rolling, man? Well, who were you hanging out with? Where were you going? What were you eating? What were you drinking? How much, how much sleep were you getting? How were you looking at life?" And they'd help me recalibrate in the times when I was off frequency and get back on the rails again and find my frequency again.