MATTHEW MC CONAUGHEY

Focal Point :  Life lessons &  views from actor Mathew McConaughey

Autobiographies and interviews impart much knowledge and broaden our outlook. Dad’s words reverberate about the importance of learning from other people’s experience & mistakes and avoiding your own.  Eternally grateful for the technology that enables the transfer of this information within minutes across time zones and continents . No horse-backed riders with parchment and arduous steamship journeys , how blessed we are !   At the touch of a button , often within minutes ,  the “rich, famous and wise” (not necessarily the same person 😊 ) enter our humble homes bearing gifts of new ideas. 
​
Of course we cannot assume everything to be true.  Social media has proved to be akin to a job interview.  The one place where (both) parties bend facts in order to market themselves and entice the other.  But over-thinking can be self-defeating.  Even if  all preached is not practiced ….  We can work selectively.   A happy compromise is to extract the nuggets of info we want  , and move on. 

Matthew David McConaughey  (born November 4, 1969) is an American actor and producer. He first gained notice for his supporting performance in the coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused (1993), which was considered by many to be his breakout role.  Married to Camila Alves in 2012 , he has 3 pre-teen children .  Is he now running for Texas governor too ?? 

Greenlights  by Matthew McConaughey.  On sale October 2020.  “I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud”

​Comparing life to traffic lights,   🚦🚥🚦  Mathew’s analogy is that we breeze through the green , usually take the smooth highways for granted.  The “shoe-less summer walk” in happy abandon.   Good times !  Confident times !  Then BAM !  you reach a pothole or a yellow light and have to slow down.  Time to pause and survey.  Change of tyres ?  Oil and filter ?  Clean dirty windscreens?  Fortify the journey with additional supplies ?   Do we then create false trauma for ourselves by magnifying issues  ? Do we enact drama making mountains out of molehills ?  Or just put that pedal to the metal after suitably scanning the road ahead.   The yellow light is where the green light might live , where we could feel the fear and do it anyway.   Worse still , it could lead to a RED  ,  those meaningful (red) herrings seen in the rear view mirror of life ,  where a big pause and major re-alignment is required.  A complete change of route ?
 Its what you do at these yellow or red lights that counts , not how many of them you encounter. 🚥🚦🚥😊

Listening to a few interviews  after the release of his book ,  ( Jennifer Cohen Habits & Hustle  , Vishen Lakhiani Mind Valley , Franklin Covey leadership etc )   , Matthew McConaughey strikes me as  genial, down-to-earth and grounded.  He is a semicentennial too.  Just turned 50.  In pretty good shape barring a recent knee surgery .   Thought he might a touch too preachy at first .  However, last week by “happy accident” ,  an entertaining hour-long interview with Vishen found me , and made me want to explore more.   I listened quite captivated  and workout time flew by.  A sucker for sexy voices , I quite like his Texan drawl and clear diction. 

Here are some nuggets I thought worth sharing :      

1. “A roof is a man-made thing” – the constraints we put on ourselves , the ceilings we create.  Thinking  “ this is too good to be true , I don’t deserve this” is arrogant.  To consider that this is as good as it is ever going to get.  An spin off Icarus ?   We might think that the wax on our wings is melting but we can actually get that closer to the sun and easily take more heat.  Recognizing , appreciating and enjoying the good things that come our way is the best form of inherent gratitude.
2. Unbelievable  is the rudest , most stupid word  What we actually mean is INCREDIBLE or just plain awesome.  Why do we cast doubts on beauty and achievment ( Unbelievable music ! Unbelievable sunset ! ) when that is the very thing we can see and believe . 
3. Arrows and Targets -    Arrows don’t search , they just fly. Targets receive the right arrow.  Like spiders that wait in their web.   Like the Law of Resonance (Michael Beckwith ) – the universe gives you not what you want but who you are. 
4. The power of the Walkabout -  Simple and greatest tool for self discovery and awareness.  Done without tech-crutches , gadgets and mobiles.   Just being one with yourself and listening to the message you might most need to hear.   (Read more on walking & active meditation in another blog  transient-hypofrontality-and-the-zone.html )
5. Gratitude and awareness – Raising his children with constant reminders of the privileges' they enjoy (a comfortable bed,  regular meals, relatives that can visit and travel , education they can access,  beautiful home )  and taking them to countries / places that “have-not” as part of their education.   Stressing on  the importance of  delayed gratification , cause-effect ,  in this instant child-rearing age.     
6. Life-lessons in everything and everyone -   Being comfortable and learning from people from all walks of life.  Interesting anecdote meeting the musician (one of his idols) Ali Farka Toure ( 31 Oct 1939 – 6 March 2006 ) from Mali Africa .   Mathew literally followed an inner voice ,  flew from USA to Africa to find this man whose music he loved , and to get to know him.   A gem he picked up from Ali when asked why he didn’t move from Africa to USA/Europe  -  “ In Europe he would be like dried sh** . Forgotten.  In Africa he is like wet sh** .  The scent is  strong , powerful and sticks with you.  Haha …. A crude but sticky analogy ! 😊  He strongly advocates visiting a country and not leaving until you  actually get in the daily groove and are somewhat comfortable to stay indefinitely  .  I guess what he means is not doing only the “touristy” stuff,  observing it in comfort ,  but really living the daily trials and madness. 
7. Experiential education – The need to diffuse academics and build more life experience into education.  Focus on the practical , the life skills needed.   How he opted for the experiential ( auditions , interviews , time out to travel , boost confidence levels ) rather than focus too much on his honors acting program.  Mindset versus Skillset -  the latter  always needed to “lower your life-handicap” . 
8. The magic of notes -   An avid “journaller” and note-taker  ,  in the habit of jotting down thoughts  , wisdom from others ,  learning experiences on the spot .     He writes not to remember, but to forget . I like this.  free up mental RAM for other things .  capture-those-thoughts.html 

McConaughey outlines a neat “gratitude” flow process in one of  his interviews and it stoked my curiosity.  He illustrates it with a personal story.  As a young boy in Europe  he and a couple of close friends set out on a road trip and needed to hire bikes.   They approached a bike-vendor who displayed brand-new Ducatti’s, at literally ten times their meagre budget.  Totally out of reach and evidently dejected ,  the boys were zapped when the vendor insisted they “take the bikes” anyway.   He said they “needed them” . 
The boys were incredulous at this offer ! Zapped with kindness !  No hidden catches.  They wanted to pay what they could afford , hand in their return air tickets as some small security .  His wife was fuming , thought her husband had totally lost it ,  but the vendor would have none of that.   He loaned them the Ducatti’s. 
(( I had to smile , I would have been the wife in this situation,  overcome by scarcity , grabbing on to the air tickets or what security I could.  Good mouthful to generous husband later as well ! 😊 ))
And so ….  the boys set out on this road trip over Europe ,  created bonds ,   experiences and friendships for life.  One of them even totaled his Ducatti in Italy by accident ,   only to have the vendor drive up in a truck and replace it !!  Just so they could “continue” their trip.  A throwback to when he himself was young .    Some extreme generosity going on that I cannot even begin to fathom.   What an abundant mind !
And so , Mathew left USA a boy , returned a man , discovered self-confidence within , found an agent and went on to become the acclaimed actor and person he is today.   I am so taken up with the bike-vendor.  How must he  feel today knowing that he helped shape an Oscar winning actor’s future , be uplifted and remembered in his autobiography.  Often we don’t realise how our little gestures can and do go such a long way. 
Deconstructing this little flow chart further ,  some of the biggest leaps we have taken in life are on account of  the generosity of others ( whether time , money , teaching …. ) .  I might even replace the last word FREEDOM with FULFILLMENT .  One is shaped unknowingly.   Treasured relationships ,  mentors ,  help in dire times , recognition at work , financial support …. Everyone has a personalized list that they can marvel at and plot the road from gratitude to freedom.   
 

Matthew’s 10 goals of life (1992)
    
McConaughey wrote out 10 goals as a youngster , back in 1992 when he was about 24 years old.  This was one late evening in his dorm, two weeks into filming Dazed and Confused , one of his earliest films.     He says he totally forgot about them , and FOUND them 25 years later , while he was writing the book Green Lights.  If this is true , I’m just so amazed by their simplicity , their commonality (tenets we can all aspire to) ,  the power of the aligned sub conscious mind that pushed him into achieving most/all of them .    

TEN GOALS OF LIFE (1992)

1. Become a father.
2. Find and keep the woman for me.
3. Keep my relationship with God.
4. Chase my best self.
5. Be an egotistical utilitarian 
6. Take more risks
7. Stay close to mom and family.
8. Win an Oscar for best actor
9. Look back and enjoy the view
10. Just keep living. 

** Had a bit of difficulty myself with Point 5 , but then he explained further that it's the coming together and evolution of contradictions.  It’s a shift in thinking where polarities can actually complement one another instead of being mutually exclusive. The selfish and selfless.  The religious and the scientific.  The material and the spiritual.  Does one NOT lie and cheat because he is “selfless” or because he is totally “selfish” ?  because he wants peace of mind and does not want to look behind his back all the time?  Similarly by doing what we enjoy … are we serving the ego or putting ourselves in a better mental frame to serve humanity ?   
Peak performance on the front end might be the Oscar he won for Dallas Buyers Club in 2014 ,  but at the back end it started with a young man’s enthusiastic desire , single minded focus , core values permeating into all  aspects of life ,  his persistence and grit.   “The power of preparation” worked well for Mathew.    
​
His motto - Stay in the race , commit to the chase.  You never really REACH and how boring would it be if you did.   It’s the journey that’s so damn fun and meaningful and enjoyable !!🚥🚦🚥