Welcome to feel better live more bite-sized, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekends. Today's episode is brought to you by a G1 from athletic greens. One of the most nutrient-dense Whole Food supplements that I've come across. It contains vitamins, minerals prebiotics, probiotics, digestive enzymes and so much more and I myself take it regularly go to
It greens.com /live more to access, a very special offer. They are giving my listeners five, fantastic travel packs and one year supply of vitamin D, free of charge with your first order. So your details and athletic greens.com, /live more, today's clip is from episode 134 off the podcast with the wonderful Matthew McConaughey in this clip. Matthew explains. Why authenticity
C is so important to him and how by understanding who we really are and showing up as ourselves more often. We can all live happier
lives.
You say, you know, I've been in this life for 50 years. I've learned how to be fair, how to have less stress, how to have fun, how to hurt people, less, how to get hurt less? How to be a good man? How to have meaning in life.
But then this is it for me. This is the killer line. How to be more me. This is something I feel I've been on a journey with over the last five or six years. And so, that line how to be more me that resonated deeply right into my soul.
Hopefully, that line, resonates individually and originally with everybody individually. I mean, I I'm oh,
The argument but I think isn't that what we're all trying to do whether we know it or not. It's a constant, you know Adventure sometimes extremely challenging, you know, I go I go into it in the book about it's very hard to know who we are. It's very hard to know what it is, we want to do and so to take some pressure off that situation, maybe first. Let's eliminate the things in our lives that are not what we want to do this movie. We're in that action.
Is called one time the day we were born and cut will be called one time the day we die. Now. What can we do in this take? We're in, It's a Wonderful wild adventure, but I've always been interested in interrogating and investing investigating myself, you know, and it goes between, sometimes I'll write the headline first who it is. I'm want to be who I'm trying to be who I am in 10 years and then and then I'll try to live the story towards that headline, other times. I'm like, no.
I don't want to be aspirational right now. I just want to just be and flaws scars bumps Wharton all let's just be that don't deny those things. That's just look them in the eye and go from embarrassment to laughter about those things or from shame to forgiveness about those things. So I usually try to balance between those two, nothing's more entertaining for an individual to do than to get to know themselves. And that can start with giving is no they're not but boy that never gets old.
Old and it's never going to change because we never have a moment where we go. Tada. I got it. Now. I know exactly who I am now because soon as we soon as we get to that place where like yes, I feel secure in. Who I am. I'm seeing the world. Clearly the world is reverting back to me what I'm giving to it soon as we hit that place if we have any ambition at all. We open up a whole new treasure chest of questions and evolution to to, to live through. Yeah.
In some ways, it should be the easiest thing in the world to be more of ourselves, right? The problem is many of us and I certainly have been for a lot of my life. I kind of feel I'm on this fast track to discovering myself. I think it's the best Journey I've ever been on. It's the best game in town. It's the one that keeps stimulating me and keeping me going day in day out. But what is so many of us then perform at
life. You know what I mean? What what, what is it? What?
What goes on? That means we have to go on this journey to actually find out who we actually really are.
Well, you know, the world is our mirror, you know, I said earlier about how when those times when when I'm feeling the most me and what I'm giving out is is reverting back to me. You know what my soul's giving out. I'm getting a like response from the world that reciprocity is when I'm like, oh, there's no gap between who I am and and what people are what I'm doing and what people are receiving, and what they're giving back.
But a lot of times, there is a big gap, there expectations, you know, sometimes I love to say this. Sometimes we look better than we feel and sometimes we feel better than we look. But what's really nice is when we look just about as good as we feel, we feel just about as good as we look, there's no gap between those two, you know, but it's a similar situation. I think a relationship with the world. We have expectations of ourselves. Other people have expectations from for us whether
Are right on the money and accurate or not that can sometimes be the battle.
Many of us said, I'll MIT, you know, mid lives start to try and find ourselves, right? Start to think about things like values. You're someone who's spent the time to really get to know yourself. What makes you tick? What is authentic for you? What is inauthentic? And therefore you now have systems and practices around you to make sure that the way you.
Live is in alignment with that to really understand our values.
I think we need Solitude, we need time where we switch off the noise, right? So you started looking internally. Well, I don't know if you started with this but you started journaling. I Journal, but I didn't Journal. When I was 14 years old. Why did you start journaling? Was that something that you saw a round? You was it something that was intuitive to you? Because it's such a phenomenal life skill at such, a phenomenal tool to start getting to know yourself.
Where did that come from in you?
I didn't grow up in a family of writers.
Or readers or lawyers or viewers. We were a if it's daylight outside get outside and play, can't watch TV or read a book because why would you want to read or watch somebody do something that you can go out there and do yourself? That was my mom's kind of line. So we were not an introspective family. We weren't callous to introspecting. We just almost, we were so resilient. We almost didn't, I'd wintertime.
And I always tell my mom, his mom. Our greatest asset is resilient. I said there's a loophole and resilience though. If you get if you trip and fall down and every time you trip and fall down you get up and you dust yourself off so quickly and move on. You become a repeat offender of stepping in the same pot, all that you tripped on because you never actually took time to go now. Why did I fall down right there? So, the why did I fall down right? There was probably my
regional reason for Desiring and writing in my journal, but it was normal adolescent fourteen-year-old. Oh, Gretchen broke up with me. My heart's broken, you know, that kind of stuff to begin with and then asking those wonderful, youthful questions. The big one. Why to everything? Which every child asked and continues to ask and then the why I turned into the who, what where, when how everything was a question mark?
And just the asking of the question.
Was part of finding myself, I think, because I didn't find answers to some of those questions until yesterday, you know, in the days since then, but the early my teens were a lot of the, a lot of those questions. Then something interesting happened in my early 20s. I started to find my stride. I was at University of Texas. Austin is making the grade. Um, Dad were happy. My relationships were healthy at a nice girlfriend was in the fraternity.
Job at 40 bucks. My back pocket. Life was I was looking forward to Monday morning. Life was kind of rolling and I remember for, I don't know where this came from, but I remember going boo. You're not going to your channels as much.
There's a guy cuz I'm roll it. What? I need to go to earth. Like I got a hunch, you need to keep writing about what you're doing now because it might help you out later and it turned out to be true meaning when I got in another rut which we all do when we need to remember that when we're all just rolling and on time and everything's just Sunny for us. We need to even though we think like to tell ourselves. Well, this is the mean now, right? I'll
Get off this because I found it negatory. You'll get off it or someone will knock you off of it. But what I found is, I was able to go back when I was in a rut, I was able to go back to my diaries for when I was dissecting My Success. So taught to dissect failure. And what I found is, I was able when I times, I was in a rut to go back and go. What were your habits here in your life when you were rolling, when you were on your frequency, who we hanging out with, where?
Are you going, how much sleep are you getting what we have in to drink? Well, how are you waking up in the morning? How are you looking at the world? How is your, did you have? Your wink did? How's your sense of humor M at? So I was able to look back and go find some old or have it when things were going. Well. That help me recalibrate can get back in line in times where I was off my frequency or off balance.
I mean, one of the first things when I was reading your book and researching for this conversation today,
I thought that is so cool. You Journal when your goods and so you can back reference when things aren't going. Well. He what was I doing when I was flying? When I was rolling when I was running downhill. What was I doing? And it strikes me that such a useful practice for people that really will help everyone understand because, you know, we never stay on top forever, right? There's always another, there's always a down. There's a wave like, goes up. It goes down. And it's a nice little reminder. Green whites.
That's the name of the book is an awesome name.
What is a green light?
A green light is very literally a thing on this highway of life that says go continue. I have firm your way carry on Sir Freedom more. Yes.
Red and yellow light, our hardships crisis, has things that make the Slowdown think Ponder introspect. Jackknife interrupt intervene. Death. Someone gets sick. They stop us or slow us down. We don't like them green lights in our lives.
A lot about our own choices. We can engineer them. We are the choices. We we make. We can engineer them to have more of them in our future.
Moon, we are responsible for present. I found that sometimes cream life's just fall in our lap. I don't have any science to reason about how or hell, why they landed here. But damn, I'm glad they did. So what am I going to do with it? I found it green light or sometimes about perspective. Sometimes a green lights can be about actually not even give the giving the crisis of the red or yellow light credit and blowing through them because not that Dart don't stick.
I'm not letting that stick. That's false drama. I'm denying that because I've been in my own reading allies for it. And I've do, you can dwell in a yellow light and turn that into a red light. You can. You can self-sabotage and dwell in a yellow light and turn that baby. Deep red. Well,
Refer to go the other way, turning green. And while we don't want yellow and red lights. I've found that most often times. They're actually giving us something that we need.
And when do we know her notice that the red and yellow lights in our life are actually have a lesson woven into them. Sometimes we realize it in the moment. We may not know what it is. But sometimes realize I know this is this is good. This is good for me. Somehow. I just don't know why it's a good thing. I'm going through this. Sometimes we notice it tomorrow. The next day, sometimes will notice that on her deathbed. And I think that probably sometimes will notice the green light assets of a red and yellow light. We may not even
even notice in this lifetime. It may be our great great grandkids. That realized what that lesson was three generations from now.
There's also different kind of green lamp. Some of them are battery-powered their short-term. That's fine. But what I'm really seeking and I think most everyone in some level of seeking is what are those solar powered green lights? The ones that are going to shine on for us longer and brighter in our future and continue to shine. After we are gone from this life. That's the ones I'm trying to chase. It's not the ones. I always catch because
I think it's life was nothing but, green lights, literal, green light. I'd be like, oh, so what's it all about? I mean, I'll just entertainment, you know, which is not. So we need the yellows and the Reds to have some form. We need those resistances. Those things are slow as down gravity, you know, to read like that. Stop us in our tracks, to help us grow and evolve. Yeah. Yeah. I love it.
Hope you
enjoyed that bite-size, clip do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. If you want more. Why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest. So, just a quick reminder that my upcoming book. Happy Minds. Happy life is now available to pre-order, all over the world. It's available in paperback ebook and as an audiobook, which I am narrating an init, I share with you simple ways in which you can develop. And
In the skill of Happiness, which will also have a profound impact on your physical and mental well-being. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my new bite-size to Friday email. That's called a Friday, five. And each week. I shared things that I do not share on social media, it contains five short doses of positivity articles or books and I'm reading quotes and I'm thinking about exciting research. I've come across and so much more.
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