IT'S TIME TO BECOME A MAN - Best Motivational Speech | Matthew McConaughey

engage in the world. Go find out some new things. Learn some new things. Whether that's the physical frontier or the mental frontier. Take more risk there. Start with what do you have an innate ability to? What's in your DNA? You know, I wanted to play basketball for years. I wanted to dunk. It ain't my DNA, bro. I was I'm never going to dunk. No matter how hard I worked at it, I was never going to dunk. That's what I wanted to do. So look at what do you have an innate ability for? Then what then are you willing to pursue an education for, work for, hustle for that for which you have an inate ability for? And if we're going to talk about making a living, is that which you have an innate ability for? And now I've educated yourself. talent to have a talent for is that and how can that be something that the world demands cuz it's supply and demand. Boy, you can end up doing something you got an innate ability for. Plus, you you become really good at it and you learn the craft and the world demands it and you can supply it. There you go. But some of us have innate ability, but we're not willing to we don't work for it. We don't improve our skills. We kind of rely on what we got and it kind of come middle of the field and it Sometimes I don't have the ability for it, but I'm going to learn a new craft and I'm going to hustle at it. And I actually when we get good at something, we kind of can start to go, "Oh, I didn't know I loved it. I didn't like this anymore, but I like it now." It starts to feel good to do over and over. I was lost, man. I'm lost. I'm writing 16page letters to myself, and I'm returning them with a 17-page letter about what? existential huge existential questions mixed in with, oh, everything is going great. Trying to talk myself into keeping my head up. You know what I mean? And I said, "Okay, if I can't do what I want to do, I'm going to quit doing what I've been doing. Cut the MC. Quit giving yourself that out, that parachute. Even though you may have it, I needed to strongarm myself. Put my damn hands on the wheel. Look in the mirror and go, "It's on you." Cuz it is time to become a man. Walk forward. Peripheral vision. Get it. Own yourself. Walk forward with more courage and start becoming the man you want to be instead of acting like it, putting it off. Work ethic. Hustle. Hustle. Hustle. I can't, I hate, and lying were three things that you got in trouble for. So what did I learn from don't say you can't that unable to do something you can even if you can't pull it off you can go find help which means you would just have in trouble what I learned from getting a butt whooping for saying I hate you to my brother well what I was learning is the antonyms to those words because saying I can't lying and saying I hate you were bringing me pain so the opposite must bring pleasure right tell the truth love and believe that you can. Those were the values how I remember them getting instilled in me and to this day I still have them trying to transfer to my kids as well in a different way than my parents did. Anything exterior should not give you your identity. Why are you going to watch someone doing something when you can go out in the world and do it yourself? Belief is a verb. Do you remember these? >> Yes. >> You wrote this roughly around the same time in '92. Roughly actually when I was born, funnily enough, I saw the date on the top and thought, "Oh, that's a few days off after my birthday." >> And again, you put fatherhood number one, but there's a a series of other things on this list of your 10 goals in life. As you reflect on those goals, do you wish you hadn't written any of them? And is there anything else you wish you had written? >> No. That that that I wouldn't change a thing about it. >> 10 goals in life. become a father. Find and keep a woman for me. Keep my relationship with God. Chase my best self. Be an egotistical utilitarian. Take more risks. Stay close to mom and family. Win an Oscar for best actor. Look back and enjoy the view. Just keep living. >> I don't know what I'd add to that. >> One of the things that you talk you've talked a few times about is this idea of like you needing resistance. >> Yeah. >> You've said it two or three times. And going back to what it is to be a man and what it is to be a well-orientated, stable man, needing resistance, is that a goal to aim for? Is that I think it's just a necessary necessity for having more than just an individual life, the top of the high-rise. You got to have some resistance to have some form. You got to push off of something to go somewhere. It's very hard when you're just floating and no gravity and no resistance to actually pursue a north star. You have no leverage. You you're floating. Where's the art? Probably more anarchy than art. So resistance gives form. Heard a great artist say this. Limitations reveal style. Resistance. It's like in green lights. If life's just nothing but green lights, if you got no yellows and reds, no reasons to pause or crisises that stop you. Resistance. Just what do you just go in circles? Do you run out of gas, get dizzy? I don't see that. How do we evolve or devolve without resistance? Now, picking the right resistance is is an art in itself. It's challenging. I've been clumsy with it in my life. When especially when I got famous and got success and the enough people telling me I love you and the caviar and the champagne, I was like, "What the Why me? I don't deserve any of this. What I did I I things up on purpose just to say like I trip myself running downhill so I could bloody my own nose and go ah now I can feel okay okay now my heels are on the ground I need it's clumsy so I don't think we need the kind of resistance that we create that can harm us or get in our way for getting in our way sake cuz I've come to learn I think we all are no when things are going really well resistance is going to come if you stay if you stay with if you're if you have any ambition resistance is going to come. >> We often see resistance as a form of failure and something that we should endeavor to avoid. You think about the avoidance of like people building families or even many people consider that we're living in a bit of a comfort crisis. This is slightly a different sort of analogy but most of the diseases that we have today whether they're diseases of I don't know the mind like you know people feeling lonely and isolated or physical diseases 80% of Americans getting back pain but no one in the had a tribe in Africa getting back pain they're all a consequence of us continually choosing comfort which is a short-term friend but long-term enemy and resistance I think is um is something increasingly we can choose opt out It's a choice, too. Let me Can I hit a little poem that's on this subject? It's called Tips Included. All right. And I wrote this based on participation trophies. Uh um entitlement. How too much of something can be just as harmful is not enough. Uh how we all need good fortune, good fate, and charity sometimes. But we shouldn't rely on that. Okay. tips included. When extra credit's included, credit doesn't get as due. When more gives us less, the exchange rates gone a skew. When amnesty is offered going into the crime, we're more bound to commit it cuz there is no fine. We start playing to tie instead of going for the win. When participation is the trophy for every cow in the pin. If I stay on the porch because you picked up the slack when you look over your shoulder, I I can't have your back. If there is no curfew, we're going to stay out all night. No tab at our bar, we're going to get drunk and start a fight. All these long lenses got us losing our sight. You keep lifting it for me, I'm going to lose all my might. When a four-star duty suits a six-star rate, we take our hands off the wheel and rely on fate. Eating all we can at the all we can eat buffet gives us a 3.8 education and a 4.2 GPA. We steal from ourselves and get away with the scam. What's the measure of merit with less give a damn? Hm. These unlimited options sure have me confused. While all the conveniences are keeping me properly lived in this red light district with the of inflation, the ROI's math don't pay for vacation. So, let's just admit it. This extra credit is quite a fluffer. Cuz when the tips included, the service will suffer. the conveniences, the long lenses, everything's like, oh, and we we've outconvenienced oursel. What's AI going to do to us? Talk about convenience. How much and I want to keep hearing studies. I wonder if you have an opinion on this. How much of you coming up with an idea and then writing and rewriting it, thinking about it, no, no, no, no, that's not what Oh, no. This is what I really mean and how to get done. How much of that is really valuable to get it beyond just an intellectual idea? More valuable than just going, "Ah, there it is." Cuz what comes out of it? Incredibly impressive. My hunch is that yeah, we can use it for like uh signpost to help us. Oh, that's good. Or that will help. Thank you for helping me organize. But there's a value to us going through the sweat equity of learning something. the the studies have just that have just come out using different things like chachi have actually proven what you've just said to be true that when people use AI to produce a piece of work not only can't they recall what they've made but they also start speaking in language more like the AI so they start to lose their own voice people like Richard Fryman the physicist has said the best way to learn something is to learn it and then to go through the pain of writing it condensing it down to a simple truth like you do so often in your new book poems and prayers and then sharing it with the world and then getting the feedback and if if the world understood it like you meant it like that poem you just shared you you you understand it that's evidence that you get it >> right >> so I think AI is going to be great for me saying something to you but not learning something myself and I think if you know if you want to defend creativity and innovation and the ability to think you actually have a huge opportunity which is to go left when everyone's going right >> right >> and it goes to what you were saying there you were talking about be careful when you mess mess with incentives like be careful when you choose the easier road. Be careful of the unintended consequences and AI is a prime example of an unintended consequence of you taking the easier road today. Look, I still got to learn how to take a vacation because you know we there's sometimes when the wind's at our back and we've earned it. There's some times when it's easy street and it's like, "Yeah, don't interrupt this, man. This is a sweet ass song. Trust that the hill's coming again. Don't be so impressed with this. And don't what I have to do so fall into when things are going really well, I go, "Ah, there it is. That's the mean." No, it's not. Not with any ambition. It's not. Or not with life happening. It's not reality. You shoot for an A and make a C is better than shooting for a C and making an F. So go for perfection. Reality always comes in under it. But in that moment when you see the inevitable reality, the outcome, the result. How quickly can we go, okay, but I got so much more out of it. The job, the person, myself, because I went for perfection. than if I'd have just gone for no dude just I mean you know just pass class and but what can be hard for me sometimes is it can take me too long to to to come down from when oh it didn't hit perfection and maybe it takes me a week to go dude now do you finally realize that of course you weren't going to get perfection but you got so much more out of it because you went for perfection. >> Yeah. So be pleased with reality because you got a you got a good grade on it, man. That war that was that was good. That piece of art was wouldn't have been that true. If you wouldn't have been I don't like I say this all the time and I never mean this in a in a in a in a disrespectful way. I've never done a movie or a performance that lived up to what I thought it could be cuz I'm thinking it can be divine. comes out maybe majorly inspiring may speak to masses even have some magic to it but only it's divine and I think I think everything that's ever been built that's great or creatively brilliant has come from someone who has a big a big expectation gap and of course the very definition of that you're never going to close it and actually the probably the reason you then are motivated to move to the next thing and pursue divine again is because it wasn't divine last time. Maybe there's still something left on the table and that's means you never arrive, >> right? >> But if you can find something that can keep you going, something no matter how small to look forward to and continually have faith in and chase, well then your life here will be better than it is now, heaven or not. What do I need to understand about your earliest context to understand who you are, the values you have, and the perspective that you view the world with? Earliest on basic values of respect yourself, respect others. Give a damn about yourself, give a damn about others. combined with a mother that wherever we went in the world that we might have been a little nervous to take a risk at, she was like, "Don't walk in there like you want to buy the place. Walk in like you own it." So, a sort of boosting up of what you could say is massive ego, but also you were not allowed to walk on your proverbial toes in our family. You were brought down. And if anyone in our family, if anything, I would say going back, I think mom, mom and dad maybe could have been a little more lenient with the successes that we had and let when we did parade when my brother did win the the track meet and walk through the house like this to allow him to do that in and and but you weren't allowed to you weren't allowed to do that. You were immediately humbled no matter if you were coming right off a victory or a win or a box office hit. You weren't allowed to. At the same time, you were raised up once you were humbled. Um, that balance. We were taught resilience. Heavy heavy duty resilience, baseline gratitude. Quit asking me for new shoes. I'm going to introduce you to the kid with no feet. Well, okay. Like sobering. These were were these apherisms from my mother. Yeah, but they were pounded into us. All right. At the same time, I was spent 36 years thinking I was Little Mr. Texas cuz my mom told me I was until 36 years later I look at the trophy and it says I was runner up and I go, "Oh, mom was like overselling us to ourselves at the same time. You better be humble." Sleep was sin in my household. Sin. I saw my dad asleep one time in my life. I got up at 8:00 on a Saturday morning and looked pee went through the kitchen and peeked and I saw him sleeping. I went and woke up my brother's like, "Dude, but that dad's still asleep." He actually died 2 and 1/2 months later and connected that idea that, oh, if he slept in that late, he must have not been feeling well. If it was daylight, you couldn't be inside. There's a fierce sense of independence. Get 30 minutes TV a night max. Mom would always say, "Turn that damn thing off. Get outside." You had to be outside. like go get out in the world. Go hustle. Figure it out. Be home in the dark. That was just the understood rule. We always knew we were loved. There was never a question that we were loved. And mom would always keep on to make sure you're loving yourself. I remember breakups, heartbroken. She'd let she'd let us mourn. She was a great ear, very sensitive ear to that kind of to pains like that, broken hearts. But only for a day. After a day, she'd crank up the AC/DC, man, and go like, "Now, get up. You're worth it." Her loss. Come on. Get out of bed. Uh-uh. Come on. Uh-uh. Quit moping. Lift your head up. Come on. Come on, buddy. We got this. Uh-uh. Her loss. To give you the day. No more than that. Our love in the family was physical. No grudges. No grounding. you get in trouble, which we did. One, we were always guilty when we got in trouble, but it was corporal. It was take your licks. Get it over with. Take your licks. We're not going to ground you cuz that'd be taking away your time. And your time is the most valuable thing you got. So, take it. Take your licks. You're not going to get injured. It's going to hurt. And don't yell cuz if you yell more licks, you're going to get another one. The love was tough. The love was phys. We hugged more than the the the hands soothed much more than they hurt 999 times out of a thousand. But it was a we were a physical hugging loving family. You always went to bed with an I love you and a kiss. Even if it was ritual, which it was like a Sunday service, got to wake up. Even if I'm not listening to the damn preacher, I'm being subconsciously reminded that you should take a day out of the week to be at the most. Number two, that you should go get humbled and say thank you to a higher power and thank you for the things that you have in your life and thank you for the people you have in your life and helping those people double down on those great attributes that they have. People come, oh my god, I'm so sorry about your childhood. And I never felt like I wasn't loved. And it was hard love and it was tough love. And my mom and dad's love was passionate love. We knew we were loved.

"Quit giving yourself outs. Look in the mirror and say it's on you. Because it is time to become the man you want to be." Matthew McConaughey. Get McConaughey's bestselling book, Greenlights: https://amzn.to/2YinBAM Special thanks to: The DOAC: https://www.youtube.com/@TheDiaryOfACEO --------------------- Ways to stay connected with Motiversity and stay motivated: ▶Subscribe for New Motivational Videos Every Week: http://bit.ly/MotivationVids ▶SHOP Official Motivational Canvases and Apparel: https://bit.ly/motiversityshop ▶FOLLOW our Podcasts: https://linktr.ee/motiversitypodcasts ▶JOIN our Newsletter for Exclusive Updates, Discounts, and Deals: https://bit.ly/Motiversitynewsletter ▶BECOME A MEMBER of our loyal community! https://bit.ly/motiversitymembers -------------------------------------------------- ►Speakers Matthew McConaughey McConaughey is known all over the world for his many accomplishments: Academy Award winner for Best Actor in Dallas Buyers Club, a Golden Globe, a Screen Writers Actors Guild Award, two Critics' Choice Awards, a People’s Choice Award and more. Follow Matthew: https://www.instagram.com/officiallymcconaughey/ https://www.facebook.com/MatthewMcConaughey/ https://twitter.com/McConaughey Greenlights book: https://amzn.to/2YinBAM ►Follow Motiversity on Social Media Find us everywhere: https://linktr.ee/motiversity Discord: https://bit.ly/motiversitydiscord Facebook: https://bit.ly/motiversityfacebook Instagram: https://bit.ly/motiversityinstagram TikTok: https://bit.ly/motiversitytiktok Website: https://bit.ly/motiversitywebsite ►Follow Motiversity on Music and Podcast Platforms Spotify Music: http://bit.ly/Motiversity Apple Music: http://bit.ly/MotiversityAppleMusic Podcasts: https://linktr.ee/motiversitypodcasts https://bit.ly/MotiversityonMindsetApp 👈 Download Mindset app for free and listen to all the world's best motivational speeches. Follow all the Motiversity YouTube channels: https://linktr.ee/motiversity ►Music: Licensed from Epidemic Sound ►Video footage: All video footage used is either licensed through either CC-BY or from various stock footage websites. All creative commons footage is listed at the end of the video and is licensed under CC-BY 3.0. ►Submit to Motiversity Speeches: http://bit.ly/MotiversitySubmitSpeeches Music or Footage: http://bit.ly/MotiversitySubmitFootageMusic ►Official Motiversity Motivational Canvas Art https://shop.motiversity.com/ ►Join Our Motivational List and get Exclusive Videos, Discounts and Updates: http://bit.ly/MotiversityNewsletter #Motiversity #Motivation #matthewmcconaughey #success