Name: Stop The Cycle of Self-Sabotage - Matthew McConaughey
Uploaded: 2026-02-06T10:32:17.000Z
Duration: 9 min 6 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

It seems to me like courage, the ability to feel our convictions and commit to them is a little bit of a common thread that sort of runs through that.

Adverbs of manner

So I grew up only knowing sort of the courage of the persistent, be resilient, endure, get up, dust yourself off, go.

The problem with that, the Achilles heel with that is you get up and get the courage to keep on going every time and get up and dust yourself off.

You make the same mistakes each time around because you never backed up.

What I've now learned, I'm still learning, is the courage to go, no, I'm going to let some people pass me in the race right now because I'm going to look at why I keep stepping in that damn same pothole and twisting my ankle the same spot.

Why I keep failing when I try to get that next spot in this relationship or failing in this place to get this product of my craft to the next level.

Would that be the relinquishing of the Rom com era in a small part for you?

It also has to do with when I got married.

My son comes to me at 4 years old and says, why isn't Mama McConaughey?

I'm going through my head, you're 4, dude.

I sat there, I was like, did your mom put you at this?

It's a great question, but I mean, we're not.

When you get married, switch your name, okay?

And then he just listened and all of a sudden he goes, are you scared?

I remember going to a pastor and talking to a lot of different elder men who had had long term relationships, were married for decades and stuff.

And, and, and my pastor goes, let me just ask you this, Mr. Risk Taker.

Carrying on, Mike, you're going and it's going well, or taking the deeper dive into the sacrament.

Covenant of marriage should be a covenant between you and her and God.

That will be a whole new adventure in itself.

I was like, oh, the getting married's bigger risk.

That was part of why I made the affirmative action and was what I was looking for, the way to play offense with that choice.

I didn't want to do it because, oh, that's what you're supposed to do.

We got engaged I didn't want to do it by the book and I was looking for the offensive reason to do it.

The rom com time that was definitely me doing the work I was doing and only being able to do the work I was doing and offer the roles I was getting.

The rom coms was eating at me because I felt like I could.

I make good money, feel like I can roll out of bed and do one of these tomorrow morning.

I was countered by I had met Camilla, fallen in love, she's now pregnant with her first child.

So that my life was extremely vital and I was alive.

Cried harder, laughed louder, felt more joy, all those things.

And I was like, well, I wish my work could be as challenging or as vital as my life.

And I remember looking in the mirror going, we'll be glad right now.

Appreciate that it's not the other way around.

But can I have my work challenge my lifestyle in this vitality?

If I do some dramas I want to do, well, those aren't coming.

If I can't do what I want to do, let me quit doing what I was doing.

Now that was, I think, yeah, it was definitely courageous.

I did, I did honestly think I'd written myself a one way ticket out of Hollywood.

People close to me, basically almost everybody besides my wife, was like, what is your major malfunction, little brother?

Why, why are you throwing a jackknife in this that way?

You're tripping yourself, running downhill, man.

I had my wife and myself to remind myself of that 4:00am clarity that I had in tears when I was like, no, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm rolling the dice, I'm sticking with it.

And yeah, man, I did think I wrote myself a ticket out of Hollywood.

I did look at other vocations, become a teacher, a wildlife guide.

But over time, and it was about 20 months, it was gone long enough.

Enough was not in your living room, in a theater, in a rom com.

And then I think I told you the story, turning down the $14.5 million offer.

Maybe people go, oh shit, what's he up to?

You don't just step out of Hollywood and enter.

You turn that down because you got a plan, you got somewhere you want to go.

And I think that made me more attractive.

I think it's fair to say that took a fair amount of courage from me.

For a lot of people, their work feels more vital than their life.

Is that a shiny object mirage that they need to rid themselves of?

Look, that's part of why I started writing.

I was feeling like my work was more vital than my life.

I felt like I was going through the motions more in my life, but

I was really getting major life experiences and through my work.

I was like, well, let's see where I can challenge myself more in the documentary the one life I'm living rather than the characters I'm going to play that somebody else wrote.

Someone else is lensing through their camera and editing.

What are we doing on this one take that we've had since the day we're born and we'll be cut the day we die.

And so that was a challenge to myself, which led to the writing, which was a more direct experience.

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Stop The Cycle of Self-Sabotage - Matthew McConaughey

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