Greenlights | Matthew McConaughey

Another great book is over as of this Father's Day (2021, 20 June). I really loved the quotes from this book. Normally I am a big fan of biographies and autobiographies and this book was a good example of why I love this type of books. In short, they make me learn from other people's experiences. Do you also like to learn from others' mistakes and take-aways, then you should have a look at this book. 

From the Academy Award®–winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.

Unflinchingly honest and remarkably candid, Matthew McConaughey's book invites us to grapple with the lessons of his life as he did—and to see that the point was never to win, but to understand.—Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

 

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. 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. How to be more me.

Introduction

This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life. Adventures that have been significant, enlightening, and funny, sometimes because they were meant to be but mostly because they didn’t try to be. I’m an optimist by nature, and humor has been one of my great teachers. It has helped me deal with pain, loss, and lack of trust. I’m not perfect; no, I step in shit all the time and recognize it when I do. I’ve just learned how to scrape it off my boots and carry on.

We all step in shit from time to time. We hit roadblocks, we fuck up, we get fucked, we get sick, we don’t get what we want, we cross thousands of “could have done better”s and “wish that wouldn’t have happened”s in life.

To Life

I never wrote things down to remember; I always wrote things down so I could forget. The idea of revisiting my life and musings was a daunting one; I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy the company.

What’s a Greenlight?

Greenlights mean go—advance, carry on, continue. On the road, they are set up to give the flow of traffic the right of way, and when scheduled properly, more vehicles catch more greenlights in succession. They say proceed.

In our lives, they are an affirmation of our way. They’re approvals, support, praise, gifts, gas on our fire, attaboys, and appetites. They’re cash money, birth, springtime, health, success, joy, sustainability, innocence, and fresh starts. We love greenlights. They don’t interfere with our direction. They’re easy. They’re a shoeless summer. They say yes and give us what we want.

I believe everything we do in life is part of a plan. Sometimes the plan goes as intended, and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s part of the plan. Realizing this is a greenlight in itself.

It’s a matter of how we see the challenge in front of us and how we engage with it. Persist, pivot, or concede. It’s up to us, our choice every time.

This is a book about how to catch more yeses in a world of nos and how to recognize when a no might actually be a yes. This is a book about catching greenlights and realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green.

Outlaw Logic

A denied expectation hurts more than a denied hope, while a fulfilled hope makes us happier than a fulfilled expectation. Hope’s got a higher return on happiness and less debit on denial, it’s just not as measurable.

“Don’t walk into a place like you wanna buy it, walk in like you own it.”

“if all that I would want to do, would be to sit and talk to you… would you listen?”

Create structure so you can have freedom.

Create your weather so you can blow in the wind.

Map your direction so you can swerve in the lanes.

Clean up so you can get dirty.

Choreograph, then dance.

Learn to read and write before you start making up words.

Check if the pool has water in it before you dive in.

Learn to sail before you fly.

Initiation before inaugurations.

Earn your Saturdays.

We need discipline, guidelines, context, and responsibility early in any new endeavor. It’s the time to sacrifice. To learn, to observe, to take heed.

If and when we get knowledge of the space, the craft, the people, and the plan, then we can let our freak flag fly, and create.

Creativity needs borders.

Individuality needs resistance.

The earth needs gravity.

Without them there is no form.

No art.

Only chaos.

Dirt Roads and Autobahns

“I will form good habits and become their slave.”

Good looks don’t cook the dinner, but they’ll get you a seat at the table, and I was determined to take advantage of any seat I could get.

We all must earn belief in ourselves first, then for each other.

Engage with yourself then engage with the world.

oneinarow

Any success takes one in a row.

Do one thing well, then another.

Once, then once more.

Over and over until the end,

then it’s oneinarow again.

Losing my father, like it is for many, was my most seminal rite of passage into manhood. No more safety net. No one above the law and government looking after me anymore. It was time for me to grow up. Time to say goodbye to the boy I’d been, building tree houses in the middle of the night.

A realization came to me. I carved these words into a tree:

less impressed,

more involved.

The sooner we become less impressed with our life, our accomplishments, our career, our relationships, the prospects in front of us—the sooner we become less impressed and more involved with these things—the sooner we get better at them. We must be more than just happy to be here.

All the mortal things that I had been revering in my life, everything I was looking up to in awe, suddenly came down to eye level in front of me.

“You gotta do what Randall ‘Pink’ Floyd wants to do, man, and lemme tell you this, the older you do get, the more rules they’re gonna try-yyyy to get you to follow, you just gotta just keep livin, man, l-i-v-i-n.”

just keep livin…lower case because life is nobody’s proper noun, and there’s no “g” on the end of livin because life’s a verb.

The Art of Running Downhill

if only

Means you wanted something but did not get it.

For some reason, either by your own incompetence or the world’s intervention, it did not happen.

Sometimes this is just the breaks and we need to bow out gracefully.

But more often than we care to admit, we don’t get what we want because we quit early or we didn’t take the necessary risk to get it.

The more boots we put in the back side of our if onlys, the more we will get what we want.

Don’t walk the it’s too late it’s too soon tightrope until you die.

Sunday came. It was Mother’s Day. I called mine at daybreak.

“Don’t walk in there like you want the role, Matthew, walk in there like you own it!”

Just what I needed to hear.

“Thanks, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day.”

Reach beyond your grasp, have immortal finish lines, and turn your red light green, because a roof is a man-made thing.

sometimes you have etc.

sometimes etc. has you.

—Fatima Alves

First, we have to put ourselves in the place to receive the truth. This noisy world we live in, with its commitments, deadlines, fix theses, do thats, and expectations make it hard to get clarity and peace of mind, famous or not. So we have to consciously put ourselves in a place to receive that clarity. Whether that’s prayer, meditation, a walkabout, being in the right company, a road trip, whatever it is for each of us.

Then, after we’ve put ourselves in this place to listen to the gospel and hear their music, we then have to be aware enough to receive it, and conscious enough to recognize it. It will arrive nameless because it is clear, omnipresent, unanimous, and infinite. It usually lands like a butterfly, quick and quiet. When we let it in, it needs no introduction.

Then the relationship can begin, and we need the presence to personalize it. This is where the anonymous truth gets intimate, and becomes autonomous. We ask our self what it means, how it’s unique to us, and why it’s here now.

Then comes a harder part, having the patience to preserve it— getting it from our intellect, into our bones, soul, and instinct. We must pay attention to it, concentrate on it, keep it lit, and not let it flutter away. This takes commitment, time, and ’tendance.

If we make it this far, after we’ve put ourselves in the right place to receive the truth, recognized it as such, made it our own, and preserved it, then comes the coup de grâce…

Having the courage to live it. To actually walk away from that place where it found us, take that truth with us into the screaming arena of our daily lives, practice it, and make it an active part of who we are.

If we can do that, then we are on our way to Heaven on Earth.

Where what we want is what we need.

Where what we need is what we want.

Turn the Page

To beat a dragon, be a dragon.

Less impressed, more involved

Guilt and regret kill many a man before their time. Get off the ride. You are the author of the book of your life. Turn the page.

The Arrow Doesn't Seek the Target, the Target Draws the Arrow

The arrow doesn’t seek the target, the target draws the arrow.

We must be aware of what we attract in life because it is no accident or coincidence.

The spider waits in his web for dinner to come.

Yes, we must chase what we want, seek it out, cast our lines in the water, but sometimes we don’t need to make things happen.

Our souls are infinitely magnetic.

The silence wasn’t awkward, it was golden.

Be Brave, Take the Hill

If everything we did was right, we’d never know what was wrong.

time and truth.

Two constants you can rely on.

One shows up for the first time every time while the other never leaves.

Live Your Legacy Now

you just live together you live for the present.

you marry you live for the future.

—Lili Fini Zanuck

As I approach the next chapter of truths to cross, the only thing I know for sure is that I will recalibrate again, and that my family will be at the core when I do. As a father, I often contradict myself, and I know I could do a better job of practicing what I preach, but I’ve also learned that if the message is true, don’t forget it, and forgive the messenger, even if he does.

I hope to give my children the opportunity to find what they love to do, work to be great at it, pursue it, and do it. Rather than cover their eyes from ugly truths, I want to cover their eyes from fictional fantasies that will handicap their ability to negotiate tomorrow’s reality. I believe they can handle it.

It’s hard to find constants, natural laws, universal truths in life, but when we have kids, there is no intellectual discussion or philosophy as to how or how much to love, protect, and guide them, it’s an instinctual commitment, an immediate, infinite, and ever-growing responsibility. A privilege.

Pray for luck and make the best of it. We all have scars, we’ll get more. So rather than struggle against time and waste it, let’s dance with time and redeem it, because we don’t live longer when we try not to die, we live longer when we’re too busy livin.