543. Greenlights
Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Recommended by: Heather Ringoen
Author: Matthew McConaughey
Genre: Non Fiction, Memoir
308 pages, published October 20, 2020
Reading Format: e-book
Summary
In Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey tells his life story in an unconventional manner and includes poems, drawings, photos and other material from his 35 years of diaries. His theme is that life gives you green lights, yellow lights and red lights and that you need to pay attention to the signal you are receiving and act on it or work to change it.
Quotes
“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. Stepping in shit is inevitable, so let’s either see it as good luck, or figure out how to do it less often.”
“Don’t walk into a place like you wanna buy it, walk in like you own it.”
“We cannot fully appreciate the light without the shadows. We have to be thrown off balance to find our footing. It’s better to jump than fall. And here I am.”
“I believe the truth is only offensive when we’re lying.”
“When we mentally give a person, place, or point in time more credit than ourselves, we create a fictitious ceiling. A restriction over the expectations that we have over our own performance in that moment. We get tense. We focus on the outcome instead of the activity and we miss the doing of the deed. We either think the world depends on the result or it’s too good to be true. But it doesn’t and it isn’t. And it’s not our right to believe it does or is.
Don’t create imaginary constraints. A leading role, a blue ribbon, a winning score, a great idea, the love of our life, euphoric bliss… Who are we to think we don’t deserve these fortunes when they’re in our grasp? Who are we to think we haven’t earned them?
If we stay and process within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line. Why? Because we’re not thinking of the finish line. We’re not looking at the clock. We’re not watching ourselves on the Jumbotron performing. We are performing in real time where the approach is the destination.”
“The question we need to ask ourselves is: what is success to us? More money? That’s fine. A healthy family? A happy marriage? Helping others? To be famous? Spiritually sound? To express ourselves? To create art? To leave the world a better place than we found it?
What is success to me? Continue to ask yourself that question. How are you prosperous? What is your relevance?
Your answer may change over time and that’s fine but do yourself this favor – whatever your answer is, don’t choose anything that would jeopardize your soul. Prioritize who you are, who you want to be, and don’t spend time with anything that antagonizes your character. Don’t depend on drinking the Kool-Aid – it’s popular, tastes sweet today, but it will give you cavities tomorrow.
Life is not a popularity contest. Be brave, take the hill. But first answer the question.”
“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 have scars, we gonna have more. Rather than struggle against time and waste it, let’s dance with time and redeem it. Cause we don’t live longer when we try not to die. We live longer when we are too busy living.”
“Me? I haven’t made all A’s in the art of living. But I give a damn. And I’ll take an experienced C over an ignorant A any day.”
“I’d rather lose money havin fun than make money being bored,”
“A denied expectation hurts more than a denied hope, while a fulfilled hope makes us happier than a fulfilled expectation.”
“All destruction eventually leads to construction, all death eventually leads to birth, all pain eventually leads to pleasure. In this life or the next, what goes down will come up. 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.”
“I have a lot of proof that the world is conspiring to make me happy.”
“Sometimes which choice you make is not as important as making a choice and commiting to it.”
“No longer chasing butterflies, Camila and I planted our garden so they could come to us.”
“Life is our resume. It is our story to tell, and the choices we make write the chapters. Can we live in a way where we look forward to looking back?”
“Guilt and regret kill many a man before their time.”
“Make my life my favorite movie. Live my favorite character. Write my own script. Direct my own story. Be my biography. Make my own documentary on me. Non-fiction, live, not recorded. Time to catch that hero I’ve been chasing. See if the sun will melt the wax that holds my wings or if the heat is just a mirage. Live my legacy now. Quit acting like me. Be me.”
“Catching greenlights is about skill: intent, context, consideration, endurance, anticipation, resilience, speed, and discipline. We can catch more greenlights by simply identifying where the red lights are in our life, and then change course to hit fewer of them.”
“To lose the power of confrontation is to lose the power of unity.”
“Great leaders are not always in front, they also know who to follow.”
“The inevitability of a situation is not relative; when we accept the outcome of a given situation as inevitable, then how we choose to deal with it is relative.”
“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.”
“Now you can shut that door on me or we can walk through it together.”
“We want lovers, friends, recruits, soldiers, and affiliations that support who we are. People, individuals, believe in themselves, want to survive, and on a Darwinistic level at least, want to have more, of ourselves. Initially, this is a visual choice. The where, what, when, and who…to our why. Upon closer inspection, which is the upfall of the politically correct culture of today, we learn to measure people on the competence of their values that we most value. When we do this, the politics of gender, race, and slanderous slang take a back seat to the importance of the values we share. The more we travel, the more we realize how similar our human needs are. We want to be loved, have a family, community, have something to look forward to. These basic needs are present in all socioeconomic and cultural civilizations. I have seen many tribes in the deserts of Northern Africa who, with nine children and no electricity, had more joy, love, honor, and laughter than the majority of the most materially rich people I’ve ever met. We have the choice to love, befriend, recruit, call to arms, associate, and support who we believe in, and more importantly, who, we believe, believes in us.”
My Take
“All right, all right, all right.” Greenlights was a really fun and thought provoking read. Matthew McConaughey has led a fascinating life and has some wonderful and often hilarious stories to tell. He has also done a lot of thinking about taking risks and provides some worthwhile advice on how to live your best life in this well written and easy to read memoir.
