Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
Kindle & Audible: US or CA
Morning Readers & Happy Thursday!
Matthew Freakin McConaughey, ya’ll. Someone give this man a standing ovation. Not to be swayed by my bias for ‘How to Loose a Guy in 10 Days’, this book is simply put, life changing. Driven home all the more by the fact that it is narrated by the author himself; his life, his words, his voice.
Let’s cut to the chase though shall we, this book isn’t just 5-star, it’s gold star. It is gifting it to every friend & relative you know, it is buying the signed, limited edition copy and relistening to it on the way into work because you need a salve that reaches the soul. It is real and it is moving!
This is a side of the actor I honestly never would have imagined, it hit all the right notes. It was the perfect mix of humility and self assuredness, a passion for the serendipity of life while cashing in the reality check of hard work and perspective. This book prescribes life lessons and teaches embracing life to create more opportunity in becoming truer to yourself. It is more self-actualization than simple reflection.
‘The Great Rewatching’ is currently ongoing as I continually found myself pausing and thinking “Noooooo… he wasn’t in that movie was he?!” Tangent, how had I never heard of ‘A Time to Kill’, this movie shook me in a way that only Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger have ever done before.
A few of the hard hitters:
“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 happy to just be here”
“Note to self: The intellect is not meant to surpass the apparent so far as to conceal it or make it more confusing. It is meant to expose the truth more clearly and reveal more of the obvious from more lines of sight. It should simplify things, not make them more cerebral.”
When we mentally give a person, place or point in time more credit than ourselves we then create a fictitious ceiling, a restriction over the expectations we have of our own performance in that moment. we get tense and focus more on the outcomes, instead of the activity and we miss the doing of the deed.”
We are stuck with the one person we can never get rid of, ourselves.
“This noisy world we live in with its commitments, deadlines, fix this’s, do that’s 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.”
“Life like architecture is a verb. If designed well, it works, its beautiful and it needs no directions. It needs maintenance.”
“Three things that make you ask yourself, what matters? Three things that make you realize, it all does”
Ugh, Chills.
This book genuinely is a love letter to life herself, and McConaughey has managed to soak each page with his zest for life and family in a way that reminds us, we are all human, just learning how to live this one crazy life. & it’s a beautiful thing.
Happy Reading!
-Anna R.
*As always if you purchase through any of the links in this post, or throughout this blog, a small commission comes back to help support the page & what I do here!
Kindle & Audible: US or CA
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