We spoke of Matthew McConaughey’s Art of Living event yesterday and I want to share some other gems from that event.  I want to clarify that the purpose of the event was discovering the things that hold us back in order to live our lives more honestly and fully.  It’s more than just developing confidence, it’s about identifying what weakens our confidence in the first place, identifying the fears we have.      McConaughey asked, “What is the boogeyman?  It’s fear of the unknown, fear in our head, not in reality.”  The reason this stuck out is the realization that we aren’t trained how to deal with these fears.  Too often we are taught to plow through and do until we are able to move forward with some degree of success. McConaughey suggests that this be more like looking the monster in the eye.  When we actually confront what we fear we learn how to deal with it.  We aren’t trying to beat it into submission, we are asking what it needs which opens a conversation.

McConaughey said that anything worth having cost something.  For example, to be successful (of our own definition) we have to be willing to give up other people’s expectations and we have to be willing to sacrifice our comfort.  He doesn’t suggest we do this in a masochistic way, working 20 hours a day and striving toward burnout, he says we need to identify where we can learn to face down the voice that seeks out comfort over our dreams.  I love the idea of getting comfortable with who we are and accepting who we are because there’s another thing we mistake in life: that if we make mistakes, we can’t have the life we want.  McConaughey says the exact opposite: We can have fears and flaws and still get to our ideal life if we learn how to approach those fears.

I loved the perspective McConaughey shared on fear in terms of figuring out what the actual problem is: It’s a right of passage to face our fears and flaws—ask ourselves what monster we need to face.  When we go through life we spend a large amount of time proving our worth and judging the worthiness of others.  When we see it’s mainly because we aren’t taught how to develop our own worth, we can start looking at how we feel about ourselves and where we want to go.  By the time we get to the question about what we really fear, we are in a different mindset.  Sometimes the questions we ask bring us the answers we didn’t expect, and THOSE are the answers we need.  If we want to live fully, we need to be fully honest about the things we don’t want to face and we need to be equally honest about what we can actually face in spite of our fears.  The answer lies on the other side of our fear/comfort zone.  When we get there, we are unstoppable.  What monster do you need to look in the eye?