Matthew McConaughey is a firm believer in jotting down goals. The Texan says it’s how we make a “contract with ourselves.”
If you think about it, Matthew McConaughey is correct. Whether you reach the goals or even surpass them is another question. But when you commit to the process of writing something down, it becomes concrete, at least in the moment.
McConaughey maintained journals throughout his life. He leaned on them to write his 2020 memoir, Greenlights. And in an Instagram post from Wednesday, McConaughey dropped a video looking back at a key moment in his life. Of course, he also had documented the moment.
As he opened the video clip, McConaughey chatted about that contract with ourselves. If you write down stuff, you can use it as a life barometer. “Am I still on track,” he said. “And am I chasing what I want to chase.”
What Was That Key Matthew McConaughey Year? 1992.
Then Matthew McConaughey looked back at 1992. Let’s set the scene. The future Academy Award winner was a year away from finishing his degree at the University of Texas. But he did earn a couple of acting roles that year, albeit ones with no lines. He made an appearance on Unsolved Mysteries. (McConaughey played a hero, an ex-Marine who tried to keep a sexual predator away from some kids. He got shot, anyway.) And, McConaughey also was in Trisha Yearwood’s music video for Walkaway Joe. (He played Joe).
In an interview last year, he also detailed another key moment in 1992, when he met the guy who gave him his first big break. Presumably, this was Richard Linklater. Here’s how he described the meeting in a podcast for Amazon.
“In the right bar, at the right time, meet the right guy, we hang out, having quite a few pops – enough to get kicked out of said bar,” he quipped. “In a cab ride back to my house, he’s rolling up a doob, he’s dropping me off, he says, ‘Hey man, you ever done any acting?’”
So back in 1992, what were the goals of a 22-year-old Matthew McConaughey? He went back and glanced at them when he was writing Greenlights.
“I’d never looked at those journals, never looked at them until two years ago when I found the list from 1992,” he said. “I remember when I wrote this, but hadn’t gone back and looked at them.
“Son of a gun, all 10 of the things and goals I’d written down I had already achieved or was in the midst of achieving.”
Count Down the Vintage McConaughey Top 10
- Become a father (he has three kids)
2. Find and keep the woman for me (McConaughey married Camila Alves in 2012. She’s the mother of his children).
3. Keep my relationship with God
4. Chase my best self
5. Be an egotistical utilitarian
6. Take more risks
7. Stay close to mom and family. (Matthew McConaughey and his mother, Kay, have a terrific relationship. However, he wrote about how they didn’t speak for several years during the 1990s.)
8. Win an Oscar for best actor (Big check. He earned an Academy Award for the 2013 movie Dallas Buyers Club).
9. Look back and enjoy the view
10. Just keep livin’
