by

Tim Ferriss

How to Reinvent Yourself and Make Bold Moves — Decisive Stories from Matthew McConaughey, Steve Young, Samin Nosrat, and More (#879)

Leave a comment

Topics:

This is a special compilation devoted to reinvention: how to shed an identity that no longer fits, decide on a new chapter, navigate uncertainty, and commit to what’s next.

This episode is brought to you by:

  • Shopify global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business
  • Momentous high-quality creatine for cognitive and muscular support
Listen onSpotify
Listen onApple Podcasts
Listen onOvercast
How to Reinvent Yourself and Make Bold Moves — Decisive Stories from Matthew McConaughey, Steve Young, Samin Nosrat, and More

Additional podcast platforms

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Transcripts

Show Notes

Connect with Matthew McConaughey:

Website | X | Facebook | Instagram

Matthew’s appearance on the podcast: 474

Connect with Steve Young:

HGGC | Forever Young Foundation | X | Instagram

Steve’s appearance on the podcast: 847

Connect with Lori Gottlieb:

Website | Ask the Therapist Column (NYT) | X | Facebook | Instagram

Lori’s appearance on the podcast: 415

Connect with Suleika Jaouad:

Website | X | Facebook | Instagram

Suleika’s appearance on the podcast: 516

Connect with Samin Nosrat:

Website | Facebook | Instagram

Samin’s appearance on the podcast: 339

Connect with Martine Rothblatt:

United Therapeutics Corporation | X | Instagram

Martine’s appearance on the podcast: 487

Connect with Debbie Millman:

Website | Design Matters Podcast | X | Facebook | Instagram

Debbie’s appearances on the podcast: 472, 304, 230, 214

Recommended Reading, Listening, & Viewing

Books

Movies & TV

People

Timestamps

  • [00:00:00] Intro from Tim.
  • [00:01:43] Matthew McConaughey: Walking away from rom-coms, the 20-month “desert,” and unbranding.
  • [00:14:35] Steve Young: Treating retirement like a death you must mourn; Staubach’s advice to “run.”
  • [00:17:16] Lori Gottlieb: Quitting Hollywood, then medical school, to follow the fire in her belly.
  • [00:24:38] Suleika Jaouad: Cured isn’t healed — PTSD, and inventing her own rite of passage.
  • [00:36:47] Samin Nosrat: Shutting down her pasta business; trusting feelings over spreadsheets.
  • [00:45:04] Martine Rothblatt: Teaching herself biology to find a drug to save her daughter.
  • [00:56:51] Debbie Millman: The 10-year plan for a “remarkable life.”

Quotations from This Episode

“Fuck the bucks, I’m going for the experience. If I read a role that shakes me in my boots, and challenges the vitality that I feel in my own real life, and challenges me, the man I am in my own real life, that’s what I’m going after.”

— Matthew McConaughey

“What I’ve learned about transition [is] that everyone … needs to recognize and treat it like a death, to mourn it and go through all the steps of mourning it and burying it and actually having it as a place that you can keep referring to as almost like a grave site. Because otherwise you carry it around and you never transition.”

— Steve Young

“Thinking about death makes us happier. I don’t mean dwelling — just acknowledging it. Just acknowledging that life has a 100 percent mortality rate and most of us don’t know how or when we’re going to die.”

— Lori Gottlieb

“Recovering wasn’t about a return to the old. It was a brute, terrifying act of discovery.”

— Suleika Jaouad

“Now that I know what’s possible — negatively and also positively — I know what to ask for and I know how to articulate that.”

— Samin Nosrat

“What I didn’t know, I just kept going backwards in academia, backwards in learning or pedagogia, until I would even get to a high school level textbook that would explain something. And I said, ‘Okay, I get that.’ And I kept taking notes and just educated myself night after night until I learned everything I needed to know.”

— Martine Rothblatt

“Write this day, this one day, 10 years from now. What does your whole day look like? Start from the minute you wake up, brush your teeth, have your coffee or tea, all the way through until when you tuck yourself in at night. What is that day like for you? Dream big. Dream without any fear. Write it all down. You don’t have to share it with anyone other than yourself. Put your whole heart into it and write like there’s no tomorrow. Write like your life depends on it because it does. And then, read it once a year and see what happens. It’s magic.”

— Debbie Millman

Want to hear another episode with someone who walked away at the top to reinvent himself? Listen to my conversation with author, entrepreneur, and one-time circus clown Derek Sivers, in which we discussed selling CD Baby and giving the proceeds to charity, the joys of an un-optimized life, finding paths less traveled, taking giant leaps, the wisdom of quitting when you’re ahead, picking the right game of life, why saying “good enough” can be a superpower, and much more.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

Comment Rules: Remember what Fonzie was like? Cool. That's how we're gonna be — cool. Critical is fine, but if you're rude, we'll delete your stuff. Please do not put your URL in the comment text and please use your PERSONAL name or initials and not your business name, as the latter comes off like spam. Have fun and thanks for adding to the conversation! (Thanks to Brian Oberkirch for the inspiration.)

0 Comments

Keep exploring.