The Day My Friend Quoted Matthew McConaughey

And why that walk became a blueprint for the life—and work—I live now.

It was one of those long, low-energy days. A walk with old friends—the kind you don’t need to perform for. The kind who still call you by your school nickname, still take the piss out of your trainers, still remember exactly who you were before you learned to act like you had it together.

There were four of us, ambling along a coastal footpath in Devon that didn’t seem to go anywhere quickly. The sky was blisteringly bright. The pace was slow. We sat and nattered over a thermos and a Tunnock’s. One of the boys started talking about a podcast he’d listened to on the drive down.

Matthew McConaughey was on it, talking about selfishness and what he’d learned from trying to live a decent life. “He said this thing,” my mate told us, “and it stuck with me—‘What’s good for we is good for me.’”

I nodded. Smiled. Said something like, “That’s decent.” But inside, something cracked open.

Because I was slowly dying inside, quietly—and no one knew.

On the outside, I wasn’t in crisis. But inside, I was breaking down. I was functioning, more or less. But it felt like I was watching life happen from just outside the room. Everything was slightly muffled. I was tired—not the kind of tired you fix with a night off, but the kind that settles in behind your ribs and stays there. I’d been holding it all together for so long I didn’t even realise I was clenching. And there I was—with my oldest friends, on a beautiful sunny day, in a place on this earth I cherish—alone, and in the dark.

And that line—what’s good for we is good for me—landed. Not with fireworks. Just… something small. A seed dropped in the dark.

I didn’t know then that it would be the line I’d build everything around.
I just knew it was true.

Years later, I’d come across the Steve Jobs quote. The one about the dots only making sense in hindsight. You can’t connect them looking forward; you can only connect them looking back. People quote it all the time without knowing what it means. But I knew. Because by then, I was starting to see how the pieces had joined. Not in a straight line. Not with logic. But in the way a tree grows around damage.

That walk. That moment. That version of me—silently unraveling in good company—was a dot. So was the man I became when I started living differently. So were the people I began to help, once I stopped trying to save myself through them.

And somewhere along the line, the seed cracked open. That simple line from McConaughey, passed to me by a mate with muddy boots and no idea what I was carrying, became more than a quote. It became a way of showing up. And eventually, a way of working.

When people ask me what I do now—what kind of coach I am—I never know how to answer in a sentence. I usually start with what it’s not. It’s not corporate optimisation. It’s not a programme. It’s not therapy in disguise. It’s not a list of better habits to solve your life.

It’s quieter than that. Slower. More honest.

I work with people who are, in theory, doing well. Senior, experienced, capable—and slightly lost. They’ve spent years building something impressive. A career. A business. A version of themselves that looks great in LinkedIn posts. But they’re disconnected from it. From themselves. And they don’t know why.

They don’t come to me for answers. They come because they’re ready to ask better questions. Ones that don’t fit neatly into a strategy meeting or a Sunday night scroll through job listings.

And so we talk. We walk, sometimes. We sit in silence. I ask things no one else does. I reflect things back they’ve stopped hearing. I don’t fix. I don’t lead. I walk alongside, until something shifts.

What I see—over and over—is that the shift doesn’t start with insight. It starts with action. Not big, dramatic action. Just one small choice made from a different place.

And that’s the point. That’s the bit that reminds me of Jobs, of the dots, of that walk. Most people wait until they understand before they act. But the real shift happens the other way around. You act—honestly, from a place that feels right in your gut—and then you start to understand. You start to trust. You get the reward not for believing, but for trying.

And that’s when something new starts to build: faith. Not in me. Not in the process. In themselves.

That if they just keep acting from alignment—if they ask, what’s good for we, right now?—then the future starts to make sense. The dots arrange themselves. The weight lifts.

I’ve seen it happen too many times to pretend it’s coincidence.

People who couldn’t breathe from the pressure of performance start laughing again. People who were convinced they had to keep running find they can actually stop—and nothing collapses. They make decisions differently. They show up differently. They let go of things they thought were keeping them safe. They focus on what matters now—and that turns out to be enough.

More than enough.

There’s a moment in every client relationship—if it’s working—when they do something small, something real, and I see it. The shift. It’s in their face. Their body. Their eyes.

They’ve just made a decision their old self wouldn’t have made. They’ve trusted something they can’t yet prove. And they feel it. That this, whatever this is, is the beginning of a different way of living.

When that happens, I know I’m in the right place. Not because of the result, but because of the honour of witnessing it. It’s quiet, that feeling. But it’s solid.

That’s purpose, to me. That’s what it looks like. Not fireworks. Not certainty. Just standing beside someone as they realise they can stop performing and still be enough.

That’s the work.

And if you trace it back, if I trace it back, it leads to a muddy walk. A podcast line passed between friends. A moment no one else noticed.

That was the dot.
This is what it became.