Matthew McConaughey discusses aging: 'How do you do it gracefully but how do you deny it?'

Not everyone accepts aging with grace, but Matthew McConaughey is not one of them. The 53-year-old actor and author shared his life mantra in a recent interview with Dax Shepard on his "Armchair Expert" podcast. He also discussed aging and how he handles stress in life, reported Yahoo. "It seems to me this aging thing, right, it's like, how do you do it gracefully, but how do you deny it?" McConaughey said, "And there are awkward ways to deny it, we've all seen it." 

As someone who is in show business, the actor is not immune to it. He shared that he pondered upon getting a hair transplant in the late '90s. "I had a silver-dollar bald on top and I went, 'Go gracefully, be all face,'" McConaughey said. "I remember going, wait a minute, I'm not ready to go quietly into the night on this. I considered hair plugs, then I was like, nah, I don't wanna do that, none of those look that good. So I found this topical treatment... I started working on it topically and son-of-a-b****, I have a better hairline now than I did in '99. So, I still use it daily. I'm not going to quit and see if it's all going to stick."

He does not claim that aging has made no impact on his life. "I blew both my knees out a couple of years ago," he explained. "[His son Levi] was 12, good athlete, so obviously he's beating me in sports, right? And so, I get surgery, they're better, but I'm not back to where I was and he still kind of beating me at a lot. But I chose to go, I'm not ready to accept that fact yet."

At this point, McConaughey took to "hardcore" post-surgery rehab, where he "really worked on my knees" to get them back to health. "At least I'm back to competing," the actor said. "He's better in some [sports], but I'm still whooping him in some. I wasn't ready to concede."

McConaughey also ensures sleep hygiene, as he gets "nine-and-a-half hours of sleep a night," which he says helps balance his stress levels. But he has also learned to embrace his emotions. "Stress is a word that has such a bad name right now, and I think it's getting a bad name kind of unfairly," he said. "Having a little bit of stress means you give a s***."

He has also learned to understand what his emotions are communicating. "I don't remember the last person I was jealous of. I am jealous of people with traits of what I'm chasing to get to, the man I'm trying to become," he shared. "I'm jealous of people that don't seem to need accomplishment and achievement as much as I do to feel significant... I'll have bouts of insignificance if I don't get what I want, or pull off what I want, or maybe don't feel I'm relevant in the right way. I get jealous of people that have the full belief in themselves, even in those times."

McConaughey has truly learned to embrace aging and life itself and what a delight it is!