Transcription
Talk about love stories you know, and you said it: the relationship with our life—that's a love story. You know, the relationship with ourselves—that's a love story.
[Music]
Oh, do I have something cool for you lot today! I had the insane opportunity to talk to none other than Matthew McConaughey about dating and love life. We were very much on board with the reconnaissance, as it became known. Yeah, but he didn't stop there. He went and wrote a book called "Green Lights," a book that I read in the last few weeks. An incredible book where he showed himself to be more than an extraordinary actor or someone capable of taking huge risks in his career, but a philosopher, a poet, an amazing giver of life advice, and someone who can provide a roadmap for living life to the full.
Having read his book, I was so excited at the opportunity to talk to him, and it happened! I got the chance to speak with the man. Whatever you do, watch till the end of this because there is something happening that you need to know about, and we talk about it at the end of this video. I'm so excited; I can't wait for you to see this!
I present to you Matthew McConaughey.
Matthew, how you doing?
Pretty damn good, man. I'm good. I'm happy to say I've completed your book "Green Lights" in the last three days. You know, I've spent 15 years of my life helping people work on their love lives. It seems to me you've given people this incredible manual here for how to love their life, which is one of the most important things I think you can possibly do in having a great love life: to develop a great relationship with life itself. Through your stories and through the vulnerability and everything you talk about in this book, it's extraordinary to me what a practical kind of manual you've put together for people to be able to do that.
Ah, thank you. Thank you! Yeah, you know, we talk about love stories, and you said it: the relationship with our life—that's a love story. You know, the relationship with ourselves—that's a love story. I've been happy to hear from people that said, "Oh, you know, you gave me some tools to reapproach things in a different way." You showed me how you, yourself, Matthew, did not navigate the best way sometimes, did not navigate that relationship.
You know, I've had a lot of people say, "You helped me take more risk in my life and see myself as the subject in my own story in ways that I haven't been able to do before." That felt really good to hear.
Well, when you say people say you encouraged me to take more risk, there was a phrase you used in the book that really stuck with me, which was "less impressed, more involved!" Yay! And you told this story of being this guy in high school who had a truck, and you were having fun dates with girls and having a fun time with your friends. You were popular; people wanted to be around you and the energy you created. Then you got this red sports car, and you thought that would be an upgrade, but actually, as soon as you started acting like the cool guy with the red sports car, some of that attention died off.
Could you just explain that idea of "less impressed, more involved" because I think it's so powerful even for people's love lives?
Yeah, well, it came to me after my father passed away. If you've had a loved one pass away, especially, I guess, a parent, it sobers you up pretty quickly. I remember that soon after he passed away, I noticed that everything I had been revering in life, like looking up to—wow, so impressed with—and I was impressed! I had just gotten my first acting gig, and all my future was looking bright. Oh, my life's really good! Wow!
Everything that I revered lowered down to eye level. I looked at it eye to eye. I also noticed that everything that I had been sort of condescending and patronizing about—saying, "Oh, that's not worthy of me!"—rose up. I looked at my level, and I remember writing, "The world is flat." Something about that gave me courage to go, "Oh, well, what are we doing? Let's go more boldly forward, be less impressed, and more involved!"
In my acting career, it had to be less impressed. I still, to this day, with success, have to be less impressed with the things that I've got. Be respectful; very respectful. But if I'm overly impressed to be talking with you right now, I won't be able to be present with you right now because I'll be like, "I've got you on a pedestal."
We do it in relationships all the time. Our mate, we hold them up there as Wonder Woman or Superman, and it's not fair—not only to them, it's not fair to us because no one can live up to it. But we're so impressed we can't be involved or be honest or authentic in it.
This was a time in my life where life was going good. In high school, I was rolling; I decided I'm gonna get this candy red sports car with T-tops. I was like, "Ah, just an upgrade!" As you said, it was not an upgrade. It wasn't me. What I found was that that red sports car did—not just I but we all have our red sports cars in our lives that we need to unpack.
I began leaning against that red sports car, letting that red sports car try to do the work for me. I thought I was cool because of my red sports car, and the people around me were like, "You're kind of boring now, bro. You're relying on this damn car you're leaning against."
You used to be the fun guy, man! We used to go in your truck, mudding after school. You had the speaker in the front of the truck where you would jack with everybody in the morning in the parking lot; now you're just leaning against a sports car.
I became the guy at the party who leans against the wall and smokes cigarettes to look cool instead of the guy who goes and gets on the dance floor and actually has a good time. That's what that red sports car became: a crutch! I relied on it, and I noticed that I was like, "Man, my social relations have gone dry. People don't want to hang out with me anymore. What's going on?"
I looked at that sports car and said, "You son of a..." I went down and traded it back in for the truck. Came back the next day, I was back! But I was impressed with this red sports car.
I got another story in the book about when you can ask yourself if you want to, before you do. It's that story about when I got my jeans pressed for the first time. I had a housekeeper for the very first time, and she pressed my jeans, and I was telling a friend, "It's so awesome, man! I've got this housekeeper; she cleans the room, she makes me milk. Check this out: she presses my jeans, man! She makes that crease, that line down the front!"
My friend was like, "Well, that's cool if you want your jeans pressed." And I was like, "I never thought of that before!"
I just thought I was very impressed with it because it was the first time I could get my jeans pressed, and I said, "I don't like that line down my jeans! I should quit doing the—the like—quit pressing my jeans." From then on, there are certain things that we're impressed with because we can get them or because society says, "Oh, that's the cool way to go."
The red sports car makes you cooler, or the jeans pressed is something more chic to get because you can get it—that we gotta kind of ask ourselves, wait a minute, that may be more—somebody may tell me that's cooler, but is it really for me?
And like though they weren't, I've watched people do the same thing with people where they're on a date, they're trying to find love, and they're so busy wondering if they can get someone that they never stop to ask themselves, "Is this someone worth getting?"
They may see a lot of things in those early stages where, you know, you talk all about what represents green lights or yellow lights in the book. There's a lot of things in early dating that represent red lights—like, this person's not gonna make you happy, this person's not going to be good for you, they're not well-behaved, they disrespect you, they mistreat you, they don't show you they're really investing.
And we pursue them anyway because we, instead of seeing a red light that says, "Oh, this should be telling me to go in a different direction," we see it as a green light to try harder. How do you recognize the red lights in situations like that and then have the confidence to act on them?
Why do you think we ignore those red lights when we see them?
Look, not only in love, but we have relationships where we get in them, and it doesn't quite live up, but we think we can coach them up! We think we can kind of mold them; we're kind of giving ourselves credit away. "I can change this person!"
And usually, there are some things we can, but usually, those red lights and those yellow lights in relationships are like, "Hey, if there's any time that the person that I'm interested in is showing their best behavior, it's now."
If anybody's overselling who they are, it's now! It's not going to usually get better. If anything, it's going to drop down to a more realistic place where you're going to go, "Oh, I saw the signs early, and now they're just even more illuminated."
But we want to be accepted; we want approval. We want to get their approval; we feel like—as I said—we can maybe mold them in, and maybe we should even sacrifice something of who we are. Maybe I shouldn't be upset with that trait of that person, maybe that's on me. Okay, that's a good thought: we got to compromise as well in relationships.
But the ones that go against—and that word authentic is thrown around, but it's a good word—the ones that go against? We've got to have a more bottom line, bottom line what we can put up with, what we can do.
We're not going to find: I don't think love in someone that's just like us! Hell, that's boring! But if we're gonna find something, you know, what? More bottom line; we're in sync in what we stand for, what we stand against, what we can put up with, what we won't put up with, how we respect ourselves, and how we can respect each other.
But, you know, after that, if something crosses those lines, they're usually not coming back. That's a good sign to go, "You know what? Probably not for me." Thank you for showing your true colors! By the way, in that oversell thing, we've all done—and I know I've done it—oversold myself early and painted myself in a corner because I couldn't live up to it later on. You know what I mean?
And we've all been there where that person is like, "What happened to the honeymoon phase, man? Oh, you were bullshitting back then!"
Well, now, now you let me know that this isn't for me. But those early signs, if you meet on more bottom line, I think they're worth discussing.
We're saying, "Hey, can we update that a little bit? Can we shine the car on that a little bit? Can we amend that behavior a little bit?" Because it may not bother you, but it really bothers me, and it bothers me more than you actually enjoy it!
You know that's real confidence: being able to do that, right? Because that's where you're actually—in a way—testing whether it's a yellow light or a red light. Because if it's a red light and you have that conversation, it doesn't improve. If it's a yellow light and you have that conversation, it can turn into a green light.
Because you go, "Oh, progress!"
One of the big reasons we ignore those red lights is I think this scarcity mindset we have that something better isn't coming. A part of the book that really spoke to me was the time in your life where you were wildly successful doing "Rom-Coms." You wanted to do a different kind of acting; you felt like you needed to.
There was more work for you to do internally to actualize—in self-actualizing—your abilities there, but it represented this huge risk that you were going to have to, as you put it, "say yes by saying no."
You went through this whole period of time where you were saying no to things and you didn't know if something better was gonna come, but you had that leap of faith! I feel like that's true in every part of our lives: we have to be willing to say no to the wrong things now for the right thing to come.
What gives you the courage to do that when so many people just grab at the shiny thing because they're like, "I don't know where the next great thing is going to come from, and if I say no to this, maybe I'll be punished for it by life and nothing good will ever come?"
That's part of the art I live in, isn't it? I mean, because on the flip side we miss out on things and we look back and we go, "Why didn't I take the chance? Why didn't I follow through?"
But then I think of equal value is—and I would say probably even more so when it comes to affairs of the heart and love—is going and believing that time is on our side.
But we have a clock! I have a friend who had his life planned. A very successful guy, he said, "I'm gonna go through 20 as a graduate, get a job in my 30s. I'm gonna meet the woman for me, I'm going to be married at 35 when I have kids at 36." So he was racing and pressing to get in relationships because he was coming up on 30.
Then he was in there 30, 31, 32, and he hadn't met "the one." So he was pressing, trying to force relationships to work because that was going to fit his timeline.
And all of a sudden, at 35, none of those had worked out, and this was the time he was supposed to be married and start having kids at 36. It hadn't worked out—40, it hadn't worked out, 50! That time worked out.
Now, if you want to go back and deconstruct, going backwards, I would argue he had a better chance if he would've tried to force things to work to meet that timeline when he was in his late 20s and early 30s, and actually been patient and believed a little more in himself.
Going, "You know what? I need to really check and measure if this person's right for me or not," instead of trying to force my hand or trying to turn them in or trying to make them work for me. Because, to me, from the outside as his friend, that doesn't—that's not a good match.
And now he's looking up at 50 going, "What the hell happened? Well, now do I get patient? I'm behind the eight ball; I missed my timeline."
But to believe time is on our side at those times. Like, I'll say this: I met Camilla. Was she the right woman for me? Yes. Was it also the right time for me? I believe so! Sometimes we may meet the right person, but it's not the right time for us to receive their love.
Sometimes we're in the right time where we're open and it's not the right person, and we gotta watch, because we feel like—what we're talking about in the first question—oh no, I can make this work because I can see the beauty in them!
I can make—I can see the upside; I can be the optimist on this. I'll just keep brushing over the reality and say, "No, this will work." We gotta watch that too, which is what the first question you were bringing up is part of what we gotta watch.
So I think it needs to be the right person and the right time, and we gotta calibrate those two. Because when we enter that relationship, we make sure that someone's not crossing or trespassing across our more bottom lines—that they really hopefully appreciate us for the most of who we are.
And hell, we're all trying to figure out who the hell we are all the time. It's not like there's a ta-da moment, and then hopefully we meet someone that we can grow with them.
You know this now; I know this. Most of us out there, I think, know this: they're never who we absolutely hoped they would be. We have to go with the audibles that are called in a relationship as people grow. There are certain relationships—and I know I've been in one—like, "Wait, what happened to the person then?"
When I early on fell in love? The answer is this person's changed. That person is growing—can we grow with them? Oh, well, they're essentially the same person. But I got to be open to going, "I can't ask them to be that person that they were when I met them."
Essentially, I hope they are on those moral bottom lines of time, but they're gonna change. And hopefully we are too, and they can change. They can respect and not forgive, but feed the changes that we go through.
It's a balance act going forward, but I think if we can just say we know on our own what things we probably are just talking ourselves into thinking, "This person's the right person for me," and we don't need to force that hand.
And if we can trust, you know, you don't find who you're looking for when you're looking! You know, I didn't find Camilla; it took me a while! Before I found her, I was looking in the produce section at every red light, I believe, thinking, "Maybe! Yo maybe! Maybe!"
I wasn't going to meet her like that. It was when I was like, "McConaughey, stay with yourself! Be aware! Be open—be open to receive her! But don't be trying so hard! Don't be looking at every damn street corner trying to go, oh, I could make that work! Oh, she could work!"
So, it was when we do sit back and are aware and are in pursuit but not over-pursuing or looking, trying to make it happen, we have a better chance of thinking of meeting the right person.
Well, I'd love to point out what's what appeared to me to be a key ingredient of that for you, and you can tell me if I'm off on this, but you talked about a dream you had where you saw lots of children.
It was a big deal for you to be a father before you even—you know—you hadn't met your person, but you knew, "I want to be a dad," and that because I deal with a lot of women, and that is a major stressor for so many of them: "I want to have a family; I want to have kids."
And a woman has a different biological clock than a man, a hundred percent. So there's this—you know—people need to develop. I agree with you: that idea of "see, time is on my side," but one of the things that helps us put time back on our side is creating peace with what is or what might be.
You used this beautiful phrase that I love, which is "being relative with the inevitable." I took that to mean, you know, when you can't change something or when something is the way it is, you can change the way you approach it, or you can change your mindset towards it, and you can develop a different relationship with it.
And you had this moment where you realized, "Oh, even if I'm a bachelor forever, I could still—I could still have kids. I could still make a family! I could still do these things."
Is there any advice you could give my audience about how to get to that place of peace, which is not just positive thinking? It really is making peace with an eventuality that you hadn't planned for, but could still be happy in.
Yeah, I looked—for me that was a literal dream that I had. In the dream, I had children, but I had not found my mate. But my relationships with the mothers were all good; it was a dream.
I woke up, and it wasn't a nightmare, and I wasn't sweating. I woke up, and I was like, "That could be my reality." That dream allowed me to do what you just said. I said, "Okay, I'm at peace!"
Now that I'm at peace with that possibly being my future. Well, that's when I found the woman for me! That's when I found my mate. Again, when I quit looking at every red light going, "Oh, possible—oh! In the produce section! Oh, maybe!"
When I kept—I quit trying so hard, quit hunting so hard. Like I said, I was still aware; I was still looking, but I was like spiritually—I believe I'm gonna be okay!
I'm gonna take the hand that's dealt me! If it's not for me, then it's not for me! But I'm gonna—I'm gonna quit trying so hard to make this crew fit the square screw fit the round hole. Whatever; however you want to put it.
Damn, it's hard to get to that. Because like I said, that came to me; I didn't engineer that thought up. I had an immaculate sort of interruption spiritually to me, so I didn't—it wasn't an intellectual choice I made.
It came to me through a spiritual dream that then I made the intellectual choice to go, "Okay! I'm good! If I could just be a father! It's the only dream I ever really had!"
That could still happen. Still looking; I'd like to find someone, mate, marry him, have a family—that'd be ideal. But if that doesn't happen, I'm gonna be okay with it! I'm gonna be okay with myself!
I kind of forgave myself, in a way. That was part of it! Part of the submission to the surrender of the idea! I did kind of forgive myself because in my eye—in my head— I still had an ideal that, "No, I need to meet the right person, have a family with that person, marry that person and that be it!"
That's a fair ideal, but I forgave the possibility of that not being the outcome, which then allowed me to find the person that made the outcome with.
Now, in that dance is some real truth, I think, for all of us. I think even just you saying that is gonna be a tremendous pressure valve for so many people—that you gave yourself that possibility and you made peace with it!
You forgave yourself for living that path if that ended up being your path. I think it's beautiful, and I just think so many people will be liberated by seeing that this very neat and tidy way they've decided they need to be happy actually is not the only way that they can be happy, right?
It's not! And it also might be the way that you find the best, better path to finding that happiness because I didn't get callous. I didn't get, "No, I don't want to meet." No, I'm not looking for—none of that.
I just shouldered setback; I stayed in my place. Whereas before, I was a bit more trusted; I was intruding. I was coming over in your space. Like I said, at the red light project, I was looking; I was hunting.
You know what I mean? And when I said, "Huh," I became—I think I became much more of an attractive mate too to Camilla at that—in that way. I don't think she would have taken me on if I would've been—use that night when I met her—if I'd have been—that she would probably be like, "Slow your roll, buddy. Back off!"
You know, and I don't think I would have been as attractive to her.
Yeah, so maybe just forgive your own idea that there's only one—that there's only one way! When you do accept that it could be another one, okay, well I will deal with the hand that I'm dealt there and the hand that I play.
And you might play the one in hand; you have a better chance of actually meeting the one that gets you what you want!
What I love about the way you talk is that you create these little recipes that help people actually create green lights in their life. You know, when I heard you first say "less impressed, more involved," one of the first questions I asked myself was, "How do I—okay—how do I get—how—what can I do?"
Like, how do I get—because that's exactly what—I believe in my bones that's the way to an extraordinary life, is to drop the ego, drop the identity I created for myself that becomes a prison of its own and to keep moving and keep growing and keep expanding.
And the question I asked myself was, "Okay, how do I do that? How do I become less impressed, more involved?" I texted our mutual friend, Dean Graziosi, and I was like, "Dean, this book's unbelievable! Like, this—this is a whole different way of looking at how to create a better life for yourself!"
And he said to me, "Imagine having practical ways of actually applying that." Then he told me about something you have going on that got me insanely excited, and I'd love to hear it from you because I'm absolutely gonna—I'm gonna make sure I'm there because I want to hear everything you have to say!
But for everyone else's purposes, I’d love you to tell us a little more about what you have.
Yeah, so I hadn't done this before. On the 24th of April—Monday at 9 A.M. Pacific time—for free, I'm gonna go live with Tony and Dean, Trent Shelton, and Marie Forleo, and we're gonna get under the hood of all this green light's approach.
Dean and Tony came to me after "Green Lights" and said, "Man, we really dig this approach in 'Green Lights.' We think it's incredibly useful and helpful. Would you, Matthew, be interested in making it more of a process—a transformative process—that people more personally can utilize in their life as an understanding? A process of how they can make it real in their life?"
I was like, "Absolutely!" So we started working with them and we put this event together, and that's what we’re going to get under the hood of.
We're going to talk about hopefully how everybody can more personally utilize some of the approaches that were in "Green Lights" and make them more of a process—the science to the satisfaction.
I believe that if we can teach and share the science to satisfaction in our lives, that's where we become the artist in our life, which is why it's titled "The Art of Living."
Now, very specifically, we're doing it at this time because, as you know, these last three years were universally disruptive. We were all thrown into uncertainty! Everybody had different specific ways we were all uncertain, but everybody was uncertain.
You couldn't—you didn't know who to trust or still don’t know who to trust, what to believe in, how to navigate forward. It's time we're kind of coming out of that, so it's really time now to negotiate what our solid steps forward on our own road trip of life are. What are our ways?
What are—how can we engineer green lights in our life? What decisions do we make that we know will pay us back tomorrow and can trust that they'll pay us back tomorrow?
How do we keep our ears, eyes, and spirit open to letting the magical green lights come in that I had no reason when they came in? They were only rhymed, but there's reason to them that we find out.
How do we do that? I believe there is a science to the satisfaction. I know I've been able to measure it in my life. I've been able to measure it also when I was not satisfied and found certain habits and choices I made, and I was like, "Oh, I see what led to that!"
Yeah, you kept creating that same habit! Then I was able to get back in line and go, "Well, let's get back to those habits that we had when we were catching more green lights and creating more green lines."
We're also going to get under the hood of red lights—those things we were talking about—those things, crises in our life, things that do not make us happy—pain, loss.
We will not be callous about them; we won't brush over them. But actually trust and see that there's a gift in every single one! Every single one of them for us.
And I don't mean that as sort of spiritual Kumbaya. I mean there actually is! I can go back and unpack a lot of red lights I've had in my life, even the death of my father, and see gifts that I got out of that.
And then finally, the yellow lights, which are the most life-like, we have a choice. "Oh, what do I do? Do I heed the caution and slow down because maybe I need to take a little inventory in my life and renegotiate how I'm going about it? Look over my shoulder and wonder why the hell I'm stepping in that same damn pile!"
You know, or do I not heed the caution and say, "Right here: yellow light, I'm blowing through you!" I'm not giving this crisis credit!
You know, and there's a balance; there's art there—what do we do? So we're going to get under all those lights that are in all of our lives.
And that's why the cover of my book is all green lights! Because ultimately, the yellows and the reds do turn green, and there are green-light gifts within them.
We're going to unpack that and do our best to make it practical for you to go, "Oh, I see how I can apply that in my life. I see things I can do, choices I can make to have more success, joy, balance—the quality value in my life."
We're going to unpack what those things are and how to get them! That's what we're gonna be doing for four hours on April the 24th at 9 A.M., for free! And I hope everyone comes and joins us!
I've never done it before; I'm very excited about doing it because then I've got some great people around me to help me out. I mean, it's unbelievable! First time ever—it's extraordinary!
And I said to Dean, "I’m gonna be front row at this thing! I’m going to be taking notes." And you know, by the way, for everyone signing up—and I would say every single person listening to this or watching this, wherever you're getting this—sign up to this! I'm going to be there; it's free!
You can go there and sign up at mhliving.com—that's living without a "g." M-H-L-I-V-I-N.com. You can sign up in seconds for free; you'll get all of the information on how to access this event, and everyone should be there!
I have to give credit to Matthew because talking to you is such an authentic extension of reading your book. To experience you, you really are someone who lives life, and you've clearly encountered so many red lights along the way, and yellow lights, and difficult moments, and challenges, but you live in a way that I think the rest of us aspire to.
We want to live that hard! We want to live in that way where we feel like we're experiencing as much as we can in this life. And you may have had a dream that gave you a sense of peace about being a bachelor for the rest of your life if that was what was going to happen.
But the truth is, I feel like you're the kind of person that you have the gift of being able to be happy wherever you are or whatever is going on. You have this incredible ability to make the best of it, and that, to me, is like a real superpower!
Even when you talk about your past in the book—there's no anger there. You've been through things that other people could be angry about, and they could say, "How do you not speak about that with bitterness? How do you speak about that with love or laughter or joy?"
And that, to me, is to be able to go back into your past and create green lights out of your past—not just green lights in your future. It's extraordinary!
And the fact that you're actually giving people a roadmap of how to do that on the 24th of April is invaluable because that's what we all need! We have the theory now; we want to know how to apply it.
And we're all excited, man! So I appreciate you, and thank you for making this happen.
My pleasure! I'm as excited about this as anything I've ever done!
It's—Dean and Tony have been really helpful. Again, in getting to the process to make it transformative—for you or whoever can go, "Oh, I really see how I can apply that daily in my life and measure it!" That's what I mean by the science and satisfaction!
So much stuff is measurable! So much of it is so damn measurable!
The link is mhliving.com, so M-H—that's my initials, Matthew Hussey: M-H-living without a "g." M-H-L-I-V-I-N.com, and you can sign up there in seconds! Do it right now before you forget!
Don't go and get into anything else in your day because I know this is the kind of event where you'll say, "This is so important for me to go to!"
Then I’ll always have people message me after an event like this who are so upset that they forgot to put it in their diary and they forgot to sign up and then they missed it!
So put it in your diary now; go sign up now: mhliving.com. I will see you along with many, many, many other people across the world on that day to experience Matthew, Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, and a bunch of other guests too who I know will be there on the day.
But Matthew, thank you so much for your time!
Matthew, thank you for yours! I enjoyed this, man, and I'll see you on the 24th!
Looking forward to it!
Lovely! Thank you! What an amazing thing that we got to do that! I'm so happy that I get to share it with you.
It was a really unique life moment for me to do that. Matthew McConaughey was one of the actors that I had always looked up to and wanted to meet one day, and what a crazy opportunity for us all to experience him actually teaching in the form of self-development on April the 24th!
Not just with him, but Dean Graziosi—who I don't know if you know Dean—but Dean is unbelievably sharp and one of the brightest guys I know—someone I've learned a ton from!
Tony Robbins—Tony has been a hero of mine! I was around 14 years old when I first went to a Tony Robbins seminar! Would you believe that? In London!
Tony was one of my original heroes—a powerhouse to this day! So I'm super excited to hear what they're gonna say! I'm sure you are too! Let me know if you're joining me in the comments!
The link again is mhliving.com without a "g," L-I-V-I-N, and we'll see each other on that day virtually from across the world!
I can't wait for this; so cool! I'll see you soon!
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