Matthew McConaughey used his Oscar win to teach his kids a valuable lesson

As we gear up for the release of his memoir, fans are starting to learn a lot more about  Matthew McConaughey .

Back in 2013, the star ended up winning the coveted Oscar for Best Actor for his work in Dallas Buyers Club. While this is obviously a huge moment for any actor or actress, McConaughey wasn’t only thinking about himself when he reached that achievement. When he got home after the Academy Awards, his kids wanted to know all about their dad’s new prize, so he used his accomplishment as a teaching moment.

“I said, ‘Do you remember a year and a half ago, when you said poppa looked like a giraffe..? Do you remember how you’d get up in the morning and he’d be gone, and I’d come home and I’d see you, we’d have dinner and I’d put you to bed?’ And they said, ’Yeah’,” Matthew revealed during an appearance on Good Morning America to promote his book.

“I said, ‘When poppa was leaving that day for 30 days, while working on that film, the work I was doing on those days, now a year and a half later, my peers came and gave me a trophy for it and deemed my work excellent. So you can do things today that will pay you back tomorrow’.”

Speaking further on his memoir, the actor also revealed that his wife, Camila Alves, is the one who had to send him off to the desert to finally turn 36 years of journals into his new book, Greenlights. While Matthew admits he had plans to do something with his journals for decades, it took “a kick in the backside” from his wife to finally get the job done.

“I wanted to get away with all 36 years of my journals and see what the heck I had and I had been threatening to go away with these journals for the last 15 years but never had the courage to do it, and finally I got a little bit of time on my hands and a kick in the backside by my wife... and she said, ‘Get out of here and don’t come back home until you’ve got something’,” he laughed.

“There were some very cold nights. It was a total 52 days. The first 12 were without electricity. After that there was a generator in hand at times.”

Obviously, the process of writing this memoir has brought up a lot of old memories for McConaughey, who has been promoting the book and giving out little tidbits over the past couple weeks.

Greenlights hits shelves today, October 20.