Do you ever wonder how certain people can make life look easier and wonderful? Betty White was one of those amazing people! In this episode, Lori and Jimmy share the life strategies implemented by Betty White during her amazing 80-year career.
Episode Keys
- Why it is most important in life to be true to yourself.
- When it is a good time to change the world for the better despite the costs to your career.
- How to live life to its fullest – everyday!
- Who you should give the most freedom and respect to – YOU!
Podcast Transcript
JW:
Good morning, you know, it’s a new year. I am hump beyond, I don’t know, Rick this year has started off with a tremendous bang and a little bit of sadness, but we’re gonna talk more about the bang today than the sadness. And I am honored to have with me, my co-host with the most, I wish this was actually in video folks, cuz she really, really makes me look a lot better when I’m in the same shot with her. Just a beautiful person in now Lori Few with me today. Hi Lori!
LF:
Whew! Good morning everybody! Good morning Jimmy!
JW:
Oh, I tell you. It’s always a good morning when I start it with you, Lori. That’s all I know. I tell you you’re too Lori. I asked Lori, I said, Hey Lori, what’s the most exciting thing you look forward to in these? She goes, my morning, coffee, me. I go, I decided to just see Laurie know, share a few minutes. So I know I stand behind coffee, which everybody does, Laurie coffee, one, everybody else, two. That’s kinda how it works.
LF:
As long as you know that, you’re just, you’re very, very close, but you’re still second to the coffee.
New Speaker:
Yes. Just, you know what? I can just see the golden ring. I just can’t touch it. That’s the way it is folks. That’s how close I am. Hey, you know I said as in the intro or a little bit about sadness, but we’re gonna talk about some big positive things that happened and, and Lori and I have a show for you today that I think will not only touch your heart, but hopefully it will inspire your mind and motivate you to seek out a higher level of life or each of you that are listening. Thank you again for listening. This is another new year we’re coming up on our three year mark. This is awesome. Mm-Hmm and yeah. And you know, at the end of the day, I’m going, wow, you’ve been doing this now for, this is our third year we’re going into and I’m like, you know, that doesn’t seem like it, Laura, it seemed like this has just been a few months because it just flies by well,
LF:
When you’re having fun time flies.
JW:
There it is. I knew there was something coming out. I love that idea. Hey, I wanna visit with you today. Lori came up with a great topic today. I’m gonna give her total credit for this, but I wanna join her and add a little bit of color to this. If I can. She has, as I do really respected the life of the great icon. Betty White recently passed this last week. Betty White though had such a storied career, such a storied life. And we wanted to sit down and analyze what could we learn from such a wonderful lady, not just, you know, set aside her acting capabilities and so forth. She was such a great prolific supporter of animals and those kinds of things for him and kind, and we’re gonna get into some of that in just a moment, but Lori got a great title and I love this. It’s everything I need to know, I learned, I learned from Betty White. I love that. Well, Lori, Hey, let’s just jump into this a few minutes. So why do you think people loved Betty White so much?
LF:
Well, I think that she was just an honest open person. First of all, I think that that’s really one of the, you can be, I think we all want to be that we strive to be that, but we kind of get bogged down in differents of, I, I don’t think that she ever wavered from that from the time, if you look at her career from the very beginning, she was very adamant and open about. I wanna get along with people. I wanna be kind to people. I want to like people because I want to be liked myself. And that was an open, genuine, honest answer and who better to facilitate kindness and, and humility and laughter than Betty White. I mean it it’s, it’s so fun to talk about her, even though now she’s passed. I, I told Jimmy when I came up with this idea that just in the last several days, it’s been refreshing to hear so many people tell stories about her life and her impact and her legacy, the things that she’s managed to accomplish in an over 80 year career, incredible, never stopped working, but never stopped enjoying the journey and the ride and was always so grateful and so gracious and so humble. And I think that those are things that, you know, we’ve talked about that on, on the podcast before, you know, we want people to remember our legacy and talk about the impacts that we made on the world and what a better role model to emulate those things than what a better person to look up to to be able to say, I wanna be like Betty White.
JW:
Isn’t that crazy? I, you know, I always remembered some of her early shows. I mean, I was really young and it might have been, the re may have been the reruns that I saw this in, but the Mary Tyler Moore show was one of her breakout series that she had. If I remember right back in like the early seventies, perhaps, maybe late sixties, I can’t recall when it was, I was a very young lad. Lori wasn’t even a gleam in her dad’s eye. I mean, be honest with as young as she,
LF:
I have seen the show, I seen the show.
JW:
You know, she could play such a comedic role and do it with such pinache to me, it was just, just fascinating to watch. She also had other shows that I really enjoyed. I mean, who could not enjoy an episode, at least one of the golden girls now come on Lori.
LF:
Absolutely. I, I saw a meme again, a couple of days ago that just, it was a drawing of all four of the golden girls and they were hugging and it had the Pearl gates and Peter welcoming Betty into the circle. And I just, it, I, I dunno, I got, it’s like sad but happy because the golden girls, everybody has a favorite episode. Everybody has a favorite golden girl. That show – definitely one for the history books.
JW:
And they made her character. I love how she just takes the writers and just looks at ’em face, just face on. And her character was a DIY blonde, older lady. And it’s so unlike her in real world, I mean, very articulate, very smart intellectual. This lady had it going on, but that showed you the depth that she could play a role and do it some honesty. I mean, do it just honest out, right. Mm-Hmm now I’ve gotta be honest with you. So I’m gonna mention something. I had a little bit of a crush when I was a kid on this lady that worked with her on on hot in Cleveland. Valerie Burelli I mean, come on girl, next door. She’s just a sweetheart out of Louisiana, just a great kid, gorgeous girl. But when I was a kid watching TV sitcoms, man, I did not miss a day of her show back in the day when she first broke out. And now she’s on hot in Cleveland or was you, you know, in hot in Cleveland until COVID hit kind of messed things up for ’em. But I will tell you, she said that Betty White was the consummate professional in front of, and behind the camera. I mean, she wanted to hit her marks. She wanted to do it right. She wanted to give the people what they deserved, which was her utmost best. And that’s where you and I were talking before the show, we can glean some very positive traits that might help us in life from the wonderful life of Betty Wyat. So what do you think are one of those things you picked up on outta her life, Lori?
LF:
I think adaptability in 80 years in a career, you have to be willing to pivot. You have to be willing to adapt. And she did all of those things. She started out in television very young. In fact, she was so popular early on in her career when she was just outta high school, because she was one of the first people on television. And back then people were fascinated by this, you know, little box that they had in their home that they’d never experienced before. And then, you know, moving forward, she would do comedic roles, serious roles, and she just learned how to adapt. And I, I definitely think, and she did it with humor and what a better a attribute to have. We talk about, you know, we can’t take life so seriously it, when we have curve balls or we have things that don’t go our way, we have to reset or rethink, you know, how to get to a goal, we have to adapt. And she definitely learned how to do that. She was still relevant in her fifties, her sixties, her seventies, her eighties, and people wanted to work with her. I read somewhere earlier this week where she probably fielded 20 to 25 gigs week. Just people that wanted to have her on their show or have a guest role or book her to speak or participate at one of their events. What, what an incredible thing to be able to do in your life. I mean, who wouldn’t want those opportunities, but she didn’t get there without being a, being able to adapt.
JW:
Oh, I agree. Love that word too. I will say this. So keep in mind, her career started in 1942 months out of high school. She’s on TV singing songs and doing things with one of her classmates I read in 1940. So I’ve gotta be honest with you. We weren’t even in world war II at this point, but the world was in turmoil and here comes Betty White dancing and singing on TV. And as you said, you know, she was the one of the first TV appearance people on, on TV. And, and you say, people say, well, she was a star. I’m gonna tell you what, 19 41, 42. She may not have been known yet, but in the fifties and sixties and seventies, when she hit Mary Tyler Moore, she became the star on TV, man, like you said, everybody wanted her after that, she just set the tone for what good acting should be. You know you know, one of the things that intrigues me about her life was I, I love the fact. She just genuinely, you enjoyed her life. So, you know, she talks about in some interviews, there weren’t always good days good times, excuse me, but she always had good days. And what she meant by that she said was, is, you know, I can sit here and say, well, woe is me and the days are tough and oh, I didn’t get the acting part. I tried out for auditioned for or I could sit here and say, Hey, you know what? I got to learn something I didn’t do well, I’ll do it differently next time. And go on, goes back to your adaptability, but also goes to the fact of her attitude. So my word’s gonna be, if you’re gonna use a adaptability, mine’s gonna be attitude. She had such a great, honest attitude with herself. Now, you know, there’s one person you can never fool in this world, Lori, something, people may fool people out in the world. You can never fool yourself. The worst thing you could ever do is lie to yourself about something about you while looking in that mirror. And I feel like what I’ve read about her and studied on her just in last week. She really loved life.
LF:
Mhm. Oh, I, I definitely think that she loved life. And one of the quotes that I love that I’ve heard recently several times at a couple of different interviews just with playing sound bites of her. And she says, it’s your outlook on life? That counts. If you take yourself lightly and don’t take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in everyday life. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver. It’s so true.
JW:
That is just awesome. That is a great quote. You know, one other thing, Gloria, that you liked about her, what would that be?
LF:
You know, one of the things that we wanna talk about women and how they have been pioneers in a certain movement. I mean, obviously I’m a woman I’m, you know, you have daughters, so you understand one of the great things that I find about her career is that she was able to do things and she did not care if she had backlash. She didn’t care if she had being canceled. Early on in the 1950s during the civil rights movement on one of the shows that she was actually hosting, she brought in an African American male performer, and he was a phenomenal dancer and she did not care what the network said. They allowed him to perform. And shortly after I, I believe the show was canceled and she did not regret that at all. And I think that she was a bit, a bit ahead of her time for thinking that and having that mindset while the world wasn’t ready to catch up with the way things were moving. But she was always pioneering in the way of saying, if you have talent, it doesn’t matter how old you are. It doesn’t matter what you look like. It doesn’t matter what nationality, it just matters that you have talent. And we need to make sure that we’re telling young people the same thing. It doesn’t matter where you come from. It doesn’t matter what you look like. Those things are IM immaterial into the talent in itself. And I love that about her. And I think that she was probably a pioneer in much more than just that, but that really sticks out in my mind. And one of the great things about that full circle moment later on in life in 2017, she actually hosted a show called little big shots where kids with amazing talent at a young age were invited to perform on television. And as a surprise, they brought back the gentleman that she had had perform back on her show in the 1950s. And he came out and surprised her. And just the look during that video clip of the look on her face, and he told her, you really changed my life and you didn’t change just my life that you told every person that was like me at a time where we were being told no that yes, there was a space and an arena for us. And I’m grateful for that. So what another, just profound lesson to learn from Betty White.
JW:
Oh, outstanding. I do want to quickly clarify one misstatement. You said about me. You said that I truly understand cause I have daughters I’ve got news for you. I’ve been only married, only 34 years to the same woman. Never had another wife and two daughters, 25 and 21. And no, I still don’t understand women. It’s OK though. I’ve learned how to survive. That’s right.
LF:
You have learned a few nuggets of information.
JW:
I have earned when to go to my room and when not to, and when not to speak and when to, and I’ve also learned two famous words that have kept Dean and me in a very ravishing marriage for 34 years. And those are yes, dear. Yes, dear. And so if you’ll learn those people from Jimmy Williams straight from here, I’m telling you from experience, it works out well, no, on a serious note, you’re absolutely right. I’d like to think. And I hope that people interpret this. As I said and mean it I’m pretty much racially agnostic. I, I, you know, people go, Hey, I, I want you to recognize me for my culture. I do recognize you for your culture. But I do think like you just said, Lori, the color of your skin means nothing to me in terms of your capabilities and how you treat people. That’s the biggie to me is how you treat others and how you treat yourself and your family. I mean, that’s the kicker in life, right?
LF:
That, that is so true. You know, and what a better lesson to learn and what a better attribute to try to emulate. I mean, we’re all working towards being better every single day. We’re all working towards being better in some facet of our life. And we have to remember to give ourselves a little bit of grace and know that we’re human and we’re gonna make mistakes. But the fact that we inspire people to keep trying, I mean, that’s, that’s the main thing in current time. We just can’t give up. You’ve got to try. And sometimes that success is gonna be very, very minute and small and sometimes you’re gonna have big, big failure. But that’s okay. That’s
JW:
Okay. And if you’re Mrs. Williams you give her husband a lot of grace. He has to a lot of grace.
LF:
She’s is a saint.
JW:
She is insane. I’ve told you old Testament, she’s just gonna go straight to heaven. Not even gonna deceased on this earth. No expiration. Just go straight up. So let me, let me mention a couple other things I found Lori, give your input on these for me. She had a, an approach to tackling only one day of life at a time. What do you think she meant by that?
LF:
Oh, I, I would like to think that, you know, she knew that we always try to take on more than we probably should. You know, just one foot in front of the other. I think it served her well. I mean, for 99 years, she was able to accomplished that goal one day at a time.
JW:
Absolutely. And you know, the one thing she always said was she says, I can’t change yesterday. So why sit and worry about it, Fred over it, the jobs I didn’t get the parts, I didn’t get the co the show that got canceled. For example, whatever, you know, she just couldn’t change any of that because today’s the new day. So she tried to take every day and live it up abundantly. That’s another one of my words. So, so far adaptability, you said attitude and abundant. I really think that those three words kind of helped sum up so far her attitude in life and what really made her, the great person, you know, disregard the fact that she was an actress, got a walk of fame star disregard the fact she’s got Emmy’s and all this stuff, disregard all that. And just say, what kind of person was she? She lived life abundantly. I mean, that’s just to me a very important thing. We all should learn that we can’t sit here and just worry about what didn’t work, but we should focus on what we do have working and what can work if we just keep pursuing it. So I love this one thing too. I I always had that she looked at things no matter what they were with a sense of humor. What do you think about that? When I say Betty White’s sense of humor, are those words that go together?
LF:
I, I absolutely think that there are words that go together. I, but the, but the thing that I’ve probably gleaned from that, you know, what would Betty White do? She would laugh. She would, you know, have a sense of humor. And I feel like sometimes myself included a lot. I take things so serious. I spend so much time wanting things to be a certain way. I want things to be good for everybody. I want things to be good in my life, my personal life, my professional life, my job, my career, my friends circle. And that’s a great reminder. We, we need to laugh. We need to have a good sense of humor and, and we get lost in that. And I am probably the worst. I, I probably have more wrinkles going. You can’t see them, but I, I can count them now, these wrinkles for where I take things too seriously, and I don’t laugh enough, I need to laugh more folks.
JW:
Her, her face is as smooth as a porcelain blast. I mean, gimme a break, young people worried about wrinkles. They look at me, you know what? A lady went up to me one day, she’s one of those estheticians. And she said, you know, I was thinking about talking to you about Botox, but I just don’t have a shovel big enough. Okay. So I’m telling you, that’s the age I’m getting, right? So, you know, one thing I love too about Betty White’s approach to life, and what we need to learn from her is, is she didn’t keep score. Now think about the gentleman. And you said she brought on a show at a very divided time in our history of this country. And she brought an African American on her show, and then the show gets canceled, but she had no regrets of that. The gentleman came back later and danced for her in another show at later in life and said how much she had changed his life and the impact she had had. But keep in mind, she didn’t go, oh yes. I helped him get to where he is today. I helped him get started. So often we need to bite our tongues. When we see people that we may have, if you will not given the handout, but given a hand up and then we go claim some of their success. You know, that’s not where we need to be as humans. We need to not keep score of everything we do in life. What’s your thoughts.
JW:
I, there’s a great quote about that. And, and you’ve spent a lot of time mentoring and mentoring is by far one of my favorite things to do. And the quote goes something along the lines of, you know, a great mentor. Doesn’t expect you to come back and say you were a great mentor because they know that you’re going to go on and do great things. It’s important. It’s so important. Just being humble and, and just doing the work because you want to do the work and if it turns out great, awesome. And then, you know, that that has happened and you can keep that. But being humble is, is it’s a struggle for a lot of people. And it’s probably a struggle for myself as well at, at different points in life, because you want to be excited. You want to be happy about accomplishments, but there’s a fine line between, you know, being boastful and being bragging and then, you know, trying to really reign that in and be humble.
JW:
And so it, it’s, it’s a daily walk. It’s another one of those things that you keep in your toolbox and you say, oh, okay, well, I, I need to, you know, reign it in a little bit and just sometimes be a cheerleader for other people. And I think Betty was great at that. I saw an interview this week with Keenan Thompson. Who’s one of the longest running cast members for Saturday night live. And he talked about how he, she literally walked through every sketch with them and she was high fiving and she was happy and she was, you know, patting people on the back. And they were all just in shock because they were learning from her at the same time. She was learning from them. And it, it was great. He said that she’s one of the very few hosts that they had that at two 30 in the morning, she was still partying at the after party and got a standing ovation from everybody at the after party. So I, I think that’s another Testament to her being humble. I, I know that she, she probably knew how important and how significant her contributions to the entertainment world were that she always managed to do it in a graceful way.
JW:
You know, humility, I think was one of her biggest traits. And, and I gotta tell you, you brought up Saturday night live. I’m not as big a fan as when it was in the seventies. When they first came out that I just laughed. I couldn’t miss a Saturday evening. I mean, we had to be watching this at 10 30. It came on as a blast, but there is one skit that the gentleman does. You mentioned, it’s called jeopardy. I’m not gonna give it his full name, but it’s the jeopardy skit. I have laughed my head off the one with Tom Hanks on there, just crack me up. But anyway they have some really good guests on there, but you know, one thing too, I love that, that she did for us is she did show that humility. But at the end of the day, you’re, you’re absolutely right.
JW:
She could be a mentor. We can be a mentor to someone and know that within ourselves is the reward not outwardly where there is everyone seeing all the trophies of, of life and so forth. And the riches they gained. I want to share something that I read about Betty White. So she left a trust. As I understand for her dogs. Now, this may sound a little odd to those of us in certain parts of the world. But when you have an animal you just love like part of your children and she had no other children. So she had to. And what happened was she carried so deeply for animals and dogs. She’ll just adopt pets. I mean, they didn’t have to be pure breads. She just adopted pets. If she felt they needed a home. Well, these two dogs is what I understand. If it’s true, I just read this is that she left a big part of her money, her wealth, over $75 million.
JW:
She left a big part of that to the support of her two dogs and required that they have luxury callers, luxury leases, and that a basically a valet or Vale, as it said in England and a housekeeper would be employed for them their natural lives. So these dogs. Wow. What I love about that says though, is that we need to get in unity with our fellow animals and, and everyone on the planet. Peace is something that she sought in her life and what a better way to build that than have two animals that love you unconditionally as, as puppies do. And so my point with that is, is I just love the fact that she had the mindset to seek peace in all things that she did. I just thought that was so cool.
JW:
That is cool. What a legacy too. You know, she was very much well known as an animal lover and a supporter of animals. I, I think that she, I read that she had worked with numerous animal shelters and served on zoo boards and different things and just an animal lover and, and just have fun. I mean, and what a, what a way to say. I, I know that I, you know, you can’t take it with you and why not leave it to a good cause. And I’m sure that in the coming days and years, we’ll find out about, you know, other philanthropic efforts that, that she’s, you know, made arrangements for. But we all have that thing that’s special to us. The thing that we want to our legacy to go on and, and support, and hopefully we have done some fun financial made some good financial decisions to be able to do that. And I don’t know, like if I had to choose today, there would be so many organizations that I would wanna give to. So I got a lot of work to do because I need to, I need to make sure that I have all my ducks in a row so
JW:
That I can do that. You know, one thing, Lori, I, I just gotta tell you, I could never serve a as a, a direct volunteer for an animal organization. And lemme explain why, because I have this soft spot that I’d feel like I’d bring all of them home and Ms. Williams would kick me out and probably keep the pets. I mean, that’s how that works.
JW:
You would be out in the doghouse and the animals would be in your house.
JW:
Literally, literally in the doghouse, literally. So to bring this to kind of a closed little bit, Lori, I think there’s some things that Betty White did teach us all. We need to know. We learned from Betty White, a few of those things were her adaptability to the situations in which she found herself, her attitude of gratitude, as well as just keeping great humor in her life, finding the good and all things she thought abundantly helped those causes and just helped those people that she could help, not really recognizing any on her own accolades, but focusing on them and then humility, man, you mentioned that what a humble person, she was all of her life. And then the last one we talked about was animals was just simply being a peace maker, trying to find that piece on this planet that we can’t find anywhere else, but through maybe our pets and, and our animals that we have in our midst. What what’s your final takes?
JW:
I think if anything, you know, Betty White probably taught us all how to laugh. We all like, you know, we talked about that. Like we all needed take things a little less serious. And we will talk about this woman for generations to come. Just she will live on an infamy. And I think that if each day we try to be a little bit kind and laugh at ourselves and, and not take things too seriously. Then we will, we will be keeping the spirit of Betty. Why?
JW:
Oh, I couldn’t say that any better folks. Thank you for joining us today on live life by design, we hope that you find something positive to apply from this episode, not just in your life, but in the lives of those you touch around. You remember the world’s a big place, but you’re a big player in that world that we couldn’t do life without you, as you are today, but we can always be bigger, better and bolder in helping others. And may I just add from Lori and me rest in peace, Ms. Betty White, you of all people have earned it.
