Giving Your Best: Lessons from Vince Lombardi

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.

SPEAKER 05 : 0:08

Hey there, friend. Angie Austin and Jim Stovall here with the good news. And we are talking about his winner’s wisdom column titled A Legendary Lesson. Welcome, Jim Stovall.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:18

It is always good to be with you, Miss Angie. And A Legendary Lesson, this week’s column, was just a lot of fun for me because my first movie, The Ultimate Gift, was directed by Michael Seibel. And he was in town and stopped by to see me. And it brought back so many memories. And I asked, what are you working on now? and he’s working on this faith in football movie about the Green Bay Packers. And I thought, what a cool deal. And he’s actually going back to the Ice Bowl, 1967, the first championship. It was 15 below zero, and Vince Lombardi’s team won. And there’s only two guys alive that were on that team, and one of them is Jerry Kramer. And wow, that brought back a memory, because when I was nine years old, I went to a college basketball game, and they had this lounge in between, and you could go get a Coke or popcorn. And I went up there with my dad, and several people were saying, that’s Jerry Kramer. Well, I couldn’t believe it. I went over and met this giant guy. As you know, I wanted to be a football player, and that’s probably where the ambition began. And he actually talked to me quite a bit about it, and he’s such an amazing guy. And I said, what are your memories of Lombardi? And he said, you know, he’s the only coach I had, so he seems normal to me only now in retrospect do I understand what an amazing figure Vince Lombardi was. But he said, you know, Jim. Vince Lombardi always told me, my best is good enough. So don’t worry. Don’t feel inadequate. You are entitled to victory. You’ve got it. Your best is good enough. But we need your best every time. We’ve got to have your very best every time. And that’s not as easy as it sounds. Because sometimes we think we’re doing our best, and we’re really not. And you have to reach down and just get a little more. There’s always a little more. And I’ve shared with your listeners before, I do a lot of Fortune 500 events for CEOs. And I remember I was working with a guy who helps with brainstorming, creative thinking. And you had a group of these guys who run some of the largest companies in the world in the room. And he said, okay, here’s our topic. Write down every idea you can think of. Every idea. Total brain dump. And when you’ve got it all down, put your pen down. We’ll know you’ve got it all. And he waited until everybody had written down every idea they had. Okay, everybody’s down. All the pens are down. He said, now… Pick up your pen and write down one more idea. And without hesitating, these guys did it. And I said, where did that idea come from? We just had a total brain dump, and there’s a little more left in the tank. Well, that’s how giving our best effort works. You think you’re doing your best until you find out when you really are. It’s kind of like that first love you have, Angie, you know, when you’re in junior high school and you meet somebody and say, this is it. This is the absolute quintessential love of my life. And they are until you meet the one that really is. And they’re, oh, well, that’s what that is. And you don’t know. We are always deeper, broader, more significant. I always tell my audiences, I hope God will put enough challenges and obstacles and barriers in your life so you’ll find out what a giant of a human being you were created to be, because we all have so much more than we think we did.

SPEAKER 05 : 3:31

I love it that only an elementary school age Jim Stovall would ask Jerry Kramer for the best advice he received from Vince Lombardi. Like that cracks me up. But even at nine, you’re like, oh, this would be a good question where most kids are like, how much can you lift? How fast can you run? You know, but his best advice from his coach is a pretty good question to ask when you get someone like that who will spend that amount of time into someone that well-known that will spend that amount of time with a kid.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:58

Oh, absolutely. And I will admit, when I was nine, my dad may have helped me with that a little bit. I was scared to death to even meet this guy, you know. So, you know, we’ve always got to remember that there’s always more capacity than we think there is, and you can always get more out of it. You think you do your best until you do, and then you can do better than that.

SPEAKER 05 : 4:17

So yeah, right. You think you’re doing your best, but can you pull more out? So he told Jerry, I want your best, but I want it every time, not just your best half the time or in the playoffs or whatever it ends up being.

SPEAKER 03 : 4:31

Yeah, and, you know, football’s like life. I mean, there’s a few things that matter and a lot of things that don’t, and we need to make sure we focus on the things that matter. And people always tell me, you know, I’m giving 110%. No, you’re not. And there’s some things that aren’t worth that. Just, you know, I would encourage most people, look at the things you’re doing today and do fewer things but do them better. And the people who succeed, I don’t care whether you’re the greatest golfer in the world or the greatest actor or the greatest writer or you’re like Angie, you’re the world’s greatest radio host. The thing you do, if you’ll do it better and do fewer things, it won’t matter. It will not matter. I mean, I have interviewed some of the greatest people from their field. You know, whether it’s entertainment or sports or business. And it’s amazing how some of these people, they don’t know how to do any of the normal stuff that, you know, you and I and your listeners know how to do. They don’t know how to go to a grocery store. A lot of times they don’t know how to drive a car. They don’t know how to do anything, you know. And, you know, because they focus everything on the one thing they do, they’ve got other people to do everything else in their life. So the more you can focus and be excellent on the thing that matters… and avoid the things that don’t matter.

SPEAKER 05 : 5:45

Right. Don’t spend so much time on the stuff that doesn’t matter. Like I’ll find myself and it matters to do puzzles with my mom because she’s in her mid eighties and she loves to do them and no one else in the family is really into it. So I do those with her, but then she’ll be like, And her little apartment in the basement and I’ll be upstairs on the big dining room table, you know, and I’ll pass the puzzle and I’ll be like, I’ll just feel that drawn. I’m like, I know I need to clean. I know I have laundry to do. I know I have other things I should be doing. And I’ll stop for like 15 minutes by myself and I’ll just think in my brain like. Why am I standing here doing this? This is like scrolling on social media or whatever. It’s fine if I’m if you’re with your mom and you’re having a conversation and you’re keeping your company. But we just stop by the puzzle in the middle of the day when I have so many other things to do. I get that giving your best all the time is important, but also focusing on the things that really matter at the right time. Like that puzzle might matter when it’s in conjunction with my mom. But when it’s by itself, there are things that are much more important for me to be doing. I’m just stalling, you know.

SPEAKER 03 : 6:44

Yeah, I remember when I was first starting in the movie business and I interviewed Jack Lemmon, the Academy Award-winning actor, and I went on set. He was making a movie. And just before the director would say, you know, action, Lemmon would say something to himself over there. So when we took a break and I was talking to him, I said, what is that you say to yourself? And he said, I always tell myself, this is the magic time. This is, you know, somebody’s grandchildren that aren’t even born yet are going to see this. And you leave it. So every time I walk on stage, I always think of, you know, Mr. Lemon. And this is it. I mean, there are people here tonight. This is the last time and the only time I’ll ever see them. They’ll ever see me. And, you know, this is what matters. This is these people. 12 000 people is what matters or every week when i talk to angie austin the people in your audience for for these few minutes uh good bad or ugly this is the best i got and uh and i bring it every time because you never know when you’re going to have that and somebody out there’s hanging and they’re trying to decide if their dreams can come true and does this stuff really work and uh You know, that’s why, you know, we all got to find something that matters that much to it and give it your best every time. Your best is good enough, but make sure it’s your best.

SPEAKER 05 : 8:04

Did he say anything else that stuck out to you? He’s been gone a long time. He died in 2001, but I knew exactly who you were talking about. He’s an Oscar winner and, you know, obviously very, I mean, one of the top all-time actors. I think he won for Save the Tiger. I’ve never seen that one.

SPEAKER 03 : 8:20

Yeah, yeah. China Syndrome, he won an Academy Award.

SPEAKER 05 : 8:23

Oh, that’s right.

SPEAKER 03 : 8:25

Yeah, he was an amazing, amazing actor. And he started out on Broadway, and he and Walter Matthau did so many movies together. They did The Grumpy Old Men and stuff. And I remember, you know, but he said he never had more fun than doing The Odd Couple on Broadway with Walter. And he said, but the fun show was the Sunday afternoon show, because he said, I was Felix, he was Oscar. until Sunday afternoon, and we would switch parts, and nobody knew, and we would do the other part. Oh, my gosh. And he said, it was just so much fun. We always looked forward to that one. And he said, Walter lived to make me laugh. He was always helping, you know, in the middle of the Broadway show, doing The Odd Couple. He’s going to make me laugh, and he was so dedicated to that all the time. And, yeah, he was… And then he said, Walter was totally insane. I got to interview him, too, but he said… Walter, you know, he said, I hadn’t seen Walter Matthau in two years. We just hadn’t worked together. And then he said it was Saturday morning, really early, 738 in the morning. And he said that the maid wasn’t there and there was nobody there. The doorbell rings. And he said, I couldn’t figure out how is the doorbell ringing? He said, I have a gate out front. How does somebody ring my doorbell? So he said, I get in my bathrobe and I go down there. And there’s Walter Matthau standing there in his pajamas with a cup of coffee, and he doesn’t say hello or anything. He says, you got any cream, Jack? And he said, that’s Walter. And he would just do stuff like that to try to make me laugh. And he said, I don’t know how he got there. There wasn’t a car. There wasn’t anything. And then we had a cup of coffee, and he left. And he said, that was Walter. He said the man was absolutely insane.

SPEAKER 05 : 10:01

That’s hilarious. Now, Michael, who – directed The Ultimate Gift. That was your most popular movie, your very first movie. Now you’re doing your ninth. How come you haven’t worked with him again? Have you had a chance to work with him again? Has he done other big projects?

SPEAKER 03 : 10:17

We finished that project, and he was off doing something else. Michael Landon Jr. did the sequel to the film. Then we brought in Raquel Welch to make the third film in the trilogy. She had a director she wanted to work with. And it worked out really, really good. And then it’s just – yeah, Michael and I were sitting here talking. Maybe we should do another film together. I think we probably will. But it’s just everybody’s schedule has got to be clear at the same time because making a movie is a year out of your life, and everybody’s time has got to coordinate or you’ve got to go find somebody else.

SPEAKER 05 : 10:53

I love it. I think he said this, that I couldn’t do a – I don’t think I could do a film that’s against my worldview. That’s pretty cool. That seems like someone you would work with.

SPEAKER 03 : 11:05

Yeah, Michael can’t do that, and the thing I’ll always remember about him in that movie, we had Abigail Breslin when she was eight years old, and she had just got nominated for the Academy Award for Little Miss Sunshine, and she came to our movie, and what a gifted actress, but she’s eight years old. and Michael would take time with her, and she was fearless. She’s standing around with James Garner, Brian Denny, Lee Merriweather, and all these people, and Michael was discussing the next scene, and she would say, now, Michael, I have a thought here. And she’s talking like a little, I mean, I told her, I said, tell the truth, you’re a midget in a kid’s suit, right? I mean, don’t give me this. And she was just the most amazing thing, but to see her work with him, was such a delight. I mean, it takes a lot of talent to pull that out of a kid like that. And then to work with all these big stars and not be intimidated by them.

SPEAKER 05 : 11:57

Well, I’m looking forward to it. I’ll keep my eye out for his documentary about faith and football regarding the Green Bay Packers. I take it that Michael is a Christian. It sounds like he is from his interviews.

SPEAKER 03 : 12:11

Yeah, he is. And in his case, being a person of faith It’s not what he does. It’s who he is. I mean, you don’t have to. He didn’t tell anybody. He didn’t make a big deal out of it. It’s just like totally obvious to everybody.

SPEAKER 05 : 12:28

I love that. And then when’s your ninth movie coming out? What’s going on with your next movie?

SPEAKER 03 : 12:32

It will probably be out next year. That movie’s Will to Win. And then I have two others that have been optioned. Coach for Life and then that travels with Steinbeck and Coach for Life the book will be out this summer but it’s already been optioned and then the Steinbeck book will be out early 26 and it’s been optioned for a movie so you know you gotta be insane to do one to do three movies at the same time and in a show every week with Angie then you know you’ve arrived and who is the subject of Coach for Life It is a novel. It’s a fiction I wrote about a coach that lives in this little tiny town for 50 years, and he coaches football, basketball, and baseball. And when he dies at age 80, that’s the opening of the book and the movie. And then all these people, governors and world leaders and billionaires and athletes and entertainers, that he coached way back in the day when they were little kids. They come back and say what he did for them. And the whole thing is our legacy is that which we leave behind in other people, and it’s just a great story about that thing.

SPEAKER 05 : 13:42

Oh, I love it. All right, jimstovall.com. Thank you, friend.

SPEAKER 03 : 13:45

Be well, Angie.

SPEAKER 02 : 13:51

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SPEAKER 01 : 14:45

Elizabeth is dialed in to the mighty 670.

SPEAKER 05 : 14:54

If you are just joining us, this is Angie Austin with the good news. Well, today we’re talking about overall health and fitness and finding, you know, well-being through accountability. I don’t know about you, but accountability has been such a help to me when it comes to keeping up my health and fitness and has been for really decades. I have a partner for the gym and I have a partner for the neighborhood walks and I Grocery shop with my best friend who also likes to eat clean and we share healthy recipes and Instagram posts and all kinds of things. Well, now we can get even more help because not everyone has all those friends to partner with for accountability. There’s a new platform that can help us build and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Joining us to explain is Dr. Neha Pathak, chief physician editor with Health and Lifestyle magazine. Welcome, doctor.

SPEAKER 04 : 15:36

Hi, how are you? Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER 05 : 15:38

Oh, you are welcome. So let’s talk about accountability and why it’s so important on staying on track with our goals.

SPEAKER 04 : 15:45

Yeah, accountability, to your point, is so critically important. I love everything you said and all the examples you gave. Because we know that so much of motivation and motivation is a feeling. It can shift. It can change throughout the year. It can change throughout the day. And so what we really need more than motivation is a plan of action. And so many of us, like you said, don’t really have motivation. partners in our plan. And so we really are looking to the Embody platform. And I am with WebMD. And what we recognize is that, you know, there are so many people getting very concrete advice from their doctors when it comes to, you know, medications, prescriptions. We know The dose, the time, the name of what we’re supposed to be taking. But when it comes to health advice like exercise or nutrition, we don’t often get that same concrete advice except for, you know, you should just eat better. How about exercising more? And so the embodied platform is really meant to take that gap, that gap. Lack of concrete information and make it a concrete plan with accountability built in, with the potential to build community so that you can take these motivations for change and make them into really concrete plans in your life.

SPEAKER 05 : 17:08

I like that idea of community as well, because you can always ask questions, et cetera. And then in terms of the embodied platform, you know, expert advice is always better than like I have this one cousin that I hate to be this one, but he weighs at least 350 pounds. And any time I talk about like we do family gym night and all six of us go to the gym together. And as the kids have started to graduate or, you know, go off to college, the group’s gotten smaller, but it’s kind of like family peer pressure to go. Well, anyway, he always gives me advice and no offense, but I’m not taking I don’t want his advice because he’s not where I want to be. You want to look at people differently. who have the education or the current health where you respect their opinion and you go, oh, they really know what they’re talking about or they’re following their own advice. So sometimes people give you advice who claim to be experts and it’s pretty obvious they’re not. So I like the idea of getting, you know, expert advice as well. So let’s talk a little bit more about what Embody then offers its users, this new platform.

SPEAKER 04 : 18:07

Absolutely. So when it comes to the Embody platform, what we want to help provide people is free access anytime, anywhere on their timeline with a couple of things. Number one, it’s the what. And that is, to your point, the evidence. What is the best evidence for the changes that I should be making? And so we really rely on experts. across the country to help provide that guidance so we can cut out the noise, the confusion, and really focus on the places that there is consensus, there’s strong evidence of how we can change what we put on our plates to get healthier. How do we actually do better physical activity to improve our flexibility or to become better at aerobic exercise? How do we sleep better or stress less? So we really wanted the expertise from experts across the country to guide the what are the changes we need to make. But we wanted to pair that with how are you going to make these changes. So it’s really important to know what to do, but it’s critically equally important to figure out how are you going to do that in your own life. So we really wanted to provide these resources in a variety of ways. So whether that’s a self-paced course that you want to take or just a downloadable that is going to make your life a little easier so you can have a checklist of things that you want to do on that particular day that’s going to give you the biggest bang for your buck with regard to improving your health or whether that’s live courses with experts so that you can ask your questions in real time. We really wanted to provide a breadth of resources.

SPEAKER 05 : 19:49

And I like that it can offer you, like I was reading a little bit about it, actionable steps. Like sometimes you just don’t know where to start. So I like the idea that you can work out a plan that works for you with steps that you can actually put into your life.

SPEAKER 04 : 20:05

Exactly. All of us really are motivated to make different changes. And we should not feel judgmental about what changes we want to make, right? I might want to change my diet and somebody else might want to get more physical activity. Somebody else may want to stress less or sleep better. So all of us have different doors that we’re entering to get to better health. And so the embodied platform is really meant to be there to say whatever door you come through, here’s the best evidence. Here’s that plan for this particular pathway on your journey. And if you want to shift, if you want to move to a new path, you have lots of other opportunities to learn about the best ways to make those changes as well.

SPEAKER 05 : 20:48

Now, in terms of the support group portion of this, how powerful are support groups when you’re trying to reach a health goal?

SPEAKER 04 : 20:56

You are so right to bring up support groups because support groups are critical. I think, you know, when we think about support groups, we are thinking about a group that might be helping us for a particular health goal, which is important. But I think support groups with the evidence do so much more than that. And what they do is they provide us a sense of belonging somewhere. So these are a group of people that may be tackling the same health goal and And now we belong together with this group. We feel connected. And that is so important to get us to continue to feel motivated. The second thing that support groups do is that they normalize the health goal or the health condition that we might be struggling with. And so we see that we’re not alone. A lot of us, all of us here together are working towards this shared mission. And then it does something even more important and something that sometimes your doctor can’t even do is provide you with really concrete shared strategies. So if you’re working together and your doctor has said vaguely, hey, you know, you need to exercise more. And now you’re in this group with people who have said, well, this is how I’ve done it. I’ve paired it with walking one mile every morning because that’s exactly how far my daughter’s daycare is. So now I get a mile of exercise every day and I get to spend time with my daughter. So now you’ve got this really great hack, this strategy that you might not have thought of. And then support groups also provide you with momentum because you share your successes.

SPEAKER 05 : 22:30

Sorry, excuse me. I just did a little sneeze. I was also going to say, just in talking to my girlfriend, Last night, she and I ended up having some of the same health issues like high blood pressure and high cholesterol and being insulin resistant and all these things for us, for family history. And then I’ve got my six-foot-six husband who weighs what he weighed in high school, who weighs like 200 pounds at 6’6″, and he, of course, goes to the gym with me every night, but There was a time when I had done this Southern California like raw food spa. And so I go there and you drink, you know, wheatgrass juice and you only eat basically raw fruits and vegetables for your breakfast is like watermelon or something. Right. It’s like extreme. And I’m trying to figure out like, oh, can I lower my cholesterol through, you know, diet and exercise? So anyway, after four weeks of following this plan of raw foods and wheatgrass juice and My cholesterol was like still high. Right. So my husband goes in for the same test at the same time. And he likes McDonald’s hamburgers and like the big five. And he likes, you know, a fried chicken sandwich. And his was, of course, perfect. And so that’s when I learned that, like, oh, I definitely have different challenges than he does. And I need different advice for my health than he does. And so that’s what I like, too, about the communities. You can find like my girlfriend texting me last night. I’m like, oh, my gosh, like I’ve been on that same journey for 10 years. I have all the same things that you have, basically. And, you know, what I’ve done to help, you know, in that arena, per se, different things you can try. So I like the idea that you can really personalize this and talk to people who, you know, I’m not going to talk to my husband on the health forum that, you know, goes to McDonald’s for hamburgers and has perfect cholesterol and is not a single pill, you know, nothing. Right.

SPEAKER 04 : 24:13

Well, you bring up such an important point. And I will say I have a very similar conversation with my husband. Weight, health, they’re influenced by so many more factors than just what we have control over. So some of it is genetics. And some of it is our environment and hormonal shifts. But some of it, a big part of it, are things that we can control or at least we have some ability to shift and change. So whether that’s sleep, stress, what we put in our bodies. how we’re really taking care of our mental health. And you’re right. You know, we want to find people that are similar to us in certain ways so that we don’t feel alone. Because if we were just talking to our husbands, we might feel like, oh, my gosh, I’m trying to do everything and I’m just not getting better. So the key piece is not judging yourself, recognizing that this is much bigger. Health is much bigger than just the things you control. But finding people that you can make some of these shifts with, because sometimes If you can’t, if it’s not, it’s not just about numbers. It’s not just about your cholesterol. When you make these changes in general, you’re making yourself healthier.

SPEAKER 05 : 25:24

Well, I love to, I’m on the website and I looked at it earlier and just some of the things that, you know, I’ve considered, I call myself a flexitarian because I still do eat some meat, but I try to be a vegetarian. So right there on the front page of Embody, it says, should I be a part-time vegetarian? Meat less. Yes. And so I’m like, well, that’s perfect. I see that one right away, something I want. And then there was another about one of my girlfriends is on the GLP-1s, and they talk about muscle loss right now. And so there’s an article about strength training and how to arrest muscle loss on GLP-1s. But then like four of these articles that I may have no interest in, I just love it that there’s such a wide variety of options that you can investigate for overall health and so many different little things you can put together, like 100 different little things. I interviewed this one doctor. Dr. Michael Roysen, and he says he does like I do 109 things a day for my health. And it’s just funny because he’s so specific and, you know, he jumps up and down when he gets up, you know, for his bones and like all these different things. But he’s found 109 little different things. But I might have another a different 77 that I pick.

SPEAKER 04 : 26:31

That’s exactly right. So beautifully said. And that’s really what we’re trying to do with the Embody platform is to help you figure out your own one thing to start with, or then getting you to a list of 10 or 20. And, you know, you can start small, take whatever path works for you. And I love how you phrase that.

SPEAKER 05 : 26:50

You know, I love medicine and how you pick your area of expertise. Does this area of expertise give you a lot of satisfaction? Because instead of delivering bad news, maybe to people several times a day, you’re really focused on health and longevity. Does that give you a lot of satisfaction kind of guiding people in this area? Yeah.

SPEAKER 04 : 27:07

Absolutely. It just provides the ability to have joyful, hopeful conversations because we are talking about something regardless of medications that you’re taking, regardless of your health, your current health condition, your health goals. Every single thing that you work on when it’s related to sleep, stress, food, physical activity is going to make you a little bit healthier. So that’s a hopeful and happy conversation, which I love to have.

SPEAKER 05 : 27:34

Absolutely. Then there’s so much on the platform. All right. I’m on youembody.com. What’s the easiest way for people to get involved with the Embody platform?

SPEAKER 04 : 27:45

Absolutely. So the Embody platform is at youembody.com, Y-O-U-E-M-B-O-D-Y.com. And then you can look for live, upcoming live webinars. You can look for quizzes and just much more content to help you on the path that you want to go on for better health.

SPEAKER 05 : 28:04

And is there a cost for it on the website? As I’m looking, I don’t see any of the articles I’m reading are free.

SPEAKER 04 : 28:10

No, completely free. And we want it to be free and accessible to all people anywhere that they can access the internet.

SPEAKER 05 : 28:18

I love it. You embody dot com. Thanks, doctor. I’m checking it out right now. I’m going to check out one of those live workshops.

SPEAKER 04 : 28:25

Thank you so much. Take care of yourself.

SPEAKER 05 : 28:27

Thank you. Have a great day.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:29

Thank you for listening to the good news with Angie Austin on AM 670 KLTT.