The Best Advice I Ever Got (21 page)

Al Roker

Television Broadcaster and Weather Anchor

Willard’s Way

My best advice came from my mentor and second dad, Willard Scott. In 1976, I was a rookie weatherman at WTTG-TV in Washington, D.C. At the time, nobody watched the station except for shut-ins, the demented, and folks who had passed on and left the TV on Channel 5.

One day, out of the blue, I got a call from the one person in D.C. who was bigger than the president: Willard Scott. This was before Willard joined the
Today
show. He was
the
local weatherman and personality in Washington. He was inviting me to dinner. Me? The weather guy at Channel 5? Willard was a legend, not only in Washington but in the TV weather community.

We went to Alfredo’s La Trattoria on Wisconsin Avenue. People were coming up to him left and right and, God bless him, he would introduce me as if I was his professional equal. During that dinner I was given two pieces of advice by Willard that I live by to this day, more than thirty years later:

(1) Always be yourself. It may not be much, but it’s all you’ve got. No one can take that away from you, if you don’t let them. Trying to be someone you’re not takes up too much energy and is no fun. Willard is a prime example of “what you see is what you get.”

And (2) Never give up your day job. Willard was the king of multitasking. During his long career he was, simultaneously, the original Ronald McDonald and half of a great radio morning team, the Joy Boys. He was the local weatherman and owned a farm in Delaplane, Virginia, where he hosted birthday parties and sold eggs at a local department store, Woody’s. But he always did the weather. Even when he got to the
Today
show, he never gave up his day job of doing the weather.

I try to emulate that advice. I try to be myself each day. For better or for worse, it’s who I am. And no matter what else I do—executive-producing a TV series, hosting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, or anchoring
Wake Up with Al
on the Weather Channel, I will always do the weather on
Today
. It’s the source from which all else springs.

For this advice, I will always be grateful to my Uncle Willard.

Wes Moore

Entrepreneur, Bestselling Author, and Youth Advocate

Have Faith, Not Fear

As I prepared to deploy to Afghanistan in 2005 with the 82nd Airborne Division, my grandparents handed me a Bible. The weathered leather Bible was used by my grandfather for more than fifty years during his ministerial career. It had guided him through some of the happiest and the most trying moments of his life. As I gratefully accepted this heirloom, they asked me to open the front cover.

On the first page, in my grandfather’s eighty-six-year-old handwriting, now weakened by cancer, were four simple words: “Have faith, not fear.” The strength of this advice, combined with the love behind the gesture, touched me deeply and would sustain me in the trying months ahead.

I spent the next year in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, in a remote area called Khost, which months before I could never have identified on a map. This isolated outpost quickly became my home; the many Afghans whom I fought alongside, my friends; the soldiers I led and with whom I served, my brothers and sisters. All the while, the words of my grandparents came back to me: Have faith, not fear.

What my grandparents knew, and what I learned, is that we can be paralyzed by the unknown. We can languish and allow ourselves to be controlled by fear. I saw it often while deployed; my fellow servicemen and women would wear fatalistic expressions each time we left “the wire,” hoping it wasn’t their time to have their number called. However, for me faith was the antidote to that fear. Faith not just in myself but in something larger. It was this faith that allowed us to push through, without being stymied by potential consequences or paralyzed by what-ifs.

I carried that tiny, worn Bible in the left breast pocket of my battle dress uniform every time I prepared myself and my soldiers for a mission. And I have relied on those four words for strength and guidance every day, that same way, ever since. Have faith, not fear.

Alex Rodriguez

Professional Baseball Player

The Power of Words

Among the influential people in my life, the two who played pivotal roles in my success were my high school baseball coach and my mother.

The slightest words of encouragement can affect a child’s self-confidence and motivation. By age nine, I was training rigorously for both baseball and basketball. Years later, at Miami’s Christopher Columbus Catholic High School, I continued to pursue baseball, although I was rather discouraged about my future in the sport. The varsity baseball team was loaded with players, and I was advised to concentrate solely on basketball. As much as I enjoyed basketball, it was not my true passion. Thankfully, a number of people told me to follow my heart and not give up on baseball.

Coincidentally, I received an amazing opportunity during my sophomore year to attend Westminster Christian, a private high school in Florida that had one of the state’s top baseball programs. Heading up the team was Coach Rich Hofman, who kindly assisted me in getting financial aid to attend the school.

I had just transferred and was still feeling a little insecure about my future. Coach Hofman said something to me that would change my life forever: “You need to have a really big summer and work especially hard, because in three years you will be the number-one pick in the major-league baseball draft … and soon after you’ll be in the big leagues for a long time.”

His words of encouragement had a profound effect on my future, and I vowed not to disappoint him. My determination soared, and at the end of my junior year I was encouraged to bypass senior year and go straight to the majors.

Off the field, there was no bigger coach in my life than my mother, who made tremendous sacrifices so that I could pursue my dreams. During the day she worked full-time as an immigration secretary, and in the evening as a waitress, where she would stand on her feet for hours each shift.

When she returned home, exhausted from a sixteen-hour workday, I would count her tips and massage her tired legs. To this day, I marvel at her ability to rise above her circumstances, and I remind myself of her sacrifices whenever I feel even slightly challenged. My mother taught me the importance of quiet sacrifice. In her case, words were few, but her love and dedication were infinite.

For me, these two figures embody the power of positive thinking and determination. My mother taught me about perseverance, while Coach Hofman’s abounding encouragement gave me the ability to think without limitations. Perhaps even more critical, their two voices drowned out any discouraging influences around me and taught me to trust my inner voice.

Curtis Sittenfeld

Bestselling Author of
Prep
,
The Man of My Dreams
, and
American Wife

My Other (Less Neurotic) Half

Frank Conroy was the director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop when I was a graduate student there, and he was perfectly suited to the role: He was white-haired, unapologetically opinionated, a wonderful writer, and an often hilarious introducer of various visiting writers. He was also a talented jazz pianist, and among the legends that circulated about him—and this one was actually true—was that he’d once jammed with the Rolling Stones. In a graduate program populated mostly by over-educated and gossipy twentysomethings trying to become legitimate poets and novelists, Frank was funny, candid, and magnificently unflappable.

Frank’s sixty-fifth birthday occurred in January 2001, just before the start of my last semester in the workshop, and a few of us who had been his recent students decided to take a cake over to his office. As we ate slices, we prodded him—although I’m not sure all that much prodding was necessary—to share with us the wisdom of his years.

In class, Frank would dispense advice about writing that I still think of, but on this winter morning he spoke more generally: Time is like a wind tunnel, and the older you get the faster it seems to pass. Life really is about the simple pleasures, like a good nap or a hot bath. Then he said it, the thing I consider pretty much the best advice ever: Don’t marry someone who’s more neurotic than you.

At the time, I would have been delighted to marry someone more neurotic than I was, especially a fellow writer. I imagined intense conversations about language, a shared skepticism toward the conventions of ordinary life, when in reality I now suspect that the greater likelihood would have been professional competition and frequent ego massaging. I’m quite sure that I could have been a wife who was willing to endlessly prop up my husband’s sense of self, and it’s hard to overstate how happy I am that I don’t have to.

The only flaw with this piece of advice is that, in any couple, just one person can follow it. And a few years after leaving Iowa, when I found myself in a serious relationship with a smart and easygoing guy named Matt, I fretted about whether I should ever tell him what Frank had said. An additional problem was that I couldn’t remember whether Frank meant that a writer should never marry someone more neurotic or that no one should—a crucial distinction. Sadly, Frank died in 2005, so I couldn’t check. I stewed and wondered: Should I warn my boyfriend away from me, or did the fact that he was an academic and a reader but not a writer mean that we were in the clear? This was, of course, the version I chose to believe.

Nevertheless, around the time we got engaged I repeated Frank’s words to Matt. My husband-to-be gave me a look of deep amusement. “Curtis,” he said, “do you think I don’t realize you’re more neurotic than I am?” We were married in March 2008.

Jay Leno

Comedian and Host of
The Tonight Show

In Defense of Class Clowns

I grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, and I was lucky enough to have really great teachers in high school. Mrs. Hawkes taught English and creative writing, and I had her for sophomore English class. One day, she stopped me in the hall and said, “Come here, Jay, I want to talk to you. I always see you fooling around in class and I hear you telling stories in the hallway, and people seem to be laughing. Why don’t you write those stories down and I’ll accept them for class credit?” I took her up on the offer, and for the first time in my life I actually enjoyed doing homework. Up to that point, I was the kind of kid who did only what I
had
to do.
Excuse me, is this going to be on the test?
That was my usual question. But for the first time in my life I cared about doing well at something for its own sake. I started writing funny stories. I wrote it all down, crossed it out, rewrote it, tried it again from another angle, and I’d find myself—rather than the usual forty-five minutes I spent on homework—actually spending three hours trying to get the story perfect. In class, Mrs. Hawkes asked me to read my story aloud, and I got a few laughs in the usual kid way. Afterward, she said, “Jay, have you ever thought about becoming a comedy writer?” Although I’d always been a showoff and a cutup, it had never occurred to me that you could make a living by writing comedy, and so Mrs. Hawkes’s question really sort of changed my life. I thought, Here is something I’m learning in school that I can actually use for a practical purpose. I had no interest in algebra or trigonometry. I was dyslexic, so that stuff had no meaning for me. But here was something new that, wow, I actually enjoyed doing, and it didn’t seem like homework at all, and I even got credit for it! It was a real turning point in my life.

Today, whenever I meet young people who are interested in something—anything—I try to encourage them. Because so many kids these days aren’t interested in anything. They just sort of hop around from one thing to the next, or maybe they just zone out. So, whether it’s photography or painting or whatever it is, I always try to encourage them in any way that I can, because that’s what someone did for me.