Robin Roberts' Health Crisis: Her Message for Healing and Coping With Cancer
She’s an Emmy- award winning journalist and co-anchor of Good Morning America. Robin Robert’s unparalleled strength inspired millions of people around the country as she publicly shared her health crisis, battling both breast cancer and a rare blood and bone marrow disease. In this interview, Dr. Oz speaks with Robin about her message for others fighting the same battle. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
If you were talking to me this time last year, I'd be a little bleary-eyed.
I would be about to start my second round of chemotherapy.
My hair would just about be falling out.
Now I've got this little dew that's coming back in.
I like it.
I hear it's chic.
Or whatever.
Oh, it's tre chic.
Yeah, tre chic.
Nice job you've done with him, Lisa.
Hey, everyone. everyone.
I'm Dr. Oz, and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast.
One of my favorite people's in the studio today.
I've been a huge fan of hers for a long time.
I even get to go on the Good Morning America show with her once in a while.
You all know her.
It's Robin Roberts.
Thanks for joining us.
This is odd.
I'm supposed to be asking you questions.
I know.
It usually is.
No, no, no.
What's going on here?
Well, they said if I had a full hour, so I don't have to do what you do in four and a half minutes.
Ah.
I might be able to handle it.
Now, I'm going to tell you a little bit about Robin behind the scenes.
She's well known to you for her ability to report the news spectacularly and bring emotion to topics that are sometimes confusing and sometimes scary to folks.
But she grew up in Mississippi.
She had a stellar career in that state as a college basketball player.
Took her to ESPN where she hosted a bunch of shows.
And then finally to Good Morning America where we've all got to know her in our living rooms every single morning.
And she's done some wonderful things in her life.
Including putting down some of the things that she's passionate about in a book called From the Heart, Seven Rules to Live By.
And it's a book that a lot of us had a chance to look at, and it had power to it just because it was Robin talking about things that she had done in her life.
But she ran into medical hardships, which compelled her to add an eighth rule to live by.
And so I'm honored to have her on the show today to talk about all seven rules plus the eighth rule, like the dwarves, right?
Yeah.
Exactly.
It's not white.
I know.
Just added one.
Let's go back a second before the events of the past year.
When you first had the idea to write a book, which for those of you out there who haven't written a book, it's like having, I don't know, some of my combinations are having a baby.
Yeah, that's well put.
You should know.
Exactly.
It only takes longer.
It takes longer.
There you go, Lise.
There you go.
Yeah, you're not going to let us get off the hook in saying that was like having a baby.
You've had one.
Well, no, I'm also writing a book, and it's taking much longer than being pregnant.
Well, I have to say, I didn't, and it's one of the first things I say in my book, is that I never thought I'd write one.
It wasn't my intent.
I enjoy commencement addresses.
And oftentimes, after I give a speech, either a student or a parent will come up and go, oh, could you, I really would like, it really helped me a great deal.
Kid, I have a copy of her speech.
And the problem is, I don't write down my speeches.
I speak from the heart.
Right.
Do you get the whole exuberaneously?
I do.
And it's not like, insert college here.
You know, some of those speeches.
No, I really, depending on what's going on that day, what I've experienced, I really feel that people don't We're so programmed that we don't take in the moment and just share.
And so people kept saying, oh, I wish you would write a book.
And that's what I did.
I kind of put down the basics, the things.
It's not, believe me, it's not my life story.
I always get chuckled by people who write their memoir in their 20s, 30s, 40s or whatever.
That's cathartic too, by the way.
It can be.
But it was just showing examples of things that have helped me along the way that I really feel people can apply to whatever...
Whatever they're going through, it can help them as well.
You called it from the heart because that is actually, many would argue, the seat of the soul is.
It's where some of the important decisions we make instinctively.
At what point in your life did you begin to realize that that's where your power was going to come from?
I think I was very fortunate to learn that kind of early.
My father was a Tuskegee Airman, and so the first black flying air corps in the military.
So he grew up not far from where we're doing the show right now, in New Jersey.
I've been to Tuskegee Airmen.
Yeah, just down in Alabama.
And he grew up in New Jersey.
I know, and I'm very excited because Tuskegee is about to open its first memorial, a true landmark for the airmen, which is really huge that they're going to do that.
So he grew up across the way in Jersey, and he would go down in his basement and take a broken broomstick handle and would imagine that it was his throttle and he was flying.
You're kidding me.
And this was a time when, you know, blacks didn't have a lot of rights in this country.
And so he had the nerve, people thought, like, you're going to fly one day?
And he was like, yeah, I am.
Because he knew in his heart he was going to fly a plane one day, and then he ends up being a Tuskegee Airman, a full colonel in the Air Force.
So, can you imagine as a kid, you know, you have that example.
My mother was the first in her family to go to college, and then she was on the State Board of Education and on the Federal Reserve and doing all these things.
And...
As my parents always said, and I always felt that I wasn't the prettiest.
They didn't tell me this.
You are the prettiest.
But not the smartest and all this and that.
You are the smartest.
It was just because I had the desire.
And my parents taught me that early on.
That if you really want something, and you're doing it for the right reasons.
And I think partly the reason why we're having the problems with this so-called bailout or rescue plan or whatnot.
Is that people don't mind other people getting rich.
It's if you don't do it and give something of value.
You know, the Rockefellers and people in the past, at least they gave us something.
We got a railroad out of it.
We got something of substance, something of value.
And I think people really just want something tangible of value.
It's okay if you're getting along, but what am I getting out of it as well?
And so that's how I've always approached things.
I was reading the Robin Roberts author of From the Heart, Eight Rules to Live By.
It just came out.
You mentioned this issue of value.
In the healthcare system, the big problem we face is not that we're spending 15% or even more of our gross national product on healthcare.
It's that people don't think they're getting their money's worth.
And when you give people what has value, then it's luxury.
It's beautiful.
It's blissful.
It's something that folks don't have any problems with.
And I think what you describe in the book in a lot of ways are things that bring value to your life, but also remind you continually to give value back.
For example, you talked about the great things your father and mother did, but I don't know how many great female athletes were around when you started to craft your path through the basketball courts of Mississippi.
But the first chapter, I think, is about positioning yourself for the shot, which brings value to the team and you, because you get ready to put the shot in, but you score.
I should have written that!
That's so good!
Yeah.
It's always time to say it was a typo.
Tell me about the role of sports in your life.
Crucial.
I'm sitting here because of it.
I'm a proud product of Title IX because I was exposed to playing sports, encouraged to playing sports.
Learn the intangibles that men for generations have used to go on to be successful in other areas of their life, not just in athletics.
And the one word I heard over and over again, whether it was basketball, tennis, or bowling or whatnot, the coach would always say to be position.
Proximity is power.
You can hope, wish, and pray all you want, but if you're not putting yourself in position to get the rebound or position to make the shot, it's not going to happen.
That's right.
And I was able to kind of make the correlation to, oh, that's right.
Well, okay, if I want to do this in life, I can hope and pray, and that's great.
I'm a very spiritual person.
But if I actually don't put myself in position for it to come my way, I'm making things a lot harder than need be.
And I learned that through athletics.
I learned teamwork, all those intangibles.
And, oh, by the way, had a lot of fun and learned also how to be healthy spiritually.
Which has helped me a great deal.
And that's why it's been so difficult this past year in dealing with my health crisis.
It was the first time.
I'm an athlete.
I've done all the right things.
You know, I've done what I'm supposed to do.
And I just learned that it really doesn't matter.
But I also learned it's very important to have those principles, those rules that we live by, per se.
So when we have that crisis, we whoop out those rules that have gotten us through different crises in our life.
Actually, let's go from rule one to the eighth one, because you brought it up.
And you say it doesn't matter.
And in fairness, I think the reality is you had the lowest chance you probably could have had of developing cancer because you were taking such great care of yourself.
Mm-hmm.
But it still happens sometimes.
Absolutely.
Stuff happens.
But your ability to cope with all the chronic illnesses we know of is not so much driven by the therapy we give you, although that's important as well, but it's primarily driven by the things you bring to the table and the things you do afterwards to change and adjust lifestyles to maximize chance of success.
So if you could walk me through sort of your survival.
How you did it.
Well put.
Well put.
If you were talking to me this time last year, I'd be a little bleary-eyed.
I would be about to start my second round of chemotherapy.
My hair would just about be falling out.
Now I've got this little dew that's coming back in.
I like it, actually.
I like it.
I hear it's chic.
Or whatever.
Oh, it's tre chic.
Yeah, tre chic.
Nice job you've done with him.
So...
What a difference a year can make.
But at the time...
No history of it in my family.
Had always been very active.
Had had my screenings.
Had been lax in doing in the last couple of years.
I will admit that.
And was totally shocked.
Was not prepared for it.
Any family history?
None.
None.
But then I found out 80% of people who are diagnosed with cancer, breast cancer in particular, no family history to it.
With it.
So, was not suspecting.
And 46 at the time.
And...
I was down for the count, so to speak.
I felt like the boxer that was on the ropes.
I got the standing eight count.
Crawling up.
No, just crawling up.
But I just knew that I was very thankful to have quality health care and all that.
I was embarrassed because I thought I would never be that ill because of my athletic background.
I'm looking at that turkey sandwich you have over there and the nice greens and all those things.
This is just plastic.
It's just bait.
Oh, it smells good.
Also, being from the South, if we could fry water, we'd fry water.
I'm not going to try myself.
There's a perfect person here.
I mean, I had my Popeye's fried chicken.
I was human.
The gravy's a beverage down there.
I like that.
It's true.
It's very true.
And I was told early on when I was diagnosed that Being athletic and doing all the right things did not prevent me from getting cancer, but boy was it really going to help me in fighting it.
And I really found that out.
I really found a strength, a desire that I didn't know was quite there.
And the title of the last rule is make your message because...
We all have something.
And my mom always says that we all have something.
And you have to find out why it is that you're going through that.
What is the what's the message there?
Mine was to encourage people.
And I've been so encouraged this last year.
So many people have told me that they, too, have gotten their screenings.
Sometimes it's good.
Sometimes it's not.
It's not so good.
But early detection is key.
You know that.
And the only reason that I'm still here is that I found it as early as I did.
I still have a road ahead of me.
I completed my treatment in April.
So, you know, it's a little uncertain, but I am very confident that because I have put myself in position for good things to happen to me.
My number one rule.
I put myself in position by, you know, I went and got checked.
When I found the lump, I didn't wait.
Even though I had an appointment that was six months down the road, I didn't wait.
I immediately changed it.
Even though my doctor, can you get this doctor that I called to say, hey, I found the lump, can I come in early?
And the doctor was like, no.
And I'm like, don't you know who I think I am?
It was a new doctor I had no relationship with.
I said, thank you very much, I'll find a doctor that can't.
And I found a doctor that would let me see them right away through a colleague.
Yeah.
I mean, numerous huge points just to emphasize them.
Getting a second opinion, even though you never got a first one, you effectively got additional opinions.
And we just did a show that I got a lot of feedback on about a woman who had a 140-pound tumor in her body.
Can you imagine that?
140?
Pounds.
Tumor.
And she had gotten a doctor's opinion.
And by the way, you know, this is not gross malpractice.
Doctors make mistakes like everybody else.
The physician hears yet another woman call about a lump in her breast.
You know, it's probably nothing.
It's probably a cyst.
The odds are that it's not going to be cancer.
And so, you know, what's the big deal six months?
It's wrong.
The fact of the matter is a woman wants to be seen because she thinks she's got a breast mass.
She ought to be seen, but we make those mistakes.
And so the smart thing to do is to keep pushing, because you are the world expert in your body.
You did that.
Absolutely.
And then the second thing, of course, is you examine yourself in the first place.
Now, had you always done breast exams?
I had.
And that's why I can't quite understand this new study or whatever that came out saying that the self-exam, that's a waste of time.
I mean, come on!
I'll tell you why.
This is a beautiful example, and then we'll go to break real quick, because I've got so much to ask you about, Robin.
But the reason that we run into trouble with breast self-exams is people don't know how to do it right.
So if you examine yourself in the last week of your cycle, you're going to have more cysts.
True.
So you're going to discover things that aren't that valuable for you.
If you have a big breast that's pretty fibrous, a young woman, for example, often will have breasts like that.
It's very difficult to feel a mass.
So you get a false sense of security if it feels normal that you don't go and get examined by someone with you lying on your back and with muscles relaxed, all these other things.
So there are multiple moving parts, but there's no question about it.
If you know when to examine your breast the first week, examine yourself day seven of your cycle, so seven days after your menstrual cycle starts, Get a baseline on your body so you know where you stand.
Right.
That's key.
Absolutely.
Because you can tell better than anybody else.
And that's why I always get concerned when there's one study out of 50 that says something's bad, everyone sort of jumps on that, and it just confuses the public.
Because these aren't cookie-cutter exams.
We have a lot more to talk about, but first, let's take a quick break.
Of all the sports, I can imagine Robert Roberts playing.
Bowling wasn't on the list.
Softball, I could see.
Golf, that's perfect.
But bowling, just didn't see it.
You don't bowl?
You and Lisa don't bowl?
No, actually, when I was a kid, I bowled all the time.
I played football and I bowled.
And I loved bowling.
Oh, he never told me this.
We would go bowling as a family.
He'd crush us.
He'd just pretend he picked up the ball for the first time.
No wonder.
Oh, now it comes out.
I bowled a 237 one day.
Excellent.
One of my few games above 200. He was playing me and my kids.
With the little rails up.
Oh no, with the bumper guards.
When I was a kid, I bowled a 237. I've never gotten close to that as an adult.
Even with the bumper rails up.
You should do a bowling Good Morning America and the two of you should face off.
Lisa, I like the sound of that.
Sounds like South Park, actually.
That too.
So From the Heart's Name of Robin's book, Eight Rules to Live By.
She added an extra rule after recovering, surviving cancer.
And we talked a little bit about the lessons she learned from that.
But I want to go back and talk about the broader life lessons you talk about in the book.
Because I think that these are actually in part what allowed you to beat cancer, but also get to where you are today.
Let's talk about success for a second.
How do you define success, at least in your own eyes?
In my own eyes, it's doing something that I wanted to do on my terms.
I wanted to be involved in athletics.
And I thought that, oh, at the time, the only way I could do it was to be a physical education teacher and a coach.
And I remember coming back from career day.
Remember when you used to have career day?
And I came back and I said, you know, my mom was an educator.
And I said, you know, I'm going to be a PE teacher and a coach.
And she goes, no, you're not.
That's the only thing you think you can do.
Huh.
No.
And it really wasn't what I wanted to do.
I did want to be a professional athlete or a sports journalist.
Even when you were a little girl?
Even when I was little.
And the fact that I went on to do it, that to me is success.
Whether it's setting any goal whatsoever and actually obtaining it.
And it has nothing to do with the lifestyle that it can create.
The money or any of that.
Absolutely.
And I've said that from day one.
And I didn't even know what all it brought.
All I knew was that that was going to make me happy.
And to me, that's success.
Wanting to be a sports journalist as a little girl...
Given the times when really it was just male professional sports being covered and women certainly weren't allowed access, it's kind of like your dad practicing to fly.
Very similar.
Yeah, because he never would have dreamed that that was a possibility given his experience.
And you are the same way it looks like.
Well, it's a little more difficult if you don't see someone like yourself doing what you want to do.
And that's something when I go out and I talk with people.
And I said, I don't know...
I don't like to try and convince people to follow what I did or to be a sports journalist or to be a news anchor.
That's what I wanted to do.
And I simply tell them, I have no idea what your dream is out there that I'm talking to right now.
But I do know if you don't see someone like yourself, that you can still obtain it.
Because that's my example to you.
My example to you is that I didn't have anybody, and I didn't moan and groan about it or anything.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
It was just fine.
That's how it was.
And I surrounded myself, and there are a lot of people that are sitting in this chair with me right now.
My mother, my father, preachers, teachers, so many people who helped me.
And that's another thing that you have to realize.
You are not, especially if it's a field or profession where there's not many people who look like yourself, you're going to need a whole lot of help.
And I am the first one to admit that I had a lot of people who saw something in me, believed in me, saw my heart.
I realized that when I was going to these smaller markets, I didn't really want to stay there.
But I never treated them like a stepping stone.
When I was there, I was there.
When I was in Nashville, Tennessee, and I was the sports director for Ralph Emery, which was a country show, we had outhouse racing, and you would have thought I wanted to be the commissioner of outhouse racing in this world.
What is outhouse racing?
You don't want to know, my friend.
Is that what it sounds like?
It's what it sounds like.
You put them in an outhouse, and you race.
We had paddle boat racing and things like that, but you would have thought that that's exactly what I wanted to do at that moment.
And so people, when they can just see your sincerity, and I wanted to improve every station where I was working.
I wanted to improve that station, improve myself to be able to move on.
So many times people don't like what they're doing, and they want something else.
Well, if you don't do a good job where you are, why in the world is someone going to help you?
Exactly right.
Why are they going to want to help you if you're not doing a good job?
We're having this debate right now within our family.
What's going on?
I think I'm doing a terrible job on the radio.
No, no, no.
It's actually not about Lisa.
But it's a kid's issue.
Not surprisingly, kids grow up in an environment where they're often rewarded for doing what they're supposed to do.
Like, you go to school every day, people congratulate you for going to school every day.
When you go to the workforce, people don't congratulate you for showing up.
Good point.
You've got to deliver at a different level, and it gets frustrating when you don't get the accolades, you don't get the grades at the end of the week.
The odds are stacked against you if you need immediate gratification, so you have to look for it inside, which is, in fact, the only gratification you should be looking for to begin with.
But we don't emphasize that.
Why would kids figure it out?
That's part of your path in life, to figure these kinds of things out.
So that's why you've got to read from the heart, Eight Rules to Live By.
And I love when people, everyone's rule is different.
And I ask people to see my rules, and at the very end, I also encourage, rip them up, and I want your rules.
And that's what I was doing last year when I released the book.
I really enjoyed going around the country and hearing people hear what their rules are to live by.
Because we all have something.
They're the core principles because it is so difficult out there right now for everyone.
And if you don't know what your core principles are, it makes it that much more difficult.
And to be able to apply it to any kind of circumstance that you're facing, it just makes it a little bit easier.
And you need all the help you can get right now.
We're talking about success a fair amount, but I want to talk about failure as well.
Please.
Because you do get into it a little bit.
And I think for a lot of folks, you know, we always see the successful, glamorous life.
You know, Robin shows up on the show every morning with us.
She looks so beautiful.
So is everybody else at GMA and all the other people in all the television stations.
Everyone looks so fantastic.
Every one of those folks in any walk of life, maybe priest, doctor, lawyer, professional, parent you've ever met that's really been good at something, probably failed a lot along the way.
And we don't tackle failure aggressively.
Athletism teaches you that.
You fail in a game and you go back and embrace it and learn from it and improve yourself because you haven't really failed until you're completely done.
Exactly.
You might lose that game.
Doesn't mean you're going to lose the series or lose the championship.
You lost that particular game or that point.
How did you deal with failure when you were young?
How did you make it part of your success?
I remember, and it was through athletics, and I remember I didn't like losing a tennis match.
I didn't like losing to Hancock North Central.
That was our big rival in basketball.
I didn't like it.
I understood it, but I didn't care for it at all.
And what I have learned, and I'm so glad you want to talk about this, because oftentimes young people see the end result.
They don't see how we actually got there.
And I can remember so many times when I was first starting out, especially in this profession, and what I called, you sent out resume tapes.
Instead of sending out a resume, you sent out a resume tape to try and get hired.
And I swear, I just felt there was a big rubber stamp with reject on it.
Bam!
I barely sent the tapes out that they were coming back to me, in my mind, with a big reject stamped on top of it.
It's so important for people to know that the failure that we all have gone through, all of us who have, quote unquote, succeeded, have gone through a failure at one time.
And the trick for me has always been that I'm going to be frightened.
And I realize that even successful people are frightened, but you work through it.
And that's why I say take the shot even though your knees are shaking.
And I learned that through, this is the one example I learned when I was playing, we were playing the big LSU.
We're a little bitty school.
We're playing big old LSU.
And there was this one girl on the team, on the opposite team, point guard, who had this little swagger and just like, you know, she was all that in a bag of chips.
And the game was toward the end.
And we were actually keeping close with them.
We might upset LSU. And I purposely fouled her because we needed to get the ball back.
So I purposely fouled her to bring her to the free throw line.
And everyone's going crazy, yelling and stuff.
And I remember her stepping up to the line.
And her teammate came up to kind of go, hey, make these shots.
And she freaked out and said, get away from me!
And I'm like, oh, you're not so tough.
Let's see when the chips are down here.
Oh, let's see.
You're a little shaky here.
But I thought that she was a super successful point guard and she never showed any fear.
But still, it just showed that we all are.
We all are.
But it's how we deal with it and push through it.
And for me, really playing sports helped me identify that, helped me see that, and helped me also see that it's not a weakness.
It is not a weakness.
I remember very distinctly, and this is still when I was playing in high school, and we used to wait in the wrestling room before we went out to the stadium.
I'm sure that smelled really good.
That's why I bring it up, because it was underground, and it smelled of sweat and blood and tears.
It just wasn't a good environment, and mold and bacteria.
I list them now.
And our coach came in, and coaches are great mentors.
Absolutely.
And came in and said, you guys are nervous.
As nervous as you are, think of how they feel.
Because we had a good team and it was home for us.
And I never thought about it in that way.
When you think about what your opponent's going through, it's just what you're going through.
And so you can actually make your weakness their weakness.
And I think you speak to that beautifully as you talk about finding success by addressing those issues that hold you back.
There's another thing you talk about a lot in the book, Robin, and that's this issue of dreaming.
So you say dream big, but focus.
Amen.
Focus small.
Focus small.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm a big dreamer.
You know, I choose to say I'm more of someone who sets goals.
I think goals are something you can write down and they're a little more tangible.
Dreams are kind of like you're looking up in the stars and they're not quite as, you know, you can't really feel that.
But goals you can.
But I do say dream big, focus small.
And by that I mean, what can you do today?
I mean, If you ultimately want to get somewhere, you're not going to be that whatever it is today.
But what is that one thing you're going to do today that's going to ultimately get you there?
And for me, I used to hate to make these cold calls because I just needed to get to a bigger TV station.
I was in Biloxi, Mississippi, and living happily ever after, it was my hometown, you know, great, living home with mom and dad, having a little, you know, Maxima, I thought of, you know, a little...
With curb feelers and everything.
The CB. I was brown sugar.
Come back, brown sugar.
Double nickels and all that.
I was happy.
Were you brown sugar?
I was brown sugar, baby.
Yeah, brown sugar here.
Smokies out there, come back.
Come back.
So I'm fine.
I'm making a good living.
And I realized I really want to move on, and so I had to keep calling people.
And it was the worst thing.
It's the hardest thing to do, to pick up and call, at the time, Houston, Texas.
That was my dream.
So I would call a news director in Houston, Texas, who didn't know me from Adam's house, Kat, and would try and make some kind of conversation.
It was the hardest thing.
It was just so...
Now just thinking about it, I go into sweats, thinking about making those cold calls.
So...
But I would have this victory.
Even if the person didn't even take my call, I felt so much better because I made the call.
I said I was going to call this person.
I did.
And it almost didn't even matter what he said or she said on the other end.
It was a fact that I did what I was going to say that day to get me closer to that ultimate goal.
So there are all these little things we can do that are going to eventually get us.
And I always feel like action.
The times I feel the worse.
Or if I say I want to do something and there's something I want to achieve and I'm paralyzed and I do absolutely nothing.
Yeah, that's the worst.
Yeah, you're the, Memet always says keep your feet moving.
That's it!
No matter what, just keep the feet moving.
I know!
Kay Yow, who is a phenomenal basketball coach who is battling serious breast cancer, and she talks about shuffling her feet.
She said all you got to do is just keep your feet.
And when she's having a bad day and she's just like, move your feet, just shuffle your feet, shuffle your feet, keep moving.
It was like Zoe.
Our third daughters came home from school one day when she was about five years old and she wanted to get her pants off immediately.
So Lisa said, what are you doing?
She said, my teacher said I had bugs in my pants.
Every report card I ever got as a child said I had ants in my pants.
All of them, until I was in high school.
But you do it metaphorically.
If you come to an obstacle, you just keep moving.
Don't let that stop you in your tracks.
One of his other favorite sayings is, never take no for an answer.
So he just doesn't hear no, so he goes and asks the question another way.
That's him.
But he's always forward motion, and if you have to take a little detour, go around and just keep moving forward.
And that's the thing, I mean, if you talk to all the people that I'm blessed to work with, Diane Sawyer, Chris Cuomo, and Sam Champion at Good Morning America, all different paths to where we are.
You know, we're still basically all doing the same thing, but boy, did we all take different paths to be there.
And so I'm very keen on having people, I love, I just love to read how people did different things.
Isn't it cool?
Yeah, it's cool.
The coolest thing.
And success leaves clues.
Oh, this is what they do.
And I would try and model some of the things that people did.
But you have to personalize it.
What's going to work for you?
What worked for Diane?
What worked for Chris?
What worked for Sam?
Wouldn't necessarily work for me to be where I am.
I love that.
Success leaves clues.
It does.
It's in the book.
Don't have to rewrite it again.
That one's in there.
There's a lot more where that came from, but first, a quick break.
When I look at you on television and in person, but especially on television, I don't even I can tell you're a female.
That's a plus for you, by the way.
But the race thing sort of drops off.
Oprah's like that a lot.
I think a lot of folks have transcended race.
It's not an issue, but it is definitely an issue for a lot of folks trying to change their lives for the better if they don't see role models.
And part of the reason I don't see race is because I'm white.
And if I was black, I might notice it more because there'd be a reason for me to pay attention to it because I might sense things happening to me that are real.
And most of the folks I've spoken to, I hear this more from black men than black women.
And it's probably because they talk to me more openly about this.
But there's definitely a sense that there are challenges placed in front of them that don't exist for a white guy, even a white guy whose parents were immigrants and has a weird name.
So I'm curious if you just sort of break it down.
Where are the places we ought to be putting more emphasis to getting folks trained so they're out there as role models?
In positions of authority and power, in the front office, so to speak, we need to see more diversity there.
And I know exactly what you're saying about not seeing color.
Me and my father, being in the Air Force, we're always the only black family.
My dad and mom never...
It was all about ability.
I remember the one time I complained about, oh, I didn't get it because I was a black woman.
And they said, well, maybe you didn't get it because you're not good enough.
Do you think about that?
I was like, ouch!
And that was the only time.
It was like right out of college.
And they're like, you know, you're young.
Maybe you haven't done the work yet.
And they're like, we never want you to ever use that as an excuse.
Look to yourself for your strengths and weaknesses, not others.
But I do...
I was always taken aback when people would be kind of like, oh, wow, Robin, look what you're doing, and it would inspire them.
Until...
I was in my early 30s.
I had a health issue at the time.
I went to see a doctor in Boston.
And I had some lip nodes that were swollen and was going to have to have them removed and just kind of examined and everything was fine.
But I went to this big, fancy hospital in Boston.
Didn't know the doctor that was recommended.
And I'm waiting in the room.
The doctor walks in.
True story.
It's a black woman.
You're stunned.
And I finally got it.
Because I almost started crying.
Because I just was so proud.
I had never met her.
But I looked at her picture when we went to her office.
And here you saw her.
And she graduated from some Ivy League school.
The only black woman in a sea of white faces.
And she was just this one black face that was there.
And I said, I finally get what people, what they mean when they see somebody that looks like themselves, that you don't, and you weren't, I wasn't expecting a black woman to come walking in the door, tell you the truth.
And I was like, okay, then I cut people slack when they would say something about what I was doing in television.
Because to me, it's not a big deal.
To me, it's just I set a goal for myself.
Mm-hmm.
To me, the true trailblazers are my mother and father, those who really, really went out on a limb and truly blazed a trail that was not there.
The least I could do was follow what I wanted to.
But it's very, very important, very important for young people of all colors, all shapes and sizes, to see someone that looks like themselves in positions of authority on television, in movies, in positive roles.
I mean, you know, I remember...
Of course.
Get Christy Love.
That's when I said, I'm going to get you, sucker.
I remember when I was a kid, I'm like, I really don't want to be Christy Love.
I really don't want to say I'm going to get you, sucker.
No, that doesn't do a lot for me.
In positive roles.
Yeah, positive roles.
It just makes for...
I think that we would not have some of the conflicts that we're seeing worldwide that we have in recent years.
We all have more in common than not.
And we have to find those things that make us, that bring us together.
I remember doing, when I was at SportsCenter, at ESPN, had a show in the Sports Light, and I had Rush Limbaugh and Spike Lee on the same show.
Oh my goodness.
I love your eyes, Lisa, right now.
Because they had this common, they love sports.
And so I was able to find something that brought them together.
And my point was being, you know, we could all find something that brings us together.
I thought you were doing a celebrity death match or something.
That's right.
Back to South Park.
I'm speaking now to the guys who create South Park.
Yeah, yeah, Robin Robertson there.
There you go.
Bring it.
There's one with Al Sharpton now, isn't there?
I'm sure.
There are a couple like that, but the Sports Center does a great job.
We featured some of their shows.
We did one with ESPN on a transplant story recently.
The mascot of the North Carolina basketball team was killed in a freak accident in East Rutherford.
Right.
He was up here for the NCAA tournament.
Oh, I remember that.
Was walking across the street.
Right, right.
Hit by a car.
His parents donated his organs because he'd expressed the desire for that to happen.
And he saved over, well, he affected 50 lives.
We had about a dozen people whose lives he had saved that were involved in the show.
But it was all done by SportsCenter.
And I'll bring this up again because, you know, the guys at ESPN do a very good job at this.
Tell me about some of the things you did that made you really uncomfortable but helped you grow.
I did not want to leave the world of sports.
I left kicking and screaming.
I had the best job sitting next to Diane Sawyer every morning.
The best job.
Bar none.
And I didn't want it.
I didn't because I wasn't comfortable.
I was like, I've always said sports.
I've always been...
This is not comfortable for me.
I'm going to stay right here.
What made you move?
What made me move?
Because, Lisa, I finally figured out that I was limiting myself.
I finally figured out that I was...
I was scared.
And when I realized, what am I afraid of?
That I can't do the job?
No, I know I can.
I'm afraid of what other people will say.
Like, oh, look at her.
Now, she should be grateful.
Here she is working at ESPN. She wants to get greedy and go over there.
Oh, look at that, Martha.
Look at her.
Why do I care what somebody else is thinking?
And then I realized that's what I was afraid of.
I wasn't afraid that I couldn't do the job.
I was afraid of what other people would say and think.
It's funny you say that because I frequently feel that I feel that personally because people are saying, my brother, what's he doing?
How much time are you actually in the operating room anyway?
But I know that's true for a lot of folks.
You find yourself subconsciously wishing people would fail sometimes because you don't feel that they should be out there doing this stuff.
Until you begin to feel the energy they have.
It takes a brave person to take a chance of the nature you took.
I mean, it is a big deal.
Because, you know, if you leave at the safety of the nest at SportsCenter and go into Good Morning America, who knows what's going to happen?
What if you fail there?
Can you go back?
I know.
Can I go back?
I think of single moms.
I think of single moms who, you know, they have a good job, but they know if they could further education and it's going to be very difficult to do that.
And they've never really felt that they're that smart or whatnot.
And it's very difficult for them to go, all right, I'm going to leave what I know for something I don't know because I know it's going to make a better life for myself and my family.
You know, we've all had those times that we just want to stay right where we are and we don't want to do anything else.
And I look back and I think, boy, had I stayed at ESPN, I mean, it would have been great, but I never would have been able to have the impact I have had this past year with my message.
Of breast cancer and awareness and all the work that I've been able to do this past year.
Never would have done that.
Never would have been in my hometown after Hurricane Katrina.
Exactly right.
To be able to lend help to all those that are devastated.
The big question I have for the end of the show.
I was in Switzerland a couple years ago, and there's a wonderful lecture.
A guy was talking about career development.
He said, if you draw a curve, like a sign curve.
I don't know how you'd describe that.
Like a mountain.
Draw a mountain.
Okay.
And most people try to change careers when they reach the very tip of the mountain, the peak.
Because it's the highest you can get in your old job, and that's when you should jump off to the new job.
And he said, that's a mistake.
Because when you get to the peak of where you are, you've already stopped accelerating.
You're no longer progressing.
You've lost momentum.
You've lost momentum.
So your trajectory is actually horizontal.
It's parallel to the ground.
It's not to go higher.
It's just to keep at the peak.
Right.
Whereas if you switch...
As you're accelerating up the mountain, up the slope, you'll actually keep going skyward if you switch to the right job.
You could also crash, but switch to the right job.
So you're young, enthusiastic, beautiful, talented.
What's next?
What do you do?
What's happening for you 20 years down in the future?
Well, I do feel like I'm still on the up client.
I don't feel like by any...
I feel like, to use a sports analogy, my friend, I'm rounding first base.
I've got a good head of steam to second.
First quarter.
I know, yeah, really.
I just really feel...
And what I love is that when I graduated from college...
And someone said what I was going to do, and I said something.
It wasn't nearly as grand as what I'm doing.
So I love that.
I always seem to, whatever I say, the good Lord has something much more in store for me than I can even hope and dream for myself.
I didn't realize that I would be working at ESPN. When I was there, I didn't think I'd be at Good Morning America.
I didn't think I'd have this past year, which has been a blessing in many ways.
Very difficult.
Very difficult, and you know firsthand the difficulty of that.
But I never would have known the blessing of it.
I know I'm going to be around people.
I know that I'm going to want to have an impact.
What form that's in?
You're going to run for president.
Oh, yeah, we can roll it all into one.
All these changes can be in one.
You can keep that, Lisa.
But who knows?
Who knows what's going to happen?
And one thing that I've learned this past year is to really accept and embrace now.
