Life is Delicious- Mindset Mastery, Midlife Empowerment, Joy, Purpose, Vitality, Inspiration, Women's Health

25: Coffee with Burton: Reflections on Aging, Joy, and Leaving Your Legacy

• Marnie Martin- Midlife Mentor, Empowerment Coach, Happiness Expert, Best Selling Author • Season 1 • Episode 25

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What wisdom would an 86-year-old share with someone navigating midlife? This question frames a beautiful, heartfelt conversation between podcast host Marnie Martin and her father in this special birthday episode of "Coffee with Burton."

The dialogue opens with reflections on midlife planning – how at 56, Marnie's father couldn't imagine what life at 86 would look like. His candid admission that long-term planning wasn't his strength offers reassurance to those who approach life with flexibility rather than rigid roadmaps. His advice? "Figure out where you want to be with your life, not just your business or job. When we have our life together, everything else falls in place." This wisdom reminds us that experiences and connections often matter more than career milestones.

Family legacy takes center stage as Burton shares how his parents shaped him. From his mother, he learned the power of proper language and communication – skills he passed down through generations. His father, despite having only a third-grade education, possessed remarkable practical intelligence and taught him to connect deeply with animals and see beyond conventional solutions. These stories highlight how values transmit across generations, creating ripples that extend far beyond our immediate family circle.

The most touching segment explores Burton's life in assisted living, where he's discovered a new purpose: spreading happiness. His "Smile Force" initiative – insisting dining staff shouldn't serve residents until they smile – transformed his community's atmosphere. "We don't know, we might actually be the nicest or best thing that happens to each person we bump into today," Marnie reflects, underscoring their shared philosophy that small kindnesses create profound impact.

Ready to explore intergenerational wisdom in your own life? Listen now and discover how conversations across age gaps can unveil timeless truths about purpose, joy, and meaningful connection at every life stage.

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Speaker 1:

Hey, beautiful friends, it's Marnie. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show. I'm so grateful to have you here and we are doing our second Coffee with Burton episode. And today I have my very favorite dad back here with me again and we decided to do this particular episode because my dear old dad just turned 86 and he has all kinds of cool wisdom that he's going to share with us, or at least we're going to pry it out of him. Welcome to this episode of Life is Delicious. I'm Marni Martin and I'm so glad you're here, and if this is your first time here, welcome to the Life is Delicious family. This podcast isn't about surviving midlife. It's about crafting your next chapter, life overflowing with purpose, joy and delicious possibilities. Listen, midlife doesn't have to be a crisis. It can be a beautiful invitation to remember who we are, to rediscover a new version of ourself, or to completely reinvent our life, to reflect who we are becoming now.

Speaker 1:

So if you're tired of being exhausted, living life on autopilot and putting everyone else first, then you are in the right place. Each week, we'll bring you thought-provoking ideas and practical strategies, as well as inspiration to help you prioritize yourself again. As well as inspiration to help you prioritize yourself again. It's time to take back your joie de vivre. So grab a notebook and pen and pop in those earbuds and let's go get it.

Speaker 1:

As we all know, life isn't always delicious, and one of the only constants we have in life is that things are always changing. Life can be a beautiful mess of twists and turns and as we grow through each unique season of life, our needs change, our goals change, our priorities change and our responsibilities change. And sometimes, when the really hard stuff shows up, as it inevitably will, we can find ourselves lost and without a clear direction. Sometimes that can happen when we've had a huge life transition, like a divorce or a diagnosis, or we realize that our babies are all grown up and ready to be out on their own. And sometimes it can be a subtle or not so subtle restlessness that tells us we're ready to step into a bigger, bolder, more authentic version of ourself. But one thing is for sure. We can't transition into what's next happily until we get really clear about what's weighing us down, what lights us up and what we truly want when our soul whispers its truth.

Speaker 1:

Happy is Not an Accident is a guided journal created to bring you back home to your truest self, to remember who you are and to give you a safe place to explore and reflect on where you've been, where you really want to go and who you want to become now, with deep, inspiring prompts, thought-provoking questions and powerful exercises to help you excavate your most authentic self. Happy Is Not an Accident will be the daily ritual that you look forward to as you step into this next awesome chapter of life. Give yourself the gift of self-reflection and create this beautiful life of yours on purpose and with intention. Get your copy, or one for somebody that you love at lifeisdeliciousca forward. Slash happy. Hi, dad, I hope you're here.

Speaker 2:

I'm here and it's nice to be on your show.

Speaker 1:

Well, happy birthday. I'm so excited that you had a great day on your birthday and that you're coming to visit me pretty soon.

Speaker 2:

I am so, and it won't be very long, and I'm going to visit and and you're going to show me around your place and I can hardly wait. It's going to be so exciting.

Speaker 1:

It is going to be so much fun. So today I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about we talk about all kinds of fun things when we get together but I thought maybe you could shed a little bit of light for some of our listeners as to maybe how you felt when you were like my age, like 56. So you know, as we kind of enter into this next chapter of our like third chapter of life, there's all kinds of transitions where kids are getting married and moving out and all of those kinds of things. So back when you were 56, I would have been 27. So I would have probably just been a young mom with little boys at home and you would have been working. I'm not exactly sure what would you have been doing at that time. That would have been caricatures.

Speaker 2:

Caricatures, and I was probably doing window advertising at that time as well, right.

Speaker 1:

So what would you maybe have done differently? Or what advice would you give your 56-year-old self if you could have a conversation with him today? Do you have any ideas about that?

Speaker 2:

Well, I haven't really thought about that in depth, but one of the things I think that's really important is to to focus on what you're doing and to be able to see. It's difficult. It was for me difficult to think that far ahead when I was 56, for me to think about when I'm going to be 80, I can't get my head around that. It just didn't seem so. I didn't really plan in a big way the way some people do and maybe the way I should have. But if you're a little bit resilient and you kind of work off the cuff, you can make it turn out good no matter what happens, and I think that's basically what I did. Now, any advice that I would give is to try to figure out where you're going or where you want to be, and not with your business or your job, but where you want to be with your life, because that's quite different it is when we have our life together, everything else falls in place yes

Speaker 2:

it always does, and you have to have your life together first, all the things that are important to you. If there's some place that you needed, that you wanted to travel before you died, or some place that somebody wanted to go and see, or somebody you wanted to take by the arm and go on a holiday with, you have to plan that and you've got to go for it and don't put that off because you may never get the chance. So you go and you do it, and then you can look at it and say that was terrific and it builds wonderful memories and that's what I would do at 56.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know it's interesting because I bet you well, I know for sure that you are not alone in that fact that a lot of us don't think that far ahead, and to really really look 30 years from now it seems like it's like a million years away. So it's sometimes hard to really wrap your brain around what that's going to look like. But I heard a quote once that I really loved, and it was like you will never regret the things that you do, but you will regret the things that you never did do, and so that's fabulous.

Speaker 2:

I think that's absolutely true.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because you might make mistakes and do dumb things, but if you didn't take a chance on it, you just never, never get to know, right. So so, yeah, really really good. And I know you were really, really close with your parents, which obviously we are really close, and I think that makes a big difference when you're growing up and in your formative years, and I know you've talked to me quite a bit about how important you felt your relationship with both your mom and your dad were, and they were both really different. So what do you think was the best advice that your mom gave you? I know you guys talked a lot about language and words and what's the biggest impact she made on you?

Speaker 2:

Well, one of the things that she was very adamant about was that you learn to speak the language and speak it properly, so that you don't use slang, you use proper English, you speak it nicely, and because she believes that that took you out into the world and people would hear you speak and they'd say now there's an educated person and and it it puts you in a different stead than somebody that is just talking slang and different things and in bad sentences and so on. So she was very adamant about that. She was also. To her, it was very important to learn how to explain things properly and how to just how to use the language and how to interact with people. She was really one that was a communicator and and that actually stood in good stead for me, because I still think about the things that she taught me even today. When I think about meeting somebody, or sometimes even just in a sentence, I go, oh, oh, that's right, I got it, you know, and that was very important to me and she was very important to me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know, what's cool, though, is I think that is so interesting because I think you pass that down to us kids as well. Very much so, because I have always had a huge love of words and language and proper grammar and proper punctuation. And I don't know if you remember, but when I was in I think it was grade it was either grade 10 or 11. And you asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I said I wanted a thesaurus. And so I got a thesaurus for Christmas.

Speaker 1:

And then I went back to school and it was Mr Chalmers' class, my English teacher, and he pulled me aside after class one day and he said to me I have a question for you. And I said what is that? And he said did you get a thesaurus for Christmas? And he could just tell, because every single word I would have ever used I replaced with some big, huge, you know adjective. And he just thought it was hilarious and he's like you know, that's really good, but you don't need to use all the words in the whole thesaurus on your first paper. So yeah, so I think that obviously trickled down to me.

Speaker 2:

That's funny, that's good, I'm glad it did and I'm sure it has, because I see the work that you do now today and you're brilliant in the way you handle the language. It's terrific. My mom would have been really proud of you too.

Speaker 1:

Aw, that's so sweet. Thank you, dad. I think I would have liked to have met her. Yes.

Speaker 2:

I'm sure you would have. She loved you.

Speaker 1:

Aw, that's so cool. Now again, on the other side of that, your dad was a very different character and you grew up on a farm. So I know you and your dad had all kinds of other things and I'm almost going to guess what kind of advice you got from your dad. But maybe share that with our listeners too Well, yeah, my dad was a. He was an amazing man, he only had grade three education. Wow yeah wow.

Speaker 2:

But he could do math. He's one of the few people that I could see. Take a column of three, four, five figures in a column and just run his fingers down and write the answer at the bottom and it would be correct. He didn't need a calculator, he could do it all in his head because that's who he was.

Speaker 2:

But beyond that, he taught me the value of things, and animals were one of the things that he found immensely. And he we raised some cattle and some pigs. But it was kind of funny because he would, when you feed the pigs, you put the chop in the trough and then he would walk through them and he'd talk to them all. He would talk to them and he'd pet them and they just were part of the family. But I had asked him once or commented what an interesting gesture that was. And he said you know the animals. They grow better. I get much better grades when I sell them. They grow better. I get much better grades when I sell them. They're much better grades because they are happier and they hear you.

Speaker 2:

And he said don't make any mistakes, the animals understand when you talk to them. And so sometimes on a Sunday afternoon we'd go out and lean on the fence and just chat, look out over the pasture, and and he could call one of the cows, he'd say, bessie, come on over here. So she'd come, just just her, and she'd get a scruff on behind the ears and and you know, like that, and he'd tap her on the cheeks and he'd say you, you're a super cow, and away you go. And then he'd call the next one and we'd just sit and talk to the cows and it was just I mean, it was just marvelous to watch him with animals.

Speaker 2:

He just was amazing actually, and I think that's one of the things that he taught me was how the communication between us, and the animals is amongst many other things.

Speaker 2:

he was also very mechanical, even though he didn't have mathematics. He didn't have a whole lot of stuff he he was. I remember he would hire a fellow to build cupboards for and the guy was having so much trouble making those corners fit and he said, give me this square here and he'd just measure it out and put a line down. He said, now, cut it there and it'll fit. And it always did. But he could see that he had a visualization and I learned some of that from him?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you definitely did, because I remember you telling me stories about how he could just kind of fix things or if there was a roadblock, you could just figure out a way to MacGyver it, and you were like that your whole life. That's true, that's where I got it from. Yeah, you get those challenges that come in the way and you're going to get past that challenge in some way or another. And that ability to have a little bit of stick-to-itiveness or resourcefulness is, I think it's amazing and it's a superpower that you know can go through your entire life for sure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and one of the things that he always talked to me we always we had discussions about everything you know, and it was that that was so invaluable to me, because I learned how to think maybe outside the box a little bit, because that's the way he lived his life on the farm.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I love that, and we have those outside the box conversations all the time which.

Speaker 1:

I love. It's so great. So now that you are where you are I know you're in an assisted living place and I think it's really given you some really nice ability to relax a bit and not have to worry about cooking dinners and not have to worry about cleaning or doing laundry too much laundry anyways at least your sheets and stuff so that's given you a lot more ability to just kind of take care of yourself and to be feeling good and happy. And what would you tell the listeners about the transition into that space? Was that a good move for you?

Speaker 2:

Well, first of all, I didn't want to do it. I definitely was not going to go and live in an old folks home because I didn't think I was an old folks. My kids had another thing to say about that. They said, Dad, we just want you to know you're already an old folks. And it's true. I don't think we said that when you think of yourself you don't think of yourself as an age, as whatever age you are.

Speaker 2:

No no exactly Now, I'm 86. And it doesn't make any. I have no idea of knowing what that really is. It's only today, tomorrow, the next day, and so what I do now is I look for ways to be happy and to make others happy, and it's very important at this age to be able to help others to see how really good their life is. An awful lot of people come into this place and other places like it and they think that they've lost so much, all the things they used to do and wanted to do they can't do anymore. And that's true to a certain extent. But there's so much plus to that, because now you get to see life a little bit differently and you get to see the bigger picture. It doesn't mean you're planning your death or anything. It just means that you get to see more of the life that you were too busy to see when you were working and trying to make money.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, that's a. That's really well said, dad, because life is kind of short, you know and I know that's not actually a positive sentence because life is as long as you make it, and but the time that we have, we have to make the most of it, because we just aren't promised tomorrow. We don't know what that's going to look like and it could be 30 years of tomorrow, but it could be 10 years of tomorrow and we don't know. So we, we have to make the best of each day, and especially when you make it your mission, to also lift others in the process. I think that is an awesome purpose.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I do too, and I think it's just pleasing for me to see when some people get it, you know, because they go along in their life and that, and all of a sudden they get it and they go wait a minute, this is so it's tuesday and this is happening or that's happening, and it gets, becomes exciting again, just just for tuesday. So we can celebrate tuesday and it's. Whatever you want to celebrate, doesn't really matter, because we, some of us, have tried that just for fun. We said, let's, let's just celebrate each day. So okay, we'll do that. So, hey, it's Wednesday or it's Thursday, and so we say, guess what, today is the day you know.

Speaker 2:

And at one point in the dining room we started a thing where they serve your meals on a plate. So I went around to all the girls that are serving the meals and I said I want you to not give anybody any food until they smile. Okay, they must give you a smile. And we started this smile force and it was really we did it just for fun, but it was amazing how it changed people's attitudes, including the girls that were serving us, and it was just a pleasure to see that happen.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's so awesome Because there's so much science behind that and just like, even if you're in a really bad mood and you smile, you can't help but feel better. That's just the way our brains work and it's contagious, and so I love that you're starting a little bit of a movement in your home there and influencing people, because I know the girls love you and I think that's part of it is because you make their day better. And you see, you're the guy that says your dress looks pretty today or your hair is looking really nice, like you notice those things and I think a lot of those girls don't necessarily get that from some of the other people, so it's really special you know that's absolutely true, and when we give compliments it's so meaningful to somebody and they have to be legitimate that you actually mean what you say.

Speaker 2:

But there's always something good to say to somebody about them and we just have to stop for a second and see them and say you know, I like those running shoes you're wearing. Those are fabulous. I never saw that color before, or whatever, and now they've got something special that they can walk through the day in, and just little things like that makes people's day better?

Speaker 1:

Yes, oh, 100%. And you know, what we don't always realize is it doesn't cost a thing and we all have the capacity to do it, and it just takes a second. Just takes a second and it can change the trajectory of the that person's entire day. You know, I remember when I had my restaurant, the Beanstalk Coffee Company, and I would sit with my staff and one of the things I would always say to them as I said, we don't know, we might actually be the nicest or best thing that happens to each person that we bump into today. So make that important, make that a priority, that if you see somebody, make it just that extra little bit of effort to notice something or to look them in the eye or to give them a real, genuine greeting, and that might actually be, for some people, the best thing that they get to experience that day. And if you get to be that thing for them, how amazing is that?

Speaker 2:

that's absolutely true and that's something that there's. A few of us are getting together here and we're trying to start a movement because I think it's important. And once that catches on, look out how beautiful would life be once you can get that attitude to catch on so that people are thinking like that. Can you imagine having a room full of 50 people, each with their own set of little problems and everything, but being able to deal with their problems with a smile and help each other? You know, hey, I'm sorry you're having that difficulty, but come on, let me help you, or let's do something, or just making them smile and making them happy and spread a little happiness. That song that goes Don't Worry, be Happy is amazing and we try to live by that every day.

Speaker 1:

I love that, dad. That sounds like things are going just as they should. I love it. I was going to ask you what your superpower is, but I think maybe we just covered that Well, yeah if there is a superpower for me, it's getting someone else to see how special they are.

Speaker 2:

Lots of people don't think they are. Lots of people don't think they are. They go through life and they deal with their problems and this happened and that happened and this is happening and I've got to go and do this now for somebody and as soon as you can get your headspace out of that the problem list and on to the point where they can see happiness.

Speaker 1:

if we have enough happiness to go around the world is a better place so this is kind of an interesting question and I was going to ask it to you because I know you've had some amazing friends and some different interactions. In my Happy is Not an Accident book, I have one question is that if you were at a dinner party with everybody that you've ever known, who would you go looking for? But this question is a little bit different and it's who would you want to have coffee with if you could have it with anybody, alive or dead, so it could be a celebrity, it could be somebody you've known in your past, it could be your dad or whoever. So if there was somebody that you would just love to sit and have like a heart-to-heart with, is there somebody that comes to mind for you Without?

Speaker 2:

any question, it would be my dad.

Speaker 1:

Aw.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, he and I could have a cup of coffee and the world would be okay. Yeah, he was so special and we had a great connection and it just brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it, because that was very important to me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, how lucky. How lucky is that? Yep, well, I'm so glad that we got a chance to have a little chat. These Coffee with Burtons are awesome, and I love to share some of your wisdom and our relationship with my listeners, and it's always a pleasure, and this is extra special because it's your birthday. So thank you for making the time to sit with me and to share some of your joy and your happiness with the world. I think I, for one, am really really grateful and lucky also that I got to be born into your family.

Speaker 2:

Well, we certainly are the benefactors of you being born into our family. That's wonderful. We're so happy about that as well. Thank you, marnie, for being yourself, and thank you for doing such a fabulous job with this interview.

Speaker 1:

We'll do it again soon. We will All right, love you lots. I hope you loved today's episode. I hope it inspired you or motivated you in some way to keep going and create your very best life. If you did, would you stop and take five minutes to leave me a review on Apple Podcasts? It's the best way for me to know that you're enjoying the show and it helps other listeners find us as well. And while you're at it, head over to lifeisdeliciousca and sign up for email updates so you'll get notified every time a new episode drops and I'll send you a free copy of my e-book, the Midlife Manifesto inspiring strategies for mastering the eight most important areas of your life. Sign up today at lifeisdeliciousca and, if no one has told you today, there's not one person on this planet that is exactly like you, and the world is a better place because you're here. So thank you for being here. I'll be back next week and I hope you'll join me right here on Life is Delicious.