The World According to Mister Rogers

That (along with the intro quote) is from the beautiful Foreword by Fred’s wife, Joanne Rogers.

I read those inspiring words and thought to myself, “Wow. What a blessing to be worthy of THAT kind of praise from the woman with whom you spent your entire life!” (Fred and Joanne were married for 51 years!!)

Then I thought, “I want to be worthy of that.” Then I knew we’d need to make this the first Big Idea of this Note.

So… You know those “eulogy virtues” we talk about all the time?

In The Road to Character, David Brooks tells us: “Recently I’ve been thinking about the difference between the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the ones you list on your résumé, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being—whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed.

Most of us would say that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé virtues, but I confess that for long stretches of my life I’ve spent more time thinking about the latter than the former. Our educational system is certainly oriented around the résumé virtues more than the eulogy ones. Public conversation is, too—the self-help tips in magazines, the nonfiction bestsellers. Most of us have clearer strategies for how to achieve career success than we do for how to develop profound character.”

Stephen Covey tells us we need to “Begin with the End” in mind. Our ULTIMATE end, of course, is how we want to be remembered when we’re gone.

I’ve used a version of his “Eulogy Exercise” as the very (!) first exercise I used with my very (!) first coaching client nearly 20 years ago. And, we used it as the very (!) first exercise in our Heroic Coach certification program we launched earlier this year.

All of which begs a couple of questions.

1. What three virtues do you hope your loved ones use to describe YOU?

2. Are you living in integrity with them?

Remember: TODAY is (always!) the Day.

P.S. That whole discussion about how hard Fred worked to be “other-oriented” via his practice of using the first-person plural “we” reminds me of this wisdom from Brent Kessel’s great book It’s Not About the Money.

He tells us: “The irony is that the more self-centered we are, the less likely we are to survive. A medical study of more than three thousand individuals over seven years measured the frequency with which each person spoke the words I, me, and my, to see if there was any correlation between this self-referencing and coronary heart disease. Amazingly, they found that self-referencing was indeed related to the incidence of heart disease; in fact, it was the strongest predictor of mortality among heart attack victims.”

Plus: “It’s as though the laws of the universe bend for love. Financial laws bend. Temporal laws bend. Logistical constraints bend. By giving, we might just end up having more.”

P.P.S. Speaking of “we,” let’s not forget our Note on Me to We.

Mister Rogers “enraged”?

Yep.

You want to see his fierce courage in action?

Watch this 6 minute, 50 second video of him testifying before congress.

Note: Please make sure you notice how he channeled that rage into pure love.

Notice how pure love broke through the armor of a hitherto harsh foe. (I’ll be surprised if you, like the Senator in that hearing, don’t get goosebumps (and/or tears) FEELING the soul force of Fred Rogers standing up and speaking out for what he believed in and dedicated his life to.)

What’s fascinating for me is how similar Fred’s approach is to Gandhi’s. I just finished Eknath Easwaran’s brilliant biography Gandhi the Man.

One of the primary themes of that book is Gandhi’s evolution/transformation in which he learned to alchemize his anger into an unstoppable “soul-force.”

He did this via what he called “satyagraha.”

Satyagraha is a word he coined combining two Sanskrit words. It basically means “holding onto truth” and is the foundation of his (and MLK’s) “nonviolent resistance” to evil.

So… What values do YOU care about the deepest? What movements within society support those values and command your love? Are those values endangered?

If so, let’s become enraged and celebrate the power of that emotion as we alchemize that fierce love into noble action—standing up and speaking out for what we believe.

P.S. Aristotle comes to mind as well. He tells us: “So too it is easy to get angry—anyone can do that—or to give and spend money; but to feel or act toward the right person to the right extent at the right time for the right reason in the right way—that is not easy, and it is not everyone that can do it. Hence to do these things well is a rare, laudable and fine achievement.”

P.P.S. The ancient etymology of the word “hero” comes to mind as well. Recall: The word “hero” literally means “protector.” Protector of what? Of the values that command our love.

P.P.P.S. Finally, I am also reminded of wisdom from Adam Grant. In Originals, he tells us: “To channel anger productively, instead of venting about the harm that a perpetrator has done, we need to reflect on the victims who have suffered from it. … Focusing on the victim activates what psychologists call empathetic anger—the desire to right wrongs done unto another. It turns on the go system, but it makes us thoughtful about how to best respect the victim’s dignity. Research demonstrates when we’re angry at others, we aim for retaliation or revenge. But when we’re angry for others, we seek out justice and a better system. We don’t just want to punish; we want to help.”<- Angry AT others vs. angry FOR others. What a difference, eh?

A barrelful of songs?!

Yes. A BARRELFUL of whatever it is you aspire to do. At least. Make it overflow. And be so busy creating that you lose track of winning/“making it.”

Reminds me of some similar wisdom Joseph Campbell once gave. He tells us: “When I taught in a boy’s prep school, I used to talk to the boys who were trying to make up their minds as to what their careers were going to be. A boy would come to me and ask, ‘Do you think I can do this? Do you think I can do that? Do you think I can be a writer?’ ‘Oh,’ I would say, ‘I don’t know. Can you endure ten years of disappointment with nobody responding to you, or are you thinking that you are going to write a best seller the first crack? If you have the guts to stay with the thing you really want, no matter what happens, well, go ahead.’”

Then there’s Dave Ramsey and his barrelful of radio shows. In EntreLeader he tells us: “If you can find someone who can stay on mission, on task, with focused intensity for an entire decade, I will show you someone who is world-class in their chosen area of endeavor. They are likely a national brand, or will be. In his great book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes that one of the keys to unusual heights of success is spending ten thousand hours of practice at your chosen craft. The Beatles spent countless hours playing at summer festivals before you ever heard of them; Peyton Manning, widely regarded as one of the best quarterbacks to ever play football, has been known for his work ethic since he was a child. I just won my first Marconi Award, which is essentially the Academy Award for radio, and afterward counted up that I have been on the air over ten thousand hours. Remember, you work your tail off for fifteen years and you are suddenly an overnight success.”

Then there’s Adam Grant and his great book Originals. Again.

He tells us: “It’s widely assumed that there’s a tradeoff between quantity and quality—if you want to do better work, you have to do less of it—but this turns out to be false. In fact, when it comes to idea generation, quantity is the most predictable path to quality. ‘Original thinkers,’ Stanford professor Robert Sutton notes, ‘will come up with many ideas that are strange mutations, dead ends, and utter failures. The cost is worthwhile because they also generate a larger pool of ideas—especially novel ideas.’”

Mel Robbins brilliantly riffs on parallel wisdom in her 5 Second Rule.

She tells us: “Picasso created nearly 100 masterpieces in his lifetime. But what most people don’t know is that he created a total of more than 50,000 works of art. Did you see that last number? 50,000. That’s two pieces of art a day. Success is a numbers game. And you’re not going to win it if you keep telling yourself to wait. The more often that you choose courage, the more likely you’ll succeed.”

Back to you and your barrelful of whatever it is you do.

Let’s get it overflowing.

Then fill another one.

Another one of my favorite scenes in the documentary that I keep raving about is about how Fred liked to swim. Every day.

But they focus less on the discipline it took to swim every day (what does “feeling like it” have to do with it?!” :) and more on what he did AFTER he swam.

Do you know what he did? He stepped on a scale to weigh himself.

Do you know what the scale said? 143.

Fred had fun striving to hit that target every (!) single (!) day of his adult life.

Do you know why “143” was such an important number for Fred?

Well, “I” has 1 letter, “L-O-V-E” has 4 letters and “Y-O-U” has 3 letters. 1-4-3.

His ENTIRE LIFE—all the way down to his weight!!—was one big expression of “I love you.”

P.S. Fred was 6 feet tall. So am I. I weigh a little more than Fred but not much. Although I’m currently in the 150’s, I’ve been playing around with different potential combos for my weight.

Here’s the current one: 149. 1 is for our “I’ and 4 is for “L-O-V-E.” What about the 9? Let’s go with: “E-U-D-A-I-M-O-N-S.”

<- I love YOU and YOUR eudaimon. Yes, I do.

That’s from a section featuring Fred’s acceptance speech to the Television Hall of Fame. (You can watch it here.)

It’s inspiring to see Minister Fred Rogers using that context to continue to fulfill his ministry by challenging all the powerful producers and celebrities in his industry to step up their standards and use their power and fame to do one simple thing: SERVE.

One of the big themes throughout this book is the fact that our primary job is to ENCOURAGE others to discover and live from the best within themselves.

As Fred says in a different context: “As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has—or ever will have—something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.”

So… Let’s take ten seconds to appreciate some of the people who have loved us and wanted what was best for us in life—those who have encouraged us to become who we are today.

And… Let’s take ANOTHER ten seconds and think about the people WE will love today—those we will encourage to become who they are destined to be.