"There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind." Fred Rogers
To Fred Rogers, every child required special attention, because every child needed assurance that he or she was someone who mattered.
"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news," Rogers had told his young viewers, "my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers -- so many caring people in the world."
Fred Rogers never -- ever -- let the urgency of work or life impede his focus on what he saw as basic human values: integrity, respect, responsibility, fairness and compassion, and of course his signature value, kindness.
You don't set out to be rich and famous; you set out to be helpful.
Fred never accepted the advice that pretending not to care would alleviate his loneliness and pain.
Although he was a strong figure in the family, Jim Rogers [Fred's dad] was tolerant and always very careful not to bully Fred. He treated his son with respect and support, no matter their differences.
He found a way to turn adversity to a focus on what he wanted to study and where he wanted his life to go in the future.
The essential is to be found in depth and introspection, in searching for meaning, and then finding the truth that comes from that meaning.
Fred was always careful to manage his own time in the most thoughtful and deliberate way, and he honed his unique ability to focus on what was important to him, undistracted by his family or his friends.
"The real issue in life is not how many blessings we have, but what we do with our blessings. Some people have many blessings and hoard them. Some have few and give everything away." Fred Rogers
Rogers asked the wily Hayes how he managed to connect so well with his audience, and Gabby replied that the only way to manage a television role in which one is asked to speak directly to a disembodied, distant audience is to convince oneself that one is speaking only to one little child. "Just one little buckaroo," Hayes told Rogers; just think of taking only and directly to "one little buckaroo."
The noblesse oblige that Fred Rogers adopted, putting his commitment to children and their education ahead of any personal gain, might never have been possible without the family wealth that gave him, and his mother, such freedom. If Rogers had been born poor, his attitudes would quite likely have been different.
Religious faith should bring all sorts of people together, not pull them apart.
Some of his friends in Pittsburgh were disappointed that Fred didn't speak out publicly on behalf of the disadvantaged or vocally champion tolerance and inclusion, the values in which he so fervently believed. But Rogers worried that such public posturing would cause confusion with the parents and children he reached on television. And he always felt that actions -- kindness, understanding, and openness in relationships -- were more important than words.
The Presbyterian values -- hard work, responsibility and caring for others, parsimony, duty to family, ethical clarity, a strong sense of mission, and a relentless sense of service to God -- drove every moment of Fred Rogers's life.
The best discipline is not punishment, but teaching a child the art of self-discipline.
It was Fred Rogers who taught multiple generations of American parents how very critical the first few years of human life could be, and how social and emotional learning is more important at that age than cognitive learning. More than any other popular voice in American culture, Fred Rogers taught this powerful lesson to parents, teachers, and to children themselves through his gentle, slow-paced but richly textured programming.
Roger's wealth gave him a certain "level of security"... He chose to dedicate himself to making the world better. He was always focused on "What good can come of this? Where do people need help?"
Fred Rogers's respect for the people who worked for him made it a comfortable place to work.
Everything he set out to do, he set out to do the best way possible. There's a poem he liked called "Be the Best of What You Are. If you're a janitor, be the best janitor -- or whoever you are. Whatever you do, do it the best way you know how.
Susan Linn, a psychologist at the Harvard Medical School and the cofounder and director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, is an accomplished puppeteer in her own right (as well as the voice of Audrey Duck). She points to the psychological power of puppetry: "The freedom we get from speaking through this creature that is us and not us at the same time makes [puppets] such incredibly powerful tools for therapy. Children -- and adults -- say things with puppets they absolutely wouldn't say otherwise."
"You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are." Fred Rogers
In a now-famous Rogers dictum, delivered in speeches and in his books, he advises adults: "Please, think of the children first. If you ever have anything to do with the entertainment, their food, their toys, their custody, their day care, their health, their education -- please listen to the children, learn about them, learn from them."
Jeff Erlanger and Fred Rogers didn't meet again until nearly twenty years later, when Fred Rogers was being inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1999. When Jeff rolls onstage to surprise him, Rogers runs up to the stage and hugs him as if they are the only two people in the auditorium. "On behalf of millions of children and grown-ups," says Jeff to Fred Rogers, "It's you I like."
Every day Fred Rogers would rise early, read his Bible, and then go down to the Pittsburgh Athletic Association building for a long swim before he went to work. When Rogers traveled, he asked his staff to book him into a hotel with a pool, so he could continue exercising daily.
Rogers's aversion to turning children into consumers was unique in American television. Operating in a free-market system, protected by the First Amendment, advertisers felt no constraint about going after young children who could push their parents to buy things.
Rogers's antipathy to advertising extended to anything that might be construed as fooling a child; he viewed himself as a powerful mentor who must never abuse children's trust by pretending to be something else.
Fred Rogers felt very strongly -- backed by the research of child-development mentors -- that the most effective gift to young children is nurturing the capacity for self-discipline rather than the imposition of it. He recognized the importance, and the value, of outside discipline, but he thought lasting benefit for the child came from developing the ability to concentrate and hold yourself accountable for your own actions.
Being who you are was so important to [Rogers] that the only thing that would really upset him was phoniness. As long as I was being genuine and honest, he respected that.
The white spaces between the words are more important than the text, because they give you time to think about what you've read.
Fred Rogers got up every morning between 4:30 and 5:30 AM to read the Bible and prepare himself for the day before he went to the Pittsburgh Athletic Association to swim. But Rogers's preparation was not so much professional as it was spiritual: He would study passages of interest from the Bible, and then he would visualize who he would be seeing that day, so that he would be prepared to be as caring and giving as he could be. Fred's prayers in those early morning sessions were not for success or accomplishment, but rather for the goodness of heart to be the best person he could be in each of the encounters he would have that day.
It's worth the struggle to discover who you really are.
In the one life we have to live, we can choose to demean this life, or to cherish it in creative, imaginative ways.
His power derived from a really unique place. It was his absolute self-possession, which is very different from self-interest or self-satisfaction, or selfishness. He didn't need anything from you or from me. He welcomed it, but he didn't need it.
Remember that a person's name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
Be a good listener.
Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Talk in terms of the other person's interest. Make the other person feel important -- and do it sincerely.
Extraordinarily, each of us has the ability to change the circuitry of our brain.
In World War II there were special decks of cards that were made and sent to prisoners of war in Germany. Each card could be peeled apart and hidden inside was a section of a map that, if you pieced it all together, showed a secret escape route for the prisoners. Now that was an amazing magic trick.
Breath and relaxation are the first steps toward taming the mind.
Everyone has a story, and I have learned that, at the core of it, most of our stories are more similar than not.
She taught me the pointlessness of wishing for a different past and the futility of worrying about all the frightening futures over which I had no control.
The reward for taming the mind is clarity of thought.
Each of us chooses what is acceptable in our lives. As kids, we don't get a lot of choice. We are born into families and situations, and it's all really out of our control. But as we get older, we choose. Consciously or unconsciously, we decide how we are going to allow ourselves to be treated. What will you accept? What won't you accept? You're going to have to choose, and you're going to have to stand up for yourself. No one else can do it for you.
You need to understand that what you think you want isn't always what's best for you and others.
I believe we learn what we are meant to learn, and some of us are simply meant to learn things the hard way.
What matters is that you have an open heart. An open heart connects with others, and that changes everything.
You have to believe in your own magic. This is what makes a magician great. He believes the story he is telling to the audience, he believes in himself.
It is a lot of work, but that's the trick. You can have anything you want by visualizing that it's already yours. It's that simple and that hard, all at the same time.
There is an old saying: "When the student is ready, the teacher appears."
Is it your thoughts that create reality. Others can create your reality only if you don't create it yourself.
It is with clarity of intent that vision becomes a reality.
When our brain changes, we change. That is a truth proven by science. But an even greater truth is that when our heart changes, everything changes. And that change is not only in how we see the world but in how the world sees us. And in how the world responds to us.
We are born and we die, and everything that happens between the two can feel so random it defies logic. The only choice we have is in how we respond in each precious moment we are given.
Unfortunately, so many people allow others to decide what they can or cannot do. This was another gift that Ruth gave me -- the ability to believe in myself and accept that not everyone will want me to succeed or accomplish great things. And how to be okay with that reality and not react to it.
I wasn't worried about the outcome, I had learned to visualize what I wanted and yet detach myself from the end result. It would happen, one way or another. That's all I knew. I did my footwork and trusted the details to unfold however they were meant to unfold.
It informed my absolute belief that who we are today doesn't have to be who we are tomorrow and that we are not connected to everything and everyone.
There's only one way for wealth to bring happiness -- and that's by giving it away.
The mind wants to divide and keep us separate. It will teach us to compare ourselves, to differentiate ourselves, to get what's ours because there is only so much to go around. The heart, however, wants to connect us and wants to share. It wants to show us that there are no differences and that ultimately we are all the same. The heart has an intelligence of its own, and if we learn from it we will know that we keep what have only by giving it away. If we want to be happy, we make others happy. If we want love, we have to give love. If we want joy, we need to make others joyful. If we want forgiveness, we have to forgive. If we want peace, we have to create it in the world around us.
The Alphabet of the Heart:
Compassion.
Dignity.
Equanimity.
Forgiveness.
Gratitude.
Integrity.
Justice.
Kindness.
Love.
Until one is truly kind to oneself, giving love and kindness to others is often impossible.
When we look at others and see ourselves, we want to connect and help.
It is our responsibility to seek justice for the vulnerable, to care for the weak, to give to the poor. That is what defines our society and our humanity and gives meaning to one's life.
Each of them had a backstory, just like me. Each of them was walking a path. Each of them struggled and suffered at times. From the person with the least to the person with the most, they were just like me.
When we give to others, it lights up the pleasure and reward centers in the brain, even more so than when someone gives to us.
In the end, how well we love each other and how well we take care of each other will be what determines the survival of our planet and our species.
You will see what one human is capable of inflicting upon another and even more sadly what one human is capable of inflicting on himself.
The brain and the heart, working together, can make the most extraordinary magic there is.
A habit is a routine or behavior that is performed regularly -- and, in many cases, automatically.
Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you're willing to stick with them for years.
The quality of our lives often depends on the quality of our habits.
The backbone of this book is my four-step model of habits -- cute, craving, response, and reward.
Brailsford had been hired to put British Cycling on a new trajectory. What made him different from previous coaches was his relentless commitment to a strategy that he referred to as "the aggregation of marginal gains," which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do. Brailsford said, "The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together."
If you can get 1 percent better each day for a year, you'll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you're done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you'll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more.
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. Success is the product of daily habits -- not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.
Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.
Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change.
Forget about goals, focus on systems instead.
Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems.
Problem #1: Winners and losers have the same goals. Problem #2: Achieving a goal is only a momentary change. Problem #3: Goals restrict your happiness. Problem #4: Goals are at odds with long-term progress.
The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It's not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It's one thing to say I'm the type of person who wants this. It's something very different to say I'm the type of person who is this.
True behavior change is identity change.
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.
Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.
The true question is: "Are you becoming the type of person you want to become?"
The cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop -- cue, craving, response, reward; cue, craving, response, reward -- that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits. This cycle is known as the habit loop.
Whenever you want to change your behavior, you can simply ask yourself: How can I make it obvious? How can I make it attractive? How can I make it easy? How can I make it satisfying?
There are no good habits or bad habits. There are only effective habits.
The process of behavior change always starts with awareness.
Broadly speaking, the format for creating an implementation intention is: "When situation X arises, I will perform response Y."
No behavior happens in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior.
When the cues that spark a habit are subtle or hidden, they are easy to ignore. By comparison, creating obvious visual cues can draw your attention toward a desired habit.
Here are a few ways you can redesign your environment and make the cues for your preferred habits more obvious: If you want to remember to take your medication each night, put your pill bottle directly next to the faucet on the bathroom counter. If you want to practice guitar more frequently, place your guitar stand in the middle of the living room. If you want to remember to send more thank-you notes, keep a stack of stationary on your desk. If you want to drink more water, fill up a few water bottles each morning and place them in common locations around the house.
Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it.
A stable environment where everything has a place and a purpose is an environment where habits can easily form.
"Disciplined" people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations.
Reframing your habits to highlight their benefits rather than their drawbacks is a fast and lightweight way to reprogram your mind and make a habit seem more attractive.
Whether we are approaching behavior change as an individual, a parent, a coach, or a leader, we should ask ourselves the same question: "How can we design a world where it's easy to do what's right?" Redesign your life so the actions that matter most are also the actions that are easiest to do.
Researchers estimate that 40 to 50 percent of our actions on any given day are done out of habit. This is already a substantial percentage, but the true influence of your habits is even greater than these numbers suggest. Habits are automatic choices that influence the conscious decisions that follow. Yes, a habit can be completed in just a few seconds, but it can also shape the actions that you take for minutes or hours afterward.
When you dream about making a change, excitement inevitably takes over and you end up trying to do too much too soon. The most effective way I know to counteract this tendency is to use the Two-Minute Rule, which states, "When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do." You'll find that nearly any habit can be scaled down into a two-minute version: "Read before bed each night" becomes "Read one page." "Do thirty minutes of yoga" becomes "Take out my yoga mat." "Study for class" becomes "Open my notes." "Fold the laundry" becomes "Fold one pair of socks." "Run three miles" becomes "Tie my running shoes." The idea is to make your habits as easy as possible to start.
Master the habit of showing up.
The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided.
Every habit produces multiple outcomes across time. Unfortunately, these outcomes are often misaligned. With our bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad. With good habits, it is the reverse: the immediate outcome is unenjoyable, but the ultimate outcome feels good.
As a general rule, the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals.
Our preference for instant gratification reveals an important truth about success: because of how we are wired, most people will spend all day chasing quick hits of satisfaction. The road less traveled is the road of delayed gratification. If you're willing to wait for the rewards, you'll face less competition and often get a bigger payoff. As the saying goes, the last mile is always the least crowded.
Habit tracking (1) creates a visual cue that can remind you to act, (2) is inherently motivating because you see the progress you are making and don't want to lose it, and (3) feels satisfying whenever you record another successful instance of your habit. Furthermore, habit tracking provides visual proof that you are casting votes for the type of person you wish to become, which is a delightful form of immediate and intrinsic gratification.
The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.
Genes do not determine your destiny. They determine your areas of opportunity.
In the beginning of a new activity, there should be a period of exploration. In relationships, it's called dating. In college, it's called the liberal arts. In business, it's called split testing. The goal is to try out many possibilities, research a broad range of ideas, and cast a wide net. After this initial period of exploration, shift your focus to the best solution you've found -- but keep experimenting occasionally. The proper balance depends on whether you're winning or losing. If you are currently wining, you exploit, exploit, exploit. If you are currently losing, you continue to explore, explore, explore.
Boiling water will soften a potato but harden an egg. You can't control whether you're a potato or an egg, but you can decide to play a game where it's better to be hard or soft. If you can find a more favorable environment, you can transform the situation from one where the odds are against you to one where they are in your favor.
The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.
Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalized the skill, and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development.
The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.
The holy grail of habit change is not a single 1 percent improvement, but a thousand of them. It's a bunch of atomic habits stacking up, each one a fundamental unit of the overall system.
