PNTV: The World According to Mister Rogers by Mister Rogers (#425)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes TV. Today we've got another great book by Mr. Rogers, who we talked about in our last PNTV. This one's called the World According to Mr. Rogers. Subtitle Important things to remember. As we discussed in our last episode, I absolutely love Mr. Rogers. After watching his documentary, or the documentary on him called Won't yout Be My Neighbor, I fell even more in love with him. We're gonna spend another day with our beloved neighbor Mr. Rogers Tomorrow in our next episode as well. But today we've got a philosopher's note. A bunch of my favorite big ideas, five of them here. We're going to start with your eulogy. We're actually going to start with what his wife, Joanne Rogers, had to say about Mr. Rogers. I read this and thought, my God, to be married to Alexandra for 51 years and have her say anything close to this would be an accomplishment. So I want you to think about your beloveds saying something like this about you at the end of your life. Always a powerful thing to do. Start with the ultimate end in mind your eulogy. We'll talk about that more in a moment. First, Joanne Rogers, she says some stuff. Then she says about his morning routine. Reading the Bible was also part of his early morning routine before he went for his daily swim. He worked hard at being the best he could be. In fact, it seemed to me he worked a lot more than he played. Discipline was his very strong suit. If I were asked for three words to describe him, I think those words would be courage, love and discipline, perhaps in that very order. Then she continues by saying, when I think of the Persona of Fred Rogers, my inclination is to put him on a very high pedestal, despite the frailties that are part of being human. Oh, did I mention what a kind person he was? I suppose that is part of everyone's experience of Fred, even those who knew him for only a couple of minutes. Then she says, I don't mean to sound boastful, but he was my icon before he was anyone else's. I get tears in my eyes. I got tears in my eyes when I shared that with Alexandra this morning as I was preparing for this. Being Mrs. Fred Rogers has been the most remarkable life I could have ever imagined. What a beautiful thing for the woman with whom you spent over 50 years of your life to have to say about you. And again, we want to begin with the ultimate end in mind. This is how we kick off our Mastery Series in the Optimized Coach program, inspired by Stephen Covey, who did the same thing. He said, look, you got to begin with the end in mind, and the ultimate end is your eulogy. At the end of your life, what will the people who loved you the most have to say about you? And they're not going to talk about what David Brooks describes as your resume, virtues, how much money you made, and all the different letters after your name. They're going to talk about your eulogy virtues, the virtues that you most aspire to embody. So I ask you, if you had to think about. Well, actually, I should say before I forget, we made module zero, the introduction to our Mastery Series, available for free in its entirety. It's a long one. Most are an hour long. This one's an hour and 45 minutes long, in which I share the seven modules, 25 sessions of our 300 day mastery series program, which is basically the distillation of my Life's work, all 600 philosopher's notes that we have today, all 50 optimal living 101 classes, all 1000 optimized plus ones boiled into one program. You can watch that. We'll have the link that you can check out module 0 of the mastery Series for free in its entirety. And you can get the worksheets we share, including this eulogy exercise that we do. And you can watch our head coach, Michael, walk you through the exercises and reflections, et cetera, and the worksheets, all that good stuff. And again, the Mastery Series, Coach program, Optimized Coach program. Half the people do it who want to be coaches, the other half of the people or who want to bring their coaching practice to the next level. The other half do it just to improve their lives, in quotes, just to become the best versions of themselves. Check it out. Optimize me, coach, etc. Etc. Now, when you think about your three virtues, what comes to mind? For me, I happen to think every morning around our big three. So I'm always thinking energy, work and love. Literally my entire life, I think in threes. And we'll talk about how Mr. Rogers had symbols that related to different parts of his life that he drove his life kind of to a focal point on. I think in threes, big three, and then times two. My identity, my virtues, my behaviors. For today, I'll just share my. The virtues that I aspire to embody as it relates to energy, work and wealth. I happen to share discipline with Mr. Rogers. It's one of the reasons why I'm such a big fan of him. That man worked incredibly hard to give his gifts to the world in service to the world heroically. Now for work. I'm committed to embodying the virtue of being prolific. I want to be disciplined with my energy, getting it dialed in certain routines. Eating, moving, sleeping, etc. Take a lot of pride in that. Just like Mr. Rogers, who swam every single morning. Then he got off out of the pool, dried himself off, stepped on the scale. I'll go ahead for a moment. And the scale every single morning of his life said 143. 143 pounds. And for him, that meant something very special to him. I love you. I has one letter. One love has four letters. Four. You has three letters. Three, one, four, three. That's what he wanted to see on his scale every morning. So he had the discipline to show up, eat a certain way, move his body a certain way, and then see the weight as a byproduct of that. That represented his number one commitment in life. I love you. And it's funny, people ask me just recently as I started sharing these PNTVs again, how tall are you?

How much do you weigh?

I'm 6ft tall, which is what Mr. Rogers was as well. And I weigh 150 something. I haven't weighed myself in a while, but when I used to hit 153 or whatever, I'd always create something in that sequence. So for me, 153 meant I serve you. If it was 155, it'd be I serve heroes. The way I spell heroes in the Greek sense. H E r o s. 156. I serve heroes. We'll add a need to be heroes. Anyway, I love finding ways to bring my philosophy into different aspects of my life. Just like Mr. Rogers. Third virtue is I'm connected. I'm connected to my wife, to my kids, to you, to our team. I want to be authentic, I want to be present. I want to be me connecting directly to you via my connection to myself. Those are my three virtues that I focus on literally every single day. I journal this disciplined, prolific, creative. What are yours? What do you really aspire to embody on a day to day basis? Well, guess what? We need to know what that ultimate aim is. Then we need to bring it back to today and live in integrity with that day in and day out. I think we just got a rainstorm. I'm filming this while a hurricane's running through Texas. This is great. We're in a barn. It's not soundproof. We might have a rain delay. Let's see if we can finish this one up. This one's actually a quick one. The enraged Mr. Rogers. Check out a link that I'm going to share with you. Mr. Rogers In a Senate hearing about funding for public broadcast stations. And he shows up and he's got this cantankerous senator who's just being belligerent to everyone who's talking that day. And Mr. Rogers comes up and completely disarms him with love. Yet you can feel his rage about what's happening in the media and his commitment to teaching kids virtue and character and love and acceptance. And you can feel the palpable soul force of this man, his commitment to being an heroic protector as he communicates with the senator, who completely falls in love with Mr. Rogers and literally in that moment says, you've got the funding you need. Gives me tears in my eyes. Ah, just a beautiful scene. I can't wait to go watch it again. Go watch it. We'll have a link to that below. Then we got Mr. Rogers and his creativity again. In our last PNTV, we talked about the tortures of the damned. Right? The tortures of the damned. That's how hard it was for him to create 900 episodes over several decades. Well, when he was a young man.

He was a musician.

He went to New York City to meet one of his heroes and to share a few of his songs with him. He'd written like four or five songs, and he was hoping the guy would like him and introduce him to somebody and he'd kind of make it. The guy listened to the songs and he said, I really like these.

These are nice.

Fred, come back to me when you have a barrel full of songs. Young Mr. Rogers, like, a barrel full. I was hoping you'd kind of hook me up with somebody. But you're telling me what Steve Martin told people who wanted to become great comics be so good, they can't ignore you. Cal Newport wrote a book based on that line. Steve Martin says everyone comes to him and says, tell me how I can be a great comedian. And Steve Martin says, what they want to hear is, okay, this is how you get an agent. This is how you do this, this is how you do that. But what they need to hear is be so good, they can't ignore you. Create a barrel full of jokes. Create a barrel full of songs. Create, create, create and know as we reflect on in the note that quality is highly correlated with quantity. The greatest artists are the ones who produce the most £50 equals an A to keep on dropping references. And if you've been following along, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, check out the information in the show notes down below, £50 equals an A. Adam Grant talks about the science of the greatest creators. Who had the most masterpieces, were the most prolific. Whether it's Picasso or Beethoven or Shakespeare. Prolific. And this is my commitment. My commitment is to be prolific. I let the results take care of themselves. Go look at my. This is like philosopher's note number 400 and something. Philosopher's notes. TV. Go look at number one and number two and number 10 and number 100. Number 150. Now I still got work to do. I'm never going to hit my creative standards, which, by the way, Mr. Rogers says, is good. There will always be a gap between who you could be ultimately and who you are being. That's a good thing. That creative tension is what allows us to become better now in the moment. We can close it and feel great. But we're never actually going to get to a place where there isn't a gap because there's always an opportunity to get better and better and write another song to fill up that barrel. And how do we do it? With love. Every single thing we do. As we strive to become heroic in our lives and to be protectors, we got to know that love is our secret weapon. 143. I love you.

What a beautiful man.

Which leads us to the final idea here. Looks like we're making it through the hurricane. God bless all the people going through it. We're outside of the countryside of Austin, avoiding the bulk of it, but we're going to get some rain, too. 10 seconds. In his lifetime achievement award, which is an event worth watching as well, he's presented the award by one of the little kids who was paralyzed, who was on his show when he was a little kid, came up and was part of his ceremony at the end of his career. Beautiful scenes. Mr. Rogers says, look who encouraged you. Who in your life has served you, has helped you become who you are today. Pause. This is in his acceptance speech for his honors. He's telling us again, let's find the love that we've received and let's celebrate it. Let's be grateful. Let's not take it for granted. Let's take it as granted. So I offer the potential exercise for you. Think about someone who has encouraged you, who has given you hope in times when you needed hope. Pause for a moment. Just 10 seconds. Think of the individual and then send them love. Send them gratitude. Right now. Do that with a nice deep breath. All day, every day. You're going to feel pretty good. It's hard to feel bad when you're feeling grateful.

Remember that.

Gratitude works. Who did you think of? Maybe you can go tell him. Maybe you can write him a gratitude letter. I thought of my mom. I was a little boy. She reminded me God gave you gifts.

You're here to give them to the world.

And supported me in countless other ways. Love you, Mom. Yeah. Let's go. Ten seconds of appreciation. Make that a daily habit. 143 I love you. 153 I serve you. Whatever it is for you. What's your weight? What's your ideal weight?

Go get that.

Go hit that. Go have the discipline like Mr. Rogers to boom. Hit the mark. Hit the mark. Hit the mark. Then make it something fun. Make it something that's related to your.

Ultimate purpose in life.

And by the way, if I had a three word eulogy, not just three virtues, what I came up with this morning was he served heroically. If I had to summarize my entire mission in life in three words, it would be that he served heroically and by extension empowered others to do the same. Why again? So we can change the world 1% at a time together. Starting with you and me today. Thank you, Mr. Rogers. Let's do this. Make today an awesome day.

See you tomorrow.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optymyze with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.

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