The Courage to Be Yourself – Part II

The purpose of the 7 Daily Nuggets is to teach us what we need to know to live a prosperous life; the things that we may not have learned or are not currently learning in church, school, home or at work. Let’s apply what we learn here and share these nuggets with others. We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give. Be a giver in a world of takers.

The World According to Mr. Fred Rogers

Mr. Rogers left a tremendous legacy by nurturing the minds of millions of children, my children included.

Do you have the courage to be yourself? Mr. Rogers did! Therefore he was successful. Success is the freedom to be who you are. It takes courage to be who you were created to be, you.

Here are Part II of nuggets from Mr. Rogers:

1.    Choices. 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.

2.    Values. The values you care about the deepest, and the movements within society that support those values, command our love. When those things that we care about so deeply become endangered, we become enraged. And what a healthy thing that is! Without it, we would never stand up and speak out for what we believe.

3.    Meaning. I believe it’s a fact of life that what we have is less important than what we make out of what we have. The same holds true for families: It’s not how many people there are in a family that counts, but rather the feelings among the people who are there.

4.    Pride. I’m proud of you for the times you came in second, third, or forth, but what you did was the best you had ever done.

5.    Success. The thing I remember best about successful people I’ve met all through the years is their obvious delight in what there are doing … and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what they’re doing, and they love it in front of others.

6.    Emotions. I must be an emotional archeologist because I keep looking for the roots of things, particularly the roots of behavior and why I feel certain ways about certain things.

7.    Perfection. Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we aren’t perfect. The child is in me still … and sometimes not so still.

Be blessed and be a blessing to others.

Carlos Fontana, President of Phalanx

Co-author of the book Follow to Lead (The 7 Principles to Being a Great Follower)

Author of the book PRICELESS (Sixty-Six Simple Stories of Reflection, Love, and Legacy)