I came to know about Fred Rogers for the first time from the movie, ‘A beautiful day in a neighbourhood’. Mister Rogers by his simplistic work in television turned a whole lot of generations of children into respectful adults, loving parents and caring human beings. And although his words were spoken mainly for the young, they are still a great source of inspiration and loving kindness for people of all ages who want to be understood, to be loved and who want to be lifted up. So here are 7 lessons from Mr. Rogers for you when you feel down.
This is because we are all children at heart and sometimes we understand our feelings no better than children. We all have bad days and days when we struggle to understand what we are feeling or how to respond to what we are feeling.
So today it’s about the 7 lessons Mr. Rogers can teach us when we are feeling down.
1.Accept your feelings:
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Each one of your feelings are precious. When we are feeling down, we tend to suffer because we discriminate between our feelings. It’s okay to feel what you are feeling.
“There’s no ‘should’ or ‘should not’ when it comes to having feelings. They’re part of who we are and their origins are beyond our control. When we can believe that, we may find it easier to make constructive choices about what to do with those feelings.”
Mister Rogers says, people have said, “Don’t cry” to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, “I’m too uncomfortable when you show your feelings. Don’t cry.” I’d rather have them say, “Go ahead and cry. I’m here to be with you.”
2. Nothing is perfect and it’s okay:
“Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we are not perfect.”
Remind yourself,
“Whatever you do is enough: Some days, doing ‘the best we can’ may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect on any front and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.”
“There is no normal life that is free of pain. It’s the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.”
3.Notice your self-talk:
“We speak with more than our mouths. We listen with more than our ears.”
Notice what you are speaking when you are not speaking from your mouth and listen to things that don’t necessarily make a sound.
Because what you speak within yourself and what you hear within yourself is important. So what kind of talk do you have with yourself? What kind of people do you engage yourself with, what kind of things are you feeding your mind with? They all determine to a large extent what you speak to yourself.
4. Its okay to Seek Help:
Mister Rogers says that there are times when explanations, no matter how reasonable, just don’t seem to help. But nevertheless it’s important to seek help.
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look out for helpers. You will always find people who are helping”
How true it is. We will always find people who are helping no matter what our problem is, whether big or small. They may be our friends, our parents or a therapist. It’s okay to seek help.
5.Talk about your feelings
“When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting and less scary.”
When I feel down, writing in my journal and calling my best friend are the only therapy I need. They are one of the ways I find clarity.
By writing I come back to my senses and speaking to my best friend I am better able to understand myself. With her I feel understood, with her I feel I can ease myself because she truly listens to me.
“In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.”
6. You matter:
“You’ve made this day a special day by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you. And I like you just the way you are.”
“In a way, you’ve already won in this world because you’re the only one who can be you.”
So,
“If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet—how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”
7. Realize your Potential and live a useful life for others:
And when we feel down, we feel we might not have any energy to go on, to continue, but that is precisely the time we need to buckle up. We cheer ourselves up when we cheer others up, we lift ourselves up when we lift others up.
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.”
We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say “It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.” Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.
“Give your gifts to the world: One of the greatest gifts you can give to anybody is the gift of your honest self.”
End note
Mister Rogers made me feel humble and in love with him instantly. He is among one of those persons the earth is grateful to have had.
He has made people feel good about being alive. His simple personality and his pure heartedness has taught people that all feelings are all valid and that we can use our life in a way that is beneficial to others using whatever we have with us.
I’d like to be remembered for being a compassionate human being who happened to be fortunate enough to be born at a time when there was a fabulous thing called television that could allow me to use all the talents that I had been given.
Fred Rogers
Thank you for reading.
I wish you a great week ahead.
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