The Mister Rogers Effect: 7 Secrets to Bringing Out the Best in Yourself and Others from America's Beloved Neighbor by Anita Knight Kuhnley

 

The Mister Rogers Effect: 7 Secrets to Bringing Out the Best in Yourself and Others from America's Beloved Neighbor by Anita Knight Kuhnley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Mister Rogers Effect is one of the best books I have read in several months. I highly recommend it. Dr. Anita Knight Kuhnley is an excellent author. The book covers the following seven Secrets that Mister rogers taught throughout his life.

7 Secrets to bring out the best in yourself and others from America’s Beloved Neighbor (Mr. Rogers)
Secret 1: Listen First – Listen with more than your ears!
Secret 2: Validate Feelings – Feelings are mentionable and manageable!
Secret 3: Pause and Think – Take time to discover what is inside!
Secret 4: Show Gratitude – Be kind and be thankful!
Secret 5: Develop Empathy – Be with people where they are!
Secret 6: Practice Acceptance – Who you are right now is acceptable!
Secret 7: Establish Security – People need to know they are cared for!

I hope you will find the quotes below helpful, encouraging, and challenging.

Shared joy is doubled, and sorrow shared is halved. Sharing has a healing impact. ~An old proverb
Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “The Little Prince”

The words “thank you” are probably the greatest words in any language. ~ Fred Rogers

There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you’ve heard their story. ~Sister Mary Lou Kownacki, director, Monasteries of the Heart

Demonstrating and communicating with empathy is the healthy relational glue that helps us stick together and cooperative relationships. ~Dr. Anita Knight Kuhnley

When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong with the fearful, the true mixed in with the façade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way. ~Fred Rogers

It’s not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls; it is the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our lives, from which we make our choices, is very good stuff. There is a neighborhood song that is meant for the in each of us. “It’s You I Like.” ~Fred Rogers

It's you I like,
It's not the things you wear,
It's not the way you do your hair
But it's you I like
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys
They're just beside you.

But it's you I like
Every part of you.
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new.
I hope that you'll remember
Even when you're feeling blue
That it's you I like,
It's you yourself
It's you.
It's you I like. ~Fred Rogers

It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?

It's a neighborly day in this beauty wood,
A neighborly day for a beauty,
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?

I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you!
I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.
So let's make the most of this beautiful day,
Since we're together we might as well say,
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won't you be my neighbor?
Won't you please,
Won't you please?
Please won't you be my neighbor? ~Fred Rogers

People are just as wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be. . . . When I look at a sunset, as I did the other evening, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a bit on the right-hand corner. . . .” I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds. ~Carl Rogers

We typically don’t accept influence from people who don’t accept us. ~Dr. Anita Knight Kuhnley

Love is at the root of everything. All learning. All parenting. All relationships. Love or the lack of it. ~Fred Rogers

Self-acceptance is a prerequisite for other-acceptance. We must start there. ~Dr. Anita Knight Kuhnley

Gratitude is incredibly good for our health and relationships. ~Dr. Anita Knight Kuhnley

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. ~Fred Rogers

Like bodies of water change the lands they run through over time, we are shaped and impacted by those who love us. ~Dr. Anita Knight Kuhnley

What is most significant in your interpersonal history is not the events but how you talk about them. ~Dr. Anita Knight Kuhnley

Many have said, “We need a Mr. Rogers in our world today.” I believe that if you can’t find a Mr. Rogers, you can certainly be one. Internalize his message and be a healing, calming presence. I fail miserably, but
I’m trying. ~comment on YouTube video “Remembering Mr. Rogers,” a video with Charlie Rose, televised in 1994

It helps to be loved in order to work in this life. ~Fred Rogers

We speak with more than our mouths. We listen with more than our ears. ~Fred Rogers

Being heard feels so similar to being loved that for many people the distinction goes unnoticed. ~ Dr. Anita Knight Kuhnley

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.” ~Fred Rogers

If we make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health. ~Dr. Anita Knight Kuhnley

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A Generous Life: 10 Steps to Living a Life Money Can't Buy

 

A Generous Life: 10 Steps to Living a Life Money Can't Buy by David Green Sr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Quotes from A Generous Life: 10 Steps to Living a Life Money Can’t Buy by David Green
David Green has written a wonderful, encouraging, practical, and challenging book. There are some great personal stories about Green and his company, Hobby Lobby. There is several quotes from each chapter that I have shared below:
• A true legacy . . . is conceived in wisdom, nurtured by principle, and sustained by character.
• The questions we ask at the end of life are the ones we should begin with.
• Generosity and legacy happen only when we return everything to the rightful owner [God].
• Wealth can be a hindrance if it’s seen as something you own rather than steward.
• I sensed God saying to me, “This company [Hobby Lobby] beongs to me. Don’t you touch it. It’s mine.”
• I knew who controlled my fate no matter what those justices decided. And peace reigned. (This was when his company was being judge by The Supreme Court over the health issue).
• Choose the eternal in the everyday mundane.
• Honoring the people in your life, respecting them, doing what’s right, acting with integrity. This is true virtue, and it begins with people.
• Valuing the eternal means putting people first.
• The first thing that will help your children is to show them a marriage they want to emulate.
• Whether it is in your marriage, your parenting, or your work ethic, integrity always wins.
• The greatest blessings are the ones that can never be lost.
• Having money does not equal being blessed. Money can actually be a curse if it is not handled the right way.
• Blessing carries a purpose that goes beyond ourselves, and even beyond this lifetime.
• Beyond Christ, everything else is just frosting.
• Every journey requires a destination.
• Generosity can start ever so small, but eventually have massive impact for God’s kingdom.
• To invest in eternal things is the most important thing we can do with our lives, our energies, and our resources.
• If we don’t use Hobby Lobby’s earnings to touch people for the Lord, I really don’t see the reason for me to be in business at all.
• Through giving, we join God in His divine work.
• Those who plan to give, do.
• Let your mind play a bit, and see whether God ignites your heart with the fire of generosity.
• Ask, “Is this going to matter a thousand years from now?” If not, it might be a good thing, but it’s not a great thing.
• Don’t underestimate the power of making a plan and writing it down.
• What you know, you can change. What you don’t know controls you.
• One of the great needs in families is to talk with one another about money and the responsibility it brings.
• You can spend your life either on the eternal or on things that aren’t going to matter.
• Work is not a curse. It is our calling.
• We simply must raise kids and grandkids to be independent. Otherwise we make cripples out of them.
• No family member, of whatever generation, must ever view Hobby Lobby as his or her source of well-being for all of life. God is our source!
• Give even when it seems impossible.
• You won’t know whether you can out-give God until you try.
• It settled permanently inside of me that God had a purpose for a businessman. He had called me.
• The more this business gives, the more God blesses us to keep giving.
• When to give? I humbly suggest always.
• Passing on wealth means passing on all forms of wealth.
• It doesn’t matter if you’re a wealthy business owner, a rookie entrepreneur, or a couple planning their family and the next five years – breaking up your family’s vision is never a good thing.
• We want [Hobby Lobby] to continue for decades, perhaps even centuries, as an ongoing source of financial fuel for God’s work around the world.
• Stockpile treasure in Heaven!
• Legacy is not just what we leave behind, but what we send ahead.
• Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or – worse! – stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being” (Matthew 6:19-21).
• I want to be remembered more for the size of my soul than for the size of my bank account.

As you can see from the quotes above, this is an excellent book. If you are a believer than I highly recommend this book. It is an easy read, but has eternal principles

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The Letter Keeper

The Letter Keeper by Charles Martin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Charles Martin is one of my favorite authors. This book, The Letter Keeper is the second in the series "A Murphy Shepherd Novel." The first book is titled The Water Keeper. Both books involved the sex-slave trade. Martin does a fantastic job revealing the horrific details but showing how the victims can be redeemed and live a life that is precious to the world. Below are just a few quotes from this awesome book:


Because the needs of the one outweigh those of the many. ~Bones (The Letter Keeper)


When light walks into a room, the darkness rolls back like a scroll. It has to. Darkness can’t stand light. And it has no counter for it. ~Bones (The Letter Keeper)

9-1 . . . 1-1 ~Bones (The Letter Keeper) (code for Ps. 91:11 “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”)


Years ago, I was working in Italy. I’d heard of Michelangelo’s David but never seen him. So I bought a ticket and walked down a long hallway lined with what look like half-finished sculptures. Huge square chunks of veined marble with forms of people being released. Works he never finished. I thought, What a shame. A waste. Then I turned a corner, and there he was. Towering. Perfection. It’s the first and only time I’ve ever looked at a piece of stone that took my breath away. The shards and slivers. No matter how long I sat and stared, I could not understand how human hands did that. How did Michelangelo know David was in there? Hidden in the rock. Spotless. No blemish. Just waiting for the sculptor’s hands to fling wide the prison doors.

Only one other time in my life have I felt this way. And the source of that awe you now hold in your hands.

From the moment we’re born, life chips away at us. With every hammer stroke, we watch in horror as the pieces that once made us fall to the ground. Soon we stand amid the rubble. The fragments. And we think to ourselves, I need that. I can’t leave that here. It was once a part of me. I’m no longer whole. I’ll never make it without it. So we spend much of our time chasing or collecting the pieces that break off, those that are stolen, or the ones we leave behind. Pretty soon, the pieces we carry are more than our hands can hold, so we throw a bag over our shoulder and stuff it full. Eventually a backpack. Before long, we’re reduced to vagabonds scouring the earth. Tormented by the fear that we’re incomplete, never whole until we find every single piece. Soon our pack is bigger than us and we’re bent over, inching along. A beast of burden walking under the crushing. Focused on what’s missing rather than what’s revealed.

But every now and then, one brave soul comes along and risks what the fearful won’t and never will. Despite the possibility of open rejection, abandonment, criticism, mockery, laughter, and shame, she lifts her pack off her shoulder, empties it before the world, and lets strangers sift through the pieces. Holding each by hand. Gemologists studying her imperfections under a magnifier. Every piece a word spoken.

When Michelangelo freed David from the cold marble cell that held him, the ground below the scaffolding was littered with pieces. Pieces that once made up the rock but not David. We know this because when finished, Michelangelo didn’t sweep all those discards into a pile only to hang them in a pack on David’s back. Why would he free him only to curse him through all eternity with carrying the marble walls of his own prison?

For reasons none of us understand, Casey has suffered the pain of the hammer and chisel, which makes her uniquely and singularly qualified to show the rest of us that we’re better off without all that deadweight. That despite the scars on the surface, there’s something beautiful, perfect, and without blemish just inches below.

Her majestic, powerful, soul-cleansing, pain-riddled, and triumphant words woven through a tapestry of sweet-soaked and tearstained pages are a masterful mosaic made up of all the broken pieces that mirror the whole. Stand too close and see only jagged rocks. But back up . . . and a giant killer emerges.

Casey Girl.

Writers are not like other people. We are the piece-keepers. We gather and guard. Holding fast throughout all eternity the discarded pieces that whisper the majesty and wonder of what is. What was. And the ever-elusive and exceedingly dangerous truth: what could be. We alone carry and share them. Carving pieces into letters that make up the words that heal us. And once they are carved, whether by hammer, chisel, or damp velvet cloth, we spill them selflessly across the earth’s table, where they walk the hurting from broken to not. From unable to breathe to laughing. From sickness of the soul to tears dripping off the corners of a smile. From lost to known and accepted in the knowing. This is the matchless and immeasurable power of our words. That’s what we do. We wander the earth. We unearth David. We slay giants. For we alone are the keepers of the letters that set us free. ~David Bishop (The Letter Keeper, this is the Forward to Casey’s book, The Resurrection of Casey Girl). Casey was rescued from sex salve trade.


1-1-8 . . . 1-7 ~Murph (The Letter Keeper) code for Ps. 119:17, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.”


And while evil can inflict wounds and lay claim to the territory of the human soul, it is a squatter. A trespasser. It has no legal deed. And it has no defense against love. It can’t touch it. Not now. Not ever. No weapon ever fashioned by man can defeat it, but what we pour from our hearts shatters it on the rocks of its own making. ~Murph (The Letter Keeper)

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