Good morning.
And welcome to your morning cereal.
Alright, good morning and welcome to
Thursday, January 2nd.
Hopefully you're catching back up on some
of that sleepy loss
from staying up late on
New Year's.
Alright, well I have to tell you, every
day I look to see what
National Day today is and
on any given day there are 30 plus
national days of some sort.
And I try to pick one or two to share if
it feels like they make sense.
And many of them I just kind of share
just to poke fun at them.
So that said, today's national days I'm
going to highlight
are Happy New Year's for
Cats Day.
No comment on that one.
Well these next two seem to go together.
Happy National Cream Puff Day and Happy
National Personal Trainer Day.
And lastly, one that applies to me more
than the first couple
for sure, Happy National
Introverts Day.
It seems like it should also be National
Stay Inside, Don't Talk
to Anybody, and Watch a
Movie Day as well.
Sounds like a really great day to me.
Okay, well let's go ahead and jump into
today's episode and today's quotes.
One fun nostalgic quote and then a second
quote to tease our
book review later in the
episode.
And as usual, I'm hoping one of these
quotes will speak to you
and jump start your day
in a positive direction.
Alright, the first quote
is, "Even darkness must pass.
A new day will come, and when the sun
shines, it will shine out the clear."
That was Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of
the Rings giving us a
little bit of sunshine this
morning and being a rock for Frodo.
Alright, and today's teaser quote from
the book review is,
"There is nothing I need so
much as nourishment for my self-esteem."
And as usual, we'll unpack that here in a
minute during the book review segment.
But first, let's jump into our usual dose
of fun and historic
facts from this day in
history.
Today's news facts are for January 2nd.
Alright we're going to start in 1890 when
a record 19.2 foot
alligator was shot in Louisiana
by American businessman
Edward Every Mecklehaney.
I have a good buddy that lives down in
that area and we've eaten
a bit of Gator down there
in Louisiana.
Tastes like chicken.
In 1942, World War II, the 28 nations at
war with the Axis Powers
pledged to make no separate
peace deals.
Then in 1965, Joe Namis spurns the NFL to
sign a deal with the AFL's New York Jets.
Then in 1974, President Nixon signs the
national speed limit into
law at 55 miles per hour.
Up to that point, the speed limits
nationally ranged from 40
miles to 80 miles an hour.
Honestly, I'd say the national average on
highways today is still similar to that.
Probably 40 miles an hour in the fast
lane and 85 miles an hour
passing them in the center
lane.
I don't know, maybe those people who
think they have a
birthright to be in the fast lane
at all times, they still have that orange
55 on their speedometer.
Move over.
In 1967, American Republican politician
Ronald Reagan, who
previously worked as an actor,
was sworn in as governor of California.
And lastly, in 2004, NASA spacecraft
Stardust collected dust
grains from the comet Wild
2.
And the cometary material was later
revealed to contain the
amino acid gysine, which is
an essential building block of life.
You know, I've kind of figured out I'm a
bit of a nerd about these space facts.
It's really incredible.
Okay, moving on to birthdays.
Happy birthday if today is your birthday.
You share a birthday
with a very short list.
Cuba Gooding Jr. is 57 years old.
And Kristy Turlington, she's 55.
So happy birthday to
everybody if today's your birthday.
Now a quick highlight of the music from
the 80s, the 90s, and 2000s.
The number one song on this date in 2002
was "Lose Yourself" by Eminem.
"Lose Yourself" became the longest
running single at number
one for a rap song at 23
weeks and also won the Academy Award for
the best original song in 2003.
That made it the first hip
hop song to win the award.
This was my go-to pump
up song back in the day.
And in fact, we downloaded the clean
version of this song for
our kiddos as one of their
pump up songs too.
I would say this song
definitely passes the test of time.
23 years ago, almost a quarter of a
century ago, that song came out.
All right, well, the number one movie in
the same year of 2002 was
"The Lord of the Rings,"
the two towers.
This was the second movie of the
trilogies and it won two
Academy Awards and made about
$938 million in gross box office, which
places it at number 71
on the top lifetime gross
movie list.
All right, well, let's go ahead and move
into some personal
growth in the book review
segment of "The Morning Serial."
This is where we take a few moments to
reflect on lessons learned
from the current book we're
reading.
And currently we are reading through Dale
Carnegie's "How to Win
Friends and Influence
People."
It's a timeless book that is consistently
on all the must read
lists and it's packed
with rock solid advice and actions for
all of us to use and
build healthy foundational
concepts to live by.
Okay, we're still in chapter two, which
is the big secret of dealing with people.
Where Carnegie started the chapter out by
contemplating our most
basic human needs and
desires and specifically
the desire to be important.
Yesterday, we began discussing our
craving for appreciation
and were given examples of
leaders like Charles Schwab and Andrew
Carnegie who chose to
lead not by criticizing, but
through appreciation and
praise of those around them.
So as we pick it up in chapter two,
Carnegie turns a bit from
discussing appreciation and
praise in the workplace to the importance
of appreciation and
praise in the house, to
our spouses and our family.
Carnegie suggests that one of the primary
reasons for strain in
a marriage or the end
of a marriage is the lack of
appreciation for our spouses.
Carnegie says, "We often take our spouses
so much for granted
that we never let them
know we appreciate them."
Now I'm a generation Xer and I did not
grow up in the timeframe
that Carnegie wrote this
book, but I think it's safe to say that
life has only become more hectic.
It moves faster.
We accomplish more and less time, which
means we have even fewer
moments to slow down or
unplug for just a moment enough to tell
our spouses that we
love them, let alone just
that we appreciate them.
Carnegie gives an example of a wife
asking her husband to
list out six things that the
husband believed would
help her become a better wife.
And as a side note, I'm sure the husband
asked for twice as
many pointers on how he
could become a better husband, but
Carnegie did not cover that one.
Anyways, the husband thinks about it
overnight and the next day
he sends his wife six red
roses with a note reading, "I can't think
of six things I would
like to change about
you.
I love you the way you are.
Very sweet, right?"
Well, the wife thought so.
She greeted her husband with tears, glad
that he had not chosen
to criticize her, and the
wife's friends had said it was the most
considerate thing
that they had ever heard.
Again, Carnegie illustrating the power of
appreciation over criticism.
Now, remember, Carnegie began this
chapter talking about
the basic needs and desires
we as humans crave with feeling important
and appreciated as the
most important of all.
It's the one desire we can't
really work harder to achieve.
It has to be freely given or earned.
To this point, Carnegie makes a
comparison here
suggesting, "People would think they
committed a crime if they let their
families or employees go
six days without food."
One of the basic needs of ours, right?
But people take no issue in potentially
letting their families or
employees go for "six days,
for six weeks, and sometimes 60 years
without giving them the hearty
appreciation that they
crave almost as much as they crave food."
Carnegie quotes an actor of his time,
Alfred Lunt, who said,
"There is nothing I need
so much as
nourishment for my self-esteem."
You know, it's interesting, I tried to
find a quote from a
contemporary actor saying something
similar and I couldn't find anyone
outright being quoted as
saying they needed praise
for self-esteem.
And I think this is because we have
evolved a bit from Carnegie's point here.
We still believe in nourishing the body
and even more nowadays
society has accepted working
on mental wellbeing and mental health.
So much so that most actors have some
sort of quote saying their
self-esteem or self-confidence
comes from within them, not from others,
which is probably true
for all of us, even if we
are just simply subscribing to the "fake
it till you make it" policy.
But this still does not mean we don't
want to hear and feel
that we are appreciated and
praised and hearing that helps to build
or reinforce our self-image.
And there are a lot of contemporary
quotes to that point.
Now, Carnegie's point here is still as
important today as it was
in 1936 when he wrote the
book.
And that is, we should make a real effort
to nourish the
self-esteem of our families,
of our friends, our coworkers.
We make every effort to nourish their
health, to make sure they
have food, make sure they
get sleep and all the other needs.
But we often seem to neglect to give them
what is so easily given and freely given.
And that's the appreciation and praise
that can give them a
feeling of importance.
Okay, nice work today.
I guess the homework for today would be
to go out there and
tell someone or tell a lot
of people that they are appreciated.
Come on back tomorrow when we'll finish
up Chapter 2, and we'll
get Carnegie's Principle
Number 2.
Okay, get out there and have a great day.
You're on day 2 of the new year, and
you're on day 2 of
accomplishing or keeping your
New Year's resolution.
At least I hope you are.
I appreciate you joining us today, and
we'll be back here
the same time tomorrow.
Have a fantastic day.
And don't forget to follow and subscribe
to the Morning Serial
Podcast and The Life
Happens Live Balance channel.
You can find more episodes and videos by
visiting our YouTube channel, At
Shawningless, or our
website at atshawningless.com, where you
can also follow our other
podcasts that are coming
in January.
That's when our first Mr. and Mrs.
English podcast and The
Life Happens podcast will
air.
So join us on those
other podcasts as well.
Thanks again for listening.
Have a fantastic day.
We'll see you tomorrow.