Good morning.
And welcome to morning cereal
Okay, good morning and welcome back to
another fantastic Monday morning.
Lots happening today with it being a
federal holiday
celebrating Martin Luther King.
Today is also
inauguration day and we'll be moving from
a Democratic president to
the Republican president.
Regardless of what side of the fence you
fall on, you should know that today is
also International Day
of Acceptance Day and
no name-calling week. So
let's just all get along.
Coincidentally, today
is also Blue Monday,
which is always the third Monday in
January and the meaning of this day is
filled with controversy because it's
supposedly the saddest day
of the year.
Many of us find ourselves in sub-zero
weather this time of year,
looking at our post-Christmas credit card
bills and realizing we might already be
breaking our New Year's resolutions.
So how's that for a good Monday morning
for you? Well, let's end
this on a positive note.
It's also National Cheese Lovers Day. So
there you have it. I totally saved this
Monday and this intro.
Let's get into today's quotes. One fun
nostalgic quote and then a second quote
to tease our book
review later in the episode.
As always, I hope at least one of these
will speak to you and jumpstart your day
in a positive direction.
Okay, the first quote is spoken by the
character Sergeant Eversman from the
movie Black Hawk Down and he says
"Nobody asks to be a hero. It just
sometimes turns out that way."
Our men and women in uniform are heroes
every day and thank you for your service.
And today's teaser quote
from the book review is
"People who smile tend to manage, teach
and sell more effectively
and to raise happier children."
And as usual, we'll go ahead and unpack
that here in just a few minutes during
the book review segment.
But first, let's jump right into our
usual dose of fun and historic facts from
this day in history.
Today's news facts are for January 20th.
In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy
in his inaugural
address said the famous line
"And so my fellow Americans, ask not what
your country can do for you, ask what you
can do for your country."
End quote. And for those of you keeping
count, that's a third
quote for the morning already.
So we're on a really good roll here.
In 1980, U.S. President Jimmy Carter
announces the U.S. boycott
of the Winter Olympics in
Moscow after the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan.
A year later in 1981, the Iran hostage
crisis ended when 52
Americans who had been held
hostage for 15 months
were finally released.
Another year after that, in 1982, this is
when the infamous story
during an Ozzy Osbourne concert in
Des Moines, Iowa, an audience member
threw a bat onto the stage. And Ozzy
initially thinking that
the bat was fake, he attempted to bite
its head off, just being
crazy and wild. However,
Ozzy quickly realized that it had in fact
been an actual living
bat. After the show,
Ozzy was immediately rushed to the
nearest hospital for rabies
shots. That's an iconic story
for the ages. In 1993, Belgian-born
actress Audrey Hepburn, who created
unforgettable film roles as
the epitome of sophistication and
glamour, while also bewitching audiences
with her quirkiness and
charm, she passed away in Switzerland on
this date in 1993. In 1997,
Vermont ice cream company,
Ben & Jerry's, I know you've heard of
them, they introduced fish
food, that's with a P-H-I-S-H.
That was a new flavor that was named
after the popular band of the same name.
Then fast forwarding all the way up to
2008, Breaking Bad,
created by Vince Gilligan,
starring Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul,
it premiered on AMC. And for the record,
that's another great series that I own a
useless DVD set to. And
finally, on this day in 2009,
Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th
president of the United
States, becoming the first African
American to hold that office. Okay,
moving on to birthdays. Happy birthday if
today is your birthday.
You share a birthday with Bill Maher,
he's 69 today, and Buzz
Aldrin, he's 95 today. You might
remember Buzz, he's a former astronaut
engineer slash fighter
pilot. He made three space walks
as a pilot of the 1966 Gemini 12
missions. And he was the lunar module
Eagle pilot in the 1969
Apollo 11 mission, which means he was the
second person to walk on the
moon after mission commander
Neil Armstrong. Following the death of
Michael Collins in 2021,
Buzz is the last surviving
Apollo 11 crew member. Now to the music
and the movies of the 80s, 90s, and
2000s. The number one
song on this date in 1990 was "How Am I
Supposed to Live Without You?" And "How
Could We Live Without
Michael Bolton for This Long on the
Show?" "How Am I Supposed to
Live Without You?" was Bolton's
first number one hit as a solo artist and
earned him his first
Grammy. I'm not sure he won any
awards, but some of his appearances on
Saturday Night Live have been epic. And
the number one movie
on this date in 2002 was "Black Hawk
Down." You probably remember this
gut-wrenching movie,
it was directed by Ridley Scott, and the
movie was based on a book
of a true story of US special
forces that were sent into Somalia in
Black Hawk helicopters in 1993. And I
won't spoil the movie
if you haven't seen it, but I'll just say
the mission ran into some
serious problems, and it's
a very intense, fantastic movie.
Interestingly, "Black Hawk Down" was the
first war movie released
after 9-11, and it won 11 awards and 37
nominations. Okay, let's move on to some
personal growth in the
book review segment of "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've been
reading through Dale
Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and
Influence People." It's a timeless book,
and it's consistently
in all the must-read lists, and it's
packed with rock-solid advice
and actions for us all to use
and build healthy foundational concepts
to live by. And last week, we
finished up part two, chapter
one, which was entitled "Do This, and You
Will Be Welcome Anywhere."
And Carnegie is showing us the
importance of taking a real, genuine
interest in other people. Take real
interest in other people,
and they will in turn, they will take
real interest in you. This interest we
take in people, and it
should be in all people, it doesn't have
to be grand gestures, but
it does have to be sincere,
and it does need to be beneficial for
both parties. Carnegie
ended chapter one of part two,
giving us his first principle, which is
"Become genuinely
interested in other people,
and you will be welcome anywhere." So
today, we start chapter two,
part two, and it's entitled
"A Simple Way to Make a Good First
Impression." Carnegie
begins this chapter with a quick
anecdote about a woman at a dinner party
who had inherited a large
sum of money. And clearly,
she had spent a lot of the money on
making sure she looked
the part. But Carnegie says,
even though she was dressed to the nines,
she didn't do anything
to dress up the expression
on her face, which "radiated sourness and
selfishness." And to
this, Carnegie says, "The
expression one wears on one's face is far
more important than the
clothes one wears on one's back."
That's a lot of ones, but it's true.
Here, Carnegie mentions his old friend
again, Charles Schwab.
You remember Schwab's success was
partially due to his ability to arouse
enthusiasm in people
by treating them with respect and
appreciation. Well, apparently
Schwab had another seek to his
success, and it was simply his smile. He
was told he had a million
dollar smile. Perhaps it had
something to do with his million dollar
salary, but it was this
smile along with his personality,
his charm, and his ability to make people
like him that were also
responsible for his extraordinary
success. And it's this first impression
of a simple smile that
Carnegie says, "A smile says,
I like you. You make me happy. I am glad
to see you." And it's true.
Something as small as a smile
goes a long way in this world. Try
smiling at someone, and I
bet you they'll smile back.
Carnegie likens this back to the example
of dogs being so happy to
see as that they practically
jump out of their skin. And that's one
reason we love our furry
friends, because they make us feel
good by greeting us with such love and
affection. And it's the same
logic that Carnegie calls on
here that we can implement with a simple
smile. Carnegie says, "A
baby's smile has the same effect.
It lightens us. It actually triggers a
release of dopamine
in the mother's brain,
and maybe not a surprise here, but a
frown does not have the same effect."
Also, I think we've all
heard of the studies that say other
people form their first
impression of you within the first
seven seconds of meeting you. And smiling
at them sounds like a pretty
good start. Again, Carnegie
is quick to point out here that he's not
talking about insincerity. He
says, "An insincere grin? No,
that doesn't fool anybody. We know it's
mechanical, and we resent
it." Carnegie is talking about,
"A real smile, a heartwarming smile, a
smile that comes from
within." Maybe it's the kind of smile
that we reserve for our family, or our
best friends, or only
when the right mood hits us.
But we shouldn't just reserve it for
those we're familiar with. Carnegie
quotes Professor McConnell,
a psychologist from the University of
Michigan, who said this
about a smile, "People who smile
tend to manage, teach, and sell more
effectively, and to raise happier
children. There's far more
information in a smile than in a frown.
That's why encouragement is a
much more effective teaching
device than punishment." And that's why a
department store manager
told Carnegie that she'd
"happily rather hire someone with a nice
smile with no education
than hire a doctorate with a
somber face." I'll just interject here
briefly that I do have a
t-shirt that my kids gave me
that reads, "I'm not mad. This is just my
face." The point being, you
don't need to be blessed with
a million dollar smile like Schwab or
Denzel Washington.
Anyone's smile, including yours,
will elicit the same effect that Carnegie
is speaking about here.
Okay, that's a great stopping
point for today. This was an easily
digestible reading today, just talking
about simply smiling
more. Tomorrow, Carnegie will dig deeper
into just how powerful the simple,
sincere smile can be.
So be sure to come back as we dive deeper
into the second chapter of part two.
Okay, I hope your day
is off to a great start. And if you're
facing a big project,
personal goal, or just another day on
the grind, know that you've got this.
Have the courage to just keep moving
forward in a positive
way. Life is what happens when you're
busy making other plans. So
make those moments in between
matter. Have a fantastic day, and we'll
see you back here tomorrow.
Don't forget to follow and subscribe to
the Morning Serial
podcast on the One Life
Live It channel.
You can find more episodes and videos by
visiting our YouTube
channel and the website at Shawn
English and at ShawnEnglish.com, where
you can also follow our
other podcast, the Mr.
and Mrs. English podcast
and the Life Happens podcast.
In these other podcasts, we'll dive
deeper into everyday issues,
self-improvement and
well-being, business and finance, and we
welcome special guests too.
So join us.
It'll be a good time, I promise.
Thanks again for listening.
Have a fantastic day and
we'll see you tomorrow.