Good morning.
And welcome to morning cereal
Okay, good morning and
welcome to Wednesday.
Now I know it's hard to believe that
we're already to the
middle of the work week and
I think it's even harder to believe,
however, that we are at
the end of April already.
I mean, what a great month.
We've been moving into spring and now
we're just around the corner from summer.
Good times.
But maybe even harder to believe is the
fact that there is a national denim day.
And there is.
And it happens to be today.
So good news for those of us that grew up
in the 80s and the 90s
because we can go get
out our old jean jacket that was acid
washed or favorite pair
of blue jeans from the 80s
that were acid washed too, maybe.
I don't know.
But let me just say this.
There is no cheating allowed.
Those jeggings do not
qualify for national denim day.
And today is also national
hairstyle appreciation day.
And if your neighbor has a bad hairstyle,
it's okay to tell them
because today is also
national honesty day.
So the universe continues
just to bring it all together.
And lastly, I learned how to play mahjong
this last weekend at
a soccer showcase that
we're at with our team down in Austin.
So I want to say happy national mahjong
day to the mahjong moms.
That was a bit of a tongue twister there.
But I also want to say thank you to that
group of moms for letting
me into your group, sharing
some wine with me and having some laughs.
It was a lot of fun.
Well our quote today is not one of the
mahjong moms, but Amy
Grant is a mom and her quote
is about positivity and resilience.
And Amy Grant said quote, "More important
than talent, strength or knowledge is the
ability to laugh at yourself and enjoy
the pursuit of your dreams."
End quote.
All right.
Well, let's move on to today's news facts
and birthdays and they're for April 30th.
And we're going to start back in 1859.
And that's when Charles Dickens, a tale
of two cities, his
story was first published
in weekly installments that ran from
today through the end of
November in a periodical
called All the Year Round.
It's a great book.
And now moving to a great toy, on 1952,
the Mr. Potato Head toy
became the first toy advertised
on television on this date.
Then lastly on this date in 2009, you
might remember that
during the Great Recession,
the Chrysler Automobile Company, they
filed for Chapter 11
bankruptcy on this date.
Eventually they combined with Fiat so
that they could stay in
business so that we could
all buy our favorite Chrysler's.
Well, happy birthday to you
if today is your birthday.
You share a birthday
with actress Kirsten Dunst.
She's 43 today.
Actor from Christmas Vacation and the Big
Bang Theory, Johnny Galecki.
He's 50 today.
And NBA great and a member of the Detroit
Piston Bad Boys that
gave my Michael Jordan
such a hard time in
the 90s, Isaiah Thomas.
He turned 64 today.
And the number one song on this date back
in 1991 was Baby, Baby by Amy Grant.
Now this song, which is a love song, it
just has an air of innocence and fun.
And it really takes me back to those
innocent years of youth.
But for Amy, it was her second number one
hit following her
duet with Peter Satera on
the song The Next Time I Fall.
And this song, Baby, Baby,
it received three Grammy nods.
Well, let's give a nod to some
self-improvement here.
We are reading through Stephen R. Covey's
The Seven Habits of
Highly Effective People.
And we are in Covey's second chapter of
The Seven Habits, an
overview, where Covey discussed
how important and influential habits are
in our lives with
habits being defined as the
intersection of
knowledge, skills, and desire.
We all know that now.
And these habits we all know are a
maturity continuum, right?
It takes us from growing, from dependence
to independence to
interdependence, right?
And these habits we learned yesterday can
be highly effective
when properly implemented
in our lives and properly balanced.
So today, Covey's next sub-chapter here
in chapter two is three kinds of assets.
And he doesn't keep
them a secret from us.
The three assets Covey describes are
physical, financial, and human.
And the first asset Covey discusses is
physical, and he
compares it to a lawnmower.
Remember yesterday, we talked about the
need to take care of both or
balance both the production
and the production capability.
Well, Covey did not take care
or maintain of his lawnmower.
This would be his production capability.
And therefore, the lawnmower did not cut
the grass well anymore.
This would be the desired
result or the production.
And Covey says if he would have
maintained the lawnmower
along the way, it would have
continued to work and
produce its best results.
But since Covey had let it go without
maintenance, it was
basically not effective anymore.
And it would now cost far more to bring
the lawnmower, the
physical asset, back into its
peak performance.
So Covey's point here is if we ignore the
maintenance on
physical assets, whether they
be a lawnmower, a car, a computer, our
furnaces, our body, or
even our environment, it can
have a tremendous negative effect on the
effectiveness of those physical assets.
And you'll find that this is similar to
the second asset, financial assets.
Covey says, "Our most important financial
asset is our own
capacity to earn," and that
we must "continually invest in improving
our own production capability."
If we ignore this maintenance or this
growth of ours, then we
expose ourselves to being
"locked into our present situation,
running scared of our
corporation or our boss's opinion
of us, economically dependent and
defensive, and again, it
simply isn't effective."
Lastly, Covey talks about human assets.
And the way human assets fit into this
P-slash-PC balance is
just as fundamental.
And Covey believes more important,
"because people control
physical and financial assets."
Covey covers his human assets subject a
bit more in depth
before he finishes out this
sub-chapter.
So we're going to
finish that out tomorrow.
So come back for that as we dive into it
a little bit more, and
then we're going to finish
up that sub-chapter, which brings us, I
think, one or two
sub-chapters away from part two
of the book.
So we're making really good progress.
Well done.
Okay, if you're feeling extra frisky
today with your denim,
give those pant legs a little
tight roll at the bottom.
Hey, thanks for joining us today.
Come back tomorrow and
have a fantastic day.
Don't forget to follow and subscribe to
the Morning Serial
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Live It channel.
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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.