Morning Cereal

Start your day with inspirational quotes, followed by a fun journey through nostalgic facts from this day in history. Then, we dive into James Clear, Atomic Habits. Atomic Habits shows how tiny, consistent improvements in daily habits—focused on systems rather than goals—compound over time to produce remarkable personal and professional results.
In This Episode:
  • Daily inspirational quote to spark your motivation
  • Fun Morning Cereal trivia question of the day
  • A dive into the Chapter 1 Atomic Habits
Whether you're a leader, communicator, or just someone looking to improve your relationships, this episode is packed with actionable insights.
Tune in now and let’s grow together!
Resources:
Clear, J. (2018). Atomic habits: An easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones. Avery.
 
All photo’s utilized in this video are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported by Wikimedia Commons license and are free to copy, distribute and transmit.  No photos have been altered.

What is Morning Cereal?

Good morning, and welcome to Morning Cereal!
Pull up a stool, grab your favorite cereal, and let’s kick-start your day with a spoonful of inspiration, nostalgia and personal growth. Join your host, Shaen Inglis, as he highlights the music, movies, and moments that made the 80s, 90s, and 2000s unforgettable—kind of like digging for toy at the bottom of the cereal box. Each episode, Shaen also reviews a chapter or so from top wellness books, offering practical insights to help you set a positive tone for your day. Start your mornings right—no cartoons required!

Follow and subscribe to the Morning Cereal podcast and visit our Life Happens, Live Balanced channel and our website at shaeninglis.com to check out and follow our other podcasts. You can also follow Shaen @ShaenInglis on Instagram, YouTube, etc. Feel free to share the Morning Cereal with someone who could use a little fun and motivation to start their day right.

Good morning and welcome

to your morning cereal.

All right, good morning

everyone and welcome to Monday.

The day we all know where

the coffee need is strong,

but I hope you are up and

ready to hit this week head on.

I also hope you had a great weekend

and perhaps some of you are

on spring break this week.

If so, I hope this finds you somewhere

where you can get some no

doubt well-deserved R&R.

Well, making our day even better,

especially if you check out their reels,

today also happens to

be National Panda Day,

celebrating the fluffy black

and white ambassadors of calm

who spend most of their

lives eating bamboo and napping

and by watching most of their reels,

really most of their

days falling out of things.

All right, well, the answer

to Friday's trivia question,

France, Germany, Italy,

Spain, and the Netherlands,

those are five of the 12 countries

where the Euro replaced

the local currency in 2002.

All right, well, now it is

time for the essential vitamins

in your morning cereal today's quote.

And it is from former Jayhawk

Baller and birthday boy today

turning just 32, Joelle Embiid,

who once said simply, "Trust the

process," end quote.

Now your morning deco,

actually longer than the code,

have faith in your journey,

believing that consistent effort

will eventually lead to your success.

All right, well, let's go

ahead and hear from the experts.

Now it is time to pour in some atomic

habits by James Clear.

And today's section is forget about goals

focused on systems instead.

So James Clear, he

makes a bold claim here

that goals, they are overrated, okay?

Now that might surprise a lot of you

because society

constantly pushes goal setting,

fitness goals, career

goals, financial goals.

But Clear argues that

while goals are useful

for setting direction,

they're actually not what

drives success ultimately.

Instead, success comes

from building systems.

Clear writes this, quote,

"You do not rise to

the level of your goals,

you fall to the level of

your systems," end quote.

Now, goals are about results.

Systems are about the daily processes

that create those results.

So for example, many people

set a goal to run a marathon,

but the real driver of

success isn't the goal,

it's the training routine

that gets someone running

every single day, right?

Clear highlights

problem number one here, okay?

Winners and losers have the same goals.

Every Olympic athlete wants to win gold.

Every startup

business, they want to succeed.

Every student wants to get good grades,

but these goals alone,

they don't separate the

winners from the losers.

The difference is the system behind those

similar goals, okay?

All right, problem number two is this,

it's something that

many people experience.

Achieving a goal only

creates a temporary change.

So for example, someone may die intensely

to lose weight for an event, right?

But once that goal is achieved,

the system that created the

problem in the first place,

well, that returns

and so does the weight.

So, Clear explains that

focusing only on goals

is like treating symptoms

instead of the causes, okay?

The real transformation happens

when the underlying system changes.

He writes, quote, "Goals are

good for setting directions,

but systems are best for making

progress," end quote.

Now, the beauty of systems

is that they turn success

into something

repeatable and sustainable.

So instead of relying

on bursts of motivation,

systems create automatic responses

or automatic progress

through habits, right?

A writer who writes one

page per day has a system.

A business owner who reviews priorities

every morning has a system.

A person who prepares gym

clothes the night before,

well, they have a system, okay?

And over time, these

small structured behaviors,

they create potentially

extraordinary results, all right?

Here it is, your Monday takeaway.

Don't obsess over the finish line.

Build a system that

moves you forward every day.

All right, friends,

Monday is officially underway.

Trust the process, build the system,

and let the results follow.

All right, now the prize from

the bottom of the cereal box,

the morning cereal

trivia question of the day.

Here it is, what is the abbreviation

for deoxyribonucleic acid?

All right, hey, thanks for

listening to Morning Cereal.

We will see you back here tomorrow

for the answer to the trivia question

and for more sugar for the soul.

And until then, have a fantastic day.

Don't forget to follow and subscribe

to the Morning Cereal podcast

on the One Life Live It channel.

You can find more episodes and videos

by visiting our YouTube

channel and the website

at seaningless and at seaningless.com,

where you can also

follow our other podcasts,

the Mr. and Mrs. English podcast

and the Life Happens podcast.

And these other podcasts will 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.