Good morning.
And welcome to morning cereal
Okay, good morning and welcome to Monday
and a brand new work week.
I guess I think of Mondays as the start
of the week even
though some people consider
Sunday as the start to the week.
Well, I Googled it and according to the
ISO, which is the
International Organization for
Standardization, ISO rule 8601.
Yes, this is very formal.
It has its own number and everything.
But in 1971, the ISO established that
Mondays were the beginning
of the week in daily life
and in business and Monday through Sunday
are indicated by the numbers 1 through 7.
However, apparently only in the US and in
Canada do some people
still consider Sunday
as the first day of the week.
Where do you fall on this
most serious of subjects?
Hey, also happy bubble
wrap appreciation day.
Let's get into it.
Today's quotes, one fun nostalgic quote
and then a second quote
to tease our book review
later in the episode.
Hopefully one of these quotes will speak
to you and jumpstart
your week in a positive
direction.
Here we go.
The first quote is from the
movie Legends of the Fall.
"Some people hear their own inner voices
with great clearness
and they live by what they
hear.
Such people become crazy
or they become legends."
Man, I really hope I'm
in the latter of the two.
And today's teaser quote from the book
review is, "Good manners are
made up of petty sacrifices."
That's Waldo Emerson who said that and as
usual, we'll unpack
that here in just 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.
Now, today's facts are for January 27th.
Way back in 1820, a Russian Antarctic
expedition, they discovered
the continent of Antarctica.
In 1945, the Nazi concentration camps in
Auschwitz, Poland, they were
finally liberated by Soviet
troops on this date.
And as such, today is international
Holocaust Remembrance Day.
This day in 1951 recorded the first
atomic detonation at
the Nevada test sites.
And in 1956, the song Heartbreak Hotel
was released by RCA
Records, who had just bought
out Elvis' contract from Sun Records for
just $35,000 by the way.
Turned out to probably be a pretty smart
move on the label's part,
as this song in particular
would eventually sell
over a million copies.
And it became
Presley's first gold record.
And in 1970, the movie rating system
modified the M2PG ratings.
In 1976, the first episode of the sitcom
Laverne and Shirley, a
spinoff of Happy Days, it aired
on ABC.
Do you remember the opening credits where
the two women were
working in the bottling
plant I think it was and
they put a glove on the bottle?
Man, that takes me way back.
And lastly, if you were to be browsing
the TV Guide on this
date back in 1995, you would
have seen shows like Family Matters, Boy
Meets World, The X-Files, and 2020.
Okay, let's move on to birthdays.
Happy birthday if today is your birthday.
You share a birthday with
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
As you know, he's an Austrian composer
and he was born on
this date back in 1756.
Interestingly, he only
lived to be 35 years old.
Also Edward Smith, he was born in 1850.
You may not know that name off the top of
your head, but he was
the captain of the RMS
Titanic.
And lastly, Mike Patton
of the band Faith No More.
He turns 57 today.
Now to the music and the movies of the
80s, 90s, and 2000s.
The number one song on this date in 1989
was Two Hearts by Phil Collins.
Two Hearts was written
for the 1988 movie Buster.
Haven't heard of it?
Me either.
The movie soundtrack had two number one
songs, including Two
Hearts and A Groovy Kind of
Love.
The song Two Hearts won a Grammy in 1989
for the best song
written for a motion picture
or television.
And for Collins, this was his sixth US
number one hit as a solo
artist and his fifth as
a songwriter.
I love me some Phil Collins.
And the number one movie on this date in
1995 was Legends of the Fall.
This movie stars Brad Pitt, Anthony
Hopkins, and Henry Thomas.
And it won the Academy
Award for Best Cinematography.
Honestly, I don't remember if I've seen
this movie or not, but
my wife said she loved
it and that we have to watch it.
So more to come on this one.
Okay, let's start this week off with 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 we're still currently reading through
Dale Carnegie's How to
Win Friends and Influence
People.
This is a timeless book and it's
consistently on 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.
Now yesterday we started chapter three of
part two, which was
entitled, If You Don't
Do This, You Are Headed for Trouble.
In the first half of this chapter,
Carnegie is hammering
home the fact that people are
proud of their names.
And he's given several examples of
successful people that
have discovered the importance
of remembering and using people's names.
Carnegie recounts a story about P.T.
Barnum, the greatest showman of his time,
who was disappointed
that he had no sons to
carry on his name.
Well, the story goes that
he offered his grandson, C.H.
Seeley, $25,000 if he would just call
himself Barnum Seeley.
Now consider throughout history the
honors that have been
bestowed on people to have
works of arts or books
and songs dedicated to them.
Libraries and museums are named after or
have the richest
collections named after people.
Stained glass windows in most churches
commemorate their donors.
Hospitals have wings named after them.
And Carnegie has a sense of humor about
this and a sense of
sarcasm throughout the book
at times.
And to this point, he lays it on a bit
thick saying of people who
have their name on libraries,
etc., are people that "cannot bear to
think that their names
might perish from the memory
of the race."
He's just building the case of how
important people's names are to them.
And Carnegie believes that most people
simply just don't take the
time and energy to remember
names and often use the excuse for
themselves that they are just too busy.
But Carnegie asks if we are more busy
than Franklin D.
Roosevelt, who "took the time
to remember and recall even the names of
mechanics with whom
he came into contact."
And Carnegie illustrated this with a
story about how the car
company Chrysler had built
Roosevelt a special car because, as you
recall, Roosevelt was
paralyzed from the waist down.
So the car was delivered to Roosevelt by
W.F. Chamberlain and a
mechanic so that they could
teach him how to use it, given it had all
these extra gadgets
and was not a standard
car.
And Chamberlain said this of his
experience, "I taught
President Roosevelt how to handle
a car with a lot of unusual gadgets, but
he taught me a lot about
the fine art of handling
people."
While Roosevelt learned Chamberlain's
name throughout the
demonstration and in front
of a somewhat large crowd that had
gathered to see the car, he
continued to use Chamberlain's
name saying, "Mr. Chamberlain, I
certainly appreciate all
the time and effort you spent
in developing this car.
It's a mighty fine job."
He openly gave Chamberlain appreciation
while calling him by name.
Now I know I feel good when the cashier
at the local store
knows my name, let alone the
president.
And as the delivery of the car was
drawing to a close,
Roosevelt sought out the mechanic
that came with Chamberlain.
The mechanic was shy and kept in the
background most of the day
and Roosevelt only heard his
name once.
But before leaving, Roosevelt looked for
the mechanic, shook his
hand and called him by
name thanking him for
coming down to Washington.
And a few days later, Chamberlain and the
mechanic received a
thank you letter and an
autographed picture
from President Roosevelt.
Carnegie says here that Roosevelt "knew
that one of the
simplest, most obvious and most
important ways of gaining goodwill was by
remembering names and
making people feel important."
And Carnegie again asks the readers, "yet
how many of us do that?"
Carnegie reminds the reader and he knows
that his examples have
been about politicians here
where forgetting a voter's name is to
forget is oblivion, as Carnegie says it.
But Carnegie reminds us that the ability
to remember names is just as important in
business and socially.
Carnegie also acknowledges that
remembering people's names takes effort.
Some people have to write the names down
and repeat them to set them to memory.
Or other people have
their own way of doing it.
And Carnegie quotes Emerson here saying
that yes, all this takes
time but "good manners,"
said Emerson, "are made
up of petty sacrifices."
Carnegie closes out the chapter with a
story about how this is
not just for presidents
and executives.
But he uses this example of a factory
worker who at lunchtime
starts using the lunch lady's
name and he got more chips on his plate
and he got more ham on his sandwich.
Carnegie ends the chapter saying this,
"We should be aware of
the magic contained in
a name and realize that this single item
is wholly completely
owned by the person with
whom we are dealing and nobody else.
The name sets the individual apart.
It makes him or her
unique among all others.
The information we are imparting or the
request that we are making
takes on a special importance
when we approach the situation with the
name of the individual."
And it works with
everyone that we might encounter.
Here is Carnegie's Principle 3 of Part 2.
Remember that a person's name is to that
person the sweetest
and most important sound
in any language.
Great job!
We finished another chapter and we
continue to learn the tools to win
friends and influence
people.
So far in Part 2 we have learned
Carnegie's Principle 1,
become genuinely interested
in other people.
Principle 2 was "Smile" and now Principle
3, remember that a
person's name is to that
person the sweetest and most important
sound in any language.
Come back tomorrow as we'll begin Chapter
4 of Part 2 and that's entitled "An Easy
Way to Become a Good Conversationalist."
Alright, I love that Carnegie's pointers
and his advice are so
easily digestible, but
we can't miss the fact that they can be
so materially life
changing if we implement
them in a genuine way.
Well, I genuinely hope you're off to a
great start today and
you feel like your skis are
pointed downhill.
You'll have a fantastic Monday and we'll
see you back here
tomorrow for the start of
Chapter 4.
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 podcasts, 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.