Good morning.
And welcome to morning cereal
Okay, good morning and welcome to Monday.
Wow, what a Super Bowl.
That was one for the ages.
And I can't believe that ending,
who would have thought the
insert winning team's name here
would have pulled that
out in the very last play.
And how did they get the
Budweiser horses to do that?
And Kelsey's and
Taylor's incredibly vicious
and public breakup
during the halftime show?
I did not see that coming.
Well, clearly I haven't seen the game yet
because I record these
before the game happened,
but I hope it proved out
to be just as entertaining.
I also hope you are recovering
from one of the biggest eating and
snacking days of the year.
And just in case you have room for more,
today is National
Cream Cheese Brownie Day.
Also, and I'm not kidding
here, it's National Poop Day.
So maybe that's timely.
And just a quick public
service reminder here,
we have 130 days until
summer and to be beach body ready.
So there's no time to waste.
Maybe one of today's
quotes will inspire us
to lose that winter weight.
Well, let's find out
now because as usual,
we have one fun and 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 kickstart your week
in a positive direction.
All right, here's the first quote.
And it's our second
time quoting Jim Carrey.
And he said, quote,
"As far as I can tell,
"it's just about letting the
universe know what you want
"and then working towards it.
"While letting go of
how it comes to pass."
End quote.
And I like this.
It's similar to how I think about
the opportunities life gives us.
At times, life will open doors for you,
but it's incumbent on you
to actually step forward
in faith and in confidence
and walk through that door.
You have no chance if
you don't take action.
And today's teaser quote
from the book review is,
"If you argue and wrinkle and contradict,
"you may achieve a victory sometimes,
"but it will be an empty victory
"because you will never get your
opponent's goodwill."
And as usual, we'll unpack that here
in just a few minutes
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 and
birthdays are for January 10th.
In 1940, the first Tom and
Jerry cartoon was released.
In 1942, Glenn Miller and his orchestra,
they were awarded the
first ever gold record
for selling one million copies of the
Chattanooga Choo-Choo.
Then skipping up to 1989,
that's when the WWF admitted
and shocked the world, I might add,
that pro wrestling is an
exhibition and not a sport.
I can't believe that's not real.
And in 1990, the spacecraft Galileo,
it flew past Venus on its way to Jupiter.
Then in 1993, Michael
Jackson granted his first interview
in 14 years to none
other than Oprah Winfrey
at his Neverland Ranch.
And the show aired on ABC
and it drew an
incredible 90 million viewers.
Then in 1996, the
supercomputer, Deep Blue,
you might remember that,
it became the first computer
to win a chess game against a reigning
human world champion.
However, Team Human
rallied and Gary Kasaprov,
he proceeded to win
the match four to two.
Note that Deep Blue won a
rematch in the following year.
And then finally, in
2006, the final episode
of Arrested Development aired on Fox.
Well, happy birthday to you.
If today's your
birthday, you share a birthday
with a bunch of TV
and radio personalities,
Glenn Beck, George
Stephanopoulos, and Jim Cramer.
Also, US track and field
sprinter, Justin Gatlin, he's 42.
Actress Elizabeth Banks, she's 51.
Pro golfer, Greg Norman, he's 70.
And Roberta Flack, singer of songs like
"Killing Me Softly",
"Tonight I Celebrate My Love",
and "The First Time I
Ever Saw Your Face",
she turns 88 today.
And the number one song
on this date is a song
that I picked
especially in honor of the fact
that some of you and
your team may not have won
this Super Bowl.
And with that in mind, the
number one song on this date
in 1997 was "Unbreak My
Heart" by Tony Braxton.
This song was originally
intended for "Slean Dion",
one of my all-time favorites,
but Braxton won the
Grammy for the song in 1997,
and it became one of the
best-selling singles of all time
with over 100 million
copies sold worldwide.
The song was number one
for 11 weeks straight,
and I highlighted it just in time
because it ended its run at number one
the week of February 15th.
And the number one
movie on this date in 1994
was "Ace Ventura", "Pet Detective",
starring Jim Carrey.
Now I've seen this movie scores of times.
Yes, I use the word scores,
probably more than any other movie scene,
and most of them
sitting on my buddy's couch.
Shout out to Mr. Franks.
But I haven't seen it in like 25 years,
so I think it might be
time to reintroduce it
to the next generation.
So many quotable lines in this movie too,
and too many to mention,
and I won't put you through the agony
of me half-acting those quotes.
But one thing I did not know
was that Carrey based
the character of Ace
off of a smart bird, like
a cockatiel or a parakeet.
The clothing was bright and
colorful like a tropical bird.
His walk was like a bird.
He talked like a bird, and even his
haircut was like a bird.
Alrighty then, onto 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're
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 us all to use and build healthy
foundational concepts
to live by.
Last week, we began part three
of "How to Win Friends
and Influence People",
which is entitled "How to Win People
to Your Way of Thinking".
And Carnegie threw us
straight into the deep end
with chapter one, "You
Can't Win an Argument".
Where Carnegie is making the point
that there are no winners in an argument,
and he left us with a
rhyming quote, quote,
"A man convinced against his will
is of the same opinion still", end quote.
Carnegie next tells a
story about a car salesman
that came to his class
because he wasn't being
very successful at selling cars.
And it turns out that
the salesman had a bit
of a fiery streak, and
he would end up arguing
with potential clients if
they said anything negative
about the cars he was selling,
or if they were saying
something positive and supportive
about the competitor's car.
Well, the salesman said
he'd come out of these meetings
saying that he sure told them something,
but he hadn't sold them anything, and
that was the problem.
And he learned from Carnegie not to argue
with his customers.
Maybe in hindsight, he
could have figured that one out.
I mean, I could have told him that.
But Carnegie's advice to the salesman
was to agree with his clients.
If he simply agreed that the
competitor's car was better,
then there was nothing
left to say about it.
I mean, what are they going to do?
Keep going on and on about it?
No, he already had agreed.
But with that now aside, the
salesman could talk to them
about his cars, and he
became a much more successful
car salesman.
Wise old Benjamin Franklin said, quote,
"If you argue and wrinkle and contradict,
"you may achieve a victory sometimes,
"but it will be an empty victory
"because you will never get your
opponent's good will."
End quote.
And to this point, Carnegie
says it's up to you to decide
how you want to handle these situations,
asking if you'd rather, quote,
"Have an academic theatrical victory
"or a person's good will.
"You can seldom have both."
End quote.
Carnegie is saying plain
as day that in an argument,
we might be right.
We might be 100% correct.
But even in that
case, more often than not,
you are not going to
change the other person's mind,
which means the argument will be in vain.
If you don't change
the other person's mind,
then it's just like you
were wrong in the first place.
Here, Carnegie unpacks a
bit more how people's need
to feel important.
It is, or it can be, filled in an
argumentative situation.
He illustrates this through story.
And this story starts with an argument
between a tax consultant and
a government tax inspector.
Well, they were arguing back
and forth about who was right
regarding a certain tax regulation.
The consultant noticed
that the more he pushed back,
the more the tax
inspector was digging in.
The consultant said
the inspector was, quote,
"cold, arrogant, and stubborn."
The consultant then changed
strategies to stop arguing,
to find some
appreciation for the inspector.
And the consultant told the inspector
this was likely a very petty matter,
in comparison to the
important and difficult decisions
the tax inspector usually dealt with,
and that he, the consultant, got his
knowledge from books,
whereas the tax inspector's job meant
that he was on the front
lines getting his experience,
and that he wished he had a
job like that of the inspector's,
as it would teach him a lot.
Well, that changed the
direction of the conversation.
The inspector
lightened up as he talked about
the difficulties of his job,
and again, long story long,
the conversation ended
up on a friendly note
with the inspector
saying that he would look
into the matter further,
and he eventually came around
to the consultant's perspective.
Here's the point.
People want to feel important.
When we choose to argue with someone,
they are finding their sense of
importance from within
by defending their position,
puffing up their
standing in life and digging in.
Focusing on winning
the argument at all costs
is what makes them feel important.
But as soon as the other
person, let's say you and I,
as soon as we note the
other person's importance,
that box is checked.
Their defenses fall.
They don't have to find
importance from within
by defending themselves now.
We gave it to them freely,
and Carnegie says then people are, quote,
"Permitted to expand their ego
and become sympathetic
and kindly human beings."
Let's end today's review and sum it up
with a quote from Buddha saying, quote,
"Hatred is never ended by
hatred, but by love," end quote,
to which Carnegie says, quote,
"And a misunderstanding is
never ended by an argument,
but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation,
and a sympathetic desire
to see the other
person's viewpoint," end quote.
Well, this lesson on
avoiding arguments is timely
as we all prepare to argue
about the official's terrible
call from the game yesterday,
or the official's terrible
no-call from the game yesterday.
Either way, thank you for joining today.
Come back tomorrow as
we finish chapter one
and we learn Carnegie's
first principle of part three,
of how to win people
to your way of thinking.
Head into this week with
optimism and the courage
to walk through the doors
that life opens for you.
Take it one step at a
time and you'll get there.
You've got this.
We'll see you tomorrow
and have a fantastic day.
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 seaningless
and at seaningless.com, where you can
also follow our other
podcast, the Mr. and Mrs.
Inglis 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