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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 morning cereal
Okay, good morning and
welcome to Wednesday.
You've made it to the middle of the week,
and from what I understand,
it's mostly downhill from here.
Especially considering
today's National Bagel Day,
National Hat Day, and
National Strawberry Ice Cream Day.
So it seems like we've got
a nice little Wednesday going for us.
So let's just go ahead and jump straight
into today's episode
with today's quotes.
You know how we do it.
It's one fun, kind of 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 day
in a positive direction.
All right, here's the first one.
It's from Sir Paul McCartney,
and he had a lot of really
good quotes to choose from,
but this is the one that I chose
because it fits in so well
with our book review right now.
It's also probably
one of his most famous.
Here it is.
Quote, "In the end, the love you take
is equal to the love you make."
End quote.
Yeah, I think that fits pretty well
into our book review right now
if you're following along with us.
Okay, let's go ahead and
get in today's teaser quote.
Here it is.
If we want to make
friends and influence people,
let's put ourselves out to
do things for other people,
things that require time, energy,
unselfishness, and thoughtfulness.
Okay, as usual, we'll unpack that here
in just a minute during
the book review segment,
but first let's go ahead
and jump into our usual dose
of fun and historic facts
from this day in history.
Today's news facts are for January 15th.
All the way back in 1892,
that's when the basketball rules,
written by James Naismith,
they were first published
at the Triangle Magazine.
They are now housed in the Kansas
Jayhawks basketball arena,
Allen Field House.
That's at my alma mater at
the University of Kansas,
Rock Chalk.
In 1919, a storage
tank collapsed in Boston,
sending more than two
million gallons of molasses
flowing through the city's north end.
The Great Molasses Flood,
as it became to be known,
it caused extensive damage.
It killed 21 people.
Man, that is some serious syrup.
In 1943, the world's
largest office building,
the Pentagon, it was
completed to house the US military.
The Pentagon is now actually
the world's second
largest office building.
It's second to the Surat Diamond Bourse.
That's a new 7.1 million square foot
trading office in India.
The Pentagon was 6.6 million square feet,
so I think they are
aiming to beat that first off.
And by comparison, Apple's headquarters,
it's 2.8 million square feet.
Okay, in 1967, in the
first Super Bowl game,
the Green Bay Packers of
the National Football League
defeated the Kansas City Chiefs
of the American Football
League by a score of 35 to 10.
Now, as a side note, my
Broncos were knocked out
of the playoffs this past weekend,
so I'll have to go with
my fellow AFC West team,
the Kansas City
Chiefs, the rest of the way.
All right, 1974,
that's when the American
television series, Happy Days,
a nostalgic comedy set
during the 1950s and 60s,
it premiered on ABC.
Then in 1981, the police
drama, Hill Street Blues,
that premiered on NBC.
Okay, in 2001, Wikipedia,
the free internet based
encyclopedia, it was launched.
Dang, I really need to
give them that $2 donation
they keep asking for.
And finally, in 2009,
US Airways Flight 1549,
piloted by Captain
Chelsea Soli Solenberger III.
It landed in the Hudson
River after the plane flew
into a flock of geese
shortly after takeoff.
Do you remember that?
That was incredible.
It's also a really good movie.
All right, let's move
on to the birthdays.
Happy birthday.
If today is your birthday,
you share a birthday
with Martin Luther King Jr.
He was born on this date in 1929.
You probably already knew that one.
You may not have known though,
that you also share a
birthday with Regina King.
She's 54 and Drew Brees.
He's 46.
Now to the music of the
80s, the 90s and 2000s.
This was the number one song in 1984.
It was Say, Say, Say.
That was a
collaboration between Paul McCartney
and Michael Jackson.
This actually was not
their first collaboration.
Their first one was The Girl Is Mine.
And that song peaked out
on the Billboard top 100
at number two.
Michael Jackson wrote most of the lyrics
for the song Say, Say, Say,
while McCartney played
the guitar, the bass,
the synths and percussion.
The song Say, Say, Say was
number one for six weeks.
And it was Jackson's
seventh top 10 hit of 1983.
That broke a record
that was previously held
by the Beatles and Elvis.
There are a lot of interesting facts
related to this song.
In the video, Michael's love interest
was played by his sister.
Not surprising for the
Jackson family, I suppose.
And the video was filmed
on what would eventually
become Neverland Ranch.
And lastly, McCartney
apparently jokingly told Jackson
to buy the publishing
rights to the Beatles song
if you wanted to secure a
strong financial future.
And Michael did just
that a few years later.
And that led to a falling out
between Michael and McCartney.
All right.
The number one movie on this date in 1988
was Three Men and a Baby.
Okay.
I know the very first
thing that comes to my mind
when you think of this movie.
It's a good movie, funny movie, yes.
But you know what I'm gonna say.
The Ghost of the Dead
Kid in the Curtains?
How creepy was that?
Don't tell me you didn't
pause and rewind that scene
a million times to see that creepy kid
standing in the curtains.
Still kind of gives me the chills.
I know they say it was
a cut out of Ted Danson,
but I don't know.
We may just need to get
Josh Gates to investigate.
Okay.
Let's move on to some
personal growth here
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'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 all of us to use
and build healthy
foundational concepts to live by.
Now yesterday we
continued part two, chapter one
entitled Do This and You
Will Be Welcome Anywhere.
And Carnegie is walking
us through the importance
of taking a real
genuine interest in people.
Not just friending
someone on social media,
but the people that will show
up when you need help moving
or when you're sick or
when you need a kidney.
I know that's extreme,
but Carnegie is
wanting us to hone the skill
of taking real interest in other people.
And in turn, they
will take interest in us.
That's putting positivity out there
and receiving it back, right?
Okay.
So we left off yesterday
talking about how someone
as important and busy as
President Roosevelt was,
but he still took the time to slow down
and to be genuinely
interested in the people around him,
even his lowest level support employees.
And in doing so, he won
the admiration of them all.
Carnegie continues on this point of
taking time and interest
in the quote,
seemingly unimportant people
who I would describe as
more peripheral people,
but Carnegie talks about
an account of a salesperson
who took the time to
talk with the soda clerk
and the sales clerk prior to heading back
to talk with the owner.
And one day when the
salesman arrived, he said hello
and he made the small
talk with the soda clerk
and the sales clerk
before basically being tossed
out of the store
because the owner was upset
that the salesman's company was selling
to larger national chains and in turn,
not supporting the smaller local stores.
Well, after a few
hours of thinking about it,
the salesman decided
to go back to the store,
only to be welcomed
by the owner this time.
And when asked why, the owner said
that the soda clerk came up to him
after he previously
kicked the salesman out,
mentioning that the
salesman was one of the very few
that ever took the time to talk to him
and that if anyone
deserved the sale, it was him.
The owner agreed and
remained a loyal customer.
And the salesperson said, quote,
"I never forgot that to
be genuinely interested
"in other people is as
most important a quality
"for a salesperson to possess,
"for any person for
that matter," end quote.
Following this account, Carnegie writes
that he has, quote,
"discovered from personal experience
"that one can win the
attention and time and cooperation
"of even the most sought after people
"by becoming genuinely
interested in them," end quote.
And I'd point out here that in line
with being genuinely
interested in people,
we need to remember what we learned
yesterday from Carnegie.
And that is this concept of being
genuinely, authentically,
a person that is interested in putting
positivity out there
without expectation of gain,
or just simple interest in
people, it may fall flat.
Recall the story of the
editor who could identify
if the writer of a
story liked people or not.
People will be able to discern
how authentic your interest really is.
So Carnegie illustrates
this point through a story
of when he was teaching a writing course
at the Brooklyn
Institute of Arts and Sciences,
and he wanted some
very distinguished authors
to come to speak to the class
and share their experiences.
So he wrote to them
saying he admired their work
and was deeply
interested in getting their advice
and learning their secrets to success.
And each letter was signed by the 150
students in the class,
and the letter
mentioned how they realized
how busy these other people must be.
And they did not expect
them to prepare a lecture,
but instead they
included a list of questions
for them to answer about
themselves and their work methods.
Well, as you might've guessed, this
method was successful.
And not only did it work on the authors,
but similarly, Carnegie
was able to get such speakers
as the Secretary of the
Treasury and the Attorney General,
among other prominent people, to come
speak to his classes.
Carnegie says that all of us,
from factory workers to office workers,
to stay-at-home parents,
all the way up to presidents and kings,
all of us like people who admire us.
Carnegie tells a
quick story to this point
about the German Kaiser at
the close of World War I.
Carnegie says this
about the Kaiser, quote,
"He was probably the most savagely
and universally
despised man on this earth.
Even his own nation turned against him
when he fled over into
Holland to save his neck.
The hatred against him was so intense
that millions of people would have loved
to tear him limb from limb
or burn him at the stake."
But amongst all these
people that hated him,
apparently one little boy
still admired the Kaiser,
and he sent him a letter
saying that he loved him,
and no matter what,
he would always be
the little boy's Kaiser.
Well, the Kaiser invited
the boy to come meet him,
and the boy came and so did his mother,
and the Kaiser ended up marrying the mom.
So the story maybe isn't a
good example of good parenting,
but it does illustrate for Carnegie how
instinctive it can be
for us to show interest
in people and admire them.
Carnegie sums it up well, saying, quote,
"If we want to make
friends and influence people,
let's put ourselves out to
do things for other people,
things that require time, energy,
unselfishness and
thoughtfulness," end quote.
And if you're like me,
that sounds really nice,
but it feels harder to
implement on a daily,
even an hourly basis.
But that's the point of this book, right?
To change our lives, to
change the way we think,
and God forbid for some
personal growth, right?
Okay, nice job.
Come back tomorrow as
Carnegie offers more insights,
and we'll hear a story of how
a small act of thoughtfulness
earned someone a second
chance at a first impression.
Okay, take a moment today to do some
small act of kindness
for someone else, and
do one for yourself too.
You're halfway through the week,
so just keep putting one
foot in front of the other,
and eventually you're
gonna get where you're going.
Have a fantastic day, and
we'll see you back here tomorrow.
(upbeat music)
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.