Good morning.
And welcome to morning cereal
Guess what day it is.
Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike,
Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike.
Guess what day it is.
Well, it's Wednesday,
people, and good morning to you.
Welcome to hump day.
Did you know that the camel's character
in the Geico
commercials, camel's name was Caleb.
Again, the more you know.
Hey, happy disaster day.
Yep, that's exactly what it sounds like.
It's for raising
awareness and the importance
of being prepared in proactive mitigants
so that when disasters do
happen, we're ready for them.
Maybe a little easier
to swallow is it's also
National Chocolate Fondue Day.
Still not exciting enough
for you on this hump day?
Well, it's also National
Shower with a Friend Day.
I'll let you look that one up,
but it's actually much more G-rated
than the name would suggest.
But you do you.
You know we encourage that on this show.
On that note, let's go ahead and jump
into today's quotes.
One fun, nostalgic
quote, and then a second quote
to tease our book review
here later in the episode.
Hopefully one of these
quotes will speak to you
and kickstart your day
in a positive direction.
Okay, the first quote is
from the singer Boy George.
And he said, quote,
"My life hasn't always been a disaster.
It's just that when it has,
it's been a spectacular disaster."
Well, ditto to that.
That's part of life, right?
There are ups and there's downs.
The key is to learn from
them and to keep moving forward.
And today's teaser quote
from the book review is,
quote, "The life of many a person
could probably be changed
if only someone would
make him feel important."
End quote.
As usual, we'll unpack that
here in just a few minutes
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 and
birthdays are for January 5th.
Okay, way back in 1869,
the biggest gold
nugget in history was found.
It was named the Welcome Stranger
and it was discovered
in Melokia, Australia.
It had a gross weight of 173 pounds.
I once found a $5 bill once on the ground
and I was pretty happy about that.
Moving on, in 1909,
the world's first
synthetic plastic was developed
by Belgian chemist Leo Bacaland.
In 1934, baseball
legend Hank Aaron was born.
In 1936, the movie Modern Times,
was the silent film
directed and written and starring,
Charlie Chaplin.
It was released.
You'll remember the
scene of Charlie Chaplin
as a factory worker working in a room
with these huge wheeled cogs.
In 1969, the United States population
reached 200 million.
Today, it's estimated at
between 337 and 347 million.
In 1983, Def Leppard's album, Pyromania,
started a 92-week run on the US charts.
Although it never reached number one,
but it sold over 6
million copies in the US alone.
In 2003, the US
Secretary of State, Colin Powell,
he appeared before the
United Nations Security Council
to present evidence
that Iraq possessed weapons
of mass destruction and it
posed an immediate danger.
And then finally, in 2004, Janet Jackson,
she became the most searched for image
in the history of the internet,
just a few days after Jackson's
and Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl show,
wardrobe malfunction.
And happy birthday to you.
Today is your birthday.
You share your birthday with Brazilian
soccer player, Neymar.
He's 33.
And a fellow soccer player,
Portuguese soccer
player, Cristian Ronaldo.
He turns 40 today.
Singer Bobby Brown, I'm not
sure if it's his prerogative,
but he's 56 today.
And then actress Laura Linney, she's 61.
You might remember her
from shows like Ozark
and Love Actually.
And the number one movie on
this date in 2000 was Scream 3,
a classic West Craven thriller
and sort of a middle child movie
because there were seven
movies in the franchise.
At the time of its release,
Scream 3 broke the record
for the most amount of screens
it was showing on in its
opening weekend, 3,467,
if that means anything to you.
By comparison, the movie Titanic was
shown on 2,674 screens
during its opening weekend.
Well, because of
national events happening
around the time of its release,
the movie company reduced the amount
of onscreen violence and blood.
The film used only 10
gallons of fake blood
compared to 50 gallons of fake blood
in the first Scream movie.
The number one song on
this date back in 1984
was Karma Chameleon by Culture Club.
This is another
quintessential iconic 80s song.
Some of the best music
ever came from this decade.
Well, interestingly, Boy
George, who wrote this song
while he was in Egypt as a side note,
he had to fight to get
this song onto the CD
because the rest of the band hated it.
But Boy George says it's about the
alienation people fear
if they stand up to others.
And instead, you just kiss up to everyone
and you aren't true to yourself
or you don't act like yourself.
Then you get Karma Justice.
And that's the meaning behind the song.
Okay, that's way deeper
than I thought this song was.
I really need to start listening
to the lyrics more closely.
Great song and a great transition
to some personal growth
in the book review segment
of The Morning Serial.
As you know, 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's consistently
on all the must read lists
and it's packed with rock solid advice
and actions for all of us to use
and to build healthy foundational
concepts to live by.
Yesterday, we were still
in chapter six of part two,
which is entitled How to
Make People Like You Instantly.
And Carnegie is reminding us that, quote,
"The desire to be
important is the deepest urge
in human nature," end quote.
He is hammering home the
philosophy of treating others
as we would like to be treated
by handing out sincere appreciation
because that, along with
some basic good manners,
can open countless doors
because appreciation feeds
our need to feel important.
Quote, "The life of many a person
could probably be changed
if only someone would make him feel
important," end quote.
That's a quote from Ronald Roland,
an instructor of
Carnegie's courses in California.
And Carnegie shares a letter
that Roland had written him
about a student in one of his classes.
Roland taught other classes
and one of them was an advanced class
that had become a bit of a status symbol
and a privilege for a
student to be accepted in.
Well, one day, Roland
approached a shy boy
who Roland thought he, quote,
"Had an inner fire deep inside him,
but was often overlooked
because of his quiet, shy nature.
The boy was shocked and said,
"Who, me?" when Roland asked him
if he'd like to join the advanced class.
"Am I good enough?" asked the boy.
And Roland replied, "Yes, you
are good enough," end quote.
Roland had to turn
and leave at that point
because tears were coming into his eyes
as they were in the boy's eyes as well.
Roland wrote to Carnegie
that that boy taught him
a lesson he would never forget, quote,
"Our deep desire to
feel important," end quote.
Carnegie follows up the
story with a bit of straight talk
and he says, quote,
"The unvarnished truth is
that almost all other people you meet
feel themselves superior to
you in some way," end quote.
And Carnegie is showing
us that the guaranteed way
to win someone over, again,
in a genuine and sincere way,
is to show that person
through subtle actions
and comments that you
recognize their importance.
And Carnegie, again, reminds us
what Emerson said
earlier in the book, quote,
"Every man I meet is
my superior in some way.
In that, I learn of him," end quote.
Carnegie's straight talk continues
when he calls out those
people that feel the need
to let everyone else know
just how important they are
and they toot their own horns constantly.
Of these types of
people that we all know,
Carnegie says this, quote,
"And the pathetic part
of it is that frequently,
those who have the least justification
for a feeling of
achievement bolster up their egos
by a show of tumult
bragging and building themselves up
and conceit, which is
truly nauseating," end quote.
Carnegie gives a couple of
short examples in the book
about how even just little
acts of honest appreciation
for someone can open up
a spring of gratitude.
In the first example,
a husband was visiting his wife's aunt,
clearly a well-off aunt
who was older and widowed.
When left alone with her,
he looked for something to admire
and spoke to her of how
beautiful her house was.
Well, she told him about how her husband
and she had designed it
and how they filled it with
special items from their travels
and she spoke to him of the love that
once filled the house.
And she took him to the garage
where there was a
basically new car up on a lift
that her husband had bought
her before he passed away.
And she said she was
going to give it to him.
Why?
Because she said he
appreciated beautiful things
and she wanted it to go to someone who
would appreciate it.
Carnegie says she wanted a
little genuine appreciation.
She was craving human warmth.
And when she got that from him,
her gratitude poured out
and could only be expressed
by insisting on giving him this new car.
In the second story,
a man who had also taken Carnegie's class
on how to win friends
and influence people,
well, this man was a landscaper
and the owner came out of his house
to give him a few instructions.
The landscaper was
aware of the owner's hobby,
which was breeding award-winning dogs.
And he mentioned that he admired the
owner's beautiful dogs
and acknowledged that he knew
that he had won many blue ribbons.
Well, the owner spent
nearly an hour and a half
with a landscaper
talking about his hobby.
And in the end, he gave
the landscaper a puppy
to take home to his young son.
And all because, quote,
"I had expressed my honest appreciation
for his hobby and his
achievements," end quote.
In a chapter entitled,
"How to Make People Like You,"
Carnegie again is
hitting home this notion
of finding something
to admire about a person
and genuinely letting them know about it.
And in doing so,
we unlock a great gift
for the other person,
giving them a feeling of importance
and also winning a
friend over for ourselves.
Tomorrow, we'll finish chapter six
and learn Carnegie's
final principle of part two.
And we'll also hear a story about the
power of appreciation
that talks about George Eastman.
He's the inventor of Kodak film
who's worth hundreds of
million dollars even back then.
So be sure to come back tomorrow
and join us for those discussions.
Okay, take a moment to find something
to admire about others today.
Start letting those new habits take root.
All right, get out there.
Have a great hump day.
You're on the downhill
side of the week nearly.
Stay focused, stay
positive, and you'll make it.
Thanks again for joining us today.
Come back tomorrow as we
learn principle number six
and have a fantastic day.
Don't forget to follow and subscribe to
the Morning Serial podcast on
the OneLife 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. 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.