Good morning.
And welcome to morning cereal
Okay, good morning and welcome to
Tuesday. Now,
yesterday I promised you that I
would tell you what the origin of how the
month of March got its name. Well,
March comes from Mardius, which is the
first month of the Roman calendar, and
it's named after the Roman god of war.
And as spring came upon the earth, it
meant that war could again be waged with
the nicer weather. So Mardius, or March,
it marked the beginning of the season of
warfare. I told you it wasn't a feel-good
story, but it's still interesting. Today
is also brain injury awareness day,
national backcountry ski day, which I
like that one, and
world obesity day. Okay,
let's march into today's episode with
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
kick-start your day in a positive
direction. The first quote was from funny
man actor John Candy, who said,
"As long as you can savor the humorous
aspect of misery and misfortune, you can
overcome anything." And not every day is
going to go our way. If we can
find our way through it, though, even
better finding humor in it, then at least
we know the sun will come up tomorrow.
And today's teaser quote for the book
review is, quote, "learned from
experience the enormous
chemical value of sympathy
in neutralizing the acid of hard
feelings," end quote. 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 March 4th. Starting back in 1789,
that's when the US Constitution went into
effect as the governing law of the
United States. Then in 1837, Chicago was
incorporated as a city with a population
of 4,200. Then in 1924, the song "Happy
Birthday," it was published by Clayton
Sunney. Then skipping up to 1952, on this
date, Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis were
married. And in 1974, on this date,
People magazine was
launched. Then in 1983, on
this date, Harrison Ford married
screenwriter Melissa Mathison. They
actually divorced in 2004. And then you
might remember on this date in 1990, the
college basketball player Hank Gathers.
This is the day he collapsed on the
basketball court. And then in 1994, John
Candy, he passed away of a heart attack
at the age of 43. Well, let's move on to
birthdays and celebrate those who are
still with us. Happy birthday. If today
is your birthday, you share a birthday
with actress Catherine O'Hara. She's 71
today. And Jason Neustad, he's the bass
player from Metallica. He's 62 today. And
the number one movie on this date back
in 1991 was "The Silence of the Lambs."
And you might remember that we featured
the follow-up movie "Hannibal" around
Valentine's Day. But the original movie,
"Silence of the Lambs," it was a huge
hit. And it was only
the third movie to win
all the big five Oscars. Best Picture,
Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director,
and Best Screenplay. It was actually the
last movie to do that as well. The other
two movies were "It Happened One Night"
back in 1935, and "One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest" back in 1976. There's a
ton of neat facts
about this movie, but the
one I'll just mention here is the popular
belief and the popular quote that
Dr. Lector says, where he says, "Hello,
Clarice." When
actually he never said that
in the movie. He actually said, "Good
evening, Clarice." Either way, it's still
creepy. Well, the number one song in this
date back in 1992 was "To Be With You" by
Mr. Big. And I'm curious how many people
remember this song. It definitely takes
me back to junior high or high school
crushes, but I believe it was also used
in the TV show "Melrose Place" or
something like that. So it had its
moments, but it was inspired by a girl
that only wanted to be friends with the
writer, who obviously wanted more. He
wanted to be with her. The song was at
number one for about three weeks, and it
was the band's only number one hit. Well,
let's move on to some personal growth
today 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 in 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. And on Friday, we
began chapter 9 of part 3 with that
chapter entitled "What Everybody Wants."
And Carnegie believes that the vast
majority of people out there are just
thirsting for sympathy and that we
Carnegie also gave us a magic phrase, if
you remember, that will stop people in
their tracks. It'll stop arguments, and
it'll calm them down. And this is that
magic phrase, quote, "I don't blame you
one iota for feeling as you do. If I were
you, I would undoubtedly feel just as you
do," end quote. And Carnegie says this
statement is true because if we were
truly the other person, then we'd have
had their experiences. We'd be in their
environment. We'd have their temperament,
their perspective, and you would truly
make the same decision or have the same
feeling as them because you'd be them and
not you. We'll finish chapter 9 today,
and Carnegie continues with another tale,
this time about President Taft. And Taft
had given an amusing account of an
example of how he, quote, "learned from
experience the enormous chemical value of
sympathy in neutralizing the acid of hard
feelings," end quote. And as the story
goes, a rather aggressive mother, we'll
say, was attempting to get her son
appointed to a position in President
Taft's administration. And her husband
had some political
influence which allowed
the mother to gain the recommendations of
several senators and congressmen on
behalf of her son. And the mother
attended these meetings just to ensure
that they spoke with the correct amount
of emphasis. Well, the position was one
that required some technical expertise,
which her son did not have. And based on
the recommendation of the head of an
agency, Taft recommended somebody else
for the position, someone that was
actually more qualified. And as you may
have guessed, the mother of the applicant
who did not get the job, well, she wrote
Taft a blistering letter detailing how
ungrateful Taft was
after all of her hard work,
and he could have made her a happy mother
by just the wave of his hand. Taft wrote
back a letter meeting her severity with
his own. But he was
disciplined and he did not
mail that letter. And two days later,
when he had cooled
down, he wrote a polite
letter as politely as he could to the
mom. And it said that
he understood what a
disappointment it must have been, but her
son was not qualified
for the position and
that he had hoped the best for him in his
future. And was that enough for the mom?
Nope. With the confirmation of the other
applicant slightly
delayed, Taft received yet
another letter on behalf of the son that
was passed over. And
this time supposedly from
the father. And this is where the
humorous part comes in
because although this time the
letter was supposedly from the father,
and Taft makes the point rather
humorously here that it
was written in the same handwriting as
all the other letters from
the mother. But this time, the
letter stated that because of her son's
not being picked for the
position, that the mother had
developed cancer of the stomach. And
wouldn't Taft just restore
her to health by withdrawing
the confirmation of the other person and
choosing her son
instead? Over the top, right?
Taft, now more resolute, wrote another
nice letter back to the quote "husband"
saying that he hoped
the diagnosis of his wife was inaccurate
and that he sympathized with
her because Taft's wife too
struggled with a serious illness. And
finally that it was
impossible to withdraw the other
man's confirmation. Well, two days later,
both the husband and the
wife attended a musical at
the White House and they were the first
two to greet Mrs. Taft and
President Taft, apparently
with the mother making a miraculous
recovery from her deathbed. The point to
this story for Carnegie
is to show the sympathy that Taft showed
to the mother. And Carnegie
gives several other accounts
of sympathy helping win over the day. In
one story, an escalator
repairman, he was sympathizing with
the store owner that eight hours of
downtime was not ideal. But if it wasn't
fixed, it could be two
days of downtime. And in another example
of a piano teacher saying how pretty a
girl's nails were and
acknowledging the sacrifice it would be
to trim them to play the
piano. Carnegie quotes Dr. Arthur
Gates here who said quote "sympathy the
human species universally
craves" end quote. And he goes
on to say that we crave it when we're
children and we still crave
it and we want it as adults.
That's why we tell all these stories
about our accidents or our
frustrations to other people.
It's almost a form of self-pity that we
all participate in. And
Carnegie says quote "if you
want to win people over to your way of
thinking put in practice his principle
number nine which is
be sympathetic with the other person's
ideas and desires" end quote.
Well we're really making our
way through the book and we only have
three more chapters in part
three which is entitled how to
win people to your way of thinking. I
hope the book review has
been proving helpful for you in
your everyday lives. I know it's been
helpful for me and tomorrow
we're going to continue on and
we're going to start chapter 10 of part
three with that chapter entitled An
Appeal That Everybody
Likes. So be sure to join us for that.
And as far as today is
concerned make the most of it. Not
every day is going to be easy and when
it's not let's try to learn
from it. Find the humor in it
if you can as John Candy once said and as
I always say just keep on putting one
foot in front of the
other. Stay positive and the sun will
come up tomorrow. Okay hey
thanks for joining us today
we'll see you again 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
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In these other podcasts we'll dive deeper
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self-improvement and well-being
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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.