*Attitude Is Everything...*
Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good
mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would
ask him how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I
would be twins!"
He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had
followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the
waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a
natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was
there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the
situation.
Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to
Jerry and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a positive
person all of the time. How do you do it?" Jerry replied, "Each
morning I wake up and say to myself, Jerry, you have two choices
today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be
in a bad mood.' I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something
bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn
from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me
complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can
point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of
life."
"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.
"Yes it is," Jerry said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut
away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you
react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood.
You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's
your choice how you live life."
I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the
restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but
often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of
reacting to it. Several years later, I heard that Jerry did
something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he
left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by
three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his
hand,shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The
robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively
quickly and rushed to the local trauma center. After 18 hours of
surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the
hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body. I saw
Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he
was, he replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins. Wanna see my
scars?"
I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through
his mind as the robbery took place. "The first thing that went
through my mind was that I should have locked the back door," Jerry
replied. "Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two
choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose
to live.
"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked.
Jerry continued, "The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I
was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency
room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and
nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, 'He's a dead
man. " I knew I needed to take action."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me," said
Jerry. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes,' I replied.
The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my
reply... I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Bullets!' Over their
laughter, I told them, 'I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if
I am alive, not dead."
Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of
his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the
choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.
