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.
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