ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING...
By Francie Baltazar-Schwartz
Jerry was the kind of guy you want to
admire. 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?"
"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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