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." "The Nurse 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
...