This arrived in my e mail this morning from my good friend Donna Wagner:
John is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is
always in a good mood and
always has 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 natural motivator.
If an employee was having a bad day, John 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 and asked
him, "I don't get it!
You can't be a positive person all of the time. How
do you do it?"
He replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to
myself, 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," he 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 affect your mood.
You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The
bottom line: It's your
choice how you live your life."
I reflected on what he said. Soon hereafter, I left
the Tower Industry to
start my own business. We lost touch, but I often
thought about him when I
made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.
Several years later, I heard that he was involved in
a serious accident,
falling some 60 feet from a communications tower .
After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive
care, he was released from
the hospital with rods placed in his back.
I saw him 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 I did ask him what
had gone through his
mind as the accident took place.
"The first thing that went through my mind was the
well-being of my
soon-to-be born daughter," he replied. "Then, as I
lay on the ground, 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
He continued, "..the paramedics were great.
They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But
when they wheeled me into
the ER 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 John.
"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, 'Gravity'."
Over their laughter, I told them, "I am choosing to
live. Operate on me as
if I am alive, not dead."
He 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.
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow
will worry about itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew
6:34.
After all today is the tomorrow you worried about
yesterday.
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