Attitude is Everything
By Francie Baltazar-Schwartz
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 I 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.
Email: stephen@cardina.net
