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 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 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
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.
(Author unknown)
