Attitude And The Choices We Make

I love this, I received it in an email and wanted to forward it to all my friends! 

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

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