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 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.
  
   You have 2 choices now:
  
   1. save or delete this mail from your mail box.
   2. forward it to your dear ones and choose to pass this on
  
   Hopefully, you will choose the latter.