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Michael 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 motivate. If an employee was having
a bad day, Michael
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 Michael
and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a
positive person all of the
time. How do you do it?"
Michael replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to
myself, Mike, 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," Michael 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 Michael said. Soon thereafter, 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 Michael was involved in a
serious
accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower.
After 18
hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Michael was
released from
the hospital with rods placed in his back.
I saw Michael 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 accident took place. "The first
thing that went through
my mind was the well-being of my soon to be born
daughter," Michael
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.
Michael 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
Michael."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."
Michael 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 two choices now: |