TOMORROW.
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
motivator.
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, 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
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 Michael 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
0f 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 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,
"
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 hisdoctors,
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.
"Therefore do not worry about
tomorrow, for
tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has
enough
trouble of its own." Matthew 6:34
After all
today is the tomorrow you worried about
yesterday.
You have two
choices now:
1. Delete
this.
2. Forward it to the people you care about.
You know the
choice I made.