Choose How you start your day 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 replay “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 made 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. 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.”
“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. Your bottom line: It’s your choice how you live your 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 steel rods in his back.
I saw Michael about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he relied “If I were any better, I’d be twins! Wanna see my scars?”
I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what went through his mind as the accident took place. “The first thing was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter” Michael replied. “Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered 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. “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 is, after all, everything. Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
