John's story

John was the kind of person that you would love to be; he was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone asked him how he did it, he would respond, “If I was any better I’d have a twin!”

He was in the restaurant business, managing waitstaffs but was unique because, while he held positions in restaurant after restaurant, waiters followed him from job to job. The reason was his attitude. He was a natural leader; he was a motivator.

If an employee had a bad day, John was there to help him or her see the positive side of the situation. To see it -- the way he did this -- made me curious. So one day I looked for John.

“I don't understand. It's not possible to be a positive person all the time. How do you do it? I asked.

"Each day when I wake up, I say to myself: John, you have two options today, you can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.” He looked at me. “I choose to be in a good mood," John answered. "And every time there's something bad going on, I can choose between being a victim, or I can choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me to complain, I can accept the complaint or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose to point out the positive side of things. Understand?" He smiled at me.

"Yes, it's clear, but it isn't easy," I protested.

"Yes it is," John said. "Everything in life is about choices. When you remove everything else, each situation is a choice. You elect how you react before each situation, you elect how people will be affected, by your state of mind, you elect to be in a good or bad mood.”

I thought about what John had said to me.

A short time later, I left the restaurant to start my own business. We lost contact, but I thought of him often when I had to make a important decisions.

Several years later, I heard that something terrible had happened to John. It was early in the morning and he had left the door to the restaurant open. Three armed robbers entered. While they were forcing him to open the cash register, John’s hand, trembling badly from nervousness, slipped up on the combination to the box, and they shot him. The thieves panicked and ran, leaving John bleeding and alone.

Fortunately he was found relatively quickly and taken to the emergency room of a nearby hospital. After eight hours in surgery and weeks of intensive therapy, John was discharged from the hospital, although there were still fragments of the bullet in his body.

I ran into him six months later, and when I asked him how he was I responded, “if I were any better I’d be a twin!”.

I asked him what he thought when he was assaulted.

“Well, I thought I should have locked the door! When I was knocked down on the floor, I remembered that I had two options: I could choose to live or I could choose to die. I chose to live.

“Weren’t you afraid?” I asked him.

John continued, “The doctors were good they said I was going to be ok. But when they lifted me onto the operating table and I looked at the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I was shocked. I could read it in their eyes, ‘this is a dead man.’” Then I had to make a decision.

“What happened,” I asked.

“Well, one of the doctors asked me if I was allergic to anything, and I answered with a deep scream: ‘Yes, to bullets!’ And while they were laughing I said, ‘I have decided to live, operate on me, and you’ll see, I’ll live, not die.”

John lived, not only from the skill of the doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. He learned that everyday we can elect to live fully. A positive attitude, in the end, is what it’s all about.