Discovering A Better Life graphic
P.O Box 1540, Albany Western Australia 6331
Phone/Fax: (08) 98 418 418

E-mail: abl-alb@omninet.net.au


Two Choices
Friends, this story is sure to change your day…do yourself the honour of reading it all way through, you will be glad that you did.

Jerry is the kind of person who 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 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, “What is the secret of you being a positive person all the time?” 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. 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.” He then went on to say, “Life is all about choices. In fact, 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 is: It’s your choice how you live life.”

Some years after this conversation, Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was help 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 hospital. 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. Would you like to see my scars?”

I declined to see his wounds, but I 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 remember 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 ambulance people were great. They kept telling me I was going to be okay. But when they wheeled me into the operating theatre 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 form him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.

Friends, a successful life begins with life’s realities - its limitations and changes, its surprises and unexpected turns, its timed nature and death. Therefore, if you would like some help in making the right choices in life, I’d like to encourage you to write to me for your FREE copy of “THE SUCCESS PLAN.” This is a plan that will help you not to fail in life, but to succeed in making the right choices

Email me
or write to me at
P.O Box 1540,
Albany W.A 6331.

Telephone / Fax (08) 98 418 418