John 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, John 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 and asked him, 'I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the time How do you do it?' He 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,' he 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 he 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 of reacting to it. Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back. I saw him 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,' he 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 He 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 John. '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.' He 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. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
You're gonna be fine. FIB
Me 55; XW 47; 2 kids (S13, D11) Bomb 05/19/06 Original thread http://tinyurl.com/yg2ou2t Last anniversary 04/25/10, Divorced 5/12/10 Status: Loving father of 2 beautiful children;
STBX called me this morning. She had e-mailed me on monday about various things, one of which was a question about her massage website. She needed to make a change to it and it's hosted on my servers which she cannot edit the pages on due to strict security.
She wanted to know what to do, how to move it somewhere or how to make the change (she wanted to add a chiropractors number she works at)
I told her it would take me more time to move the website to another service than it would to just edit the page for her. Told her to e-mail the info.
Then she told me that the brochures she printed on Monday were messed up because she printed the same page on both sides and also the printer had smudged many of them. So, she said "I guess I better come and get the computer and figure out how to take the brochure to Kinkos to print it".
I just said 'Ok'. If course I would be able to do this in 2 minutes. It'll take her hours, if she figures it out at all.
I didn't offer any help. Just said "Ok, bye now".
Her tone was somewhat neutral and she did thank me for doing the web page edits. I'm really not sure if she was fishing to get me to help her with the brochure conversion to take it to Kinkos. I think she was just telling me what she was going to do.
Cyclic nature of you and your wife, how familiar is this latest interaction with your wife than one say...several months ago? Is there a difference? There was a week ago. You are worried about your mistakes...I worry about repeating them.
Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn. - C.S. Lewis
Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B. - Jack3Beans
Listen without defending; Speak without offending - FaithinAK
Does your Web Server not allow for per virtual dir/web app security?
It is a good probability that she was fishing to see if you would volunteer to print the brochures.
It does, but our servers host customized high end database driven websites for our clients. As such, NOBODY gets ftp/ssh access to them except us. So, only I can update her pages. Regardless, I'll have her move the hosting to another provider that has some kind of simple editor.
And she probably was 'fishing' for help. Her tone of voice wasn't the "cute" tone she would use to get what she wants. She was talking to me like you talk to an acquaintance. Until she thanked me for doing the web page edit. That actually had some emotion in it.
I'm just a guy she knows. Nothing else. Kind of sad but it helps me to let go.
Cyclic nature of you and your wife, how familiar is this latest interaction with your wife than one say...several months ago? Is there a difference? There was a week ago. You are worried about your mistakes...I worry about repeating them.
Several months ago she was more pleasant. Now she appears to be much more detached. And it bothers me less.
Me 55; XW 47; 2 kids (S13, D11) Bomb 05/19/06 Original thread http://tinyurl.com/yg2ou2t Last anniversary 04/25/10, Divorced 5/12/10 Status: Loving father of 2 beautiful children;
