All about attitude: Pepe's story
Pepe was the kind of person you would love to be like. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say.
When someone asked him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I could be any better, I would have a twin.”
He was a unique manager because he had several waitresses who followed him from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waitresses followed Pepe was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator: if an employee was having a bad day, Pepe was there to tell the employee how to look on the bright side of the situation.
Seeing this style really made me curious. So one day I went to Pepe and asked him: “I don’t understand… it’s not possible to be a positive person all the time. How do you do it?”
Pepe replied: “Every morning I wake up and I say to myself, Pepe, 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. Every time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me with a complaint, I can either accept their complaint or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.”
“Yes, of course, but it’s not that easy,” I protested.
“Yes it is,” Pepe said. “Everything in life is about choices. When you strip away everything else, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to each situation, you choose how people will affect your mood, you choose to be in a good mood or a bad mood. In short, YOU CHOOSE HOW TO LIVE LIFE.”
I reflected on what Pepe told me… Shortly after, I left the hospitality industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought of Pepe when I had to make a choice in life instead of reacting against it.
Several years later, I learned that Pepe did something that should never be done in a restaurant business; he left the back door open and one morning he was robbed by three armed robbers. As he tried to open the safe, his hand shook from nervousness and he slipped the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Pepe was found relatively quickly and rushed to a clinic. After eight hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Pepe was released, still with bullet fragments in his body.
I met Pepe six months after the accident and when I asked him how he was, he replied: “If I could be better, I would have a twin.”
I asked him what was going through his mind at the time of the assault. He replied: “The first thing that came to my mind was that I should have locked the back door. As I lay on the floor, 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?” I asked.
Pepe continued: “The doctors were great. They kept telling me I was going to be okay. But when they took me into the operating room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I was really scared. I could read in their eyes: ‘He’s a dead man. ’ I knew then that I had to make a decision.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Well, one of the doctors asked me if I was allergic to anything and taking a deep breath I shouted: – Yes, to bullets! – While they were laughing, I told them: I am choosing to live, operate on me as if I were alive, not dead.”
Pepe lived thanks to the mastery of the doctors, but above all because of his amazing attitude. He learned that every day we have the choice to live fully; ATTITUDE, in the end, is everything.
This story is beautiful. I wanted to share it with you to tell you that we are going to fill our world with people like Pepe. Every time I hear someone complaining during my three-day retreats, I ask them to read Pepe's story. Thank you for reading me. I look forward to seeing you at “Coaching Wednesday"every Wednesday of the year.
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