He was a natural motivator.  If an employee was having a bad day, Ray 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 said, "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, 'I have two choices today.  I can choose to be in a good mood or I 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 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 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 Ray.  "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.

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself."  Matthew 6:34.

After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.