Confronting Death

Randy says he can't change the cards he's been dealt, but he can control how he plays them. "If you are hopeful, if you are optimistic, other people want to help you. And if you are down in the dumps, other people may still help you, but I've noticed that they're walking, not running, over to you," he says. "In the lecture, I talk about you've got to decide pretty early in life whether you're going to be a Tigger or an Eeyore. What I found is if you're an upbeat person, people will flock to help you, and suddenly everything gets easier."

Randy sees life as being 10 percent white, 10 percent black and 80 percent gray. "You can go through life and say, 'Gee, that 80 percent gray part, that's black, and life is a bad thing,'" he says. "Or you can say that 80 percent gray part's part of the white, and it's the goodness and the light. I want to view life that way. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. That 80 percent in the middle really can go either way, and if you decide you want to make it go good, not bad, you have a lot more power to make that happen than you might think."