Hanging with Rich

Believeland..... In 1952 Norman Vincent Peale wrote a self-help book called The Power of Positive Thinking . It was a best seller and a sensation of those times. The book encourages it's readers to keep a positive and I like this guy already! optimistic attitude. If you kept your mind clear with optimism and positivity, good things would happen. In today's era, people like Brian Tracy have made a good living as an author and motivational speaker with the same type of message. Maybe people in Cleveland have picked up a copy of this book. Optimism is rampant. But it didn't used to be that way. There was a time when the sports fans of this town expected the worst. They were waiting for the other shoe to drop. They had been disappointed and frustrated so many times, we felt this was the norm. Amazing things would happen to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. A fumble, a buzzer beater, an unusual injury. I'm not making this stuff up! The worst part of it was t

The Importance of Teamwork - In Sports and Business..... Watching the baseball playoffs has been an enjoyable and eye-opening experience. You get to see some fantastic players perform in the spotlight. Some shine, and some shrink. People react differently to pressure. Yet, those that are able to keep their wits about them can help in so many ways. That's true in sports and business. There is no "I" in team. Players in professional sports are considered the best of the best. Most are well paid. You can go to the best restaurants. You can drive a Bentley. But you can't buy a championship. That's the one thing that is the separator among players. So when playoff time comes - all their skills are on display. In baseball, even a .300 hitter will fail 7 out of 10 times. But a good player can contribute to the win even without getting a hit. An excellent example of this was evident in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series between the Indians and the

Taking Our Bodies for Granted..... We take so many things for granted in our lives that when something happens to change our daily routine, we are stunned by the changes and adjustments. I've gotten a front row seat to this experience this week. My wife is a very active person. She normally works 12 hour shifts as a nurse at a hospital. Except when she works overtime to bring in some extra cash. She shows up for work about an hour early so she can go to the gym and get some treadmill time. At home she's usually running around cooking or cleaning. I always think she should relax more. That's my speciality. But that all changed about a year ago. She was running through an airport when she suffered a knee injury. Since then she has been living, and working, in constant pain. Doctors visits revealed that while the knee was still structurally sound, she had severe arthritis and was now walking bone on bone. The solution: a total knee replacement. Maybe it'll be a c

My 5 Favorite Presidents, and Why I Admire Them ..... In about a month, most of us will be doing our American duty. We will be voting for a new President to lead our nation. It is a duty, and a right that others have literally died for to defend. Many people today take that right for granted and even abuse it. They generalize by saying, "My vote doesn't count". What disturbs me is that this apathetic attitude is especially true among young people. Many I know are not even registered to vote. I wish I knew why. When I was young you had to be 21 to vote, but you could be drafted into the Army at 18. People saw the hypocrisy of that and the voting age was changed to 18 by the Twenty-Sixth Constitutional Amendment.  I remember my first vote like it was yesterday. It was the election of 1972. The incumbent President Richard Nixon was running for re-election against the Democrat, Senator George McGovern. He was an anti-war candidate and the Vietnam War was was literally