Get Your Shift Together
Get Your Shift Together, How to Think, Laugh, and Enjoy Your Way to Success in Business and In Life,by Steve Rizzo, The Attitude Adjuster, McGraw-Hill 2013
Well, what could we possibly expect from a guy who self-describes as a stand-up comic and The Attitude Adjuster? Desperate for humor after a longgg winter, The Mill Girl is pleased to report that the content offered herein is funny, outrageous and generally a soothing alternative to Aleve and Meditation, although it doesn’t beat doing the plank.
Let’s start with author Rizzo’s sobriquet, The Attitude Adjuster. He’s spent time with Seinfeld The Great and The Big Mouth Inside Your Head. But how does all this comedy relate to your life, your work? Well, as my friend Betty Aiken, one desk over, who died at age 42 of a brain tumor, used to say before we figured out what was causing those monstrous headaches, “You’re dead a long time.”
Rizzo believes in what The Mill Girl calls Positivityness. It gets him through life and in his chapter entitled “The Big Mouth Inside Your Head” he illustrates the culprit that keeps him from living in and enjoying the current moment. Rizzo says there are four recurrent factors that need to be managed:
1. Frustrations, a situation that just isn’t going the way it should – being stuck in traffic or unhelpful people, for example;
2. Frustration and worry that I won’t get what I am entitled to and hoping for – money, a promotion, recognition. This means that I am letting negative feelings make it even more difficult for me to acquire those treasures. Basically it means I am putting happiness on hold until “the good stuff” arrives. Hmmm.
3. Worry about the future. Rizzo says the very things we worry about could actually come true because “Thoughts are the first steps in the creation of our future, and if you think it enough, it becomes your reality.” Yeah.
4. The past is eating into your present. Is there some guilt, fear or anger causing you unease in the present? Rizzo sees all four of these states part of taking a trip on the Crazy Train – the fourth bullet indicates a willingness to surrender a happy present to an event that happened 15 minutes or 15 years ago, and his response is do you really think you deserve that kind of treatment or limitation? Hah!
Rizzo was on his way to make a speech in Salt Lake City when the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened. Suddenly the jet he was flying in nose dived as the Captain announced an ATC (air traffic control) alert. The plane landed, and stayed, in Omaha, Nebraska; Rizzo got to spend four days in a Days Inn, waiting for a way back to New York. When he finally connected with his wife back in the city, the news was worse than grim:
“I assured her that I was fine but that I would be stranded in Omaha for a few days. When she asked me if I really was okay, I said, ‘Well, I’m stranded in Omaha. I mean, why couldn’t I be stranded in Hawaii or Florida? No, me, of course I’m stuck with the Children of the Corn!”
And later, Rizzo quotes a Jay Leno clip from another post 9/11 moment:
“Osama Bin Laden goes to a fortune-teller to find out how long he has to live. The fortune-teller informs him that he will die on a famous American holiday. 'Which one?' bin Laden asks. 'Whatever day you die will be a famous American holiday,' the fortune-teller replies."
Concludes Rizzo, the healing of America began to flourish the day we adjusted our attitudes and made the shift to laugh off the fear. Humor may be, he says, one of our greatest gifts, but it’s also one of the toughest to learn.