I’ve been there, done that, got the T-Shirt, and the Coffee Mug.
Where?
Doing a ‘job’ I hated, working a contract I loathed: justified by “the money”.
When I turned 60, after spending 4 months in severe pain from my Fibromyalgia, I promised myself, “I’m not going to do work I don’t want to do. And, I’m not going to work with people I don’t want to work with!”
At the time I was working a lucrative contract as a Change Implementation Consultant. The money was great. The work was easy. But …
I wasn’t happy.
The work had become repetitive, repetitive, repetitive. And, what was worse is we were discovering that our boss’s new boss was a slimy, manipulative SOB. Long on promises; short on delivery; amazingly adept at ‘slipping a knife in your back’.
Then 1 day, as I left a clinic, that little voice inside said, “Ya gotta quit this Lyle. It’s destroying your soul.”
This time I listened … 8 months previously when the same little voice told me to quit, I kept going. 1 and 1/2 months after that my Fibro kicked in: with a vengance!
So, I planned my “Exit Strategy”: subtly turning down contract assignments so I could ensure I had all my contract work complete, INVOICED, and PAID by March 31st (end of the government’s fiscal year). And, my clear intention was to simply not renew my contract when it came up for renewal April 1st.The idea was to leave quietly.
Didn’t work out that way; and the story of the ending is a fun one to be told some other time, so I can get back to the point of this post.
Lately in my coaching I’ve had several clients who are quite literally suffering illnesses, clearly connected to doing ‘soul-sucking’ work and who are staying cause “the money’s easy.”
What’s been coming to my mind as I’ve thought about thier dilemmas is a visual from a Miami Vice episode: we see a man sling a bag of drugs into his Porshe; then we seem him driving the rain slicked streets of Miami to a ‘meet’, and in the background we hear the plaintive words of Glen Frey’s “Smuggler’s Blues”, “… the lure of easy money”, as the guy gets a bullet (or six) in the head.
Ya see the problem with ‘easy money’ is … well, that’s it’s alledgedly easy. There is no apparent cost. I say apparent because there IS a cost — hoo boy is there a cost!
The problem is that the cost of doing easy-money work often arrives later: in the form of physical, mental, &/or emotional problems.
Again, I know. I sometimes feel like I’m the “Poster Boy” for stupid moves.
It’s taken being gifted with not 1 but TWO chronic illnesses for me to wake up and smell the mocha cappachino. And, to really grok this 1 simple fact:
Doing work that isn’t your ‘God-given Work’ is going to kill you … sooner or later!
It’s short term gain for long term pain. It’s ‘pay me now, or pay me later.’
It’s your choice: take the easy money and wither your soul, sicken your spirit, and die. Or, take the ‘narrow road’, nurture your soul, foster your courage, sieze the day, and follow your Bliss!
