I’m not sure if it’s my allergies or the constant overwhelm or just being an ‘old fart’ but lately I’m feeling really pissy about being asked to flex and change.

And, for some reason this morning I got thinking about Gumby.

Gumby arrived as a regular ‘performer’ on TV screens in 1957, the year I turned 10. And, it’s not that I watched Gumby and his sidekick Pokey all that much. At age 10 I was more interested in reading ‘adult books like the copy of Harold Robbins the ‘Dream Merchants’ I filched from my dad’s bookshelf.

Yet, somehow that pea green, claymation figure keept coming to mind today. I guess it’s because Gumby seemed able to flex, bend, and stretch far and wide … something I seem both less able AND less willing to do.

Yet, as a coach, counsellor, and consultant I encourage my client’s to flex their style of leadership, of communication; to change to meet the needs of their followers, their customers, and their colleagues.

Am I a hypocrite for encouraging this?

I sure hope not. Though I sometimes feel that way. After all I sometimes fail to heed my own advice.

But, let’s get back on point.

How far should you flex and change in order to ‘work with’, to get along with, to stay in relationship with, to be with another?

When is enough, enough?

That’s a question each of has to answer for ourselves.

But, I know that for me I’m feeling less and less like I want to be as flexible, as willing to change to meet the other ‘half way’, as I used to.

Am I an old cranky puss for saying that? Maybe.

But, this I know for sure … Yes, it is important to be flexible. Yes, it is critical to ’see the other persons point of view’. Yes, it is necessary to practice empathy. And, yes it is vital to change and grow.

But, god damn it, that doesn’t mean that for you and I to do business or for you and I to work together effectively;  I have to become Gumby!

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!

For some answers check out this video from Nic Askew.