Many people might find it difficult to walk away from a million-dollar salary, no matter how miserable they are. But taking the leap to explore a different career can make you realize how much happiness money can’t buy.
That was the case for 44-year-old Khemaridh Hy, who I interviewed for my book, “Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work,” about how to navigate change and find meaning in the way we live and work.
Hy left his $2.3 million-per-year Wall Street job without anything lined up. It was a scary few years that followed, but he’s never been happier, despite earning much less.
He credits his successful career change to two things: setting the groundwork before quitting and being vulnerable enough to seek guidance.
Following the first-generation playbook
The son of Cambodian immigrants who settled in New York, Hy was a studious, dutiful son: he got good grades, went to Yale, and pursued a career in finance.
At 31, he got promoted to managing director at BlackRock, the prestigious investment firm. He had financial security, a great job title, and was rewarded with the envious glances of his peers. Yet “something was still off,” he tells me.
Hy was toiling through 12-hour days and feeling “comfortably numb,” in which he describes as: “You’re not unhappy, but you’re definitely not happy. You don’t particularly love the work you do, but you don’t hate it.”
“I had a lot of insecurities that I grew up with as a result of being shy and nerdy. You think much of that goes away with success and money,” he says. “Then you have a taste of it, and you realize that money doesn’t make your insecurities go away.”
To ease his boredom, Hy threw himself into side projects. He blogged, hosted networking parties, and played around with various kinds of productivity software.
He didn’t know it at the time, but this groundwork would later be essential to building a happy life after BlackRock.
During a vacation, he started a newsletter he called “RadReads,” sharing life hacks and…
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