I Left My 6-Figure Career To Find Happiness. Here's How I Did It.

“You might never wear high heels again,” my podiatrist said after diagnosing me with Morton’s neuroma, a painful thickening of tissue on the balls of my feet that can be brought on by unideal footwear choices. It felt like a death sentence for 20-something-year-old me living in New York City, the fashion capital of the world, but it was the least of my problems. I was 15-20 pounds heavier than I wanted to be, chronically stressed to the point that my hair was falling out, and my only mindfulness practice at the time was social smoking and eating pommes frites to soak up the alcohol after an evening of bar-hopping.

Then a yoga instructor showed up in my office and I got hooked. Fifteen years later, yoga has not only helped heal my physical ailments and kept me sane during dire periods like the COVID pandemic, but it completely changed my life. It inspired me to quit my successful AdTech sales career, which I had spent almost 20 years creating. I knew leaving everything I’d built behind was a huge risk and there was a good chance it might ruin my life, but I also knew I had to make a leap.

Even though many strict Filipino parents like mine sway their kids to become doctors, nurses and lawyers, my folks trusted me to follow my career compass as long as I supported myself after college. I took this responsibility so seriously that I deferred my dream to become a journalist in order to cash the fat commission checks I received working in corporate sales.

I got so good at it that I became fully independent within my first year of graduating from college. In less than eight years of climbing the corporate ladder, I was not only able to take care of myself, but I did what some immigrant children do for their parents when they