1 week ago
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February 24, 2026 — 7:50pm
I’m a high-income earner in a corporate job that is draining the life out of me. The money is great. It pays for my mortgage and a lifestyle that I love. But the job is stressful, the culture is high-pressure, and my manager is difficult. It’s an industry-wide culture, so I don’t see much scope to get a similar level of pay in a better environment elsewhere. There are days I just want to quit, take an easy-going part-time job and live a simpler life. But I have financial goals I’m working towards, too. I feel stuck between my golden handcuffs and the promise of financial freedom later, and living my life now. Thoughts?
This isn’t really about money, or even your job – it’s about improving your decision-making process. Instead of trying to give you the pros and cons of each, I want to help you see how a small shift in perspective can change the possibilities that are available to you. You aren’t stuck with just two options – but you have a few core assumptions that make you believe you are.
Assumption 1: You don’t believe you can have both. It seems like you have a belief that you can only have one or the other: either a high-paying job that comes with a lot of stress, or a great lifestyle that is lowly paid. As long as that is the belief you’re operating within, you only have two options.
Are there people who have both? Yes. Is that possible for you? That’s up to you to decide.
I know this might sound like some empty motivational talk but the reason I’m starting here is, you have to believe that something is possible for you, in order for that to even be an option.
You’ve probably had the experience where you decide to buy a specific product (for example, a TV, a car, a home) and suddenly, you start seeing all these opportunities you never knew existed. You never knew your best-friend’s uncle owned a car dealership. You never knew that you could trade in your old car and get a few thousand dollars off the purchase price that way.
A lot of high-achievers get excellent at sacrificing and overriding their internal experience, for external gain. This is unsustainable.
These opportunities existed the whole time – you just couldn’t see them. Why? Because you weren’t looking. Your mind was closed to them. You were focused on other things.
Now, if you decide that you can have both a great income and a great lifestyle – will it happen overnight? Unlikely. But you might start seeing more opportunities that you didn’t before.
Most importantly, instead of feeling like you’re stuck in some lose-lose situation, you will start feeling the spark of possibility again. You’ll no longer feel like you’re facing a dead-end, you’ll feel like you’re opening yourself up to a world of infinite possibilities. Isn’t that more exciting?
Assumption 2: You value money more than your experience of life. You’ve gotten to where you are today because you value financial success enough to make that a priority. But what you didn’t value enough, perhaps, was your experience of life (likely because, to my earlier point, you believe on some level that you have to sacrifice one for the other).
Your experience of life is not determined by how fancy your holidays are, how big your home is, or how cool your car is. It’s not determined by what you have, but rather how you feel.
The problem is that a lot of high-achievers get excellent at sacrificing and overriding their internal experience, for external gain. This is unsustainable. There is usually a reckoning at some point – burnout, a midlife crisis, self-sabotage, or that cognitive dissonance when you’ve built a life that looks good externally but doesn’t feel as good as you thought it would.
This sometimes comes as a shock to my clients but if you genuinely want a life that feels good, you have to start valuing your experience of life enough that it becomes a priority.
When you decide that your experience of life is (at the very least) just as important as the professional and financial success you achieve, you will start making decisions differently.
Maybe you’ll work up the courage to negotiate to work from home one day a week. Perhaps you’ll start a project on the side to enjoy the creative fulfillment you don’t get at work.
Whatever that first small step looks like, it starts with deciding that your experience of life matters, just as much (if not more) than the money. Then, even if you do choose to take a less lucrative option in the short term, it stops feeling like a “step backwards” from the life you think you’re supposed to want, and starts feeling like a step forward towards the life you really want.
Paridhi Jain is founder of SkilledSmart, which helps adults learn to manage, save and invest money through financial education courses and classes.
- Advice given in this article is general in nature and not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.
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