In February 2024, I returned home to Los Angeles after the adventure of a lifetime: exploring 18 countries across South America and Asia in 18 months on a trip that cost me $34,000. I had quit my dream job as a video journalist to heal my burnout and find happiness beyond traditional measures of success and prestige.

When it was over, I went from chasing waterfalls in Indonesia and whizzing through the rolling green countryside of Vietnam on a motorbike to staring at my computer screen at home, watching the job rejections roll in. 

In some ways, I felt more lost than ever.

I’d jumped back in the job market at a particularly tough moment, as thousands of journalists were getting laid off. The future of my career and income were uncertain. That’s a scary feeling at 34, when you often feel pressured to buy a house, have kids, and save up for retirement.

These circumstances would have made me unhappy and ashamed a few years ago. I no longer had the cool job or the epic, Instagrammable life around which my self-worth used to revolve. Instead, I was home and unemployed.

But my sabbatical taught me four key lessons about happiness that helped keep me positive, confident, and self-assured despite the challenges.

For years, I thought working my dream job would bring me the ultimate happiness. But I couldn’t shake the burnout and anxiety. 

Then I thought going all in on travel — the thing I’m most passionate about — would fulfill me. But eventually, the novelty wore off. Exhausted from constantly being on the go, I longed for the comfort and stability of home. 

I realized that I won’t find lasting happiness unless I’m living a life balanced between adventure, rest, productivity, and learning.    

Now that I’m home, I have new career and financial goals. A few years ago, I would’ve sacrificed everything to achieve those, while applauding myself as a go-getter and a hustler.

But now I pace myself and do my best to maintain a personal life and gym and meditation routine. I’m enjoying the journey instead of racing to a finish line that probably wouldn’t be everything I imagine it is. 

I never felt like I had enough success or money while living and working in Los Angeles and New York City. But in South America and Southeast Asia, where I encountered mind-boggling levels of poverty, I realized how privileged I am.  

Even many average neighborhoods didn’t come close to my standard of comfort. A lot of the locals I met had never left their country because they couldn’t afford it.

I realized that as an American renting an apartment in LA, I live an unfathomably luxurious life compared to much of the world. 

While freelancing and job hunting in a very difficult market, I was tempted to slip back into feelings of inadequacy. But the perspective I gained while traveling reminded me that I already have — and am — more than enough. 

Before returning home, I spent nearly two months in Bali. I found true work-life balance and a magical, extravagant, free-spirited lifestyle I’d never experienced.

I began freelancing and applying for jobs from beautiful cafés and restaurants, while enjoying a slower pace of life, surrounded by lush nature and stunning views. 

A few years ago, I felt like I needed a big brand-name employer to define my value. I would have despaired at the rejections and lack of opportunities. But my experience in Bali inspired me to value well-being over prestige and money. I saw what life could be like, and it had nothing to do with a dream job. 

I decided to stop burning myself out trying to force my way back to a “perfect role.” Instead, I would pursue a job that offers flexibility and quality of life, while channeling my passion for video journalism into becoming a creator with my own YouTube channel.

I went from feeling helpless to empowered.

My sabbatical was partially inspired by the travel influencers I followed on Instagram. I was jealous — my life felt lame in comparison to the epic, picture-perfect lives they seemed to lead. 

But behind the scenes, globetrotting is a lot messier. You don’t see the burnout, fatigue, loneliness, and sadness many travelers experience.

After realizing firsthand that nothing is as glamorous as it seems, I stopped aspiring to be like others and began to prioritize my own needs. I decided to sleep in and relax at cafés in Cartagena, for example, instead of hustling to embark on a Caribbean island boat tour I didn’t really want to take. I don’t regret it.

Nowadays, I spend most of my time working on my computer, going to the gym, running errands, and seeing friends and loved ones in low-key places. There’s barely any fodder for Instagram posts. 

I see others leading more outwardly enviable lives, personally and professionally. I’m happy for them, but I don’t feel bad about myself. I know I’m exactly where I need to be — no matter what it looks like to anyone else.

Helen Zhao is a former video producer and writer at CNBC. Before joining CNBC as a news associate, she covered residential real estate for the LA Business Journal. She’s a California native and a proud USC Trojan and UCLA Bruin. 

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Deryl McKissack is no stranger to spotting toxic traits.

McKissack, 63, is the founder and CEO of Washington D.C.-based construction firm McKissack & McKissack, which she launched with $1,000 from her savings in 1990. She churned through employees who weren’t the right fit in her company’s early years and the business struggled, she says.

Finding the right talent helped grow her company, which now brings in $25 million per year in revenue, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

These three red flags stand out the most when McKissack is hiring employees or evaluating her current talent, she says.

Every boss needs to be able to trust their employees, McKissack says. People who lack integrity are a problem, especially managers who don’t give their teams proper credit.

Alarm bells go off in her head “if someone is saying ‘I did this’ the whole time, and they’re not giving credit to their team,” McKissack says.

McKissack isn’t the only person who says a lack of integrity is a red flag among employees: Heidi K. Gardner, a professional leadership advisor and distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School, similarly calls out workers who pass off other people’s work as their own. It’s unethical, and it gives off the impression that you don’t respect your colleagues, Gardner told Make It last year.

“Maybe they’re unable to actually see how much value the people around them bring to their own success,” she said. “And that inability to appreciate other people’s contributions is a huge red flag for me … It’s anti-collaborative.”

Nearly every team, no matter your industry, needs people who can work well with others. That’s difficult when your co-workers don’t like being around you, or vice versa.

McKissack says she needs to actually like her employees’ personalities, because if she doesn’t like to be around you, chances are, clients won’t either. “If I don’t want to be in their presence, then no one wants to be in their presence, usually” she says.

Having a warm, inviting personality at work can potentially take you farther in your career than your capabilities and credentials, self-made millionaire and entrepreneur Steve Adcock told Make It in April.

“Your personality will get you 10 times richer than your intelligence,” said Adcock. “I learned that throughout my career, slowly but surely. I worked with a lot of smart people, no doubt about it. But those smartest people in the office weren’t necessarily the ones getting the raises and promotions.”

McKissack has a three-word mantra for her business: humble, hungry, smart. She says she picked it up from author and business management expert Patrick Lencioni’s book, “The Ideal Team Player.”

“We have an insatiable appetite for success,” McKissack wrote on LinkedIn earlier this year. “Humility drives us to make decisions for the collective good … [and] we value emotional intelligence because we know that’s what builds strong relationships.”

Expecting employees to embody those three descriptors — humble, hungry, smart — turned McKissack’s firm into a workforce full of people dedicated to the same mission, rather than one that struggled with low employee engagement, she says.

They’re the “three virtues” of successful team players, according to Lencioni’s book.

“I kept saying, ‘We’ve been stagnant for years. Why am I stagnant?’” says McKissack. “But when I made that decision to make our mission larger than just what we do, bricks and mortar, but make it more about the betterment of mankind, is when we really started changing.”

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Ramit Sethi, self-made millionaire and star of Netflix’s “How to Get Rich,” says that renting is unfairly dismissed as “wasting money” because “it’s going to a landlord” rather than building wealth.

But when you pay rent, “you’re not throwing money away,” Sethi tells CNBC Make It. “You’re paying for a roof over your head. You’re paying for a landlord to maintain your residence and you’re paying for the convenience and flexibility of being able to leave at the end of your lease.”

When looking at homes as an investment, renters commonly overlook the “phantom costs” of owning a property beyond the monthly mortgage payment.

This includes closing costs, property taxes, insurance, utilities, homeowners association fees and repairs. Mortgage payments are also front-loaded with interest, often as high as 80% during the first few years of the loan.

“People say they don’t want to throw money away on rent,” Sethi says. “Well, I don’t want to throw money away on interest.”

Sethi has rented homes in expensive cities like Los Angeles and New York simply because the costs of owning were too high. 

“I’ve made more money renting than I would have owning,” he says, referring to investments made with money that could have been spent on a down payment and phantom costs for units similar to the ones he rented.

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That doesn’t mean that buying a home can’t be a good investment, he says. Considering that home values have increased by 85% since 2010, many Americans have built wealth by owning a home.

However, we “have become accustomed to irrationally high appreciation in real estate markets,” especially during the run-up in home prices after 2020, says Sethi. This can lead people to assume that owning a home is the best way to build wealth, even though stocks have historically outperformed home prices.

“If people believe that a housing shortage will cause higher prices for decades, that’s a perfectly respectable bet to make,” he says. “But you also need to calculate your alternatives. How much would it cost to rent and invest differently? How much capital would be tied up in a down payment?”

There are lifestyle considerations that go into buying a home, too. Those could include a number of things, such as expecting to move within a few years, needing a bigger place for a family, wanting to change neighborhoods or simply needing the “flexibility to switch jobs at the drop of a hat and increase your income,” says Sethi. In that case, renting might be a better fit because it keeps your options open.

In Sethi’s experience, homebuyers don’t always examine the opportunity costs of acquiring property, especially once they’ve decided that they want to own their own home.

That’s because homeownership is viewed as a major achievement and a key part of the American dream, something “deeply embedded in the American psyche,” he says. This can lead to shortsightedness about a property’s true value compared with other investments, like 401(k) plans or stock index funds.

“I speak to couples that often tell me that the money in their retirement account does not feel real. They’ll say, ’I mean it’s there. But I can’t really touch it [like a home],” says Sethi. “There’s something mesmerizing about about a physical thing that we can see and touch.”

Since purchasing property is one of the biggest decisions that people will make in their life, Sethi advises buyers to “carefully run the numbers,” including phantom costs, before they make a decision.

“The American dream is not simply buying an expensive purchase that represents over 100% of your net worth and drains your finances because of phantom cost that you didn’t predict,” he says.

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Last year, after selling a chunk of his stock and bond portfolio to purchase a house in cash, Sam Dogen found himself with too little passive income to support his family’s budget.

The 47-year-old millionaire founder of Financial Samurai had been retired since 2012, but now that both of his kids would soon be attending school full-time, he decided to head back to work.

One of Dogen’s readers turned him on to a fintech startup in his local San Francisco. Everything seemed ideal. He’d be writing content about helping couples build wealth — right up his alley. He’d only have to work 20 hours a week in exchange for six-figure pay. They even let him maintain flexible hours. He started in November 2023.

He called it quits by March.

It turned out, this particular gig didn’t align with his personal or financial priorities at this point in his life. Though he thought working for a seed-stage startup would be exciting, it turned out to be chaotic. And while he was excited to create content on the firm’s behalf, he found the CEO’s editing style overbearing. Plus, the meetings, it seemed, were constant.

“It’s too bad, because it could have been a perfect fit,” Dogen says.

But there is one bright side to the false start: “The good thing about this, is that I realized what I don’t want.”

Here’s what he would have done differently.

It’s worth nothing that not everyone has ability to up and quit a job they don’t like without something else lined up. Dogen would be the first to acknowledge that he’s in a unique situation financially.

By last year, his passive income portfolio, which includes stocks, bonds and real estate investments, among others, was bringing in about $380,000 a year. After selling income-producing investments to buy his dream home, Dogen estimates he had about a $100,000 hole in his budget to cover.

“I was feeling pretty anxious about it,” Dogen says. But a few things happened to alleviate the pressure.

Chiefly, he found renters for his previous home (which he had been planning to sell) who pay roughly $9,000 a month in rent. “That shored up a huge hole in my passive income,” Dogen says.

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He also finished writing and editing his second book, a feat that not only comes with an installment of his book deal money, but also the promise of passive income in the future.

Plus, he received a six-figure cash distribution from one of his real estate investments. That won’t produce passive income unless Dogen reinvests it, but it gave him the cash cushion to paper over some short-term cracks in his finances.

So why didn’t things work out for Dogen? One of the major gripes was managerial style. “One problem was too many meetings. If you’re a writer, when you’re in meetings, you’re not working,” he says. “And it was really hard for me to adapt to too much management.”

Dogen, who runs a successful financial blog, describes getting rounds and rounds of edits on everything he submitted. “It was totally demoralizing,” he says.

Plus, he says, with his younger child slated to start full-time school in the fall, it was tougher than he expected being away from the kids.

“Because I’ve been a stay-at-home dad since they both were born, I thought I would find it easier to break away and go to the office and not spend time with them, because I need that reprieve — something different to do,” he says. “It was the exact opposite.”

Dogen plans to re-enter the workforce once both his kids are in school full time this fall. Here are three things he plans to do when searching for his next gig.

1. Set boundaries

While it’s difficult to know how a manager operates before you start working at a company, you can negotiate some ground rules before accepting an offer, Dogen says.

“I’ve learned that I’m going to set clear boundaries and expectations up front before I take that offer, and just say like, ‘Monday, Wednesday, Friday: these are my days, it’s 20 hours,’” he says. “Maybe I’ll do time limits for work, or I’ll do it by project base.”

2. Find the right company culture

In hindsight, Dogen realizes that returning to work at a seed-stage startup was likely biting off more than he was willing to chew. “It means total hectic chaos,” he says.

Dogen says he may look for his next gig at a later-stage startup or even a mature company — even if the latter doesn’t feel trendy among the San Francisco tech crowd.

“Everyone makes fun of people who work at [big-name tech companies], because they only work 20 or 30 hours and get paid tons of money,” Dogen says. “I mean, that sounds pretty good to me.”

3. Prioritize his kids

Still, locking down a high-paying tech job wouldn’t solve the problem of being away from his kids. To that end, Dogen is considering whether money is the most important factor in his next gig.

“I think maybe a more fulfilling job role is completely out of startup, tech and AI, but instead, in education — specifically, an educational role where I’m working at my children’s school,” Dogen says. “That way I can be part of a community and get paid. And see my children during the day every once in a while.”

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Before Simone Biles jumped on the balance beam in Paris’ Bercy Arena on Tuesday, she appeared to whisper: “You got this. It’s your time.”

It’s not unusual for Biles, now the most-decorated U.S. Olympic gymnast, to talk to herself before competing: “Most of the time before I take the mat, I just tell myself, ‘Confidence’ and ‘You have this,’” Biles told CNBC in 2016.

Biles and Team USA went on to win gold in the women’s gymnastics team all-around final. Preparing to perform at the highest level takes years of commitment and determination — but winning also requires speaking intentionally to yourself, experts say.

Completing a Yurchenko double pike is hard enough without looping self-criticism. Telling yourself you’re capable can calm your nerves and emulate how you feel in practice. Plus, talking to yourself in the third-person — like Biles telling herself, “You got this” — can actually decrease stress and improve your performance, research shows.

“We’re much better at giving advice to other people than we are to ourselves,” Ethan Kross, a University of Michigan psychology professor and author of “Chatter,” tells CNBC Make It. “If a friend comes to you with a problem, do you tell them, ‘No way, you’re going to suck. You can’t do this?’”

“Anecdotally, some people do report benefitting from [speaking] out loud,” Kross says. Doing so can add an extra level of intentionality, helping you focus.

Positive self-talk is the antidote to chatter, or a ruminating cycle of negative thoughts that can hinder your performance whether on the Olympic stage, at work or in everyday life, says Kross, who holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.

Using distanced self-talk is just one way to prepare yourself for a challenge or stop negative thinking, Kross says. His book outlines several strategies anyone can use to improve their internal monologue.

“There’s no magic pill,” he explains, but most people rely on one, or a combination of methods, to combat their own chatter. They can include writing, decreasing screen time and seeking out nature and physical contact.

“You can draw an analogy to physical exercise, right?” Kross says. “I have five or six buddies who exercise regularly. Most of us have different routines that work for us optimally, given our schedules, who we are, how our bodies work. The same is true when it comes to the mind.”

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