Choosing joy. The life we should be living.

Connie Monroe left corporate America in 2012 and now runs her own coaching company where she helps people get through big life events. Connie had no plan to work in finance it was something she just fell into. Having put herself through university she had a lot of student loads to pay back and her cousin was working in large company with lots of vacancies. It was the dot.com boom and she thought she’d go there and then figure things out.  She didn't enjoy the first three years at all but she then became a manager and her role changed. She was actually managing people which she started to enjoy.

 She was working in client services and she came to realise that many people went into those positions for other reasons. She had fifteen people in her team and at least ten of them were there for other intensions - they wanted to go the trading floor, wanted to get into HR or didn't want to be processing every day. The other thing she found was that after two or three years people were getting lazy. Her question was why are you still here, is there a way we can we help you to move on? The most satisfying thing for her was to help someone move on and bring someone new in.

People get stuck for many reasons but life is not a rehearsal and there is no reason to not be happy doing what you’re doing. As a manager, if your people aren’t happy they are not going to do good work. Connie stayed in her role for sixteen years because she enjoyed trying to help other people through coaching and personal development. Eventually though she realised she needed to find a way out for herself. She hired her own coach in 2011 and had a session once a week for about twelve weeks. Her coach came up with some different scenarios, the favourite being to combine her love of writing with her love of mentoring to write a book.

Since that time the online sphere has really boomed and now allows us to do far more things online. Most of the people she now helps are in a career transition and she uses her Joy Method which asks where are you on your journey and what is your relationship with others. After you look at those two things, you can look at you and how you fit in.

Connie feels she had very good role models in her life. Her mother brought her up after her father left when she was nine. Her mother went back to school to become a nurse so was a huge hero to her. She also had a cheer leading coach who really believed in her so she had people in her life who put her on the path to help other people. When she came out of university, she worked with a headhunter who tried a lot of different things for her including fashion and publishing but told her the one industry she wouldn't put her in was finance. When Connie told her that was what she was going in to she was told she would be miserable which of course she was. 

Connie now lives in Costa Rica with her partner who she has been with for eighteen years. When they were dating in 2007 they went there on vacation and really loved it. They kept comparing it to everywhere else and in 2008 an opportunity came up to work there for a while. They brought a house there in 2012 and over time spent more time there until they moved there permanently in 2017.

Some people never have a sense of awakening but if you’re not happy to get out of bed and face your life then it's a sign you’re stuck. People can throw themselves into their professional life because they’re not happy in their personal life whilst others seem externally happy but know something is missing or not quite right. Some people never realise it but if you’re on the wrong path something will be tapping on your shoulder.

Often what brought you joy as a child has a thread that keeps you going back. It can be something really obvious. One of Connie’s friends was very ill as a child and now works in the medical field. There is a feeling that we should be somewhere else and if you keep this down for a number of years your brain will eventually start telling you that its OK, this is where your comfortable. However, if you start telling it I need to find a way to get out of here it can be a lot better. Most of us are living a fraction of the life we should be living.

You can find out more about Connie at http://monroecoaching.com Her book is ‘Holding onto Joy Through Abandonment & Divorce’

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