Everyone has wondered at least once in their life about their reason for being. Some strive to make a lot of money, others want to help the community, and some people try to find self-fulfillment, because they believe that otherwise life would lose its meaning. Being a purposeful and pedantic person, Alina Monosova tried her hand at many different roles and managed to achieve success. But one thing the famous Moscow businesswoman is sure of is that whatever you choose to do in your life will define your path to self-discovery. After all, anything you do gives you an opportunity to grow and show the world a new, sometimes very unexpected, side of you.
A Girl with a Hundred Wishes
Alina Monosova was born in 1990 into a fairly wealthy family. Her father devoted his entire life to the construction business and hoped that his daughter would follow in his footsteps. Later in life, his hopes would come true and this industry would become one of the areas of her interest. But in the meantime, while Alina’s parents were deciding which school she should go to, she herself dreamed of working on television.
That said, her childhood dreams did not get in the way of her graduating from the Moscow Economic School and choosing a profession related to international business and business administration. Yesterday’s schoolgirl with an excellent basic education and obvious inclination towards the exact sciences easily entered MGIMO, where she soon received a bachelor’s degree in economics.
Wanting to put her knowledge into practice as soon as possible, Alina Monosova began to look for a job related to her major, although her parents were insisting that she continue her studies. In the end, they found a compromise; the young woman entered an evening master’s program at MGIMO and at the same time fulfilled her childhood dream by joining the commercial management team of Channel One. Today, Alina Monosova recalls with a smile how persistently she pursued her goal; although now, she admits that her biography would still have been as colorful even if she had not worked on television. The reality turned out to be nothing like the MGIMO graduate imagined as a child. She soon quit this job and decided to focus on her studies.
Alina had another school dream — to study at a prestigious British university. She managed to get into an exchange program at Regent’s University, where, together with dozens of students from around the world, she studied global management. The successful businesswoman remembers her time in the UK with a warm heart and says that she still keeps in touch with friends from her student days. After returning to Moscow and receiving her master’s degree, Alina began to build her career.
Building a Career Is Like Building a House — It Must Be Solid and Last Long
Thanks to an excellent education, Alina was able to get a position as a marketing specialist at the Moskapstroy-TN construction company. She had a lot of theoretical knowledge — and the next logical step for her was to gain practical experience. To this day, she is grateful to her colleagues who helped her move up from an ordinary specialist to a senior manager in the company. In 10 years, she learned how to:
- Work with people, understand their needs, and find what motivates them best.
2. Analyze data related to commercial real estate.
3. Successfully implement investment projects.
Alina found the investment field especially promising and decided to thoroughly study this topic and put her skills into practice. However, she quickly realized that the company’s resources could not keep up with her aspirations and desires. In other words, she had outgrown the business she had devoted many years to and decided to move on. Alina has never regretted taking over as investment director at Skama Group, as it was this position that allowed her to expand the scope of her knowledge.
At the same time, Alina Monosova is convinced that a successful career is not all that you should to strive for. If you are not constantly searching for new opportunities to discover yourself and don’t strive to master new skills, your success will very quickly turn into failure.
Something for the Soul
Although Alina managed to achieve good results in business matters, she felt like there was something missing in her understanding of numerous interconnected processes related to personal development. She was trying to find answers to questions about:
- who she is and what she wants in life;
- how the world around us works;
- how to interact with people to stimulate personal growth as opposed to hampering it.
The accomplished businesswoman tried to find answers to these questions in psychology and eventually got a new degree at Moscow State University. She still continues to study — she enrolled in a master’s program and regularly takes courses and trainings that help her address the personal development matters. Alina has Gestalt psychology and life coaching certificates, but admits that she needs the acquired skills primarily for self-improvement.
Following a long-standing habit, Alina Monosova tried to immediately put the acquired knowledge into practice and, together with a colleague, created the Odna Volna project. The idea was to match individual clients with professionals who would help them move forward and fulfill their life aspirations in a more efficient manner. However, it turned out that to work on such a project, you need to completely immerse yourself in psychology, putting all tasks related to running a business on the back burner. Alina was not ready for such a turn of events and had to cancel the promising project. Nevertheless, working on it helped her to look at herself and her life from a different perspective.
Now Alina is convinced that you should not immerse yourself in just one thing, because sooner or later, this will lead to professional burnout. There should always be alternatives and other opportunities for self-actualization. For her, it is psychology, which helps her take a more balanced approach to problem solving. Moreover, together with like-minded people, she runs a blog dedicated to life in big cities, enjoying the opportunity to share her knowledge with others. And although this pursuit has nothing in common with what she has been doing before, blogging gives Alina a lot of positive emotions and allows her to experience the taste of life in all its fullness.
