CHICAGO (Ivanhoe Newswire) – Despite the amount of money or incentives they receive, an alarming 70 percent of Americans surveyed in a recent Gallop poll either hate their jobs or are completely disengaged.
Experts say this dissatisfaction can often lead to stress, depression and other illnesses. One smart woman decided to get healthy and re-engage by walking off the job and into a new career.
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Gardner, author, speaker and blogger Shawna Coronado told Ivanhoe, "I was taking over a dozen prescriptions a day trying to survive. It's allergies, asthma, I was super sick all the time."
But now, Shawna Coronado realizes it was her corporate job making her sick. She started feeling better when she quit and began working with flowers.
"Once I let go of some of the extra stresses in my life and started focusing on what was really important to me, it really changed the way that my life felt and how I felt on the inside," Coronado told Ivanhoe.
Her emotional transformation started through gardening around her mailbox and that led to getting to know her neighbors better.
Coronado told Ivanhoe, "I wanted to meet people, it had nothing to do with the garden, it had to do with connecting with community."
As Coronado expanded her garden, she discovered other benefits.
"You're beautifying your neighborhood, there was a study done many years ago on how crime and violence is reduced when people are exposed to landscaping and gardening. You're reducing crime and you're feeding the community," Coronado told Ivanhoe.
Coronado now regularly gives vegetables she grows to a food pantry where they usually don't get fresh food.
"I think Shawna is a great inspiration to a lot of women all over the country to follow her lead if the time comes in their lives," Emily Larson who works at the Emmanuel Food Pantry, told Ivanhoe.
Coronado plants over 1,000 varieties of vegetables, blogs her secrets to thousands, inspiring them to lead a healthy lifestyle and do what she did, find happiness by doing what you love.
"It's always that first step in my opinion that's the hardest, like the first garden was the toughest to build and that after that it was amazing," Coronado told Ivanhoe.
Coronado admits following her passions took a toll financially but says in the end her mental and physical health were much more valuable.
Now she is able to sustain herself financially through speaking engagements, writing and landscape design.