There is a myriad of reasons why we might be unhappy with our lives, and all of them seem to be originating from longing and discontent: we long to have more time, more money, more love; we are discontent with our jobs, our living situation, our relationships. Lucia Cottone, the Founder of Knack Talent and a Public Speaker, noticed that many of us have allowed longing and discontent to dictate our lives, and at the Women’s Accelerator event last week, she gave an inspiring talk on conquering longing and discontent through Architecting Your Vision.
Photo Credit: Lindy Huang Werges
Photo Credit: Lindy Huang Werges
The event was held at the stylish Trunk Club LA on November 16, 2016, by Women’s Accelerator, a high-touch management development experience that offers a unique six-month mentoring program. By pairing top-tier emerging women leaders with a senior executive, they help high-potential women achieve and advance their career goals, as well as facilitate more meaningful and long-lasting relationships between professional women. At this discussion, they have invited Lucia to talk about the three powerful tools to improve and elevate the life experience.
Lucia began by sharing that for years in her life, she did not know where her unhappiness came from – all she knew was that she constantly felt trapped in the negativity of longing and discontent. Then one day, she decided to leave her post as Senior Vice President of Original Programming for the Global Sony Television Network Group to pursue a Master’s Degree in Spiritual Psychology. Although this dive into the space of the unknown, this seemingly reckless decision to leave a stable job behind, was initially frightening and disconcerting, Lucia was exhilarated about not knowing what to do for the first time in her life. “The space of the unknown,” she said, “is also a creative space.” Her venture into the unknown is what inspired her to launch Knack Talent in 2014, where she serves as Creative Consultant and dedicates her time and effort to guiding, supporting, and coaching her clients to achieve optimal creative experiences and live a more meaningful life.
Photo Credit: Lindy Huang Werges
Photo Credit: Lindy Huang Werges
Lucia continued by pointing out that to conquer your feelings of longing and discontent, you must first find out what your longing and discontent are. Only by locating the root of your discontent and focusing on the opposite will you know what makes you happy. For example, she was sad for a long time because her family lived so far away from her. However, instead of allowing this sense of desolation to dictate her life, she turned it around and realized that her feeling means that she is someone who loves her family a lot, and this is something to rejoice in, not grieve over.
Here are the three powerful tools she uses to elevate her life experience:
1) Notice What You Are Noticing
Lucia urges us to start seeing the fine details of every moment in our experiences. Identify your doubts, fear, longing and discontent, and strive to focus on the opposite. At the same time, try to savor, cherish, and build upon every positive moment in your life. Ask yourself: are you creating powerful thoughts? If so, you are in an upward spiral; you are creating, improving, expanding, and unleashing more possibilities in your life.
2) Ask Quality Questions
Lucia compared asking the question “why?” to chasing a tail – the effort is pointless and fruitless, and you end up going in a downward spiral and compressing yourself and your creative spaces. Instead, she suggested, turn “why” into “what.” Ask what you can do to solve the problem, to improve your situation, to make your experience better.
3) Seek Intentional Silence
Finally, Lucia advised us to have a moment of peace and quiet everyday, so that we can reflect on our experiences and see what steps we can take to improve our lives.
Together, she concluded, these three tools completely changed her life and helped her enter the space of wonder and fulfillment. Encouraging us all to tap into our creative center as a source of propelling our future, she also reminded us that it is perfectly fine to feel fear at times: fear is the companion of success that takes us to the edge of our creative space.
Photo Credit: Lindy Huang Werges
Photo Credit: Lindy Huang Werges