From Lilla Karancsi, Founder and Brand Ambassador

 

My Story – Part I: Aspirations

 

Four years ago, I was at a crossroads in life where I was challenging myself, but wasn’t exactly happy working long hours in a second-generation family corporation. I had no complaints, and yet I felt restless. From the time that I was a girl, I felt this conflict between wanting to go where my heart led and wanting to do something practical. Everyone around me said that those desires could never meet in the “real world.” So there I was, an accomplished university graduate, lawyer, and leader of international business development for a regional company, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Where was the inspiration? The joy? Was this al there was to be? I felt as though I as living half a life, existing for one part of it while lost in a search for the other.

 

All this soul searching took me to memories and places that I haven’t visited in ages. The time was childhood, when bubbling curiosity started leading me to discover my talents. My mind took me in many directions. Not content only with being a model student, I entered international drawing competitions, joined my local church choir, harbored dreams of training to become a renowned opera singer, and never tired of storytelling and fairy tales. As I became more aware of the cultural influences surrounding me, I felt blessed to grow up in a family and town enriched by a pre-medieval history. Coming from the Carpathian Basin, known as much for myth as for mystery, I was in my element because this land is also the cradle of creativity that gave birth to higher culture in the Hungarian, Austrian and Czech regions. Living amidst that special heritage made it perfect as an incubator for inspiring and developing talent. I got to bring my imaginary and real worlds closer together, and I loved every minute.

 

Then academics and the encroaching demands of the professional world forced me to trade my aspiring creative talents for more marketable ambitions. I felt compelled to repress my talents because I saw that being different in those ways was not going to help me get a “real job” and succeed in a “normal” career. Pressured to conform, I hid behind academic triumphs and donned various masks of conventional achievement. But hidden just beneath the surface, the talent was always there, sleeping, dormant, and muted. In unguarded moments, it registered as a tiny voice asking me why I had allowed a vital part of myself to be locked away.

 

However, I already knew the answer. It takes deep courage to expose vulnerability, show your pure self and dare to openly love what you truly love. Courageous moments like that come in cycles, albeit rarely, but they are milestones of life that offer the chance to fulfill a calling or mission. They allow you to access your full potential. At the age of 35, I finally listened to that call. After many sleepless nights and days bouncing between fear and doubt, I decided to end my mental paralysis. The timid mouse somehow needed to become more like an eagle. I wasn’t there yet, but I was off to a running start because with my creative talents liberated and back in my conscious embrace where they belonged, I felt as though I had grown wings and had begun learning to fly.

Don’t miss the second chapter in ‘My Story – Part II: Awakening’