21 Days to a Better You

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by Svetlana Saitsky

21 Days of Focus

The ultimate craft, is the art of living.  And in order to be the strongest, most beautiful, powerful, and valuable person you can be, I believe that it’s important to not only love who you are, but to constantly seek out ways to sharpen the blade of your metaphorical knife.

The best people never think they are the best, which is why they keep getting better. What happens though, when you do so much, learn so much and get involved in so much, that your “best” turns into a state of burnout and/or confusion. Have you ever been there?  A few months ago, I was not feeling like my best so I decided to do something pretty drastic. I decided to cleanse my entire life once and for all, and rather trying to cleanse everything all at once, I decided to focus all of my energy on just one area: my body.

I am convinced that the busy people who burnout don’t do so because they are doing too much, rather, they are not doing enough self care. As someone who born with a Type-A, highly energetic  personality, nature gave me plenty; though focus has never been a strong suit.  I've often found myself trying to run into 5 directions at once and not getting very far. Then I started observing top athletes, successful artists, business people, and philanthropists and a very clear pattern began to emerge: they all exhibit razor-sharp focus.

Tony Robbins says, “one reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power...” When I heard this, I felt like Tony was talking to me. Never lacking passion, but consistently lacking focus, I have enjoyed  being involved in a little bit of this and that, but I had trouble making decisions and choosing one area of focus. I felt like choosing one thing to focus one somehow meant that I forfeited my invitation to all of life’s other parties. And then a question appeared in my mind and would just not go away: could focusing on one area actually open the door to parties I never knew existed, and even get me on the VIP list? I decided to experiment and find out.

Focusing on Myself

I decided that my area of focus would be my body and that the goal would be to cleanse. Intuitively I felt that cleansing my body would inspire me to cleanse the rest of my life, and that is exactly what happened. Within 21 days, I lost 15 pounds, got rid of half a closet of clothes I did not need, cleaned the apartment I’d been trying to clean for months, got in the habit of meditating daily and ultimately, I became a generally more joyful person. Now, let me say this: it was not easy, but oh how absolutely worthwhile and delicious did this experience turn out to be. Putting myself on a very strict diet, I severely cut my calorie intake and stuck to a diet of raw vegetables, fruits and just a little bit of protein. I did not have any sugar or carbs and I did not eat after 7pm. I had no dairy, and gave up my favorite soy lattes in the morning. No pain, no gain (or loss in this case). 

I would like to reiterate that this was not about getting thinner so much as it was about growing into the best version of myself. 21 days of focusing on my body cleanse helped inspire me to cleanse my apartment, my address book and most importantly, my mind. Observing how much my body responded to razor-sharp focus and discipline inspired me to focus on other areas of my life, just like I had hypothesized. 

Our world needs top performers. Ambitious, creative, innovative and energetic people make the world go round.  Calm, reflective, and grounded people help keeping it from spinning from out of control. Those that happen to exhibit both sets of qualities are a rarity, and it’s been a personal mission of mine to find these people, learn from them and slowly grow into one of them. What I have learned is that there are so many wonderful kinds of people, and whether you are an action seeker, a feeler, thinker or decider, matters less than whether you've developed a healthy level of sustained joy, or what I like to refer to as a spark of inspiration, and what I also refer to as the internal gift that keeps on giving. Working on developing focus has helped me find greater joy, inspiration and productivity, and I hope that my story inspires you to do the same.

About Svetlana

SvetaSvetlana Saitsky is a Creative Iconoclast who strives to inspire through her work as a photographer, writer and designer. With her entrepreneurial spirit, business school education, corporate experience and artistic savvy, Svetlana is a contributing writer for Great Place To Work Institute, Business Heroine Magazine, SociallySuperlative.com, and works for Adecco at Google. Combining left-brain intellect with right-brain creativity, she resides in San Francisco, CA while working on her first book on Inspiration. A modern day Renaissance woman, Svetlana believes in exploring a variety of passions daily and when she is not taking photographs or writing, you might find her salsa dancing, singing, eating avocados and hanging out in coffee shops all over town.  To explore Svetlana's work, please visit her here!

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