The Art of Having it All [antikvár]

XIIIFOREWORDby Anna TrebunskayaNo pain, no gain. As someone who's been a competitive dancer since the age of seven, I'm pretty familiar with this philosophy - as I'm sure you are as well. Some version of this mindset lies at the heart of most of the strategies we're taught to help us succeed - not only in athletics, but in all areas of life. We are told from a young age that hard work, striving to be the best, and pushing ourselves to the limit is the path to realizing our potential, fulfilling our heart's desires, and succeeding at everything we want to accomplish. For over 25 years, my life was organized around this principle, and with great discipline I followed a rigorous and predictable schedule of training, traveling internationally, competing and performing. What I've learned from experience is that while discipline and hard work are essential to accomplishing goals, there is a limit to how much we can achieve through these means alone. In fact, the blessings in my life that I cherish the most - having the opportunity to perform in front of millions of television viewers; teaching people how to move their bodies and feel good about themselves; and most recently becoming a mother to my precious daughter, Amalya - were not necessarily planned, but came about as a result of simply allowing myself to be moved in the direction that life seemed to be urging me. Something I know now that I did not know ten years ago is that the universe often holds a far bigger vision for us than we are capable of seeing for ourselves at any particular moment in time. I've had to learn to embrace change and understand that we need to move toward it in a fluid way not against it it's very much like dancing.