The Power of 21 Days
How one yoga class changed everything.
Several years ago I stepped onto a yoga mat and unknowingly set in motion a year that would change my life. When the yoga instructor encouraged us to set an intention for the year, I decided that it would be the year of being the BEST ME and set about a year committing to doing things that would make me stronger, kinder, healthier, and happier.
As I set that intention, a new idea began to form. What if I could focus on doing one thing for 21 days at a time? It was long enough to be challenging but short enough to feel attainable, and that’s how my 21 Day Project was born.
For my first challenge, I chose 21 days of yoga because it felt obvious. A yoga class is where the idea was born and technically I already had DAY ONE checked off. The result of that first 21 Day Project? Far beyond what I could have imagined.
The First 21 Day Project:
The first few days were fun, fueled by the excitement of a new challenge and the bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed naivete of new beginnings. I joined a yoga studio, I found some shorter classes on youtube for a home practice, and I joined an online yoga challenge for an extra layer of accountability. I have a whole process for how I set myself up for success, but for now I’ll just say that some days were easy, some days were challenging, and I very consciously missed a day.
For 21 days I stayed committed to this thing I said I was going to do, and somewhere along the way I discovered that it wasn’t about the yoga.
The year prior, I had trained for and raced a triathlon in Costa Rica for my birthday. It was my idea of a celebration and friends and family joined me to play in the sun in Central America. Only nothing went according to plan on race day, and instead of me running the race, the race ran me. Exhausted, sunburned, dehydrated, and disappointed, I crossed the finish line but never actually finished the run leg of the race.
The sunburn healed, the exhaustion subsided, and my body rehydrated, but the disappointment stuck to me long after my flight home. I carried it around with me like this big failure that it didn’t need to be for 9 MONTHS! And just like that, during my 21 days of yoga, I decided to let that disappointment go.
I wrote in my blog at the time:
I was hoping 21 days of committing to a single thing would help me get my mojo back, help me get some momentum for the year. maybe. but I think mostly it just helped me let it go. and that feels amazing.
The 21 Day Project, Stacked
Looking back, those 21 days were just the beginning. That year unlocked some other-worldly magic: from buying my NYC apartment to running my fastest marathon ever, I was becoming the person that does all those things. All from making a committment to being the best version of myself, one 21-day challenge at a time.
That’s the magic of the 21 Day Project—small, consistent actions leading to big shifts.
Fast forward to today, and the 21 Day Project is still a cornerstone of how I live my life. The process has evolved, but the core principle remains the same: commit to something meaningful for 21 days, and watch the magic unfold.
Now What?
I’ve always had it in my mind to turn my blog from that year of my 21 Day Project into something that I could share more broadly. It was so good, it is so good, it is how I live my life to this day. So, this is that.
If you have made it THIS far in the post, and any part of this story resonated with you in a way that you thought “I could use some of that”, consider running your own 21 Day Project!
My mini-podcast episodes were recorded to give you encouragement, ideas, stories, tips for running your own! I created a 21 Day Tracker template to add a little fun to keeping yourself accountable. And I’m building out more resources that I wish I had when I started my journey, in case you could use them too.
Wherever you are on your growth journey I’ll leave you with this, because it’s important to keep in mind:
You are allowed to be a MASTERPIECE and a work in process at the same time
A tale of 2 finish lines, before and after my year of the 21 Day Project:
