Olga Belenky
International Tax Consultant
From Moscow to Israel
Olga Belenky offers us a simple and effective way to help us reduce stress and tension, and come to solutions to our questions and problems.
Olga begins her story in Moscow, where she grew up and worked as a tax consultant at one of the Big Four accounting firms with a specialty in corporate tax. From there, her curiosity led her to explore new territory in IT and product management.
At the end of 2022, Olga and her family moved to Israel. This was a huge move for them all as Moscow and Israel have utterly different cultures, languages, and required skill-sets for thriving. Even their sizes are poles apart – Moscow has a population of over 13 million people (over 21 million if you count the broader metropolitan area), whereas the population of the entire country of Israel is about 10 million.
Changes
Like many new immigrants, Olga began working in a different field for the first few years. She started a home and office organization business in which she helped her clients declutter and put their physical lives in order.
Home and office organization
Olga is excellent at this, for not only is she extremely organized and orderly, but she also understands the emotional aspects of decluttering. I recall Olga and I once having a fascinating conversation where she told me how grief is frequently involved with clutter. She gave me this example: let’s say you have a blouse in a closet that you no longer need because your profession or your size have changed. However, for some reason you just can’t seem to get rid of it. To understand why, it’s helpful to consider the memories associated with the blouse – who or what were you when you were wearing it, and what aspects of these memories do you cherish and wish to hold on to? And perhaps that’s why you’re holding onto that blouse – because it is a metaphor for those memories and feelings.
Clutter as a metaphor
I thought this was extremely interesting, and tried it out for myself: after our I went to my closet and thought about various items of clothing in it that I’d tried in the past to get rid of but had been unable to. I realized that many of them were indeed connected with a former and cherished period of my life, and that without realizing it, I was mourning the loss of that period. And therefore I hadn’t been able to separate from certain items associated with that period, specifically those items of clothing. With this new understanding it became easy for me to finally clear those clothes from my closet.
I digress by telling this story, but I find it interesting. Indeed, I find every conversation with Olga interesting.
Coming home to tax
As with most first-time entrepreneurs, a beautiful idea alone doesn’t always translate into a sustainable income. After a couple of years of building her organization business, Olga made the decision to return to her professional roots as a tax consultant. For Olga, returning to tax felt less like giving up and more like coming home.
Reducing stress and anxiety
Changing countries and paths over a short period of time placed enormous pressure on Olga. Couple this with the broader environment in Israel and worldwide since 2023, and you have a recipe for stress and tension. It is against this backdrop that Olga suggested I share with you one of the things she does to decrease stress and anxiety. Although not a cure-all (but then, what is?), it’s the simplest and most effective tool she has found for herself.
Moving into your body
Olga learned this tool about a decade prior to moving to Israel, during an extremely stressful work period where she was consistently working 12-hour days at the office. Rather than spending her days off watching TV, Olga began practicing Tai Chi. As time progressed and under her coach’s direction, she began creating stronger and stronger connections between her mind and her body.
Practicing Tai Chi helped Olga connect her body and her mind, and through this, reduce her worries and anxieties. This is because Olga, like so many of us in the legal and financial fields, was trained to live in her head. After all, it’s our heads for which we we tend to be hired – including our sharpness and cognitive abilities – and not what happens neck down. Even though we intellectually know that what happens neck down is critical for us to be at our cognitive top game.
Tai Chi and feeling your feet
The tool that Olga learned through Tai Chi is when you feel nervous, anxious, or otherwise stuck in your head, remember that you have feet. How this works in real time is to place your attention onto one of your feet. Doing this helps you move out of your head and into your body, which is very calming. Since learning this tool from Olga I’ve been working with it, and I indeed do find it extremely grounding. It’s practical and easy, for even in the middle of extreme stress one can generally still garner up the bandwidth to focus on a single foot, thereby taking you out of your head which is where your worries and anxieties reside.
Olga described the sensation of being in one’s body in a beautiful, poetic way – in Tai Chi, she says, you become a tree. In other words, you are present in all parts of your body: in your head, your arms, your legs, your trunk, and so on and so forth. This is like being a tree, Olga explains, for a tree is everywhere; you’re not just one branch, you’re everywhere.
Reaching answers through your body
Moving into her body through Tai Chi or bodywork such as massage or osteopathy is what Olga does whenever she is feeling stressed. Other options: if you’re pressed for time, you can also just shake your body or jump. Olga explains that anything you do to strengthen the connection between your mind and body helps reduce stress and tension because our brains reduce anxiety best through our bodies, not our heads.
The same principle applies when Olga is looking for an answer to a personal or professional question or problem. Rather than trying to figure things out in her head, she goes for a walk or does some other bodywork that helps her sit more firmly in her body. Olga’s strategy makes perfect sense from a Human Design level as well, for she is a Manifesting Generator in Human Design, which is a very physical, visceral type of person.