Mariel Hawley (@marielhawley) is a Renaissance Woman.

She is an author and an attorney. She is a mother of two and a widow. She is a prolific marathon swimmer and a riveting motivational speaker. She is a Oceans Seven swimmer, a Guinness World Record holder, has pioneered swims (SwimÖresund, Los Cabos Open Water Acuarium, Corazón de Mar Bahía de Banderas), and organizes a number of charity swims.

Publications

Her first book, Días Azules, describes her marathon swimming exploits. All her books – whether they are in Spanish or English – are centered around her passion for the open water:

• Deep Blue Dreams: A Coloring and Calming Underwater Experience for Adults
• Días Azules 
• Water Days: Swimming the English Channel
• Sumérgete en la Magia de la Naturaleza: Un libro de colorear para adultos ideal para relajarse
• Like the Heart of the Sea: Always at Peace
• Rising Tides: Swimming the Oceans Seven Challenge and the Tides of Life
• Diving into the Magic of Nature: A mindful and relaxing coloring book for adults
• Abrazando al Agua: Guía para disfrutar la naturaleza y nadar en aguas abiertas (Spanish Edition)
• Corazón de Mar (Spanish Edition)
• Marea (Spanish Edition)

Deep Blue Dreams

Her most recent book, Deep Blue Dreams, is an interesting approach to reducing stress. Hawley encourages people to color while practicing mindfulness and to connect with their emotions and feelings towards the ocean. The coloring book includes beautiful patterns, mandalas, landscapes, and oceanscapes related to the Oceans Seven.

Her Mindset

She asks readers, “Have you set yourself a goal or challenge yet?”

Her answer, “If you already have a sports goal you already have a clear picture of where you are heading, surely you’ve got an action plan to achieve your challenge.

If you do not have a goal yet, let me tell you something…if you do not have a challenge that guides your workout and your effort to a specific purpose or target, it becomes very difficult to stay motivated and keep up training or working out or practicing a sport.

Have courage, and with enthusiasm, establish yourself a goal and work to achieve it.

I am giving you a formula that contains the most important ingredients to establish a goal, and to achieve it successfully. Make your goal a BIG one. I mean a goal that may appear to be unreachable, extraordinary, and uncommon, that you see it far away. This means a very big and important challenge for you.

This is a basic ingredient to keep moving your motivation towards your goal. If your target is small and easy to achieve or reach, it will turn into something that will make you easily lose motivation, since with a little effort you will reach your challenge; otherwise, if you have a great challenge, this will trigger your creativity and motivation in order to keep focused on working very hard day by day, in order to achieve the goal.

The other ingredient, which is as important as to set a BIG goal, is that you become aware of the amount of effort you will need to achieve your great challenge. The effort and work you will need to achieve your goal will be proportional to the importance of your goal or challenge. Therefore, keep in mind that for a GREAT goal or challenge you will need EXTRAORDINARY effort and work.

Remember, your effort and hard work will lead you to your goal. There are some people who think that achieving a goal requires a mid size effort, a little workout every now and then and some dedication, I can tell you, it requires a huge extra dosage of hard work and dedication on an every day basis.

However, I can also tell you that your everyday maximum effort, will one day lead you to achieve your goal, and to achieve it with a very big smile.

My wish for you is that you dream big and you do it with your eyes wide open, the way I dream, with my eyes open in order to overcome and defeat every day’s obstacles, working-out and training very hard, to make my dreams come true.“

Discovery

In Deep Blue Dreams: A Coloring and Calming Underwater Experience for Adults (see Instagram link), she explains, “Swimming in the middle of the storm in the Tsugaru Strait in Japan between waves, the wind, and the rain, I discovered the heart of the seas and reveals it through this book for ocean and nature lovers, whether swimmers or simply people who want to get closer to the water and immerse themselves for an instant in its magical flow.

During the last 20 years, I have swum in seas, rivers, reservoirs, lagoons, lakes, straits and estuaries and in each of them she has discovered the magic of the water.

This book is a gift from the ocean, a song of the rivers, and a poem of the lakes for all those who seek a connection not only with nature, but above all, with their emotions, to feel them, connect with them, and initiate a process to rediscover themselves and live consciously to embrace and welcome the magic of the water.

I invite you to immerse yourself in its pages and reflect on the intimacy of the flow of water to find peace in your life. Enjoy the magic of the water.”

© 2024 Daily News of Open Water Swimming

“to educate, enthuse, and entertain all those who venture beyond the shoreline“

A World Open Water Swimming Federation project.