Destiny Olivia did not know how to swim. Not as a child, not as a teenager, not as a young adult.

Pools and the open water were both foreign and foreboding to her. The water was something to avoid; simply put, quatic experiences were not part of her life.

But then, something changed. Something motivated her to learn how to swim – and she has never looked back.

Olivia, now a scuba diver, triathlete, and open water swimmer, offers a valuable perspectives of her new mindset in her 120-page book, Challenge Accepted: 15 Powerful Principles to Overcome Limiting Beliefs, Unlock Your Potential, & Change Your Life.

She explains her reasons to write her first book, “It’s about 15 universal life lessons that I learned in the pool from doing what at first seemed to me impossible – learn to swim as an adult.”

Olivia is offering the downloadable ebook for free and asking the swimming community to review it on Amazon before her launch day of December 18th.

She explains, “Swimming has been my greatest gift and my greatest teacher. Most valuably, I learned that the differentiations we have in our heads between what’s ‘easier’ or ‘harder’ are often arbitrary or irrelevant. Before I knew how to swim, I had fixed in my mind that it was easier to swim in the shallow end and harder and scarier to swim in the deep end.

But I realized whether you’re in the shallow end or the deep end, you’re ultimately doing the same thing – swimming on the surface.

Have you created a ‘shallow end’ and a ‘deep end’ in your life? Have you categorized things as easy or difficult and placed limitations on yourself accordingly? Challenge yourself to break patterns of perception, and challenge your stories.

Go after what you want. Regardless of what level of difficulty you’ve mentally assigned to it.

This is one of 15 universally applicable life lessons I learned from my journey of going from flailing in the shallow end and unable to swim AT ALL, to being an avid scuba diver and triathlete and doing open water swimming in the Hudson River.

Have you ever felt like something was impossible for you, but possible for everyone else? Me too.

That’s why I was inspired to write a book about how I was able to make my impossible possible, and do something I (after a lifetime of failing spectacularly. I NEVER thought I would be able to do – learn how to swim as a nearly 30-year-old adult.“

For more information, visit here.

© 2023 Daily News of Open Water Swimming

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