What can swimming teach you about life?

First things first: Learning to swim is a life-saving skill that all people who live in sea countries should possess. This is an indisputable fact beyond any doubt. Nonetheless, when talking about swimming there are numerous more aspects to take into consideration. Swimming can offer valuable lessons that can be extremely helpful for our progress in life. Let's examine a number of them.

 

Choose the right teachers

From the moment we are born, we are continually learning. Even during the first years of our lives, we are constantly assimilating new information through our interaction with our parents. The cognitive function is continuous, even when we have not yet developed our language skills and our consciousness. What is also unique in humans is that they go through a long period of nurturing before they are ready to open their wings. In the vast majority of cases, people spend a couple of decades living with their parents. During this period, the personality of a person is formed, affecting greatly its further evolution. It's the period of our lives that is dedicated mostly to learning. Our parents are our first teachers before we reach school age. The wealth of knowledge, ideas and experience we get before our adult life is so crucial.

 

The role of experience

And while we can choose neither our parents nor our school teachers, we can choose who would teach us and our children from the moment we become adults. Since we all have vivid memories of our education teachers and how influential they have been for us –either positively or negatively- we always try to sort out who would be the ideal teachers for us. At this stage of our lives, we are already quite aware of what is the teaching process and style that suits us best. We also appreciate the significance of the experience. Let's now switch our focus on the choice of our swim teacher. All the above conditions would surely affect our choice. What are the traits we look for from our swim teacher? Expertise, knowledge, patience, ability to inspire. The learning process of such an important skill is the foundation stone upon which we would consider relevant future choices. This could be more important in the case of choosing a teacher for kids. The attributes of a good swim teacher would be looked after for the future choice of other teachers in different fields (e.g. learning a foreign language).

 

Work hard ethics

The whole culture of swimming is fascinating. It's not just the confidence of acquiring a life-saving skill. Neither is the amazing feeling of working your body in the swimming pool or the sea. It's more than that. From day one of beginning to attend swim classes, you would sense the underlying reason for the training methods in use. Depending on your level of swim expertise, there will be various approaches. In all cases though, there would be similar patterns. Whether you are a beginner with no prior experience or a competitive swimmer who wants to become a swimming expert, there are common lessons to learn: Repetition is crucial for effective learning. Discipline is required for achieving results. You will need to consider your nutritional habits for getting the energy you need. Healthy sleeping patterns are fundamental for keeping an active lifestyle. For successful learning of those lessons, there needs to be hard work ethics. Inspirational guidance from your swim teacher is very useful but you would need to make it happen with your efforts. This is a “law” for every success in life.

 

Learn from your failures

Mistakes and failures are part of our lives. People are not machines. There's not a single person on earth who has not experienced failure at some part of their life. The same applies to swim lessons as well. No person could be perfect from day one in the swimming pool. There may be nervy moments, there may be swim techniques that we find difficult to cope with, and there may be a feeling of disappointment when learning is slow. What is the critical aspect though is not the number of failures but the way we react afterwards? Thomas Edison, one of the greatest inventors of all time is one of the most striking examples of learning from mistakes. Edison inventions include the light bulb, the phonograph and the motion picture. He is now regarded as a legend and one of the greatest innovators of all time. What most people may not know is that Edison failed thousand times before perfecting his light bulb invention. Not once, not twice. Thousands of times. Other people in his place would quit. Instead, he used each failure as a lesson for getting better. The rest is history. Swimming lessons are providing similar lessons to all. Lessons that are for life.

 

Always keep a positive attitude

Echart Tolle is ranked among the most influential spiritual teachers globally. One of his most notable maxims says: “When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life”. Making a parallel to the swim lessons, there's the link between the uncertainty and risk that the open water brings. Most people learn how to swim for keeping safe from drowning. Once they become more confident, a whole world of possibilities opens for them. It could be visiting new countries to enjoy their beaches, starting winter swimming sessions, or even becoming a professional swimmer. In all cases, what swimming can teach us about life is that we should always keep a positive attitude despite all the difficulties, uncertainties and unfortunate events that could emerge. Life is a flowing process that can always surprise us. Our open hearts and souls are the best facilitators for great things to happen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Knowledge is power.

 

Life is a journey. And like every journey, there can