Saturday, January 11, 2014

TED Talks: Never, ever give up

Diana Nyad Swims from Cuba to Florida
Rating: ****



The TED Talks I watched was such an inspiring video. Diana Nyad had a dream that she just couldn’t give up on: she wanted to swim the 110-mile ocean crossing between Cuba and Florida.

She had tried this once before in her 20’s but got defeated by severe jellyfish attacks. Nearly 40 years later, at age 60, with tremendous amount of work and preparation, she accomplished her goal. And she had a few things to say about it. One being that you are never too old to achieve your goal and that you shouldn’t listen to what other people have to say about it. So many people told her that her goal was impossible and that she couldn’t do it. But she didn’t listen to them. She lived by Teddy Roosevelt’s quote “You go ahead. You go ahead and sit back in your comfortable chair and you be the critic, you be the observer while the brave one gets in the ring and engages and gets bloody and gets dirty and fails over and over and over again but yet isn’t afraid, and isn’t timid, and loves life in a bold way.”

Diana was a hard worker and was won a number or world records for swimming; she is a member of the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the International Swimming Hall of Fame. In the video, she talks about how everything went down and what she’s most proud of, acknowledging her strong team and friends that helped her. She talks about how she wasn’t allowed to touch the boat and how at night it was so dark she couldn’t even see her hand in front of her. The only way her team on the boat knew she was there was by the sound of her hands hitting the water. When she was hallucinating and swallowing so much salt water, she was just about to give up, but her friend Bonnie told her there wasn’t much to go. She was 15 hours away from finishing her epic journey, which to a lot of swimmers is a lot, but she had done so many 15 hour practices in training. When she finished, she said that what she was most proud of was that she was bold and fearless.

I learned a lot by watching this TED Talks video. It’s so important that if you have a goal you shouldn’t let anyone stand in your way or bring you down. It was a very motivating speech and it shows that if you’re determined you can do anything. I really enjoyed this video and the life lessons Diana shared. 

Nyad, Diana. "Never, ever give up." Video on ted.com. Posted December 2013
http://www.ted.com/talks/diana_nyad_never_ever_give_up.html

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