Life lessons in the pool: Swimming my way to success - 2025!

  

Hello readers, today I am going to share with you a few life lessons I learned after my 2025 long course swimming season. Last year I wrote a blog reflecting on my 2024 long course season which I compared with my overall learnings from this season. At a high level, in spite of me moving up an age group, I felt like I did better than the previous year but fell short in a few areas.

1. Mental preparation

This season, I felt that I was consistent in my mental preparation. However, I didn’t execute it effectively. I listened to many motivational speeches, but I wasn’t focused on preparing race strategies in my mind. I didn’t pay attention to the concept of visualization at all this season. I now realize that when I was falling short in my races I hadn’t played a short film of my race in my head before the event. Before my last swim meet, I did create a race plan on paper, but I didn’t study it enough to fully understand all the details. Sometimes, I overlooked stretching or controlling my sugar levels, which led to poor performances. Additionally, I hadn’t trained my mind to handle bad results. My dad kept telling me this season to ‘brush it off’. Focusing on one thing often caused me to forget about others. This experience taught me the importance of preparing in advance and being aware of what I’m eating and how consistently I stretch.

2. Reflection

After every swim meet, I received feedback from my coaches and acknowledged my learnings during the meet. I wrote them down, but I didn’t think about it again or take action on them during practice. Honestly, I didn’t remember half the things I missed during the events. I regret not taking the time to focus on the details that could have made me a better swimmer both physically and mentally. I’ve learned that applying your learnings to your daily life makes you stronger.

3. Distraction

This season, there were many short bursts of distractions that kept me from focusing on my goals. However, at meets, I wasn't distracted as much and stayed laser focussed. There was one meet where I thought I added time to an event, but in reality, I had actually improved my time. Unfortunately, believing I had added time affected me emotionally which impacted the rest of my performance during that meet. I didn’t shake off the distraction or move past it.

4. Feedback

There were a couple times I didn't ask for feedback from my coaches because they were talking to someone else or because I had a bad race. I learned this summer that talking to people is really important for building strong relationships and learning from various experiences. Asking questions and seeking feedback every time could have helped me become an even better swimmer.

At the end of the long course swim season, my dad told me an analogy that struck a chord with me. He told me that swimming is like baking a cake. There are basic ingredients that we always need to use such as: having sportsmanship, building a champion mindset, exercising daily, being dedicated to training and having a healthy diet. The cake needs to be baked to perfection and for that we need to keep baking the cake consistently. Dropping time is like the icing on the cake, you always put icing on after you are finished baking the cake but the very important part is baking the cake itself. This analogy will stick with me for the upcoming short course season. 

 My competitive swimming journey has been an awesome experience for the past 6 years. I have built my body into something I always thought would be impossible. I have made many strong friendships and met great coaches who have been there for me since the beginning. Most importantly, I would like to thank my dad for sacrificing his time to be a part of my journey. Whenever he seeks an opportunity to get better he always pushes me to achieve many things we dream of. I am so grateful to have a role model who I can talk to about the sport I love. I am also really blessed to have a female role model I can always look up to, my mother. She has always been there for me my entire journey. I would like to thank her for all the important advice she gives me and her love for making me a better person. I really appreciate all the hard work both of my parents put in to make my life a living dream. I can’t wait to continue my journey, but with a new perspective!!!

I would really love to hear your feedback and comments. Please reach out to me@hanikachhajer.com.