Last night I attended a charity event with a difference.
I get invited to lots of charity dos and with no disrespect to them last night’s was certainly one of the most memorable.
My friend Mike Cole from Imagine Property Group had organised the evening called Oceans 7 which was held at Watford Palace Theatre and was raising money for local charity DEMAND.
It featured two inspirational speakers and was promoted as a motivational evening. It certainly lived up to its billing.
Bob Patmore was first up. Bob has enjoyed an incredibly successful career in many different industries across several decades. He was worth the ticket price on his own.
Bob is full of wisdom, tonnes of great ideas and is a very hard to act to follow. But when Adam Walker took to the stage he captured the audience’s complete attention for more than an hour and a half.
Adam is an open water endurance swimmer and is one of just a handful of people in the world to complete the toughest seven oceans swims in the world. 
The challenge took him across the globe to places such as Hawaii, Japan, Morocco and the toughest swim of all – the Irish Sea.
He faced hungry sharks, torrid tides, jellyfish bites, crippling injuries and constant bone-crushing cold and fatigue.
His journey to become the first British person to complete the challenge began on a plane. He watched a film about a man who had just retired and felt directionless. That was until he came up with the “crazy idea” to swim the English Channel. Which he did.
The in flight entertainment gave wings to Adam’s own crazy idea. He’d swim the Channel too.
One endurance swim turned into another and eventually Adam set a goal to complete the Oceans 7.
There’s not enough space in this blog to share all of the insights and stories we were lucky enough to hear from him.
But we can all learn a lot from Adam’s approach to completing the challenge and achieving his goals.
Adam Walker (on left) sharing the stage with Mike Cole MD of Imagine Property Group.
Firstly he set a clear goal which he was genuinely excited about.
He then created a plan to achieve that goal encompassing how he would go about things.
He showed unswerving self belief to finish all seven swims– when times got tough he kept going, literally just concentrating on the next swim stroke.
He prepared for success by training as hard as possible and committing himself fully to his seeing his “crazy idea” become a reality.
But the biggest thing I took away was the importance of being positive if you want to succeed in whatever you do.
The evening reminded me of a quote I saw attributed to Henry T Ford: “Whether you believe you can, or believe you can’t, you’re right.”
So with that in mind I’m off for a swim.
Thanks for reading,
Nik
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