Deniz Kayadelen interviewed by Carina Boateng, Senior Consultant EY
What inspired you to write it?
I have always been eager to go out of my comfort zone for self-growth and explore my limits. Besides my busy consulting work, I have been a competitive swimmer for more than 20 years now. In 2018-2019, I embarked upon an extreme out-of-comfort-zone challenge: to get used to cold water swimming in preparation for an English & North Channel relay swim. Furthermore, I swam 8 km from Robben Island to Cape Town in 12°C water with the risk of being attacked from great white sharks. These cold-water immersions inspired me to share my experiences from a psychological perspective. In this book, I wanted to document this inspirational journey and give hints to inspire the readers on how they can go out of their comfort zones, explore their limits and transform pain into success.
How did you experience the process of writing it?
It was a very intense and unique process. Last year, I started writing a blog and collected my immersive swim experiences on this website: www.outofourcomfortzone.com. I received positive feedback and heard that people felt inspired by my stories. This motivated me, so I decided to write a book, in which I can combine my psychological background with my swim experiences. During my secondment in South Africa I was 4.5 months in lockdown, and it was a challenging time. I decided to transfer the painful situation into fruitful actions by using the additional time at home to start writing. Every evening, after work, I tried to write my stories and put them in a storyline. Some days it was hard to focus but my overall goal to share and inspire kept me going. I worked with an Indian publishing company and they supported me with the editing, formatting and creating my marketing strategy. I also created a publishing support team and they encouraged me as well in this journey.
A sneak peak of the content in three sentences?
In this book, I document my own journey and give some reflections on how you can explore your limits, transform pain to success and realize your dreams. I used swimming as a metaphor and tried to build the bridge toward our corporate life.
Why we all should read it?
Many people are afraid to go out of their comfort zone. They are afraid to make mistakes, to fail and have less courage to exceed their own limits. They want to explore their potential, want to do more in life but struggle to get one step further and show the courage to move despite their fears, blockades or externally limiting factors. Sometimes, they don’t know what their passion is and feel less energy to do something different and learn new things, which can change their entire life. I offer readers, based on my life story and cold-water journey, tips on how they can go outside of their comfort zones, inspire them to break their limits, have the courage to face their fears and move forward. I gave examples on how they can follow their passion, transform pain to success and expand their growth zone.
Where can we find the book?
You can find the book on Amazon click the link: