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Hey everybody, it's Mariel.

There are some life skills that we're told we're supposed to learn as kids, but then you get to adulthood and you realize you never did learn how to ride a bike or to light a match without burning your fingers or to swim.

That's true for me in swimming. I took lessons as a kid, but I somehow never got the hang of it.

I always felt like water was going up my nose and I was moving through quicksand.

And now if I try to swim, I feel like I get nowhere.

That is hard and a little embarrassing.

And that shame can make us put up walls.

Like, I'm not good at this.

Why even bother?

Colin Jones told me he gets it. Like, once you start to build that thought process that you're not good at something, it tends to become real.

Jones nearly drowned when he was five.

And then he went on to swim in two Olympics, win four medals, and become the first African-American to hold a swimming world record.

And one of the things that I think we need to do as a society, especially around water, is

stop feeding into that thought process. If you're an adult and you don't know how to swim

or don't know how to swim well, Colin is confident that you can do it. And he says you should do it.

11 people die by drowning every day in the U.S. Among adults, black, and indigenous Americans have the highest drowning rates.

And the American Red Cross found that while 85% of Americans said they could swim, only 56 percent could perform five basic water safety

and swimming skills that can prevent drowning. We've talked about all the reasons why you shouldn't

...