On July 4, 1952, a young woman named Florence Chadwick waded into the water off Catalina Island with the intention of swimming the channel to the California coast. Long-distance swimming was not new to her; she had been the first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions.
The water was numbing cold that day. The fog was so thick she could hardly see the boats in her party. Several times sharks had to be driven away with rifle fire. She swam more than fifteen hours before she asked to be taken out of the water. Her trainer tried to encourage her to swim on since they were so close to land, but when Florence looked, all she saw was fog. So she quit…only one mile from her goal! Later she said, “I’m not excusing myself, but if I could have seen the land I might have made it.”
It wasn’t the cold or fear or exhaustion that caused Florence Chadwick to fail. It was the fog.
Read the great application at the link above.