No Limits: the Will to Succeed by Michael Phelps with Alan Abrahamson

Michael Phelps is among the top athletes in the world. When he was young, only 15 years of age, he was already on the Olympic stage as the youngest male swimmer on the U.S. team ever. After that he went onto Athens to win his first Olympic gold medals at 19 years old. Now, after the Beijing Olympics, he is known for doing the impossible. Michael Phelps wrote the book No Limits: the Will to Succeed along with sportswriter and analyst Alan Abrahamson. He wrote this book to tell his about his success and his setbacks to inspire people to strive for their goals. Before the Olympics, Michael’s main goal was to change the sport of swimming forever. This meant that he would have to do the unthinkable and break Mark Spitz record of seven gold’s in a single Olympics. To break the record he had to swim eight races and win every one of them. There are eight chapters in this book, one for each of his swims in Beijing and also one for each quality that helped him to achieve his goals. The eight events he swam were the 400 individual medley, the 400 free relay, the 200 freestyle, the 200 butterfly, the 800 free relay, the 200 individual medley, the 100 fly, and the medley relay. He won each one of these races by believing he could achieve his goals through perseverance, belief, redemption, determination, confidence, courage, will, and commitment. This book explains Michael’s life from the highest and most exciting points to the lowest and most discouraging points. Michael was diagnosed with ADHD when he was a child and could not focus without fidgeting or distracting his peers. One of his teachers once told him that he would never amount to anything if he couldn’t focus. On the other hand, Michael was inspired to become great by his mother and also by the words of people that thought he wasn’t good enough to make something of himself. Michael has proved the doubters wrong and has become one of the world’s greatest athletes and is still determined to be the best he can.

I encourage anyone to read this book because it tells a person that being great doesn’t mean winning eight gold medals. Striving for and achieving your goals will help a person to become great. While I was reading the book, I found it easy to relate to his life with the limitations he encountered to the limitations in my own life and also the success in his life with that of my own. This book would be great for anyone to read if they need inspiration from the life of an individual who has experienced winning at its highest and losing at its lowest. Michael Phelps broke his wrist a couple of months before the Olympics, which seemed to mean the end of his career, but he wouldn’t let that happen and went on to win eight gold medals, break one of the greatest records of all time, and change the sport of swimming forever. This is a very good book and I would encourage anyone to read it.