I Took Cold Showers for 1 Month

January was an interesting month. I had no access to social media and every morning I got up from my warm bed and hopped in a cold shower. I took on both challenges and completed both. What did I learn from this painful endeavor? Well, you can check out my social media post here, but one thing I did learn was that cold showers are effective at waking you the fuck up. In all seriousness, cold showers had a much larger effect on me than simply waking me up. The philosophy of cold showers is much more than cold water.

There are clear health benefits to cold showers. I experienced some myself; other benefits that science has noted are improved circulation and immunity. The famous Norwegian athlete, Wim Hof, is an example of what cold exposure can do to the human body. Granted there were numerous health benefits in store for me, but I never did this challenge because of that. It was never about the cold shower itself, but rather the act of putting myself in an uncomfortable position was the point. Life was never meant to be comfortable. The whole point of this for me was to build more discipline and embrace being uncomfortable. I learned to like the cold water and embraced the physical and mental aspects of it.

Throughout the whole process, I kept repeating the same Epictetian mantra: bear and forebear. To bear is to accept the problem and to forebear is to control the emotional response to the problem. The challenge has taught me to be more appreciative of the fact that I have access to warm water, but if I were to lose access to warm water then it would be no problem. I would simply bear and forebear.

Mental resilience is the name of the game. Every time I was about to hop in to take a shower my body started to act up. If you try it yourself you'll see what I mean. Every morning my heart started pumping, my chest tightened up, and my mind started telling me: don't go in. This is what Author Julien Smith calls the Flinch. The body reacts before anything has happened and is predicting a flinch, causing anxiety. The problem with humans is that we want to stay safe and comfortable but that inhibits our ability to grow. Every morning I confronted the flinch and although initially, it felt bad I got used to it. It isn't so bad and that's the whole point. Confront the flinch and you'll see it isn't as bad as you thought. This act has translated to other parts of my life. For that, I will be grateful for nearly getting hypothermia every morning.

In the end, I enjoyed the cold water and will still be taking cold showers now and then, but I did miss hot showers. February won't be as bad. Stay tuned for that.