On Constructing the Hero.
Start taking cold Showers
-- Discipline Of The Cold --
Cold showers really suck!
Nobody wants to take a cold shower, especially when you first wake up. Going from that nice warm bed to a freezing shower is tantamount to torture.
Ironically, this is the primary reason to take cold showers.
Your subconscious will try to convince you that there is no immediate benefit, and that its not worth the effort and discomfort. Why not have a nice relaxing shower in the morning? I deserve it!
However, when you take that shower, it builds self-discipline. You have chosen the wiser choice, instead of the easier one. By forcing yourself to do something you really did not want to do, you set yourself up for a better day.
Each day holds the promise of difficult choices. I don’t mean decisions like do we invade Russia or not. I mean the REALLY difficult ones like should I grab a donut on the way to work, or maybe I can skip the gym today, or let’s skip working on my personal projects. We tend to have resistance when it comes to doing something that will benefit us in the long term. We will procrastinate, cry, kick, and make excuses to avoid starting the task. When faced with a decision there’s a battle taking place in your subconscious. One between ‘you’ and the ‘lazy you’. You only have a few seconds to make your move before you submit to this lazy-comfort-seeking opponent. Having discipline in that moment tips the scale in your favor. You can win! The discipline and strength you built enduring a cold shower multiplies as it cascades through the day, amassing inertia as it washes through one decision after the next.
It is your defiance of the weak part of your brain that is constantly seeking comfort. Like a muscle, self-discipline must be worked and stressed to grow stronger. You will feel it there, under the water, a slow hardening of the mind. At first, you might gasp, and shriek out, twitching in reaction to the cold. But as you stand there in defiance, you’ll grow calm, and fierce. You can literally feel your weakness withering away; allow the cold to strip your inner enemy from you. You are no-longer the person who walked into the shower. You step out a battle-hardened version.
-- Other Benefits --
There are other benefits to cold showers, but all the rest are far second to the first reason.
It Wakes you up
From personal experience, cold showers are far more effective at waking you up than a cup of coffee. The moment that cold water hits you, the mental fog immediately dissipates. You are no longer in dreamland, you are quite excruciatingly aware of the present moment.
Reset Switch
Its like pressing a reset switch on your brain. Whatever your mind was pre-occupied with before is completely forgotten. Feelings of anxiousness, fatigue, and even depression are quickly forgotten under the icy cold water. Like a pain response, your entire mind is recruited to face this new threat. 60 seconds of the onslaught can snap you out of even the most serious funk. Regardless of how you entered, you will leave the shower invigorated, clean, and fresh.
Health Benefits
People say it helps improve your immunity, the quality of your skin and hair, and even stimulate weight loss.
I cannot speak to that, I will however say it helps me with muscle soreness. As a gym rat, I constantly have some part of me sore from the previous days’ workout. I have found that a cold shower helps accelerate the healing process. I immediately feel better, looser, and in less pain that when I walked in. There is some science to that, as the body’s physiological response to cold is to constrict the blood vesicles redirecting blood flow to your core. Now if you are brave enough, we can take advantage of that reaction by alternating between hot and cold water. As your blood vesicles constrict and dilate, you can use your body’s survival adaptation to literally pump out the damaged cell fragments, and pump in fresh blood to heal your tired and torn muscle fibers.
Give it a try, you have nothing to lose.
Remember, especially if you don’t want to:
That’s the point!