Cold Water Therapy

So after deciding to put an end to Embracing Warriorship as I kept “failing” at my goals.

As I was up and journaling this morning, I realized I had started to put too many “big” habit changes into my day. So I needed to throttle back.

Yeah I can definitely add changes into my day and these things I’d like to make habits out of that seem “big” right now are things I just need to focus on individually.

I watched a couple of clips of podcasts with David Goggins – someone who seems like more of an extreme masochist than anything at first blush. But, there’s always been something that’s rung true in what he’s talked about. Just like Jocko.

I thought I’d previously built discipline – and I have built some. I’ve continued to do a full page journal everyday for almost 60 days now and I’ve also been doing my cold water therapy more or less for three months (it’s actually gotten to be something almost completely automatic while I’m showering).

I had the thought a while ago that I should try straight cold showers as I’ve heard about numerous health benefits from prolonged cold exposure. But I’ve always chickened out – until this morning.

After I journaled I decided today was the day to start doing full cold water showers.

Yeah getting in and my brain trying to convince me the whole time that I shouldn’t do it or maybe just add extra time to my cold water exposure didn’t help.

But I channeled my inner Goggins and turned my brain’s objections off and just stripped down and got in the shower. Then I turned the water on and before I could think about it, I turned the shower head on.

Brrrrrrrrrr

Holy coldness – but I did shower and shave entirely in cold water. Yeah it was abbreviated from my regular shower times I’m sure. But hey I’m not using as much fresh water then.

I could feel the just about every muscle in my upper body start shivering after what felt like a couple of minutes. Then my body started to adapt to the temp a bit. It was still cold, but it didn’t feel as cold – think “wow, I can count the number of streams from the shower head hitting my skin – they each feel like an ice pick!” to “okay, I’m cold but the water is only mildly numbing now.”

After that it hit me, that I should focus on simply doing cold water therapy for the next 29 days and see what happens.