The Cold Shower Experience

It's early in the morning. 4:32am. My alarm is set for 6:00am as a safety net but I can't remember the last time it went off.

It's winter time; the sun doesn't come up for a few more hours.
I switch on my happy lamp to send the "wake up" signal to my brain, while I meditate on my day.

"After this I'm doing my cold shower" I say to myself. Unrequested, thought answers back, "Ugh... really? But...it's cold..."

I find my "lesser self" can come up with the most obvious and rational excuses. I don't argue with myself. I know the benefits of cold showers, I know they make me feel amazing.

"Hey Siri, set a 90 second timer;" and I flip the water knobs to stun-.. I mean, cold.

"One minute, thirty seconds, starting now," Siri stoically replies.

It begins at the crown of my head a sensation so cold it almost feels warm. Cold advances down my face; my breathing has quickened and deepened almost without my ability to have a say. "I can do anything for one minute," I think to myself.

Regaining a measure of control over my breath with my head still under the water.
It feels like a dare now.

The timer goes off on my phone. I slam the water knobs back to "hot." After a few seconds, I repeat another 90 seconds. It's not as much of a shock this time. In fact, it almost feels good.

The benefits I've come for have been delivered. Without switching the water knobs back to hot, I shut off the water and begin my day a victor, concurring my first battle. I feel a motivating surge of endorphins. My mind is primed to do hard sh*t.

The lesson I teach myself each morning by doing this?
"Cold showers are hard; I can do hard things."

I've done this routine for months and I've learned a lot about the power of mindset, choices, discipline, and personal honesty - doing what you'll tell yourself you will do. Here are some takeaways:

1) Don't even start a conversation with yourself about whether or not you should do something you've committed yourself to doing. You've made the decision to do it. Keep your personal integrity intact and Nike-"just do it."

This is the core of any discipline. At times you are a better or worse version of yourself. If you can act in alignment with the vision of your better self even when your worse self is loud in the moment you are exercising a discipline that will get you where your better self imagined you could be by doing the thing it tells you to do. No negotiating with your worse self. You become the voice you listen to.

2) "Hard" is more a mind thing than an objective reality. That first minute is "harder" than the second minute. Nothing has changed except my approach to the second minute vs. the first.

We are amazing creatures able to adapt. Hard becomes easy by doing. Indeed, the more I practice cold showers, the less the voice challenges me before the shower and the easier the first cold minute is. "Hard" becomes "easy" because we adapt. The mental adaptations can come as quickly as thought, the physical adaptations follow.

It is a fact of life that comfort does not make us grow. Our minds and bodies respond to challenges. If we challenge our minds and bodies consistently and push the limits of our comfort we grow and adapt to the difficulty. What was hard becomes easy and we are able to push further than we ever could have thought possible.

3) Health benefits still come even though it becomes psychologically easier. The research is clear and personal experience will show: reduced inflammation, reduced pain, weight loss, increased tolerance to stress, increased mood, increased willpower, increased immune response, and improved circulation.

These benefits come as a result of the cold exposure, not necessarily because the cold exposure was hard. The body responds in its own way to the cold to make itself more resilient.

If I can really get good at point 2, and not make things harder than they need to be, then I can still enjoy the physiological benefits without the psychological agony. This means reaping benefits become less painful over time as I am able to master the interplay of points 2 and 3.

4) In all growth curves there is a point of diminishing returns, where another increment of input produces a reduced amount of output. Current research shows that much of the benefit to cold showers comes within 2-3 minutes of the activity. No need to be a hero. Come for what you came for and move on.

So to maximize the benefits of cold showers:
Get in there and start. Get your mind out of the way. Don't make the 2-3 minutes harder than it needs to be - the hard is mostly in your mind. All your body is feeling is cold - you'll be fine. Get your mind out of the way.
Get what you came for. Simply doing the cold shower brings the beneficial change you want. Get your mind out of the way.
Get on with life. Get your mind out of the way.

If you don't already take cold showers, start. The lessons it will teach you if you keep the practice up for a month will be beneficial, I promise you this. Cold showers train the mind to do hard things.

So how do you get into the practice? As with most new habits, you jump right in. I generally find it more effective to make small changes first. I didn't start off with two 90 second segments right off the bat. I simply started with three five-second stints of cold with ten seconds of warm water in between.

Without pushing hard, there would be days I felt like more of a challenge - I tried four or five five-second stints of cold. Or I did three stints for 10 or 20 seconds. Other days, I fell back on my minimum, no big deal here. Lots of personal grace as long as I got it done; always pushing when I felt stranger.

I found I could stretch my wits farther without making the moment feel harder. This was a huge lesson and discovery!

Psychological discomfort and effort are not the same.

I could teach myself to push longer and colder (more effort) without adding to the mental perceived difficulty.

In other words, the voice of resistance in my head was a barrier. By getting around it I could get the benefit of the "hard" without as much pain. And I could develop into that strength slowly through consistency. The jump to one minute was quick once I realized this. And the jump to two 90-second stints was a simple step.

It was harder to go from five seconds to ten, then from ten to 90.

Why?

Because the "hard" was made up in my mind. I had to learn this going from five to ten. But going from ten to 90 was easy - the hard part had been figured out.

I have personally found improved mood, discipline, weight loss, and mental resilience to be some of the greatest benefits that I have received from practicing cold showers. There's no telling what benefits you will find for yourself until you give this little practice a try. If you can't do 1-3 minutes, then really what can you do? Beyond being a challenge of proof, it is a challenge that has real physiological benefits that will improve your life.

If you're looking to find simple ways to make huge improvements to your life with little time and energy investment, no doubt cold showers are where it is at. They will deliver what they promise, and more importantly build within you a discipline and resilience to push further and harder in other areas of your life without it feeling quite so difficult.


For you to believe this for yourself you'll simply want to give yourself three minutes of cold water therapy. Don't be fooled. While the time investment is small, the benefits it gives you will far outweigh the cost.

What if a few minutes of cold water could set you up with the mental firmware to do more with less pain and energy. Why wouldn't you do it? Why not take cold showers in the morning?