How Cold Showers Boost Willpower
You’re stood there stark naked. Bar of soap in one hand. The button of doom by the other. You’re looking for every excuse not to press it. And that’s why you must.
Cold showers are how champions start their day.
There are tons of health benefits to blasting yourself with ice cold water every day. The main ones I’ve noticed are improved immune system, increased alertness and faster muscle recovery after workouts.
However, this post will explore the best benefit of all: improved willpower.
Cold showers build your bravery muscle
Here’s the thing about fear. It feels the same no matter what it is you’re afraid of.
Right before the moment of truth, you’ll hear this voice in your head giving you excuses not to do it.
Your job is to find the willpower to ignore those excuses and do the thing anyway.
The great thing about willpower is that it acts like a muscle. It grows the more you push it to its limits, and stepping in a cold shower every morning is a great way to do that.
Cold showers barely get easier
I’ve been taking cold showers since I was 16. The first day you’ll probably stare at the shower head and cry thinking about it. Once you get started, it’s every bit as bad as you imagined it would be.
It gets a bit easier after that, but you’ll never get to the point where you want to press that button. Every day is a test of your limits.
It’s even more testing to stay under that freezing cold water when every fibre of your being tells you to escape it. And that’s why you must do it.
Joel Runyon, of The Impossible Blog, tells people to take a five minute cold shower every day for 30 days. Now I’m telling you to do it too.
How will cold showers change you?
A 30-day cold shower challenge will help you master the art of feeling resistance and doing the thing anyway.
It’ll teach you to know that something is going to suck, but accepting that it’ll make you better.
If you can do that in the shower for 30 days straight, you can do it in any other aspect of life. You can go a 30-day gym challenge, a 30-day no-carbs diet. The world is yours.
After all that resistance you feel when you’re stood naked in the shower is the same resistance telling you to skip the gym or not to speak to that pretty girl. It’s the same voice ruining your life, just in different ways.
Start your day by defeating this voice once, and you’ll eventually gain the mental strength to beat him down again and again in every area of your life.