It’s the heart of winter, you wake up cold and the first thing that springs to mind are showers; hot, hot showers. We are all culprits in that when we have a hot shower we can get lost in such comfort, lose track of time and potentially even end up singing classics into the shampoo bottle. This is fine don’t get me wrong it doesn’t make you weird, but it does make you lazier in day to day life (the showering not the singing). Let’s start off by summarising the science behind having cold showers then I will move on to share my personal experience with you.
Putting your shower to the coldest setting and hopping in has many claimed benefits. Follow this link to see them all: https://www.menprovement.com/benefits-of-cold-showers/ . I am going to focus on one of them and this is going to be personal development. How can basically torturing yourself improve you as a person?
If you were to ask a handful of people if they would have a cold shower every morning for 5 minutes each, most of your responses will be along the lines of “Why would I do that?”, “No I can’t be bothered”, “I have bigger worries in my life”, “I don’t have time”, “Too easy, no point” and the list goes on. Rarely will someone either say yes or admit to it being too hard. Do you see how these are excuses and not valid reasons? These excuses come from the same voice inside you which restricts you in other areas of day to day life. For example; making new friends, “They’ll think I’m weird if I speak to them”, “They won’t like me”, “They’re not my type”.
Having said that, can you see what consistently exposing yourself to cold showers may do for you? Taking a cold shower in the morning is one of the few very accessible things that you can do to put you way out of your comfort zone and by constantly putting yourself out your comfort zone, this zone grows and you become better at dealing with day to day stresses hence personal development, but does it really work? I will now share my personal experience.
The first cold shower I had was roughly 3 months ago and prior to that I thought it cannot be that bad. Since I had never tried one before I hopped right in and it was COLD. My body started to shiver and hyperventilate. I was jumping around and shouting. I wanted to be out as soon as possible. Forty seconds in and I couldn’t take it anymore and finally got out. It was so cold it burnt. After drying off I felt dizzy and had a headache for the rest of the day. This was my body going into complete shock and discomfort.
The next day I woke up dreading the thought of going near the shower, my heart was pounding and I was incredibly scared of doing that to my body again. I eventually got up and switched the shower on, and instantly I felt a cold breeze from the water which scared me even more. It took me a good 15 minutes of mentally fighting myself to get over it and hop in and so I did eventually. The same happened as with day 1 BUT with almost half the intensity and I lasted an extra minute. After I dried off something strange happened. I felt a sense of euphoria, a sense of wanting to be productive and it was an incredibly rewarding feeling and I found that after this cold shower by a maximum 10 minutes I was in my clothes ready for the day, whereas after a hot shower I like to sit about before I start doing anything.
Day after day I was coping better and by the end of the first week I could finally do a full 5 minutes and the feeling I got after drying off just got better and better. People say that I’m just getting used to the cold. I strongly disagree; the way I see it is the water never gets warmer, you just learn how to DEAL with the cold water better by the day and eventually you start day dreaming just like you would in a warm shower. You can apply this to real life situations which scare you and you very quickly develop a mentality of just going for it since you know how to shut that voice inside you down when it gives you excuses. It seems hard to comprehend and you will only find out once you do it.
Since I started 3 months ago I have not looked back and having a cold shower for me is just like having a warm shower. Just yesterday I was singing into my shampoo bottle! If you have any questions ask below I will be happy to answer and keep in mind, the average temperature of the coldest setting on your shower is 15 degrees! The water will not harm you in a million years so there are no excuses at all.
Thanks for tuning into my first post and do check out my YouTube channel where I answer interesting scientific questions. http://www.youtube.com/Mystifact Mystifact