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Taking Cold Showers

jasonshen.com

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Re: Taking Cold Showers

#21

Post by jasonshen »

orangecat wrote: post #8

I'll be the meta-contrarian ( http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metaco... ) and disagree. If you believe that it's important to deliberately suffer to build character, at least do something that provides some benefit like vigorous exercise, or even rejection therapy.

Good point - if cold showers were the only thing you were doing to build self-discipline, that would be rather silly. I already work out almost everyday, put myself in uncomfortable social situations and other "character-building" activities. This is just one more thing I've added to the mix and that I'm sharing my thoughts on.

Re: Taking Cold Showers

#22

Post by influx »

orangecat wrote: post #8

I'll be the meta-contrarian ( http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metaco... ) and disagree. If you believe that it's important to deliberately suffer to build character, at least do something that provides some benefit like vigorous exercise, or even rejection therapy.

Talk about first world problems, it's almost embarrassing that you have to seek out discomfort and the only way to do it is to take a cold shower.

Re: Taking Cold Showers

#23

Post by jasonshen »

yock wrote: post #7

First there was Rejection Therapy and now this. I'm sure there's merit to this stuff but how many of these practices can one adopt before they transition from conqueror to masochist?

Fair question. I don't intend to come off as masochistic but I can understand if it appears this way. I'm just sharing something I've found to add value to my life and suggesting that others try it and see if it also gives them value.

Re: Taking Cold Showers

#24

Post by georgieporgie »

Good luck getting a clean shave under those conditions.

It sometimes amazes me what people think constitutes adversarial conditions, and testing oneself. Reaching down and turning a knob, then telling yourself that you're building character? Odd.

By the way, I loved the comments. They read like something I would have written as a twelve year old. "I'm like a Navy SEAL because I beat myself up every day with a cold shower! I'm tough!" My favorite is paleo guy:

But I also do it due to the paleo/primal lifestyle I’ve been adopting—the fact that we didn’t evolve bathing with the convenience of hot coals or temperature faucets and and that our bodies are probably designed to buck up and shower in less-than-ideal conditions.

Except that you'll find that frequency of bathing, and bathing as a social and relaxation mechanism, directly correlates with availability of hot water. Where there are hot springs, there are happy, relaxed locals.

Re: Taking Cold Showers

#25

Post by jrockway »

jasonshen wrote: post #20
steele wrote: post #13

"life coach" baloney

Would you like to share some specific reasons why people shouldn't engage in cold showers? Or are you just going to make a personal attack that doesn't relate to anything I said?

Would you like to share some specific reasons why people shouldn't engage in cold showers?

Would you like to share some sort of science proving that taking a cold shower has some health benefit over talking a hot shower?

Re: Taking Cold Showers

#27

Post by scythe »

The way I see it, learning to be uncomfortable is beside the point; it's about finding the positives, not ignoring the negatives. If you learn to be uncomfortable, you become complacent, and don't do things to improve your life in real, tangible ways, like, say, negotiating a better salary.

If there's a problem you need to solve with a method like this, that's great, but I would hesitate to recommend that people regularly incorporate unpleasant things into their daily life for the sole sake of them being unpleasant. That ultimately leaves you with less understanding of not only how to lead a pleasant life but also of how to improve the lives of the people around you, this latter goal being the core of entrepreneurship. E.g. if you try to use nothing but `cat` to edit files, you will never design a better text editor. If you walk to work, you won't be able to contribute to advances in vehicle technology.

Ultimately I think our goal as humans is to reduce that sort of thing, not to increase it; otherwise we might as well revert to nomadic tribalism. To quote Edward Abbey:

One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.

Re: Taking Cold Showers

#28

Post by scythe »

georgieporgie wrote: post #24

Good luck getting a clean shave under those conditions. It sometimes amazes me what people think constitutes adversarial conditions, and testing oneself. Reaching down and turning a knob, then telling yourself that you're building character? Odd. By the way, I loved the comments. They read like something I would have written as a twelve year old. "I'm like a Navy SEAL because I beat myself up every day with a cold sh…

>our bodies are probably designed to buck up and shower in less-than-ideal conditions.

By this argument, our bodies are designed to die of smallpox.

Re: Taking Cold Showers

#29

Post by rprospero »

hugh3 wrote: post #2

Interesting idea. Maybe I'll try it. I fear, though, that it'll just end with me lying in bed for an extra twenty minutes every day, not wanting to get up and face the cold shower. Some say that willpower is like a muscle, and that the more you use it the more you develop it. On the other hand, maybe willpower is more like... a muscle, and if you use it too much on any given day then it just gets worn out. Will a col…

I am not a psychologist, but I've seen some interesting articles on how self-control is a semi-finite resource. The article linked to below was particularly interesting, as it even had a mechanism. Specifically, the participants' self-control was lowered when their glucose level was low and their glucose level dropped when they used their self-control

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/92/2/325/

Thus, the cold shower might not just be followed with donuts for lunch, but the lunch donuts may be necessary to skip having heroin for dinner.

To re-iterate, I'm not a psychologist, so take all of this with a grain of salt.

Re: Taking Cold Showers

#30

Post by jrockway »

zacharycohn wrote: post #18
bgutierrez wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jason Shen said that voluntarily taking cold showers increased his discipline. Can you imagine a different experience if you chose cold showers instead of being forced to take them? I don't feel like I've properly had a shower unless the shower has raised my core temperature, but I'm going to give this a try. The easiest life hacks are ones that don't require a time commitment and only minor changes in routine.

Taking a cold shower lowers your body temperature, then your hypothalamus kicks in to compensate. You get out of your cold shower, and your body heats up. If you take a warm shower, you end up cooling down after the shower.

Not my experience. Sometimes I take a cold bath (ice is involved) after running. With enough ice, I feel quite cold for many hours after getting out -- to the point where I get out an extra down comforter to sleep with, and am still cold.
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