The ability to discipline yourself with nothing but the power of your mind is one of the single greatest skills a human can have. Put the ice cream cone down, and pick up a book, then go to the gym then finish up that big project you started 3 months ago. It is the art of taking control of your own body even though it hurts. It's what separates kings from bums lying around on the side of the road.
Taking Cold Showers
91–100 of 123 posts
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#92A lot of commenters suggest to do something else instead of taking cold showers. I don't see the need to trade cold showers with anything as you certainly are able to e.g. lift weights AND take cold showers! Why not get the benefits of both?
If nothing else, taking cold showers at least prepares you to having a swim in cold water (in a hole in the frozen sea) while attending sauna during winter time in Finland.. :-)
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#93The ability to discipline yourself with nothing but the power of your mind is one of the single greatest skills a human can have. Put the ice cream cone down, and pick up a book, then go to the gym then finish up that big project you started 3 months ago. It is the art of taking control of your own body even though it hurts. It's what separates kings from bums lying around on the side of the road.
Sure. It's great. So why waste it taking cold showers?
This article is so completely pointless it makes my head spin.
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't suggesting that taking a cold shower makes you like a Navy SEAL. I was suggesting that if you were training to become one, taking cold showers would help you prepare for the shock of BUD/S training. But I guess you couldn't be bothered to read my post properly. For someone who has such strong opinions, you sure do lack reading comprehension skills. Removing context in order to make your argument more valid..…
The story is that Alcatraz had very warm showers for the inmates to prevent them preparing for the long cold swim to freedom.
Sounds like a benefit for the other 99.999% of inmates. Win/Win?
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#95As someone who has taken many, many, many cold showers in Iraq and other unpleasant locales, if your character is so underdeveloped that taking a cold shower builds it up, you should be taking bigger strides. Edit: point being, cold showers are such an unbelievably mild form of suffering that suggesting they're "character builders" is painfully pretentious. Surprised this blogger of all people wrote this. He knows su…
Hey Matt - thanks for your thoughts. I think mild is definitely in the eye of the beholder. Doing 50 pushups everyday would be a walk in the park for me - it might be absolute hell for someone else. A developer/designer might take 15 seconds to debug something that I could only manage after hours if not days of researching/Googling/struggling. As I mentioned in the post - I really like warm showers and hate being col…
I've been ending at least 80% of my showers with a minute or two of cold water since getting the 4 hour body a few months ago. It was definitely hard at first, then got easier, then got somewhat hard again (started to seem pointlessly masochistic), but all in all I feel it's been worthwhile.
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#96I've been in the army. I've taken cold showers every day. Our commanders woke us up in 2am for a long run while carrying a rubber boat filled with water to the beach almost every day. When we finally got to the beach, we had to do push ups with our head inside the freezing water. I ran 20km carrying a fat man on a stretcher, cursing him under what remained of my breath. Guess what? I still read HN instead of getting…
Wow... interesting. For some reason I would have expected that discipline to carry over. How long were you in the army? I'd be interested in asking you a few questions if you're up for it.
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#97It needn't be a shower. Meditation, yoga, and some forms of martial art work just this way. Each of them trains you to accept discomfort without reacting to it.
There's a Buddhist story where a student asks a teacher about the secret of correct practice. The answer: "Don't move." Meditation hurts. A lot. Your legs ache and often fall asleep, your lower back gets stiff. But you're not supposed to move. Over time you do become more flexible, but more importantly you learn to accept the pain without needing to fix it. It turns out that if you can focus on the moment, the pain isn't so bad - it's actually the fear of the pain lasting into the future that causes you stress. As Shunryu Suzuki (founder of SF Zen Center) said: "Don't move. Just die over and over. Don't anticipate. Nothing can save you now because you have only this moment."
But there's nothing uniquely buddhist about this... My Berkeley tai chi instructor loves to have students hold postures for extended periods to the same effect. You move past this point where you think you're going to collapse and suddenly find a way to relax further into the form. And any serious yoga student will tell you that holding yoga poses for them accomplishes the same thing. Sounds like the cold shower had a similar effect for Jason.
It's not macho, magical, or new agey - it's just a practice - though one that may seem odd in our can-do, fix-it-now culture. As we grow we learn that not every problem can be fixed, and devoting time to practices like these can teach you to be okay with that.
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Reaching down and turning a knob, then telling yourself that you're building character? Odd." Seems like something Calvin's dad would suggest. e.g. http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkypfyWBiK1qczkzxo1_250.jp...
That's the same advice that we hear a lot on HN though. "Get out of your comfort zone." How is this any different? By 'turning a knob' he is getting blasted with cold water, which is outside of his comfort zone. By doing it consistently, he is attempting to get used to living outside of his comfort zone. Just because he's talking about a cold shower instead of a start-up and a bunch of comments on his blog are by "I'…
Hmm, "Get out of your comfort zone."
That might be the case for a few days. However, after a few weeks taking cold showers becomes a habit and part of someones new comfort zone. I guess randomly replacing one shower a week with a cold shower might take longer to get used to, but it's still meaningless IMO.
PS: As someone that used to regularly swim in water colder than most peoples tap water I can say it's not really that big a deal until your core temperature drops and a normal shower is not going to do that.
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#99I consistently take cold showers, and I actually really enjoy it. Has nothing to do with being tough. I just happen to feel a lot more awake post-shower, it's a lot more satisfying to dry off after (and when you get out of the shower, you aren't as cold), my skin feels better and Im quite possibly in a better mood. Also, if I have had a few drinks the night before, a cold shower is far superior than a hot shower.
I agree, I take cold showers because I enjoy them - they are far from torture! I think the bloke that wrote the article totally missed that. In winter I even take a cold shower - and always feel far warmer after - even if the water is like ice.
I run hot showers occasionally too. Though I never have any compulsion to leave the shower, I just want to stand there. The other thing is it never feels hot enough!
Try it, just start with cold. You might even like it.
Re: Taking Cold Showers
#100Good 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…
So can you explain to us how one builds character then - how else is it (character or self-discipline) built but by resisting against a natural pull, thought, or reaction?
The Spartans to General Patton used similar techniques in building the character of their troops and their fruits cannot be disputed.
The author is not claiming that this only will build character, but this is a small tool to to work on building character yet another way. Alone perhaps it would be meaningless, but taken together with his other approaches it can lead to significant results. It may be only a tree in the forest and it takes trees to build a forest; this method can be one of those trees.
Or if you like, to return to the analogy of resisting something in order to become stronger: This is just another exercise, like the plank (among many), that used alone may not produce much; but taken together with a whole exercise program WILL make ones whole body stronger.