ITYSKA #8: The Power of Cold Showers
I have spent over a month taking cold showers. Here's what I learned.
For the past month, I have been taking cold showers. They have been the latest craze in the world of health and fitness. I have heard all about cold showers after reading books such as James Nestor’s Breath, podcasts where athletes and fitness experts discuss how cold showers have helped them with their personal performance, and passing glances at article headlines where they explain why cold showers are good for your physical and mental health.
What are the benefits of cold showers, you may ask? The basic rundown goes like this:
After hearing all of those benefits, I decided to take cold showers more regularly. I will be honest, I didn’t feel comfortable with it at first. I tried doing cold showers months ago but could not maintain the habit for very long because of the freezing liquid engrossing my pores. I chickened out and didn’t try cold showers again until May of this year.
What I did differently this time around was that I eased my way into the habit. I didn’t go all at once like before. I left the shower handle to around the 2 PM mark and I gradually went downward little by little. I let my body get used to the freezing cold. The first two weeks were the toughest. My body shivered. I breathed deeply. I huddled my feet and waddled like a penguin.
However, by the time I got over those two weeks, my body started to adapt. The pain started to disappear and I could tolerate the freezing cold in my body. It started to become therapeutic. Not only did it strengthen my body, but it also started strengthening my mind. I overcame my anxiety and my afflictions. I also no longer had any of the seasonal touches of flu and sicknesses that I would always get in the spring. I have no idea if any of that has anything to do with cold showers or if it was an unintentional side effect that stacked with all the other habits I’ve been doing, but regardless, the cold showers worked.
The biggest lesson I learned taking cold showers, however, was the value of courage. Courage is something everyone has inside them. When you think of someone as heroic, one of the best ways they can display that is by doing something that is courageous. Whether it’s fighting a battle head-on, scaling a mountaintop, or speaking truth to power, those are all examples of courage. The Greek philosopher Aristotle viewed courage as one of the markers of moral excellence. It was the virtue that balances our instincts toward recklessness on one hand and cowardice on the other.
Many of us think that we need to do something big and grand to do something courageous, but in truth, courage is something we can practice every day. There are small ways that we can do that can help build up that courageous spirit we all have. One of those ways is to practice taking cold showers. With all that said there are risks in taking cold showers. The sudden wave of cold showers can shock your body, so use caution if you have serious health conditions such as heart disease.
If you want to get into the habit of cold showers slowly, the best way is to ease your way into it. Test how cold you want your showers to be, how long you want your shower to be, and when you take them. I always take my cold showers in the morning after I work out, taking my showers for about 2-5 minutes, and the shower handle at the 4 PM mark, which is pretty cold. You can also ritualize it and add other things such as scented candles for your bathroom or pair cold showers with your favorite brand of soap.
Cold showers ended up being beneficial to my health and fitness. It was worth the effort and now it’s a part of my daily routine. It helped revitalize my body in a pinch.
📚Books I’ve Read: I didn’t read as much in June as I’ve read only completed two books this time around. Unfortunately, these are also books where I don’t really have much to say on them.
The first book is The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. A book like this is hard for me to discuss, not because there is nothing substantive to talk about it, the opposite actually, but because there’s not much I can add to the conversation. The Underground Railroad is a popular book in the truest sense of the word. It’s gotten mountains of praise the size of Mt.Fuji from various publications and readers, especially Barack Obama, won a ton of awards including a Pulitzer and a National Book Award, and did incredibly well commercially as well hitting many best-seller lists. All of that is terribly well-deserved, it’s a fantastic book on the eponymous Underground Railroad and the history of American slavery. But at the same time, it’s not a personal favorite of mine and there’s no way I’m going to convince you to read the book yourself. If Obama not endorsing the book won’t convince you, nothing will! I also tend to steer clear of popular books, which is a tangent that I will write more about in a future blog post. But if I do have anything to add, it’s that this is a book that everyone should read at some point in their lives. If you are a teen or above, this should be on your list of books you should read before you die, just like a lot of books considered part of the classic literary canon. Put this book on your list, trust me on this one!
The other book I completed is That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis. Not my favorite of the Space Trilogy but still a solid book. Overall, CS Lewis is just as good at making science fiction, as he is making fantasy. My favorite of the trilogy is Perelandra as I like the setting and story more, but the last book was still worth the listen. If you’ve never read CS Lewis’s sci-fi work, give the series a chance.
📝Most Interesting Articles I’ve Read: If you’ve been reading this blog for a while now, you’ll notice that one of my common themes is that you should find different skills and be good at many different things. Don’t overspecialize, find what you are obsessed with and spend your time learning from what interests you. This Medium article titled People Who Have Different “Too Many Interests” Are More Likely To Be Successful According To Research offers the most compelling reasons why generalists succeed in a specialized world.
One of the reasons why I decided to switch to Substack was because of Andrew Kirby through his Synthesizer Skool. I eventually finished the entire Synthesizer Skool, but I’ll admit I took my sweet time with it. If you’re a busybody and you don’t have the time to take an entire online course, there’s a summary of the entire course appropriately called Synthesizing Synthesizer Skool by my fellow Substacker Mia Ayana. It condenses all of the information from a course all about synthesizing information and it synthesizes that into a single article. How meta is that!
Finally, I have been obsessed with well-known Youtuber Ali Abdaal’s Creatorpreneur Crash Course. It’s all about how to turn your creative side-hustle into a legit long-term business. I subscribed to get a series of emails detailing how you can get the most out of your creative endeavors. If you just want to read all five emails packaged into one pdf, you can read and download the entire enchilada here. It’s 13 pages worth of useful advice regarding motivations on why you want to be Creatorpreneur, the biggest mistakes creators make, fulfilling your potential, and all the resources you need to make your dreams a reality. It’s a useful guide.
📹Videos Worth Watching: Speaking of Ali Abdaal, I’ve also been watching his podcast series where he talks to entrepreneurs, creators, and other high-profile people and delves deep into their lives, philosophies, and strategies. One of my favorite episodes is his talk with fashion and beauty Youtuber Patricia Bright. They talk about self-belief, starting a side hustle, money, work, and how to feel like you’re “enough.” A lot of great insights in this particular episode.
If you want a video series that’s a lot more precise and concise, I’ve recently found a Youtube series called Great Art Explained. The central thesis of this Youtube series is this: What makes art speak to us? What makes some of the best pieces of art resonate with so many of us? Why does art give us so much emotional value? Great Art Explained goes through the history and biography of art and artists and squeezes an entire semester’s worth of art history into 15 minutes, usually. You can go through their entire list of videos and find which piece of art resonates with you the most. Personally, the best starting point is their video explaining Frida Kahlo and how much her personal life, sociopolitical history, and cultural identity helped define her art. It’s a concise, yet moving video.
🎵I Got A New Record Player: To wrap it all up, I got a brand new record player. The record player I got is called the 1 By One HiFi System. It comes included with bookshelf speakers and I am loving this upgraded system. In the future, I will do more posts on record collecting, vinyl, sound quality, and audiophiles. In the meantime, here’s a picture of what my new set-up looks like.
That’s it for this edition of Interesting Things You Should Know About.! If you liked this post and want to see more, subscribe to this newsletter and share this with others who would find this content helpful. If you have any feedback, comment below and I’m open to any criticism. If you want more updates and what’ll happen next, please give me a follow on Twitter. Keep your inboxes nice and toasty, and as always, stay interesting!