Why I had 30 ice-cold showers in a row – An experiment on forming a new habit

Have you ever tried to start a new habit?

Maybe a new gym routine?

Or tried something outside of your comfort zone?

It feels a little weird, doesn’t it?

It’s so easy to get stuck in a pattern, whenever you break that pattern you can’t help but feel uncomfortable.

But we know feeling uncomfortable is just a part of improving as a person.

If you never leave your comfort zone, you’ll never go any higher than you are now.

That’s probably why I agreed to do this 30-Day Challenge.

A mentor of mine first mentioned it to me.

He was 12 days in.

It’s called Cold Shower Therapy, and basically all you do is have an ice cold shower every day for 30 days straight.

I won’t labour on about the benefits (you can Google it yourself) but in short:

• Improves blood circulation
• Speeds up your metabolism
• Improves mood
• Increases testosterone levels
• Improves mental toughness

I love my hot showers so I knew this was not going to be fun, plus at the time of writing we are in winter so that was poor timing on my behalf haha.

In this blog post, I’m going to talk about:

• What the challenge was like
• My motivation levels during the challenge
• Business lessons learned that you could apply in your own business

What the challenge was like:

The start was awful, I seriously considered not bothering with it after 4 days.

I thought to myself, ‘No one will care if I stop’.

I hadn’t told anyone that I was doing it, so I would only really be letting myself down if I were to quit.

As time went on I would still want to quit, but just not as bad.

I slowly ended up adapting to the ice cold showers.

Things like going for a long run prior and utilizing deep breathing made it much more bearable.

I also rationalized the challenge, telling myself it’s literally just water.

The exact same water – just a different temperature.

Once I hit halfway into the challenge, I had invested too much into the challenge to walk away from it.

From then on, I became more and more committed to seeing the challenge through.

And in the last few days, there was no way in hell I was going to miss that ridiculously cold shower.

My motivation levels during the challenge:

This is roughly what my motivation was like throughout the entire challenge..

The main thing I want you to take away from this dodgy graph is that learning any new skill (or trying anything new) is going to be hard.

You will have some early glimpses of hope, and early glimpses of failure.

But if you simply stick with it, you will almost always see amazing results.

When I coach clients, one of the biggest things I help them with is persisting when they are well out of their comfort zone.

Because if you never persist, you never adapt.

And if you never adapt, you never improve.

And if you never improve, then you never get better.

The challenge is a good metaphor for learning any new skill in business, and I’m going to elaborate on a few below.

Business lessons learned after the challenge:

In the beginning, it’s always crap – The first stage of learning anything is hard. You have little to no competence and you will encounter constant failure. Ignore how terrible you are.

Stick with it – If I had quit when I hated it the most, I would have been so pissed off with myself. At the time I made reasons why quitting wouldn’t be a big deal, but by the end of the challenge I was extremely glad I didn’t listen to myself at that point. Don’t underestimate this.

You will always adjust – After the first few days, I started to think of ways to make the challenge easier, like going for long runs in the morning and also doing deep breathing to make it much more bearable. It’s part of human nature to adapt to uncomfortable situations.

You’ll get side benefits you hadn’t intended on – Having shorter showers freed up 10+ minutes of my mornings, which was nice. My water bill was also lower than the past 3 I had received. Trying new things will open you up to new opportunities in your life and business.

Pain is temporary – The freezing shower was 5 minutes of my day. That equates to 0.003% of the day. As long as you don’t quit, pain will always be temporary. Few things in life are truly permanent, and this is especially true when you are struggling to grow your business. It won’t be like this forever if you push through.

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Want to do the challenge as well?

Make a comment below with your start date and I’ll hold you to it.

Your Action Item: What is one skill you know you must improve on, but you’ve been avoiding it? What is the smallest first step you can take to get better at it?