Making a Habit of Discomfort (Part 1)

I write this from the warm comfort of my home. I have a space heater near my desk. It’s raining and getting colder outside. Its Halloween, a day that always seems to be rainy and cold. However, just an hour ago I woke up, meditated, practiced controlled hyperventilation, held my breath for 2 and ½ minutes straight and then went directly into a 3 minute cold shower. I’ve just started practicing the Wim Hof Method. You may have heard of the Iceman, Wim Hof. He holds numerous world records for enduring extreme feats in extreme cold. If you don’t know him, check out this YouTube video https://youtu.be/q6XKcsm3dKs. Cold training via the Wim Hof Method, brings numerous physiological and health benefits, it boosts your immune system, and it makes you happier. All good reasons why I decided to try it. The physical and emotional benefits are so numerous that I think they belong in another blog (actually many blogs have been written so just google it). But the other reason I was drawn to cold training was because I became intrigued with the idea of regularly going into Discomfort. 

The whole thing began not long ago when I reflected on how comfortable I am most of the time. Not just me, but as a society how we have set up our lives for Comfort. Cars with automatic everything, air conditioning, heaters, performance fleece, microwaves, fast food. How much I personally have set up my life for comfort. I work from home, I have a short drive to drop the kids at school, I live close to the gym. The only thing I routinely do that is uncomfortable is CrossFit. But even this isn’t terribly uncomfortable most of the time and also feels really good. I registered for the CrossFit Open, and that alone brought some discomfort. Mostly anxiety about performing well, fear of failing or looking bad or incapable rather than anxiety about the forthcoming physical pain. I realized that seeking more opportunities for discomfort would be a good thing for me. Things like cryotherapy, cold showers, taking an ice bath, signing up for a Wim Hof workshop. I believe that repeatedly, daily, and routinely doing something uncomfortable is a good practice. Doing uncomfortable things gives me more confidence to do something else uncomfortable another time. I used to practice hot-cold shower cycling, and this gave me confidence to try cryotherapy. Cryotherapy gave me confidence to do longer cold-only showers and maybe try an ice bath at the workshop next weekend. I don’t even think it matters what you do. There is carry over in all parts of your life. Conquering the cold gives me confidence to conquer other scary things, like going up to people I don’t know and being nice. Challenges like this are scary, not in a pure physical way, yet there’s always a physical component to fear and anxiety – butterflies in your stomach, a weight on your chest etc. So I wonder if we can challenge ourselves to do a scary thing everyday. Can we make it part of our daily routine? I suspect that if we routinely do scary things we will come to find that doing the actual thing is less scary and hurts less than the anxiety you feel ahead of time about doing the thing. And that by doing these things more often we build more confidence and naturally feel less anxiety. I believe this confidence is transferrable. By putting myself in the cold (and progressively more cold) my threshold for discomfort increases in all areas of my life. So it will be less scary to approach a stranger and say kind things, or less scary to reach out to someone and ask for help.  

I call this Part 1 because I’ve signed up for a Wim Hof Method workshop next weekend, where I will practice with a Level 3 instructor and other students of the method. I will likely sit in an ice bath for at least a few minutes. A new level of discomfort is coming for me. And I suspect I will have something to say about that. My gut tells me that once I become comfortable with my current practices (i.e. cold showers) that I will need to find a new level of discomfort to continue growing. I believe everyone is on their own path and at a different spot. I’m not suggesting you jump into an ice bath right now. For you, it may be getting to the gym, or fasting, or meditating. Whats uncomfortable for one person isn’t necessarily uncomfortable for another. But I firmly believe that in order for us to grow as human beings we need to continually challenge ourselves, push our levels of discomfort further. Just like in exercise, when our bodies (and minds) acclimate to a routine, then become stagnant and stuck if we don’t change it up, add more weight, go a little harder, a little faster. My 3 minute cold shower was really uncomfortable and scary at first and now after 4 weeks it is less so. Now the ice bath seems scary and I anticipate it will be really uncomfortable. There’s some anxiety around that but it’s diminishing with each cold shower. It’s perfect. I’m growing. I’ll let you know.