- Hey, what is going on, guys?
So today, I wanna talk about a topic
I get asked about all the time and that is self-discipline
and specifically, what I'm gonna do in this video
is share an exercise that I've done in the past
and that I believe is one of the best ways
to build a universally applicable mental toughness
and self-discipline that you can apply
to basically any situation.
So here is the exercise
and it comes in the form of a challenge
that I'm gonna issue you.
If you're willing for the next 30 days,
take an ice cold shower every single day.
Now, I know some of you flinched
just at the thought of doing that
but like I said, I've done this
and in fact, I did it for 60 days
and now on a regular basis, I end my showers cold
even though I do do them warm at this point.
So the question is why is an ice cold shower challenge
the best way to build self-discipline?
Well, to answer that, first, I wanna talk a little bit
about what self-discipline is.
At its core, self-discipline
is the willingness to accept discomfort
and that could be in the form of physical pain or discomfort
or it could be in the form of the discomfort
that comes from denying yourself instant gratification
in service of making progress on longer term goals.
In either case, your ability to deal with that discomfort
is a skill that must be built through repeated exposure.
It's as Aristotle once said
or rather the historian Will Durant paraphrased,
"we are what we repeatedly do.
"Excellence then is not an act, but a habit."
And if you take self-discipline
which is one of the core components of excellence
and slot it in there in place of that word excellence,
the quote still holds up
and the great thing about this process
of building up self-discipline
is that no matter how you do it, it's an adaptable skill
much like our focus or our willpower
or the muscles in our bodies.
It's able to tackle a variety of different situations
even if it was trained in a different way.
So we've laid the foundation of self-discipline
but the question still remains.
Why the heck is an ice cold shower challenge
any better than any other method
for building that mental toughness?
And the answer is twofold.
First and most importantly,
taking a cold shower is an exercise
that is particularly resistant to excuses.
So take something else
like writing a term paper for example.
Say you've got a term paper coming up
and it's due in a week.
This is an opportunity for your brain
to come up with lots of insidious,
clever little rationalizations for not doing it now.
You might tell yourself,
hey, I've got plenty of time remaining.
No need to rush things now.
In fact, I do work better under a deadline anyway
so I'll be more creative if I wait till Friday to start
and I'm just gonna play some Mario Kart now
because my schedule seems to be cleared.
In any case, you're gonna come up with a rationalization
that seems to make sense
instead of telling yourself the truth
which is that you're lazy
and you just don't wanna do the work.
By contrast, taking a cold shower
affords you no opportunity for these clever
little rationalizations
because you were already gonna take a shower
every day anyway so you're left with nothing
but a simple binary decision.
Either you turn that handle to cold
and embrace discomfort head on
or you avoid that discomfort and turn the handle to hot
and regardless of what choice you make,
you know that the reason you made it
is because of your ability and your willingness
to accept or not accept that level of discomfort.
The second reason this is such a good exercise
goes back to what I was saying earlier.
You were gonna take a shower anyway
so you're not taking any extra time
out of your day to do this.
Instead, you're just facing that same decision
you make every single morning
and you're choosing discomfort rather than comfort
and every time you do it,
you're building that universal mental toughness
that you can use in every other situation
and it really is universal.
Otherwise, people in boot camp
wouldn't be forced to scrub floors and toilets
because it wouldn't apply to combat situations
but it does and in the same way
a cold shower challenge is gonna apply to your homework
or that side project you've been doing
after you get home from work or that gym session
you've been trying to convince yourself to go to
because all of these things
draw from that same reserved willpower and grit
and mental toughness that you build
every single time you face discomfort willingly.
So that's it.
I've said my piece and I realize that not everyone
is going to like this challenge
and hey, I get it, this is ice cold water
coming down on your face every single day for 30 days.
That's not a whole lot of fun
but like I said, I've done this challenge myself,
in fact, for double the amount of time
and I really did see results.
Now, the creative people among you
might realize that there are other things you could do
that you already do every day
where you could just choose the uncomfortable option
rather than the comfortable option.
So if you have additional ideas
for self-discipline exercises,
I would love to hear from you down in the comments below.
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