Do difficult things every day. Step out of your comfort zone daily because that will callous your mind. Sounds good, so I researched cold showers and discovered they have been shown to have several benefits, including reduced inflammation, reduced stress levels, boosted energy, increased immunity, and enhanced focus, among others. And because I considered them as self-imposed torture, I decided to take cold showers every morning. Then, everything went differently than planned.
The first cold showers were manageable, but after a few days, they were getting progressively hotter and shorter. Mental discomfort increased, and the initial excitement I felt after discovering the benefits of cold showers morphed into self-doubt. My list of excuses to give up piled up, and as usually happens when creating new habits, I was about to quit.
Reaching our limit is not some kind of punishment. It’s actually a sign of health that, when we meet the place where we are about to die, we feel fear and trembling. A further sign of health is that we don’t become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it’s time to stop struggling and look directly at what’s threatening us. Things like disappointment and anxiety are messengers telling us that we’re about to go into unknown territory.
Pema Chödron, When Things Fall Apart
Resistance
I would define my experience before the cold shower as a state of agitation that biased me toward inaction through excuses, self-doubt, anxiety, and procrastination. A voice that prevented me from behaving differently, which is not specific to cold showers at all. It also appears when you decide to take on a new challenge but wonder if it is too audacious, when you need to work hard on a project and don’t feel like it, or when you consider asking someone out and fear of rejection stops you. So, you’d better learn to deal with it.
Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, gives that voice a name: Resistance. He defines it as a force within you that prevents you from showing up as your best self. From working on a personal project. From doing things differently. From taking risks. According to Pressfield, Resistance is your greatest enemy, and the difference between amateurs and professionals in any endeavor boils down to beating it.
How it manifests is different for every person. For Pressfield, Resistance is “a voice in my head telling me why I can’t do something or why I should put it off for another day.” For others, it can be procrastination, self-doubt, fear of failure, inaction, ego, excuses, etc.
Acknowledging the negative consequences of procrastination or fear of failure is an excellent first step, but that knowledge is not enough to beat Resistance. We need something more. We need to encounter that voice every day, and this is where cold showers help. As you may have guessed by now, this is not about cold showers. Cold showers are just a means to meet Resistance.
Overcoming Resistance
When things don’t go as expected, keeping the focus outside of yourself is easier. In the beginning, I believed cold showers were the problem. That’s Resistance. But after weeks, I decided to change my approach. When Resistance appears before and during the cold shower, it’s all about observing. My thoughts, my reactions, and how I deal with the situation. Some days I complain, argue that it doesn’t make sense, or get paralyzed. Some days I’m driven and find it easier. Other days I’m not motivated at all, and it feels painful. Why do I behave so differently from one day to another?
Observing made me realize that it was more about me and my expectations than about cold showers themselves, and that we all have blindspots. Today I woke up and didn’t want to do it. Resistance told me it was cold and that there was no reason to do it. But I did it and felt good. It turns out I was wrong! Today, what drives me to take a cold shower every morning is curiosity; curiosity to discover how I misunderstand reality.
What started as cold showers became something more profound and interesting. The idea of leaving space for the possibility that you are wrong and trying to observe rather than running away from painful feelings turns out to be the basic idea of meditation.
In practicing meditation, we’re not trying to live up to some kind of ideal—quite the opposite. We’re just being with our experience, whatever it is. If our experience is that sometimes we have some kind of perspective, and sometimes we have none, then that’s our experience. If sometimes we can approach what scares us, and sometimes we absolutely can’t, then that’s our experience.
This very moment is the perfect teacher, and it’s always with us is really a profound instruction. Just seeing what’s going on—that’s the teaching right there. We can be with what’s happening and not dissociate. Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom, available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary everyday lives.
How we regard what arises in meditation is training for how we regard whatever arises in the rest of our lives.
Pema Chödron, When Things Fall Apart