life

What I Learned from 365 Days of Cold Showers

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Have you ever heard of Wim Hof? He's the guy who ran up Mt. Everest with nothing but his boxers. Interesting but crazy man, I thought. Then he started popping up on every single podcast available. Apparently, he takes a lot of cold, cold showers. And it's supposed to have magical powers?

While I haven't tried the Wim Hof method extensively, what stuck was the cold showers. And now I can't imagine a day without a dump of cold water in the morning. Don't get me wrong, the fear right before the shower is still very much real, but they say cold showers strengthens immunity and improves blood circulation amongst other benefits.

So what has 365 days of cold morning showers taught me? I do feel more energized and like meditation, a cold morning shower starts my day on a positive, upbeat note. And the immunity part? I can't remember the last time I caught a cold, which used to be a common occurrence given San Francisco's bipolar weather.

Jumping into cold water is physically easy (anyone can do it), but it's a real tough mental game. More importantly, sticking to cold showers for a year and picking up a habit was a mental win. At the same time, you become less reactive and more observant. Like mindfulness training, you simply learn to observe the cold water spiking your bare skin vs. reacting to it. Hey...this isn't so bad, right? 

How much "mom" time is left?

"It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end." - Wait But Why

It occurred to me as I woke up this morning, perhaps from a dream or nightmare, but I asked myself the question, "How many days does mom or dad have left on this planet?"

Frightening thought.

It brought me back to a powerful Wait Buy Why article, "The Tail End," that depicted how much time we have left with mom and dad in pictures. It hadn't occur to me that moving away for college and life would mean that I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. Occasional holiday visits would be the only time to congregate with family and even then, I remember those home visits during my early to mid 20s were used to hang out with friends. How young and irresponsible of me.

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How much "in-person" time we have left with our parents...

That's why I'm making it a priority to spend as much time with my parents while I'm around. They have this amazing story of perseverance growing up under poverty and hardships during the Cultural Revolution and eventually making it to America to provide a better life for my sister and me. I'm extremely grateful and currently working on a project to document these stories while I still can.