New Habits

January 2nd, 2024

Town Square, Dubai

In the spirit of the new year and the changes I want to myself, I started the day by completing an apparent meaningless challenge of taking a cold shower. This is a new trend on the internet, however, that's not the reason behind my 6 months desire of adding a new routine. My appetite for this uncomfortable action goes beyond of following the masses. It finds its reason on my quest for personal development.

Growing up and being an adult envolves performing tasks and doing chores that not always are synonym to joy or pleasant . Recently, in one of my reflection moments, I realized that in the past 3-4 years I haven't been as Professional and adult as my goals require me to be. I constantly delayed, or even, ignored, many important tasks I was, I am, expected to do as an evolved adult I want to be. From the way I eat and exercise, to paying attention to my taxes, and the way I conduct my business and behave with Maria and at home, I was cherry picking the activities I wanted to do, not necessarily that I had to do, in order to match my goals, my age, my responsibility. The cold shower come to fix that issue.

The first 3 seconds are the scarry shock. I pened the fawcet letting the water out, but steping to the side. The splashes that ricocheted from thw wal gave me an idea of what to expect. i closed my years, held my arms agains my body with my hands on my chest, took a long breath and entered under the stream of water coming from the shower head.

In the first 3 seconds you just hold your breath and feel the water coming down your body. The hear rate feels to spike up, and you remember to breath. And you start doing it on a high intensity to shift the attention from the uncomfortable felling. After a few moements, you start to get lightheaded from the excess of oxygen on you brain and automatically your body and your mind adjust, and you start to focus on what is really important, which will keep you conscious.

You start to control and focus on your breathing, reducing the rate of inspiring and expiring, and you don't even fell the cold water anymore. Your body became adjusted to the new environment within a few seconds, and now you are just going through what you have to.

When the timer reach the 3 minutes mark, I turn off the water and the uncomfortableness comes back for a few seconds, until I dry myself, put on my clothes and move on with the day, knowing that I am capable to adjust to any environment and situation I face.