What Learned from 5 Years of Cold Showers (That I Didn’t After a Year) [...] (This is just for informational purposes. Talk to your doctor before giving cold water therapy a try.)[...] 1. It gives you an instant, free, dopamine hit At the height of the pandemic, I suspected that I [...] had many of the symptoms of dopamine dysfunction. I lacked motivation, had a really hard time focusing, became addicted to my phone, and just had a general malaise that was hard to shake. There were two things that worked consistently to pull me out of my funk — heart-racing exercise or a cold shower. But only one could work within one minute and with no exertion. 2. It flips the switch on procrastination every single time Something I struggled with more since the pandemic than I had my entire life was procrastination. […] I found that if I took a cold shower early in the day, it was as if the switch had been flipped and it made the rest of my day more focused and more energized. I procrastinated less for that entire day, not just immediately after. It was as though someone had broken the circuit. To this day, I still call it my circuit breaker. 3. It helps you understand that maintaining a habit takes a lot less energy than activating it I strongly believe that one of the reasons most people give up on new habits is because they don’t understand this fundamental principle of life — it always takes far more emotional energy and willpower to establish a new habit than to maintain it. […] Every time I start a new habit, I always remind myself how much harder cold showers felt in the first year versus the second year versus now. Each subsequent year is significantly easier. It motivates me to ride through the activation phase of any new endeavor. 4. It will show you that the dread in your mind is often worse than the act itself Five years of taking cold showers have shown me that I’ve never once struggled as much once I’ve stepped into the shower as I had just thinking about it. […] I’ve heard the phrase, “Do the hardest thing