Power Month complete! 31 days of daily cold showers, meditation, journalling & exercise.
I did it! 31 days of no excuses, every day doing exactly what I know is good for me.
In this post I discussed how strange it is that I frequently know what the healthy thing to do is, but don't always do it. So what if I did exactly what I knew was good for me, every day for a month.
I also tried polyphasic sleep, but dropped that part of Power Month after my caffeine dependency proved too much!
But still, every day for the last 31 days, I've done the following.
- Exercise for about 15 minutes of either intensive weights/pushups/squats or went for a run.
- Cold Shower as my only form of shower
- Meditation for 15 minutes
- Journalling 3 things I'm grateful for and 3 things I want, along with 1 thing I appreciate about my partner, (which I message to her daily)
When you look at that list, it doesn't look very impressive. And you'd be right to think that, you could do it easily. But I warn you, it's deceptively difficult to do it consistently. Anyone can do any of those things - but I posit, that only a very small percentage of people would actually make it through the entire month... That's because it requires changing habits!
You can probably guess that doing these things every day has changed my perspective for the better. I'm much calmer when I'm trading the markets, my relationships in general are much more positive, I'm feeling great more often, (of course not always!).
Also, as a result of the cold showers, I've noticed a increase in my general motivation & my libido which I put to an increase in testosterone. Cold showers have been shown to have numerous benefits for skin and hair too.
Good habits are notoriously difficult to cultivate, and bad ones hard to stop. But the first step of successfully changing any habit is to first prove to yourself that it's possible. As an example, if you're wanting to quit smoking, but you've failed in the past - try quitting for just a few hours every day, consistently. If you're a heavy smoker, you might try not smoking every day between 6pm & bedtime. Select the right level of challenge for yourself, but do it daily, every day - no excuses.
If you're looking to cultivate better mental health, make a plan to meditate EVERY DAY for 5 minutes at the start of the day. You'll be surprised how good you can feel, by being successful in implementing a habit, even if it seems very small.
Most people will never even start because they think it's too easy to bother, but I'm telling you, it's deceptively hard. Rationalization and excuses can ruin you after you begin, but it's much more likely that you will never even start.
I implore, please try this - try setting yourself 1-4 simple daily habits that you'd like to implement and do them every day for a month. You'll notice the benefits and can stop what you don't like after a month!
Now that the month is over, I'm definitely not stopping. I'll be continuing my routine into the foreseeable future, with an occasional hot shower thrown in for enjoyment :)