Do hard things. Change your Brain.
One Year To Eleven Minutes and Forty Seconds - and how it changed my brain.
The first time I got into the cold plunge at my gym, I lasted about eleven seconds and made a noise I have never made before or since. Somewhere between a kettle and stepping on a dog’s tail.
I’d been listening to the podcasts. The Ice Man (Wim Hof), Huberman, Attia, the whole shivering fraternity, talking about circulation and metabolism and setting your nervous system up before the day gets its hands on you. It was 2022, I was 20lbs overweight, and I was determined to try something different, dagnabbit.
But the part that stuck wasn’t physiological. It was the idea that voluntarily doing something horrible teaches your brain it can do hard things.
Forty-something degrees. (Farenheit) Waist-deep for the first six months, because I am a coward with a routine. Every morning I added a few seconds. Just a few- I timed it on my watch because why not.
A year later: eleven minutes and forty seconds, up to my neck. Baller.
Which is, let’s be honest, far too long. The benefits fall off a cliff somewhere around eight minutes, so the last three and a half were purely ego. I’d climb out the colour of a boiled prawn and walk to my drafting table having already won something before 9am.
Here’s what actually changed though: I started pitching The New Yorker more often. Not because I’d got better (I certainly hadn’t). But because I stopped minding the ‘no’. When you’ve spent a year negotiating with a bathtub, a rejection email is a warm towel.
As humans, we’re built to route around friction. Every day offers you the chance not to.
Try something hard this week. Something small and stupid and genuinely unpleasant. See what it does to the rest of the day.
‘til next time!
Your pal,
PS. Look, if this actually did something for your brain (or at least distracted you from the creeping dread of your own inbox for six minutes), please consider restacking this and sharing it with your people. It’s the only way the word spreads.
