A Terrible Way to Start the Day
I’ll do it again tomorrow!
Starting the day with a freezing cold shower — what the heck was I thinking?
Medium made me do it. The power of the bloody pen…
It was Benjamin Hardy’s fault. What was his Ph.D.? Masochism for the masses? Jeez!
I put my right foot under the freezing jets. Squealed out loud. Cursed. “What the feck am I doing?” I shrieked the words out as the skin on my foot turned burn-red.
The hokey-cokey began in earnest then. OMG. A forearm in… and out. A shoulder. My chest. JEEZUSSS!
That’s it. That’s as far as I got. I won’t lie. The shortest freezing cold shower in history.
What a terrible way to start the day!
But I did it.
And I smiled the whole time.
I’m smiling now, thinking about it.
I’ll do it again tomorrow.
What tipped me into this particular madness? How did Benjamin take me to cold water and make me stand under it? And why should you care?
Tipping points are powerful, contagious and more accessible than you might think.
Harness them in your favour and you’ll find happy shifts peppering your path.
I’m beginning to see it happen. I think I’ve figured out why.
Want more joy, routinely? Set yourself up for more tipping points.
I’ll gladly show you how.
As one who’s struggled, a lot…
I’ve spent half a century struggling to tip the scales of my life. Or rather, my perception of life. My enjoyment of it.
From a distance, my life was successful, easy, joyous even. Others saw me smile, get promoted without striving for it, seek the good in all situations — and find it for the most part.
What they didn’t see was the tears I shed without clear cause, as I walked the park on Saturday afternoons.
Was this depression? No, but depressive thinking, yes. Habitual, depressive thinking.
I tried so hard to turn myself around. So much shame. Guilt. Frustration. I knew better than this! I coached others through this. What kind of imposter/hypocrite must I be? The thought rolled relentlessly around in my head.
On and on I went, wading through the quagmire of my mind. For years.
Until the death of my husband brought me up short.
Dying — the ultimate tipping point
Of course we all die and I knew he’d go first, but I so wasn’t ready for this one. Talk about living the nightmare…
However, the extreme nature of Michael’s dying forced me to focus.
Brain cancer. Terminal. Untreatable.
We had only one option. He led the way. We had to stay focused. To follow the joy… now.
The alternative was too awful to contemplate.
Anguish forced my hand. I had to learn to stop thinking. To breathe. To be fully present. To encourage my darling husband as he made his way Home.
Through his dying experience, Michael tipped me into joy. Finding it somehow. Following it ferociously. I had to. It was the only way to hold him in those last days and weeks. I had to enfold him in joy.
I needed to be joyful in the heart of his distress. It was the only way to bring him comfort.
I learned how to take myself off in my mind’s eye to a beach with rolling breakers. When Michael was crying, or in terrible pain, I’d cradle him in my arms. And off to the ocean I’d go.
No action could help him in those moments. Pain would rage ‘til the morphine kicked in. When he was sad, I couldn’t know what was making him cry. So many possibilities, but he could speak no words to tell me.
So instead, as I wrapped my arms around him, I’d imagine us sitting, side by side on the sand, hearing the herring gulls cry. I’d imagine a little spoken exchange, a pattern we’d repeated so often in the past, watching gulls riding thermals by the sea.
“Look at them hangin, just hangin’ ‘cos they can,” I’d say to my sweet man.
“Bastards!” he’d say and we’d giggle like children. I smile as I think of it, still.
How does this help you?
I’m not suggesting that extreme suffering should be sought out as a way to tip into your joy. No way José!
However, this experience showed me the power of the tipping point and how it can be harnessed.
You see, since Michael died, I’ve grieved, I’ve cried, I’ve felt anguish and emptiness… more than I could ever describe. The love of my friends and siblings has cocooned me in ways that surpass all understanding. I can’t begin to imagine what this time would have been like without them.
That being said, life beyond this tipping point, for me, is fundamentally different. I suspect the same is true for your tipping points too.
Through the tsunamis of grief, struggling to find joy, I return time and time again to the stillness and silence of a mind at full stop.
As I do that — stop my mind — here’s what I notice about tipping points…
I’m starting to see them more often. I can see where they come from. Focusing on the smaller ones encourages bigger ones to show up. I’m now navigating waters that would previously have capsized my boat. I’m even drawn to the ‘terrible start’ a cold shower brings to my day, with all its proven benefits.
So, how do we harness our tipping points?
In his acclaimed book, ‘The Tipping Point’, Malcolm Gladwell writes about three characteristics of such experiences. He describes:
- The Law of the Few — it takes but a few agents to bring about huge shifts.
- Stickiness Factor — the agents mentioned above need significant energy, attraction, volition.
- The Power of Context — the context has to be ‘ripe’ for change to catch on.
Clearly, Gladwell is talking about major examples of big-time shifts. I’m interested in how these descriptors shed light on the relatively tiny tipping points of my own experience. And how they help me line up with more.
I look at a major tipping point — Michael’s dying — in the light of Gladwell’s trio.
The Law of the Few — Reduce thinking to the few thoughts that help
Sharing this time with Michael was a training in managing my mind. Stopping thought was a necessary skill. Time after time, Michael made me stop. And breathe. Long enough for stillness and silence to take over. He held my hand. Insisted. Stopped me for the longest time.
“Stop. Breathe. Follow the joy.” This was our mantra.
I learned to focus on now. The future was too horrifying. The past, too filled with longing. Now was the only safe space to be. It was a great skill to learn. It stripped away so much of my thinking. Only a few thoughts remained.
“I love you. You love me. Right here, right now, we are.”
The fewer the thoughts, the more traction they had.
I had no energy for thoughts that didn’t help. I chose carefully.
Choosing my thoughts is a daily practice now. As is returning to full stop.
Meditation set me up each day to nurse Michael. Now it is my go-to place. I start my day there (before the cold shower!) I return there, often.
Immersion in silence is my immediate response now to troubling thoughts and feelings that sadden me. I think, I feel, I relax into stillness. Stillness and silence let me reboot. Then choose again. The few thoughts that help me most. Now.
Gentle practice brings realisation. Each time I come to the brink of my grief, and release my thoughts and slip into silence, I allow myself ease to choose thoughts anew. No wrestling issues to the ground. No pounding feelings into shape. Allow. Release. Choose again.
Each time, a tiny tipping point. They build. They multiply. They become expected.
The Stickiness Factor — Choose thoughts that connect with your core
Thoughts that connect with the core of our being are thoughts that inspire us long term.
For Michael and me, the Feel Good Rule, ruled. For us, joy was all that mattered. We’d long decided that if it wasn’t a ‘Hell yes,’ it was a ‘Hell no!’ Happy hedonists, we!
Following the joy while Michael slipped away was inner orienteering on an epic scale. Together, our desire for joy was so strong that the few thoughts we needed lit up in each moment.
Joy is my core. I know that now. Leveraging that knowing means I can choose the few thoughts that help most. I can make sure they’re ‘sticky’ by checking their potential for joy.
If thoughts don’t come with easy access to joy, I’m not likely to keep them. Unless they’re practical thoughts, like the need to complete my tax return… In that instance I will soak them in joy awhile, taking them to a tipping point where action feels joyous. Yes, even completing a tax form can feel like an act of joy!
The Power of Context — Align your context with your core
Every aspect of life creates context for our tipping points.
If I have a gift, it is that I connect with the most beautiful people on the face of this Earth. Each of my friends is a testament to that. I have always been selfish enough to adore people who bring joy into my world. They are my Heaven on Earth. This is my life’s context. How blessed am I!
As Michael headed Home, we were held by a group of souls more beautiful than words can say. Our friends and family: angels, all. The hospital and district nursing staff too. The strength, compassion and love all around us — a context set up to tip us into joy.
In relation to harnessing our tipping points, we can make choices to nourish our core. This advice is everywhere, but perhaps this perspective gives us fresh leverage to follow it.
Bottom line: aligning our context (the people, places, events etc of our lives) with our core, encourages tipping points. Happy ones. Consciously creating a context of joy means we tip towards our desires rather than away from our dreads.
So, how did I wind up in a cold shower this morning?
Well, applying my tipping point awareness, I can see exactly how it happened…
The Law of the Few
I am consistently reducing my thoughts to ones that bring joy these days. Steady, daily, moment to moment practice accumulates. I’m only interested in the few thoughts that feel good, and I’m loving the impact they have.
If I’m aware that an action would probably be good for me, but I don’t feel like doing it, I soak it for a while. I leave it alone, focusing only on the way I want the action to feel. I let go of the need to figure it out.
I’d heard of the benefits of cold water shock. It hadn’t appealed. At all. I left the thought for months and months… though I knew it was worth considering. I gave it no further thought.
The Stickiness Factor
When I encountered the idea of the cold shower in Benjamin Hardy’s blog, it was instantly sticky. Why? As a comfort-lover, it’s a terrible thought! Immersing myself in freezing cold water first thing in the morning, I think not!
What tipped me to wanting to give this a go? Friends had suggested it several times in recent months, it’s good for the circulation, good for the skin — but no, I wasn’t having any of it. Perish the thought.
The tipping point was subtle but absolute when it came. Hardy’s science-backed article described the benefit of a cold shower each morning in several paragraphs. One small statement leapt out. It makes you feel happy. In fact it’s being used to relieve depression.
Bingo. Joy. That’s my stickiness factor.
That such a tiny act (really, it’s not so terrible) could catalyse joy… he had me at ‘happy’. I was in. Well, bits of me were. Perhaps I’ll get my back wet tomorrow…
The Power of Context
There were accumulating factors here.
Cold showers were associated in my mind with good times — two weeks spent on retreat in Taizé; a period of icy showers in college, done for the fun of it then…
I did have friends extolling the benefits of the cold shock, I have an open invitation to an early morning sea dip anytime I want! And of course there’s Tony Robbins whose early morning ice dip is the stuff of legend…
Add to that the fact that my bath/shower refuses to feed me steady warm water through mixer taps that always give way to the greater pressure of the cold over the hot…
It only took one sticky thought in a context of far less counter-core thinking, to tip me over the edge.
A cold shower is a terrible way to start the day — I highly recommend it!
To ponder as you go…
If you want to harness your tipping points:
- Reduce your thoughts to the ones that help — you’ll clear the path for those happy tipping points
- Use the Stickiness Factor — know your core driver (mine’s joy, what’s yours?) Think sticky thoughts about changes you’d like to pursue. You’ll be inspired to tipping point action.
- Make the most of the Power of Context — create a context to nurture your tipping points. One tipping point leads to another. Soon you’ll be living in tipping point heaven!
Far, far greater folks than I have written about tipping points.
Why add my tuppenny-worth?
In case this is the tipping point for you, my friend. In case you’ve been teetering on the edge of taking magical action and one more perspective is all you need…
Yesterday, I tipped myself into starting today with a freezing cold shower. Bless you !
Today I’ve tipped myself into blogging again.
Tomorrow is sure to bring more!
I can only imagine what your tipping points will be… drop me a line and tell me!
Yours, in joy, always,
Amanda
P.S. Huge thanks to , master of word-craft and skilled interventions — look what you’ve done to my writing! Also to . Between you, your warmth, encouragement and wise advice, through your fabulous Bad-Assery Academy, have tipped this blog out of me.
