Self-Discipline: Exercising The Will To Achieve
Why I took a cold shower every day, gave up soda, turned off the TV, and exercised.
It was a Saturday night. The weekend was going fine, though nothing worth posting about. I had been reading The Path and working on my personal mission statement. It wasn’t the first time I had spent countless hours reflecting on what I was supposed to be doing and why some projects succeeded and others failed.
That Saturday was different. I got angry with myself. I got disturbed with my willingness to accept less than the best and how far I had let my personal standards fall. I stayed up late. I watched TV or played games even when I was tired. I drank more diet coke in a day than some people drank in a week. I was more likely to find excuses rationalizing my lack of exercise than I was to exercise. I was a slave to my own emotions, even though I strongly believe that emotions are just signals to inform our decisions.
It all came down to Will Power. The irony of my name being Will and having a lack of ‘Will Power’ was not lost on me.
If will power is a skill, then there must be ways of exercising that skill. It was time to do the hard practice. The type of practice that no one likes to do, but that you choose to do because you want to be great at your craft. Hard practice is the decision to do something in spite of your feelings. Hard practice is the battle between your mind and your emotions. Those that harness their mind are able to discipline their lives and achieve greatness.
Yep. That was my inspiration. If I did this, I could achieve greatness. I was about to embark on this great journey to harness my intellectual prowess and I was fueled completely by emotion. Brilliant!
Fortunately, that was not the first time I had considered launching some outlandish scheme of self-improvement driven purely by whim. This time would be different. I had learned from the past and I was determined to crawl before I ran.
With my head cleared and my emotions in check, I committed to the following:
No Soda: As I mentioned before, I drink a ton of diet coke. A 24 pack in a week, along with countless Rt 44 Diet Cokes, easy-ice from Sonic. This was not going to be easy. So far, so good. 12 days in. Feeling good!
No TV: This may not seem hard for some of you, but I had just received COD: Ghosts and my game time was typically late at night. There went my play time.
Exercise: T-25 and the treadmill have been my companion each morning. It is not a habit yet, but it is happening.
The Cold Shower: This one is the most strange and yet, it is truly the hard practice. All the other items are opportunities to exercise my commitment to myself. But a cold shower? Seriously? Let me explain…
The Cold Shower Exercise
Will power is a muscle. Throughout the day, it gets exhausted and making hard choices gets more difficult. This exercise was selected to start my day off with success and to train my ability to choose something regardless of my emotions (and my physical sensations!)
Each morning, I entered the shower with the water off. I then chose to turn the water on just enough for a full blast of water but not enough to receive any respite from the cold water.
I then chose to step further into the water. Then I chose to turn around and experience the freezing sensation all over again. My breath would quicken and occasionally I would let out a bit of a yelp. There was nothing manly about it at all.
Yet, I made a choice to stay. I made a choice to experience the discomfort because I made a commitment to myself. Hard practice.
The Results
Too soon to tell, really. I am only 12 days in. The cold shower exercise was successful. I kept my commitment. I started with success and it empowered me throughout the day. I experienced confidence in my ability to choose my responses to my emotions instead of be a slave to them.
Regardless, I will continue on my quest to achieve greatness, one hard practice at a time.
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