Let me tell you about the most hideous thing I’ve started doing roughly weekly that eliminates my anxiety and improves my focus in a way that nothing else does.
Cold plunging. You may have heard of it.
I tried it out of morbid curiosity. I am generally convinced that things which are hard and uncomfortable should be pursued. The first time was certainly uncomfortable. The hook came when I left. I had been carrying the weight of some big life changes as a constant low-grade stress. That weight was gone when I walked out. Like gone, gone. I was deeply peaceful without trying or even meaning to be.
So now it’s a thing. I go to Portal Thermaculture in Boulder. The fundamental structure is simple: get very warm in a dry sauna for about fifteen minutes, then submerge in near-freezing water for two to three minutes. Repeat a few times. Then see what happens.
The research is growing. Cold water immersion appears to increase noradrenaline, reduce cortisol, and trigger endorphin release. For people whose nervous systems are chronically overstimulated — which describes most of the high-performers I work with — it creates a kind of forced reset that is very difficult to achieve any other way.
What gets called restlessness is sometimes a dopamine system that has been so chronically stimulated by low-quality input it can no longer recognize satisfaction. Cold plunging is one of the few things I’ve found that interrupts that loop in a way that actually lasts.
It’s one hour of your life. You’ve surely spent more time than that this week on things you don’t remember. Take the plunge.
