Let’s Go - My Journey to 100%

[Cdsnuts]

My upswing from before ended - I can go back and check but I think it started towards the end of December and ended around Monday of this week.

However, I do still have more libido than I do during previous downswings.

I took a 1 minute cold shower last night, and it wasn’t any worse than a 30 second cold shower. Actually, the 30 second shower was much worse. For the first half of this shower, I had the water on my face and chest and was having a hard time catching my breath. I had to lean over and let most of the water hit the side of my face. Then I chickened out by having the other thirty seconds of cold water spray on my back and head, which was easier. (I normally spend most of my showers facing away from the water. In movies, everyone who takes a shower is always facing the shower, but that’s always been uncomfortable to me, having the water spray on my face, so I’ve always taken backwards showers.) I’m not sure if what I did still counts as a cold shower, because I was only facing forward for half of it and I never directly aimed it at my balls. Also, the water was only 80% of the way towards cold, not 100%.

I’m staying in a hotel since I can easily and cheaply get top status with Hyatt for 2 years (including free upgrades to suites) if I do it, and this is sort of me banking on the fact that I’ll have someone special to enjoy that perk with. I will get lots of points and free nights back, so in the end it will only cost me a few hundred dollars. Also I needed a change of scenery. Anyway, the hotel’s showers are much nicer than mine - it’s got more of a rain type of thing, rather than a shower head that sprays a small area.

A lot of what makes cold showers so unpleasant is that I start hyperventilating, and have to fight the urge to turn off the water the whole time. I’m just looking at the countdown and trying to catch my breath, trying to tell myself “okay, what if you just knocked off all the bullshit and maybe held your breath for a bit? You could try not shivering. It’s really unnecessary, you’re going to dry off very soon anyhow.” But it only works to a small degree.

After my work day I will take a colder shower (max coldness) for 1 minute and try to face it the whole time. I'll try to catch my breath and tell myself “you can just stand here, it’s fine.” But when that rush of cold water hits me, I turn into Aaron Brrrr.

In middle school and high school, I was on a swim team at my local pool. Practice was at 7 AM, and the water was cold every morning. Even though this was in the summer, it was shortly after sunrise and big pools take a long time to warm up. I don’t remember how cold it was in relation to a cold shower, but I would usually slooooooowly lower my feet and legs into the pool, and get in, and it would be okay. Then eventually you have to go underwater, and that part still sucked but it was over in a few seconds. Once you started swimming, it was fine. Other times, I would just jump in and go underwater straight away to get it over with. No matter what, after a couple of laps you would completely move on from the coldness factor. It just wasn’t an issue anymore.

Cold showers are similar, but different. You can’t swim to warm yourself up / distract yourself, you don’t have the forced rhythm of breathing that swimming gives you, and you can’t really ease into it, either. It’s a continuous blast of cold water, but there’s a lot of air in between the water so your body doesn’t adjust to it the way it does when you submerge yourself. It would be so much easier to get in a pool of cold water and swim one or two laps. But it’s not QUITE as bad as I thought it would be. It’s a lot more tolerable if you can take a regular shower first, then have a body temp shower for a few minutes, and then set the timer and crank it down like a madman.

I’m not thinking about going past 1 minute cold showers until I have a less severe reaction to them. For now, 1 minute is plenty of time. Maybe in a week or two my body and mind will get more used to it, and I will have a less strong reaction to it.

Also trying to not fap at all - 2 days in so far. Launching the ads for my business this weekend as well.

Do you do the breathing exercises before the shower? THIS is key to having your body sync with your mind and being able to control the shock of the cold water. The breathing basically turns on the internal furnace allowing you to stay calm and collected all while bringing your mind into a DEEP state of meditation. It eventually becomes an effortless endevour which is rather pleasant, believe it or not. I used to dread them, now I look forward to them every day.

Just keep at it man. Like everything else, with time and practice you will start reaping the rewards from this activity which are too numerous to pass up.

What business are you in if you don't mind me asking?

[LetsGo]

Do you do the breathing exercises before the shower? THIS is key to having your body sync with your mind and being able to control the shock of the cold water. The breathing basically turns on the internal furnace allowing you to stay calm and collected all while bringing your mind into a DEEP state of meditation. It eventually becomes an effortless endevour which is rather pleasant, believe it or not. I used to dread them, now I look forward to them every day.

Just keep at it man. Like everything else, with time and practice you will start reaping the rewards from this activity which are too numerous to pass up.

What business are you in if you don't mind me asking?

I’m a bit afraid to do the breathing exercises because a fair number of people have reported getting tinnitus or worsening tinnitus when trying the Wim Hoff breathing method. On a reddit thread, others said not to do the “push to the head” portion of it, as they think that that might be what causes the tinnitus worsening in some people.

I’m okay with the level of tinnitus that I have now (which would probably drive some to suicide) and I could live with this amount of tinnitus for life, no problem. But if it got drastically worse… that’s a risk I’m not comfortable with. I don’t know if there’s some sort of work around that would let me do the breathing exercises without risking worsening my tinnitus.

As for my business, I’m a lawyer but I don’t want to get much more specific than that in public (you can DM me if you want more info.) PFS de-railed my career, and my father’s horrible abuse for half a decade pushed me further away. Eventually I got a non-lawyer job but this isn’t somewhere I can stay any longer. And I want to finally make real money.

Anyway, I re-learned what I needed to re-learn (thankfully even in my darkest days, I never let my law licenses expire,) got a lot of reps in doing pro bono work, and now I’m technically, mentally, and emotionally able to do this. Once I have an ad and website combo that works, I can dial up the ad spend to increase my workload, and I’ll be making very good money. My website looks reasonable, including the professional photo and everything. I just need to pull the trigger on my ads and start fine-tuning from there. I can be making well over a hundred thousand dollars without too much trouble, and multiple times that as I get going. I deserve it.

[Cdsnuts]

I’m a bit afraid to do the breathing exercises because a fair number of people have reported getting tinnitus or worsening tinnitus when trying the Wim Hoff breathing method. On a reddit thread, others said not to do the “push to the head” portion of it, as they think that that might be what causes the tinnitus worsening in some people.

I’m okay with the level of tinnitus that I have now (which would probably drive some to suicide) and I could live with this amount of tinnitus for life, no problem. But if it got drastically worse… that’s a risk I’m not comfortable with. I don’t know if there’s some sort of work around that would let me do the breathing exercises without risking worsening my tinnitus.

As for my business, I’m a lawyer but I don’t want to get much more specific than that in public (you can DM me if you want more info.) PFS de-railed my career, and my father’s horrible abuse for half a decade pushed me further away. Eventually I got a non-lawyer job but this isn’t somewhere I can stay any longer. And I want to finally make real money.

Anyway, I re-learned what I needed to re-learn (thankfully even in my darkest days, I never let my law licenses expire,) got a lot of reps in doing pro bono work, and now I’m technically, mentally, and emotionally able to do this. Once I have an ad and website combo that works, I can dial up the ad spend to increase my workload, and I’ll be making very good money. My website looks reasonable, including the professional photo and everything. I just need to pull the trigger on my ads and start fine-tuning from there. I can be making well over a hundred thousand dollars without too much trouble, and multiple times that as I get going. I deserve it.

That's just a temporary increase during that portion of the exercise but it's transient, where as the benefits from the breathing are permanent and beneficial in the long term. It will not make your tinnitus worse. If that was the case it wouldn't be in the protocol. The push to the head is where the most benefits come from. If I knew nothing about this I would trust the research and information from people who do it on the regular as opposed to some people on reddit who tried it a couple times.