Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World
I’m beginning to run out of things to say regarding my ice baths. It’s a very predictable routine now. I do it approximately at the same time every day (at least during weekdays) and it has now reached the point where I consider it a habit. Perhaps the more interesting experiment will be when I
After my ice bath yesterday, I felt a great sense of satisfaction at reaching the halfway point of my Stoicism month. It’s rare that I stick to any pursuit for any period of time, so I was proud of myself. I learned to feel great pleasure when my body stops shivering post-ice bath. The muscles
This week was mostly a good one. I did have a weird mood swing on Day 10, but otherwise the week was tranquil. Yesterday’s ice bath was warmer than usual, but I still suffered through the uncontrollable shivering afterwards. In last week’s weekly re-cap, I discussed not sweating the small stuff and how you could
My thirteenth ice bath was mostly uneventful. I did feel a bit hurried in the morning as I had a few errands to run and a dinner with a Jesuit priest to go to (more on that in a bit). The bath definitely had a calming effect. This could be a physiological reaction, or it
Yesterday I practiced negative visualization on my drive to work. I thought about the death of loved ones, how I could be living in poverty, how I could have some incurable and painful illness, and how I could be alone and without any friends or companionship. The rest of the work day went pretty well
I ran an experiment yesterday with my ice bath. I did my usual routine first (two bags of ice, 20 minutes in the water), but then instead of running around like a crazy person in my apartment trying to warm up, I decided to take a warm shower right after the bath to see if
When I was driving to a client meeting yesterday morning, I relapsed. All of a sudden I just felt depressed and that sense of existential angst returned. There wasn’t anything wrong about yesterday. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, but I just got the sense that everything was pointless and that this project would fail
It is Polar Vortex 2 week here in DC. The government closed for a day, and I decided to work from home. Hooray for flexible workplaces! I really did not want to jump into my ice bath today. It was snowing outside, I was nice and cozy and warm in my apartment, and I just
I mentioned in my previous post that, while the ice baths are not easy per se, I do not fear them like I did before I started my month of Stoicism. Yesterday’s ice bath was about the same as the previous days. My friend, who has been kindly commenting on my posts, asked “I wonder
I finished my first week of ice baths yesterday. The ice bath was the same, but it felt good to stick with something for a week. I could have made an exception based on various rationalizations “oh it’s Sunday, no one takes ice baths on Sunday!” or “I have friends coming over, I don’t want