Health Benefits of Cold Showers

The Health Benefits of Cold Showers

Better Immune System

There are countless studies that show that exposure to the cold improves your immunity.

Cold water immersion has been shown to increase metabolic rates because it causes shivering and activates your immune system. Experiment participants who participated in six weeks of immersions benefited from an increase in plasma concentration, as well as T helper cells and lymphocytes.

In Sweden, it’s common practice to let small babies take naps outdoors in the cold. It has been shown that these babies end up more resistant to disease and that they sleep deeper and more soundly.

In Siberia, they take it one step further and dump a whole bucket of cold water over children’s heads in a ritual called Rodnichok or cold springs. They do this year-round for children between the ages of two and six. Again, this is in Siberia. These kids are tough. It’s been shown that about 95% of the kids who participate are healthy through the flu season. On the other hand, only 75% of the the children who don’t participate in this ritual stay flu-free.

Lesson learned: if you want to be healthy, stick to the cold setting on your shower!

Fat Loss

When your body is exposed to cold, it requires more heat to warm you up. To heat you up, it has to process more energy, which means it has to burn more fat more efficiently than normal. Being cold can also activate brown fat, which is a sort of good fat that helps generate heat, boost your metabolism, and burn fat.

Improved Circulation

Over time, cold water exposure improves circulation. Since exposure to cold causes your blood flow to be redirected to your vital organs, your body is forced to circulate your blood more efficiently.

Temperature Regulation

Regular cold showers help to reduce heat loss, decrease your core body temperature, and regulate your overall body temperature.

Relief from Symptoms of Depression

Cold showers have been shown to help relieve symptoms of depression. Due to the high density of cold receptors in the skin, taking a cold shower sends an overwhelming amount of electrical impulses from peripheral nerve endings to the brain, which can result in an anti-depressive effect. So, if you need a pick-me-up, jump in the shower and turn it to the blast setting.

Healthy Skin & Hair

Cold water helps to close pores. Closed pores keep your skin looking smooth and healthy, without drying your skin out as hot water can. The cold water helps keep your hair shiny and your skin soft, rather than itchy, ashy, and dried out.

Testosterone Increase

A 1993 study conducted by the Thrombosis Research Institute in England showed a link between having cold baths and having high testosterone levels. We don’t have the direct link to the study, but try it out for yourself and see. We promise that, after spending five to ten minutes in the freezing cold water, you’ll at least feel like more of a man.

Fertility Increase

As you can imagine, an increase in testosterone can lead to an increase in fertility. Hot baths and showers drastically decrease sperm count. So, if you’re looking to pop out a few mini-mes, and want to give your little swimmers a fighting chance, make sure to turn your shower to cold.

Energy Increase

Besides the fact that there’s nothing quite like ice cold water to wake you up, cold showers can actually boost your energy levels. When you jump into a cold shower, the nerve endings in your skin stand up because of the ice world you just entered. Your heart starts racing and you start breathing rapidly as your body adjusts. That’s a response that the best cup of coffee in the worldcan’t beat.

Lymphatic Movement

Your lymphatic system takes waste away from your cells to help you fight disease. It’s separate from your blood vessels, but it’s moved around by the contraction of your muscles. Cold showers cause your entire body to contract and this forces your lymphatic system to push lymph fluids throughout your body, stopping them from pooling in one part of your body as they would if the lymphatic system were compromised or inefficient.

Inflammation Decrease

Ice baths have long been used by elite athletes to help reduce inflammation after a workout. They alleviate DOMS by constricting your veins, thereby removing toxins from your blood. When you get out of the bath, your system is flushed with fresh, nutrient-rich blood that can help repair muscles and tendons.

Breathing

Cold showers can get you to breathe deeply by forcing you to pause and hold your breath as a sort of automatic reaction when the cold water hits. This helps open up your lungs (just like physical exercise does), bringing in more oxygen.

Better Sleep

Remember the sleeping babies from earlier? Well, they’re not the only ones sleeping better at night thanks to the cold. Insomniacs are often advised to take cold showers. This might be because after the initial shock of the shower, your body calms down and relaxes.

Personal note: I’ve noticed that I sleep better and deeper when I take cold showers.

Tolerance to Stress

In general, exposure to the cold gives your body a higher tolerance to stress. Over time, this leads to the strengthening of your body and immune system (as we talked about earlier).

Cold showers have also been used to reduce chronic pain, body aches, and inflammation, improve hair health and kidney function, regulate the nervous system, deepen your breathing, help fight fatigue, and improve sleep quality. Whew!

Additional Benefits

One of the main benefits of taking cold showers is developing the ability to subject your body to a certain level of stress in a controlled environment. By doing this, you teach your body to adapt to stressors and become stronger. Whether it’s respiratory, circulatory, or simple temperature regulation, you’ll find your body becoming stronger.

Of course, these are just the physical health benefits of taking Cold Shower Therapy™. I personally think the mental and psychological health benefits of taking cold showers alone make it worthwhile.

TLDR: Take cold showers. They might just change your life. 

How to Use Your Subconscious to Change Your Life

Your subconscious loves to do work while your body performs other tasks that are easy. I can prove this very easily by asking you how many good ideas you have had while driving or in the shower. When you are relaxed yet slightly distracted, your mind is often at its best.
Using subconscious requests will…

• Improve your motivation.
• Help you become happier.
• Increase your emotional intelligence.

You’ll see improvement in less than a month.
My last request was…
“Please give me more patience when commuting to work and allow me to even enjoy my time in the car.”
Within a month I was enjoying my ride to work.
My latest request is…
“Let’s find creative ways to grow my blog.”
I took this approach because it’s going to take a request to my subconscious and action in my waking life to make this happen. This request is only a few days old, but it’s already working. Instead of just asking people to help vote for my blog on social sites that rate articles such as Stumble Upon and Digg, I’ve change my communication. I now friend someone, give a compliment (only if they are worthy) and tell them that they ever need any help to shoot me a message. They are much more willing to help me out.

Mindset

My mindset is changing by setting my subconscious on a certain issue.  I start to see new angles that I’ve never seen before. This subconscious request works for personal issues as well as work related concerns.
The 3 step request only takes five minutes:
Step 1: Before you turn out the light, close your eyes and take one minute to make a request to your subconscious. It can be anything. I would start small and make it open ended. I wouldn’t request to be an astronaut by the end of the month. Your subconscious is good, but not that good.
Step 2: Take two minutes to visualize yourself actually able to do this thing. Whether it is getting the motivation to jog before work or eating a healthy snack, you must visualize yourself doing the request that you asked your subconscious. Let’s say you want to jog before work: imagine yourself getting up a few minutes earlier than usual, putting on your exercise clothes and jogging shoes, and heading out into the crisp air. Then you start jogging, watching the sun rise over the buildings, the birds chirping, and you are feeling good.
Step 3: Take two minutes to imagine the feeling that will occur when you are able to accomplish this new thing. How do you feel when you walk back in your front door after a morning jog? Energized? Whatever feeling you want to achieves imagine that you have already created this emotion inside of yourself. Let it sink in, then go to sleep and let your subconscious do the rest of the work.
Your subconscious mind wants to help you improve your life; you just have to trust its vast resources and allow it to do its thing.

Action Makes Your Request Real

You may not want to go jogging after the first subconscious request, but try to visualize yourself going through the motions the first couple of weeks. Then just start putting on your exercise gear and go for a five minute walk. Taking these baby steps will set you up for your jogging routine. Then after a few weeks just go for it. Now that you have your emotions geared toward jogging it should spur you into action.
By allowing the emotional momentum to build, you can create motivation that will help you accomplish things that make you happier.
Do you have a motivational tip to share? Have you ever tried making a subconscious requests before bed? We would love to hear it. Let’s discuss in the comment section.

Change Your Life: Change The World

Social Entrepreneurs need to question the status-quo and be the agents for change in the world, but change is not always easy. Often as social entrepreneurs, we can focus on the change we want to see in the world but I think the first place we need to start is the change we want to see in ourselves. 

“You must be the change you want to see in the world” Mahatma Gandhi. As we learn to be more introspective and make the necessary changes in our lives, it will give us the skills and abilities to bring change to the world.
Most people know the changes in their life that would make the most difference but often these changes sit on their ‘to do’ list. Almost all change requires us to give and take. Often, the hardest part of change is not the change itself but what people must give up, the sacrifices we have to make for the better.


Human beings are creatures of habit. 95% of our behaviours are habitual and only 5% of our choices are consciously self-selected. Most of us greatly overvalue our willpower and self-discipline…we think that we only need strong willpower to change things. Think about all those New Years Resolutions, how many of them did you actually keep!

The fact is, the more behaviours become a ritual and routine, in the form of a deliberate and consistent practice, the more they will become automatic and take far less energy to carry out.

5 Steps to making change happen

1. Understand your ‘why’

This is a major factor to you being successful in the change you want to see. It is your purpose or commitment to a process that will eventually determine your outcome. Write down what  your ‘why’ is and refer back to it, so you have the motivation to change. When the challenges come, you can refer back to your ‘why’ because this will become your anchor. Build a foundation of motivation and commitment before you even think about making changes.

2. Challenge your comfort-zone

All of us get a sense of comfort and security from doing what we’ve always done, even if it isn’t working for us. We all know the definition of insanity – “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”Albert Einstein. Researchers Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey call this “immunity to change.” We have competing commitments to change – on one side there is our passionate commitment to change but this is counterbalanced by an equally powerful competing commitment to keep doing what you are comfortable doing.

This is an easy way to find your competing commitment. Think about the change you really want to make and ask yourself what are you doing or not doing to undermine that initial commitment. What is it costing you to continue doing the same thing over and over?

3. Be Specific about the change you want

Saying something like “I want to be more organised” is a recipe for failure because it is too general. Say something like “I am going to spend 10 minutes everyday writing a to do list for the day” or “I’m going to spend a day organising my office and finding a place for everything.”

4. Establish a support network

Many of us have an idea in our heads that “I can do it on my own.” The fact is though, that you are more than likely to actually implement change if you have others alongside you who are trying to do the same thing. You can connect through the challenges, learn from others, and feel part of a community. The community also serves as a reminder that this is important in your life. On the flip side of this, stay away from small-minded people who want to stamp on your dreams because their intent is to hold you back with them.

5. Believe

Your belief will develop your faith. You can’t change your behaviour without first changing your belief.  Believe that you can and challenge any thoughts that say you can’t. Get rid of the doubt and the fear of failure because these things will always hold you back.


The average person launches a change effort six seperate times before it finally takes.
Change is hard. It can even be painful. You will  experience failure at times but it is through our failures that we can find success.

As social entrepreneurs, you may be seeking change for yourself so you can be a more effective leader or for the social problem that you have identified. Determine in your heart and your mind that you will not quit because success is connected to action!

6 Leadership Styles, And When You Should Use Them

Taking a team from ordinary to extraordinary means understanding and embracing the difference between management and leadership. According to writer and consultant Peter Drucker, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." 

Manager and leader are two completely different roles, although we often use the terms interchangeably. Managers are facilitators of their team members’ success. They ensure that their people have everything they need to be productive and successful; that they’re well trained, happy and have minimal roadblocks in their path; that they’re being groomed for the next level; that they are recognized for great performance and coached through their challenges.

Conversely, a leader can be anyone on the team who has a particular talent, who is creatively thinking out of the box and has a great idea, who has experience in a certain aspect of the business or project that can prove useful to the manager and the team. A leader leads based on strengths, not titles.

The best managers consistently allow different leaders to emerge and inspire their teammates (and themselves!) to the next level.

When you’re dealing with ongoing challenges and changes, and you’re in uncharted territory with no means of knowing what comes next, no one can be expected to have all the answers or rule the team with an iron fist based solely on the title on their business card. It just doesn’t work for day-to-day operations. Sometimes a project is a long series of obstacles and opportunities coming at you at high speed, and you need every ounce of your collective hearts and minds and skill sets to get through it.

This is why the military style of top-down leadership is never effective in the fast-paced world of adventure racing or, for that matter, our daily lives (which is really one big, long adventure, hopefully!). I truly believe in Tom Peters’s observation that the best leaders don’t create followers; they create more leaders. When we share leadership, we’re all a heck of a lot smarter, more nimble and more capable in the long run, especially when that long run is fraught with unknown and unforeseen challenges.

Change leadership styles

Not only do the greatest teammates allow different leaders to consistently emerge based on their strengths, but also they realize that leadership can and should be situational, depending on the needs of the team. Sometimes a teammate needs a warm hug. Sometimes the team needs a visionary, a new style of coaching, someone to lead the way or even, on occasion, a kick in the bike shorts. For that reason, great leaders choose their leadership style like a golfer chooses his or her club, with a calculated analysis of the matter at hand, the end goal and the best tool for the job.

My favorite study on the subject of kinetic leadership is Daniel Goleman’sLeadership That Gets Results, a landmark 2000 Harvard Business Review study. Goleman and his team completed a three-year study with over 3,000 middle-level managers. Their goal was to uncover specific leadership behaviors and determine their effect on the corporate climate and each leadership style’s effect on bottom-line profitability.

The research discovered that a manager’s leadership style was responsible for 30% of the company’s bottom-line profitability! That’s far too much to ignore. Imagine how much money and effort a company spends on new processes, efficiencies, and cost-cutting methods in an effort to add even one percent to bottom-line profitability, and compare that to simply inspiring managers to be more kinetic with their leadership styles. It’s a no-brainer.

Here are the six leadership styles Goleman uncovered among the managers he studied, as well as a brief analysis of the effects of each style on the corporate climate:

1. The pacesetting leader expects and models excellence and self-direction. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be "Do as I do, now." The pacesetting style works best when the team is already motivated and skilled, and the leader needs quick results. Used extensively, however, this style can overwhelm team members and squelch innovation.
   
2. The authoritative leader mobilizes the team toward a common vision and focuses on end goals, leaving the means up to each individual. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be "Come with me." The authoritative style works best when the team needs a new vision because circumstances have changed, or when explicit guidance is not required. Authoritative leaders inspire an entrepreneurial spirit and vibrant enthusiasm for the mission. It is not the best fit when the leader is working with a team of experts who know more than him or her.
   
3. The affiliative leader works to create emotional bonds that bring a feeling of bonding and belonging to the organization. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be "People come first." The affiliative style works best in times of stress, when teammates need to heal from a trauma, or when the team needs to rebuild trust. This style should not be used exclusively, because a sole reliance on praise and nurturing can foster mediocre performance and a lack of direction.
   
4. The coaching leader develops people for the future. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be "Try this." The coaching style works best when the leader wants to help teammates build lasting personal strengths that make them more successful overall. It is least effective when teammates are defiant and unwilling to change or learn, or if the leader lacks proficiency.
   
5. The coercive leader demands immediate compliance. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be "Do what I tell you." The coercive style is most effective in times of crisis, such as in a company turnaround or a takeover attempt, or during an actual emergency like a tornado or a fire. This style can also help control a problem teammate when everything else has failed. However, it should be avoided in almost every other case because it can alienate people and stifle flexibility and inventiveness.
   
6. The democratic leader builds consensus through participation. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be "What do you think?" The democratic style is most effective when the leader needs the team to buy into or have ownership of a decision, plan, or goal, or if he or she is uncertain and needs fresh ideas from qualified teammates. It is not the best choice in an emergency situation, when time is of the essence for another reason or when teammates are not informed enough to offer sufficient guidance to the leader.
7. Bottom line? If you take two cups of authoritative leadership, one cup of democratic, coaching, and affirmative leadership, and a dash of pacesetting and coercive leadership "to taste," and you lead based on need in a way that elevates and inspires your team, you’ve got an excellent recipe for long-term leadership success with every team in your life.

35 Insanely Stupid Things You Should Probably Stop Doing

1. Putting your own opinion to a fact. Unless you’re 100% certain – it’s not a fact, and you’re probably making it worse.

2. Waiting for something better to come along before you quit the thing you hate. This goes out to all the people stuck in dead end jobs, mismatched relationships, and boring social circles. Tomorrow never comes.

3. Not asking someone out because you think they are out of your league. Give them a chance to make that decision, not you.

4. Worrying about the traffic jam making you late for work, getting caught in the downpour without a jacket, or forgetting to get back to someone after you made a promise. Shit happens, get over it.

5. Thinking you’re more important than anyone else. You’re not. You’re just as important as everyone else.

6. Blaming other people when shit hits the fan. If it’s your own fault, admit it. If it’s not, then assume the person responsible is fully aware – they don’t need you pointing it out.

7. Forcing your religious beliefs onto another person. Well done – you’re a Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/Atheist/Jedi… whatever, do you want a medal?

8. Being afraid to spend money. You worked hard to earn it – so do something with it.

9. Waiting for a magical sum of money to appear. There is never enough – the sooner you realise this, the sooner you can start living.

10. Buying lottery tickets. See number 9.

11. Believing something to be true because you heard it from an authority. Do your own research. Form your own judgment. Trust your own instincts.

12. Ignoring your instincts. They’ll keep you alive.

13. Ignoring advice. Even if it seems misplaced – it probably comes from personal experience – which makes it completely relevant.

14. Refusing to watch a movie, read a book or buy a product just because it’s popular. One day, you’ll miss out on something amazing.

15. Looking too far into the future. It will never exist.

16. Trying to erase the past. It happened – accept it.

17. Ignoring the present moment. This shit is happening so pay attention.

18. Focusing too much on making a good impression. They will see the ‘you’ that they see – and there’s not a lot you can do about it. If you act with integrity, treat them with respect and look them in the eye – you’ve successfully played your part in their life story.

19. Allowing other people to write your story. Save that for when you’re dead.

20. Giving someone a lecture about a subject you know nothing about. People are remarkably good at sniffing out bullshit.

21. Treating your body like crap. It’s the only one you’ll ever use.

22. Treating other people like crap. See number 5.

23. Assuming someone is happy because they’re always smiling. Depression produces Oscar winning performances.

24. Blaming yourself for not realising something was wrong. You didn’t know because they didn’t want you to know. End of.

25. Suffering in silence. It’s not your fault. It’s an illness, and people give a shit. Let someone in – even if it’s one person – it could change your life.

26. Being scared of success. Fear is an essential part of life and expecting it to go away will always end in disappointment. Some of the world’s greatest entertainers get nervous before a performance. Some of the world’s greatest athletes are full of self-doubt as they face their opponent. Some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, innovators, and CEO’s question their own products the night before a big launch. Always be afraid – never stand still.

27. Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result. If something isn’t working then try something new.

28. Aiming for perfection and avoiding mistakes. The person who never made a mistake – never made anything.

29. Living your life vicariously through others. Great writers will always take you along for the ride, but learn the difference between inspiration and imaginary. The brain is easily fooled into thinking it was really there.

30. Reading ‘The Secret’. The universe is just as lazy as you are. Do yourself, and it, a favour by at least meeting it halfway. Sitting on your fat ass and wishing for a better life is the reason why you have a fat ass in the first place. Expect brain-rot to kick in next.

31. Being jealous. It ruins lives.

32. Believing there is an ‘us’ and ‘them’. Quit your whining, work harder, and meet the right people – all within your capability.

33. Feeling pressured into following the crowd. If you really don’t want to do something, then you have every right to say no.

34. Using silence as your preferred method of communication. If someone sends you a text, then you reply. If you have to let someone down, then tell them. If there is a date you cannot make, a deadline you cannot hit or an agreement you no longer wish to honour – then speak up.

35. Following the news. It’s negative, untrustworthy, and it will not enhance your life in any way, shape or form.