The Iceman Cometh is a play written by American playwright Eugene O’Neill. I have never seen it or read it. I don’t even know what it is about. I just like the title. I was reminded of it when I decided to write about one of my life experiments. It seems that I have been coming up with ideas for life experiments now that I am getting dangerously close to the half-century mark. I remember when I was 10 years old one of my mother’s friends read palms. She looked at my palm and said I had a strong life line and that I would live to be 110. I remember thinking “great, I have 100 years left ahead of me.” If that is the case I am not quite at the mid-point. Although, according to Wikipedia’s definition I am middle aged. So the question is how to stay young. A friend of our family is in his late 70’s. He still team ropes on his favorite horse. I saw him last fall building a deck on the back of his house. When he was done with that he was pouring a sidewalk. Not with a pre-mixed concrete like Quikrete. He had bags of cement and a big pile of sand. He did have an electric mixer. Oh yeah, and he volunteers at CTRC. Doing what he loves, helping others and keeping active seems to be working for him. Those three things seem to be big pieces of the puzzle. 

Back to Mr. O’Neill’s play. I stumbled across another man my senior that seems to be thriving as time progresses. His name is Wim Hof. He is known as the “Iceman”. He advocates cold therapy. I have not enrolled in his system (yet?) but I have read a little about him. While searching online I found the 20-day cold shower challenge. Here are my results:

If you look at my sheet you will notice 2  things.

1. I did it in Winter.
2. I didn’t quite do it 5 days a week. I only did it on the days I worked out. It was easier to take a cold shower in the winter after a workout when I was warmed up.

Week 1 was miserable. I thought it was because I wasn’t used to the cold showers. After completing the 20 days I found that when doing the 4th week of 60-second showers the first 15 seconds are the hardest. I think it just takes your body that time to adjust. The advice I found on the interwebs is to breathe and stay relaxed. It does help.

So here is the thing. You can see by my chart that by the end I did it 3 days in a row. I have not missed a day since. Every time I take a shower whether I have worked out or not I do a 60-second cold rinse. The first 15 seconds are still hard but by the time you are done and get out of the shower you feel great. I highly recommend this.

I doubt that this alone will get me to a robust 110 years old but it may help and in the meantime, it seems to be life-giving. I know this is not directly related to Three Elements Timberworks but I thought it might be fun to blog about the things I am trying to do to make my life outside Three Elements better.

Leave a comment below.

It would be great to hear from others. What kinds of things are you experimenting with for life improvements?