Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimised practices for waking, working, learning, eating, training, playing, sleeping and sex. Aubrey Marcus

as good as the body’s ability to fully recover from the resistance it overcomes. If the body can’t, then the stressor isn’t promoting growth, it’s toxic and it’s prompting decay. Thus, prudence dictates that you start with Level 1, and stay there for as long as you need to before moving your way up the ladder, or down into the tub, as it were. And once there, if two minutes feels too long for Level 2, set that as a goal and work toward it. Only your body will know—it’s up to your brain to listen to it.

       The Polar Plunge

      Do the Wim Hof cycle of thirty breaths while still on dry land, or in shower after completing necessary hygiene.

      1 Prepare an ice bath, or jump in water as cold as you can find. Set a timer for two minutes, or start playing a song that is two minutes long.

      2 Continue Wim Hof breathing until you can breathe calmly and normally (remember, the cold will make you want to gasp for air).

      3 Exhale fully, and hold your breath at the bottom.

      4 If you have extensive experience (or have a buddy with you in case you pass out), submerge completely.

      5 Get out of the water at the end of two minutes.

      Optional: Go into a warm shower or sauna to create contrast. If you feel up to it, complete a full additional round of cold shock. Be mindful not to push too hard, as the key to hormesis is not overdoing it.

       Caveat: Shallow-Water Blackout

      Make no mistake, it is possible to drown in your ice bath. That’s not how your hero’s journey is supposed to end. The combination of full cold immersion and the breathing may induce what is called shallow-water blackout. Just as when scuba diving, the safest bet is to have a buddy or your partner with you while you plunge. If you go all the way under, put up a hand signal or raise your middle finger while you are under water. Blacking out is not a sign of weakness—it can happen to anyone—so be prudent with your cold immersion.

       Pro Tip: Cryotherapy

      If you want to take cold to the next level, and by next level I mean –280°F, then you can check out cryotherapy. Typically costing around $40 per session, cryotherapy works by taking one of the literally coldest substances on earth, liquid nitrogen, and using it to cool the chamber you are standing in. You rotate around like a rotisserie Popsicle, and in three minutes your skin temperature has dropped substantially and you feel that rush of energy as the animal inside you comes alive. I’ve had the pleasure of introducing cryotherapy to a lot of peak performers. One of the most memorable moments was watching Bode Miller, who I’ve witnessed walk barefoot through the snow in New Hampshire, start to shiver. Not just a little, a lot. Like a shake weight with ears. That’s when I realized that cryotherapy was a different level of cold.

      Now Do It

      Believe me, I am no stranger to what feels like profound amounts of stress. When I’m stressed, I tell myself I don’t have the time to take an ice bath, or do the breathing. I tell myself that I just need to finish a few more things, and the stress will go away. I’m good at bullshitting myself, and you probably are too. It’s good to have reference points to keep you on track. Tony Robbins has a boatload more responsibility than me, but he takes ten minutes every morning to Wim Hof–breathe and pencil-dive into a sub-50°F plunge pool in his backyard. Or crank the shower to cold if he’s on the road. Or jump into a snowy river if he’s at his winter home.

      “If you don’t have ten minutes for yourself,” he has said, “you don’t have a life.” He’s right. If I am truly owning my day, owning my life, it doesn’t matter what is happening externally. To wait for the external world to change before you alleviate your stress is a fool’s errand. You know what is beyond that mountain? More fucking mountains. If you’re going to climb, then you better adapt. Chronic stress is less about the environment, and more about your response to it. So own it. Put yourself intentionally into the occasional fire, and take yourself intentionally out of the chronic stress oven. It’s a choice, your choice. Take that power and never give it away—especially to something as capricious as fate and fortune.

      I’m not saying adding the power shower or an ice bath or Wim Hof breathing to your routine will be easy. It won’t be. Just like in life, you are not rewarded for the comfortable choice. You will have to mentally override the fear of the cold. Override the urges that are driving you toward cozy warmth and shallow breath. This is as essential a skill as any. Just know that as soon as the cold hits your body and your fingers tingle, what you are experiencing is the exhilaration of victory—not just over the cold itself but over resistance, over stress. What better way to start the day!

      As the great swordsman Miyamoto Musashi said, “Today is victory over yourself of yesterday, tomorrow is victory over a lesser foe.” If you can conquer the acute natural stress of something like freezing water, something that makes you stronger—even grow to love it—you can conquer anything.

      THREE POINTERS

       Chronic stress is literally killing us, and the traditional medical model offers us very little help to deal with it. Counterintuitively, one of the best ways to deal with chronic stress is to seek certain forms of acute stress. Through a process called hormesis, acute stress will help you adapt and become stronger.

       Cold exposure is one of the best sources of acute stress, and can be accessed in showers, cold tubs, and cryotherapy. The cold also offers the opportunity to practice an essential life skill—what I call “mental override”—the ability to make yourself do something you don’t want to do.

       The breath, when used in accordance with the Wim Hof method or other forms of intentional deep breathing, is an invaluable tool to modulate and adapt to acute stressors like cold shock, while also helping to melt away chronic stress on its own.

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       MORE FAT, LESS SUGAR, OR DON’T EAT

      Eat to live, don’t live to eat.

      BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

      Breakfast isn’t the most important meal of the day, but it might be your most important choice of the day. Will you continue what you have already begun well—setting the foundation for energy and health—or will you take this train straight off the rails? At breakfast, don’t just think about breaking the fast. Think about breaking the habit of fast breakfast. This means fast-metabolizing foods like sugar and bread are out, fats and fiber are in. You want foods that are slow and simple for your first meal. And if you can’t find them—if all you have is sugar and refined carbohydrates—then skip breakfast altogether.

      Getting Owned

      How many times, and from how many people, have you heard the phrase “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day”? I’ve heard it hundreds of times, and I’m pretty sure we have some Madison Avenue genius to thank for it. Unfortunately for Kellogg’s and General Mills, it’s just not true. Every meal is important. Yet as a culture we believe in breakfast at any cost, so it is the one meal where we fill ourselves with the most ridiculous shit possible. The typical American breakfast, for example, is usually some combination of refined carbohydrates and sugar made conveniently available to us, in bulk, on the run, at rock-bottom prices by the great people of the breakfast-industrial complex.

      Walk down the breakfast aisle at the typical supermarket. Pop your head into the shops open for breakfast on your way to work or to school. What do you see? Nothing but cardboard and wax paper. Cardboard containers filled with “health” bars, colorful cereal niblets, sugary fruit juices, frozen waffles, toaster pastries. Wax paper filled with bagels, croissants, doughnuts (those amazing creations of human culinary ingenuity!), or, if you’re lucky, some white bread or a flour tortilla wrapped around a sad excuse for protein. Those are the options made accessible to the average American: fast foods filled with sugar and refined carbohydrates.

      This