I Take a Cold Shower Every Day During Winter

Speaking about asceticism in modern life

Hello lovelies,

I hope you had a beautiful and sustainable week.

In my last post, I chatted a bit about asceticism but I didn’t expound on it to keep the post digestible in your single-sitting while enjoying your cup of chai latte or in your daily commute (~10-15 minutes of reading). Therefore, let’s dig into the topic today. We’ll get to the cold shower part later.

Asceticism is associated in the past with the practice of the heavily/ultra-religious people. Stemming from a Greek word that means to practise, it’s only apt that the manifestation of this practice is self-denial and pleasure restriction (or removal). Coming from the Catholic tradition, I was also informed about this practice in discipline during the faith lessons in my elementary and middle schools. I didn’t know or I even forgot if my teachers mentioned the asceticism label on the practice engaged by these holy souls in the past, but the activities definitely fall under this -ism umbrella. Side note: discipline and the acts of being a disciple.

Detaching from Christianity history a bit, have you ever heard about the monasticism practices, where people stay in a monastery (I call it monasteries although the buildings or communities can be applicable for other faiths as well), limiting their contact with the outer world, walking their daily life with specific code of conduct? The Buddhists, the Hindus, and many other faiths have similar practices. Please forgive my lack of knowledge if I fail to mention your faiths that you know have similar conduct. The idea is: there are people who live differently from how the masses live at any given period of time in the history of humanity. Their goal? Vary in the low level, convergent in the high level, which is to get closer to their God, the Source, the Divinity. This stems from the steps that if broken down:

For example, (speaking from my Catholic upbringing that I know better of) do you know the Franciscan monks? Even in my home country, Indonesia, they still wear grey/brown or other dark-coloured robes with one rope around the waist when attending the Mass. They practise destitution (swear an oath upon it) to live in the examples of St Francis Assisi, the founder of this religious order. It was also shared in the spoken story tradition that St Francis could speak to the animals because of how compassionate his heart was, no creatures were afraid of or hated him. 

Plugged into the diagram of the model above (yes, I love diagramming as I’m a product manager, LOL), the Franciscan ascetic practice is to acquire virtues through being less reliant on material possessions, being more compassionate with living beings, and spending more time in their faith by making their daily life examples for other people as well. This makes them closer to what they believe in the Divinity, in God, based on Jesus’ teachings about gentleness, meekness, humility, and transforming the world into the Kingdom of Heaven without violence, but by being the salt and the light of the world.

In other faiths and movements, for example, veganism enlightens us about the unethical practice of speciesism and industrialised farming which says about r*ping the female cows/goats/sheep and prefer the more sustainable world over the practices. Other movements on smaller scales and thousands of organisations might also live under certain codes in the asceticism spirit to bring them closer to their belief system.

In short, it’s living in faith, as quoting St James from the New Testament, faith without works is dead. 

That’s absolutely applicable to inter-faiths as well. In the secular or modern conversational, it’s like saying, put your money where your mouth is.

Your lifestyle must reflect what you believe in.

Back to ascetic practice again, so why does it have something to do with feminine leadership, with femininity no less, where femininity spotlights the slow, sustainable, gentle, and receiving lifestyle instead of being destitute and restrictive?

Read that example of the Franciscan community again.

Aren’t what they live in bringing them closer to gentleness and humility?

Let me break down what I believe in femininity teaching and how being an ascetic in modern life helps me embody the spirit.

The feminine virtues I believe in to demonstrate more in the workplace and business, for example, are creating safer environments, being a good listener, and refraining from always chasing and rushing.

What are the ascetic practices that I can do to acquire those virtues so that I can be closer to my calling?

For example, I do mindful consumption of anything that gets into my body. They can be in the form of food (nutrition) or media. I can’t expect to be a good listener and creator of safe working environments if I spend hours a day getting hooked on doom-scrolling or participating in endless internet debates, can I? Rather than doing those, I can allocate my time and energy to accept calls from my parents and friends, making myself fully available to listen to them and actively engage with their stories, offering help if necessary. Similarly, I can’t be in the receiving mode, which I associate with the slowness and gentleness in my plans and movements like water, if I’m being sick or neglecting my health. Since mind and body are connected (what is a mind if not a brain being connected to the guts, affected by our system health), neglecting bodily health corresponds to more downtime due to being sick (hence, rushing in the uptime), or erring more in actions I take.

Another example is put into a broader context of asceticism practices to achieve my goals sooner. I’ve got something brewing, which I can’t share to the world yet since it needs to be vetted with certain people, but that’s the result of my feminine ideas that converge into that kind of project. Now, that’s me answering the call of my intuition. To execute the plans, I need to be in a certain shape, right? And that’s how asceticism helps in maintaining the state. It’s asceticism in modern life as it’s applicable and relatable to many walks of life, but not less effective than the discipline of those folks from hundreds of years back, as shown below.

1/ Being mindful of my intake

For foods, media, and other sources of information (e.g. group chat if unproductive or gossipy), I must cull them so the remaining are those that help me contribute to this project. Instead of reading meaningless posts or actively engaging in a tweetwar, I can take some morning time slowly, deliberately, writing this post. Instead of binging junk foods, I can eat whole foods, more plants in their God-given shapes (i.e. not heavily processed), and almost zero sweeteners in any form, in my attempt to take care of my body. More importantly, stable energy throughout the day is key to being able to contribute to my company meetings in the first half of the day and my business in the afternoon and evening.

I might still feel under the weather occasionally but the positive feedback loop helps me recover better. 

What’s the positive feedback loop here?

By ensuring the variables I can control (my food, my media consumption, the way I respond to messages or news), I feel better about my authenticity and active participation in creating my life. The positive feeling elevates my vibration. The higher vibration helps me tackle life challenges (including physical disturbance) better. Spiralling upwards.

2/ Taking a safe cold shower every day

A safe cold shower means a water temperature that I can tolerate without jeopardising my health. Safety is numero uno because cold plunges could threaten your life. Prioritising safety is aligned with my feminine values that we shouldn’t subject our bodies to excessive threats, as our feminine system would clam up and be in survival mode rather than flourishing. If done right, however, a cold shower has tremendous benefits as presented on Dr Huberman’s website (and many other podcasts/discussions).

By being intensive, I mean taking a cold plunge to the extreme, for example, a subzero degree. I’m not sure how it plays out as I don’t want to participate in such conditions. I know my body more, and she responds to gentler nudges and gradually increasing challenges, or sticking into a more plateaued, consistent manner. Therefore, what I do is showering under a cooler water temperature range instead of hot or even warm water. It’s tempting, especially during winter like this, to stay in a hot shower. But my skin dislikes it, my body likes a gentler/cooler range rather than a hot one. And I take it up a notch by exposing it to the cooler water.

If you haven’t tried this, just shower as usual, but day by day, switch up to a cooler range. You can start by showering normally with soap or body wash in your preferred temperatures then end it with somewhat cooler water. Be consistent, do it every day.

Challenge your mind to do it every single day. Before you know it, it becomes a habit.

At first, you will do it because of the motivation. After a fortnight, you will do it out of habit.

What does it do to my feminine leadership, though?

To walk or sometimes run in an entrepreneurial journey, one must have a consistent mindset and resilience. Resilience is a neutral trait, even in our femininity, we can do it, albeit differently from the outwardly chasing and rushing manner in masculine energy. Resilience in femininity goes hand-in-hand with humility and willingness to transmute the pain of failure when we fall into the courage to stand back up, silently, without publishing it on social media or broadcasting it to thousands of people.

Which brings us to the final point.

3/ Embracing the gift of silence

Hardly any religious faith or spirituality opposes this practice as it’s universally understood and accepted that this underappreciated gift holds a strong transformative power.

SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio), as the tech term calls.

From the homily of the Sunday Mass this morning (14 January 2024), I summarised the key point of being in silence. 

Sitting in silence, done regularly, helps you to tune out the noise of everyday life. Noise trickles in from different avenues, as I mentioned in my first point. From the news, people’s chatters, social media, and so on. Even when you’re sitting at home daily, say, if your job can be done from home with a computer, the noisy world can still creep into you. 

On the contrary, even if your daily life is way noisier because you need to be outside and engage with society, you can be more attuned to the signals than the folks at home, if only you use the right tool.

Which is to embrace the gift of silence.

(Silence in my morning nature walking)

Make it a habit of sitting in silence, every single day. I can’t emphasise this enough. I make it a habit of sitting with just my conscience and God every morning and night, allowing God to speak to me. As a human, I’m deeply flawed and misunderstand His direction too often. I’m always a work in progress. Sometimes I’m deaf, and sometimes I can’t even recognise the source of the voice, just like how Samuel misunderstood that the calls came from Eli. The point is, I don’t know. Recognising God’s calling is not a one-time done deal matter. It’s an active willingness from my side, by doing the least active in the masculine sense, but the most powerful in the feminine sense, which is to sit in silence.

Not allowing your phone as a distraction. Not allowing other forms of entertainment, for 15 minutes to half an hour every day.

But receiving the sounds: the gentle chirps of magpies or the rough caws of crows, the humming and bustling daily noise, the car horns in the distance. Receiving the sensation of the wool jumper on my skin. Receiving the sensation of pain in my bruised toes from hiking, pulsating and sometimes itching on the almost healed parts.

Accepting who I am, accepting my body. Allowing the inner chatter of my mind to exist, giving them the stage, including the counterproductive ones that question my worth to carry on a project. By acknowledging those feelings, all are brought to light. And the paths of darkness, when shone upon by the light, are transmuted into life-giving energy instead of the mysterious bodies lurking in the shadows.

Based on experience, sitting in silence doesn’t always mean a life-changing magic to act upon your life problems. More often than not, I didn’t get any answer. But back to the consistency wins over intensity, the practice sharpens my intuition to view the world differently. To focus more on the tasks at hand. To recognise the silent cry for help. To sense the unspoken words. It’s similar to speaking with your partner. At first, you two might not get along because of the different communication styles. But you’re trying, and they are also learning. Soon, you know how to convey your messages healthily to them and vice versa.

Communicating with your guidance, with my God, can be made more effective by embracing the silence, to allow that subtle nudge here or faint whisper there to get amplified in your heart and gut.

Only then, you can finally say that you listen to your body.

Final Words

Don’t flaunt this ascetic side of you to people.

Ostentatious and pretentious display of asceticism is the exact opposite of the virtues you want to acquire. I risked people judging me for highlighting my ascetic practice in this post, but I wrote this to allow you to read some examples of achievable modern-day asceticism that can propel you towards the lifestyle you want to experience.

I read somewhere that asceticism allows us to gain pleasure in denying pleasure itself when done consistently. I can resonate with this thought. For instance, now that I live with almost zero sweeteners (other than the complex unrefined carbs coming from whole foods, or sneaky sugar in some dry spices), I find pleasure in maintaining this lifestyle. My body enjoys this lifestyle and complains if I eat sweets. She doesn’t like me slacking off over the weekend, banging the door of my brain to get up and jot down my thoughts on my platforms.

Live in the discipline. Live being a disciple.

Also, never get discouraged if you fall off track every now and then, and never let asceticism make you feel holier than other people.

Quoting St Jerome, 

Be on your guard when you begin to mortify your body by abstinence and fasting, lest you imagine yourself to be perfect and a saint; for perfection does not consist in this virtue. It is only a help; a disposition; a means though a fitting one, for the attainment of true perfection.

Current Stuff

(I added this section to share the trivial things of my mundane life. Avoiding social media, I don’t want to immediately share simple things like this from my phone, so I build the stories for my weekly newsletter)

» The Diary of a CEO

I listen to his podcast regularly or watch him on YouTube.

There are parts of his book that strengthen my idea about motivation versus habit building. Motivation dwindles, but habits stick.

» Library visit

I visited my local library last Saturday and registered as a member. I spent two hours browsing the books and reading some pages. Although my weekend routine consists of writing and networking online, I put some non-routine activities to spice up the days, to avoid feeling like clockwork every single day.

» Trying something new for newsletter outreach

I made a preview of this post by summarising the points on my LinkedIn here.

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Hello,

Are you navigating the complexities of modern life, feeling lost in finding your true calling? Do you find yourself hindered by negative habits and beliefs, feeling blocked from reaching your full potential?

Imagine a life that's gentler, more sustainable, and perfectly aligned with your purpose. Whether you're an employee or a business owner, this isn't just a dream—it's a real, achievable goal.

I've been on this journey myself, continuously striving to unlock my true potential. Through my experiences, I realised that while I learned a lot on my own, I didn't have to do it alone. That's why I'm passionate about helping others, promoting a lifestyle of gentle living, and elevating the collective energy of our planet.

This led me to establish my feminine leadership coaching program. And don't worry, it's not exclusive to women. We all possess a blend of masculine and feminine energies, and understanding this balance is key to personal and professional growth.

If you're curious about how embracing feminine leadership can transform your life and career, I invite you to a complimentary 45-minute discovery call with me. Together, we'll explore the possibilities of your journey towards a more fulfilling and aligned life.

Until then,