“If you die once every day, then you’ll know what life is about.”
Wim Hof
Preface
The fear I faced in this story involves spending time in very cold water. Not everyone is into this, and probably not every can do this safely (although probably more people can than think they can). The success of fear facing isn’t about the objective difficulty of a task (e.g. climbing Mt Everest is more difficult than climbing a 3k meter mountain). One person’s ultramarathon could be less scary than another person’s 5k. In that case, the one doing the 5k is facing more fear than the veteran ultrarunner.
It is not about only physical challenges either. Fear is an emotion, and that emotion’s strength involves a relationship between the specific challenge and it’s difficulty to that person. The fear we face could be social, like asking for a date or a promotion or dancing in public. The fear could be leaving home for the first time, changing careers, grieving a death, giving up an addiction, facing an illness or disability, or any of virtually infinite ways a human being can, voluntarily or involuntarily, be uncomfortable.
If anything, I’m sharing this cold water swimming challenge as a metaphor for facing more difficult fears in our hearts. This physical challenge wasn’t one of the top challenges I’ve faced, which I think makes it a helpful illustrative example from which to extrapolate some general fear-facing wisdom.
In other words, I suggest basing your fear-facing success not on the properties of the challenges you choose to take on, but on the properties of what feelings they evoke in you and how fully you choose to face those feelings.
The Fear
Last weekend I participated in something I was afraid of.
It was a “polar bear swim” of 250 yards in Lake Tahoe, which they said was about 39 degrees F. I realized that was 5 olympic sized pool laps, and estimated it could take me 6 or 7 minutes, as I’m not a very fast swimmer even in warm water.
Why, you might ask, would I even have considered such an event?
Well, for the past two winters I have been doing cold water plunges in a nearby lake in water that, measured at the shore, is usually between 35 and 40 degrees F. Long story I don’t remember… probably stumbled on some Wim Hof videos and the rest is history.
So when a friend told me about this event with only 1 week to prepare, I felt both excited and a bit intimidated.
The Prep
I’ve been mostly sitting in the water with my head above the surface, and usually for about 2 to 3 minutes. I took a test swim, and to my chagrin, found myself stopping after about 1 minute from what I can only describe as “brain freeze.” Having my head under water for more than 15 seconds added another level of surprise and difficulty.
I also found that it was very uncomfortable being doubly winded, from the cold and the swimming at the same time. Normally I’d breath quickly just from my body adapting to the cold water. So swimming and getting quickly winded created some irrational anxiety that would lead me to stop, long before 250 yards.
A final reason swimming is harder than sitting still is, I think, that while sitting, the water around you warms up ever so slightly from your body heat, so after several seconds in one place, the water touching your skin is a few degrees less cold. Not the case while constantly making contact with new water while swimming.
I tried again later and stopped even sooner. I walked along the beach with a distance tracker to give myself an idea of how far I needed to go to equal 250 yards, and it looked like a distance that I just couldn’t voluntarily will myself to do.
My thought process went something like, “I could probably swim this far in this temperature if I was forced to, but do I want to risk that in front of a bunch of people at the race? That would be pretty embarrassing to turn around halfway… and what if I have a heart attack or something?” And other worries.
Each day I’d try again, usually twice, and my conviction of whether I’d do the race wavered from 90% “no” to 50% “yes”. Usually the 90% no was immediately after making my attempts.
By the end of the week, I was swimming between 2 and 2.5 minutes, I estimated 100 yards. An improvement of 2x, but still ½ of what I’d need for the race.
The Choice
The night before, I vacillated in my mind about whether I should try it. And, I paid attention to why I cared about this so much.
Some challenges are a quick yes, like going to the gym and doing our regular workout. We know it’ll be a success, and good for us, albeit hard work. Others are a hard no. If the race had been 1000 yards, I’d have known for sure it was out of range for me. But 250 yards, about double what I’d been doing without any problem, was just on that edge between too scary and exciting, between confidence and intimidation. It made me contemplate the times in my life when I backed down from a challenge that I could have probably taken on, forgoing both the risk and the reward involved. This swim became a metaphor in my mind for when to take calculated risks, and what I felt was a bias in me toward going easier than I should.
One of my favorite books is Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins, who talks about a “governor” inside of us that tends to stop us at 40% of our potential effort. Goggins spent most of his life putting himself through extreme challenges that pushed him straight from 40% to 99%, and doesn’t recommend that others do this (and neither do I), but I felt that this community swim was more like a push from 40% to 50%, a more sensible de-governing.
To me, the reason to push ourselves has to do with living without regrets, without a sense that we took the easy road and became too small, to squeeze the juice out of life that we are here to drink during this mysterious life.
I took care to not make the swim into too much of an egoic metaphor about myself as a person. I don’t think it’s healthy to draw too strong of conclusions about ourselves from a single event, one way or the other. If I didn’t do the swim, it would have been harmful to tell a narrative that I don’t take on challenges, because it’s not true. I’ve taken on plenty of challenges in life. Similarly, if I did the swim, it wouldn’t be healthy to tell some big ego story that I charge headstrong into every big risk, because that’s not true either. Like most people, I weigh my decisions and make my best bet at whether a potential risk is worth the potential reward, knowing that the outcome is not totally predictable.
And yet…
I do think that, like author James Clear says in his book Atomic Habits, each behavioral choice we make is a “vote” for our identity. The identity that I wanted to vote for was “someone who faces his fears” and “someone who pushes himself through discomfort into growth.”
This is also compatible with what narrative therapists call “unique outcomes”, and what solution-focused therapists call “exceptions” to a problem. Each success in life gives us evidence against many of the automatic negative thoughts and stories that we can have about ourselves.
And so this swim became, to me, an opportunity to choose what’s called “right action” in Buddhism… potentially.
The day of the swim, I decided to commit myself to driving there only. I had no idea how many swimmers or spectators there would be, how many would use a wetsuit, if the water was colder or warmer than the water I’d been training in, if the swim was even actually 250 yards or if that was an exaggeration, and a bunch of other variables.
In my cautious style, I arrived early and measured the water temperature. At the shore it was 50 F. I looked at the buoy we’d be swimming to, and it looked manageable. I paced around a bunch, noticing my emotions. Yes… excitement was coming more than fear. I think I can do this.
I signed up and saw that only a few people had signed up already. This was a surprise. I was expecting maybe 50+ swimmers, and it looked like there was only 20 spaces for names, with only 3 or 4 people already signed up. Hmm… a little fear crept in. But not enough to get me to awkwardly stop the sign up process. Irrational social pressure with the 3 strangers at the booth at kicked in. I paid my $35 and that was that.
The Facing
I went back down to the water and sat down to stare at the buoy I’d be swimming to. Was that 125 yards away? Hard to tell… buoys are often farther away than they appear.
I noticed a few thoughts like, “you can always not do it… you’re not in the water yet… you can drive home still…” but none of them were too convincing.
I met some of the other swimmers while in the crowded restaurant where this event was happening, as we waited for the safety debriefing. There was plenty of awkward laughter about what we’d all decided to do, which put me at ease. “Good,” I thought, “I’m not the only nervous person here. This is good.” One jovial guy said he hadn’t really been training for it and has only been in this cold of water a few times. A few others seemed more serious. Most people were younger. There were 13 men and 7 women entered.
The women raced independently first. I timed the front runners at about 4 minutes to complete the swim, to the buoy and back. We were told the water was 41 degrees F. None of the women wore a wet suit.
The men’s turn. I walked down with all my jackets still on, snowpants (warm and quick-dry) over my swim trunks, stripped down, and put my way-too-tight required swim cap on at the last minute, with just enough time to walk out over the rocky beach into the water.
The number of spectators was impressive; probably hundreds, on the beach and on the restaurant pier. We waded out to thigh-level water and, in just a few seconds, the gun went off. I didn’t even have my goggles on, but quickly pulled them over my head and dove in.
The water didn’t shock me quite like I was used to, which could have been due to the few degrees less cold than I was used to, or the adrenaline from the context. I saw plenty of man legs and bubbles kicking in front of me, before we dispersed and found our space.
I’d occasionally look up and be relieved to see the buoy coming at me in an encouraging pace. The more time that elapsed, the more trepidation turned into just fun and excitement. This race was very doable. Rounding the buoy to return, I avoided colliding with a couple of other swimmers by taking the outer lane. On the way back, I looked up enough to see I probably wasn’t making the straightest course back to the beach, and reoriented. The way back reminded me of long runs I take up in the mountains from 6,000 to 8,500 feet elevation, keeping my pace at a high but not unsustainable level, like a car engine’s RPMs near but not above the red line. The landscape of my mind flashed with various accounts from David Goggins’ competitions, and I felt somewhat of a kinship to this inspiring figure whose book I’ve listened to while running so many times. This event was orders of magnitude less extreme than his, but the spirit that prompted me to attempt it seemed to overlap with that which motivated him.
I’m embarrassed to say I noticed some grandiose thoughts of winning or almost winning, as I had no idea where I was relative to the other swimmers. When I reached the beach, I saw at least a few others had finished already. The first two were in their early 20s, one was wearing a wetsuit (I think the other 12 had no wet suit). The 3rd place swimmer was a 32 year old water polo coach. I thought perhaps I’d made 4th, but someone quickly corrected me later, and another claimed 5th. To this day I have no idea what place I got, only that I was somewhere in the middle. I noticed that my comparing mind wanted to know, to size myself up compared to these other men I didn’t know, even though the age spread ranged from about 20 to about 50 years old, with equally disparate experience levels with swimming.
I looked at my watch. At least, I thought, I could take pride in my personal best time.
Oh wait, I’d completely forgot to start it. I’d only timed the woman’s race. I didn’t even know how long I’d been swimming.
The Reflection
Later I’d ask a couple of restaurant employees if anyone timed the swimmers or recorded the order of finishers. Which place was swimmer #12 (me)? I don’t think anyone did. The first 3 finishers received small cash prizes, but after that I guess it didn’t much matter. I checked my expectations. This is a small town competition created for social cohesion and to drum up local business. The free shirt I’d received upon registering did say “Tito’s Vodka” after all. The importance of who placed where was clearly larger in my mind than in the minds of others.
The restaurant had arranged two temporary hot tubs for the swimmers afterward, which I think I was the last person to find. I took my place in the smallest piece of hot tub real estate possible, squeezed next to 9 or so men.
A lot of nice patrons, mostly women, walked by and congratulated us, and it felt good to thank them. Looking more closely at my fellow competitors, it seemed even truer that I was one of the older ones there.
I had a history at this restaurant. I actually had worked there one summer as a busser when I was 17, before my senior year of high school. At that age, almost all adults intimidated me, as I had the confidence of… well, an average teenager. So that restaurant had an air of trepidation for me, as it is a place with a lively bar where plenty of parties take place. But seeing it through 41 year-old eyes, I just saw people: families, couples, kids, singles – just regular, non-intimidating folk out to enjoy their weekend.
So, the race was a two-for-one for me in fear facing: the swim itself and the social part of being watched by a crowd that, in my memory, was intimidating.
Both fears vanquished.
The Takeaways
I noticed how the crowds attention seemed to seamlessly and quickly shift to a raffle, the swim as relevant as the ripples in the water we’d left. The swimmers, it appeared, left independently, and that was that. I have no photos of the event. Just a memory, my too-tight swim cap, and my Tito’s Vodka shirt. I checked the internet for a few days afterward to see if anyone had posted photos or a local article, and didn’t see anything. Each time I found it amusing that my mind wanted this thing to be bigger, to others, than it was. Is that why I’m writing about it?
Maybe a little. But my primary motivation here is not to report details of this race, but to share what my participation in it helped reveal to me about my mind. Here are a few such learnings:
I attached a lot of meaning to it, as I said before. Was this good or bad? I don’t know. But I think it’s pretty normal. What matters is that I, for the most part, kept some healthy distance between my Self and my mind’s social constructions. The moral here might be, create meaning from fear-facing challenges, and also hold it lightly.
My imagination filled in the unknown gaps with specifics. I imagined 50-100 other swimmers, there were 20. I imagined less observers, there were more. I imagined colder water, it was actually warmer than I was used to. I imagined a timekeeper and record of places, where there was none. I imagined competitors who were more prepared in general than there were. And so on… so, another possible learning: take an agnostic stance about imagined details to be encountered in the “dark cold waters” where our fears lie.
For the rest of the day, I did feel a lightness that seemed to come not only from the cold water effects. I did, in fact, feel good that I’d taken on a challenge that had made me somewhat afraid. But I knew that this dopamine burst would be short-lived, and that this was a small accomplishment in the scheme of my life or even my year, and so I’d do well to feel the natural satisfaction of a job well done, but not dwell there too long, and refocus on the next thing.
For the next couple of weeks, I have noticed that my reference point of time in cold water did increase. A daily 39 degree F cold swim for 2 minutes is slightly less hard than it was before the event. At the same time, it takes ongoing practice to maintain this. So, a bigger-than-usual personal push or challenge can temporarily increase our sense of what is possible, and, these effects will tend to taper off with time.
I noticed that, while before the event, I was very unsure about doing it, afterward it was crystal-clear to me that it was the right choice, and that for that 5 minutes (or whatever it was) I was doing exactly the thing that I should have been doing. The sensemaking I choose about this is that, in pushing my comfort zone, and exploring fear boundaries, I was increasing my sense of what I was capable of, even if I’d been very capable of it all along. If our body knows we can do something but our mind doesn’t, perhaps it’s almost as limiting as if we can’t do it. So, I tentatively conclude that, when we are facing our fears, we are in a very alive and expansive state and, if it all works out, we look back with gratitude for the challenge and look forward with a bit more openness to another fear-facing opportunity.
That being said, I think that it would be naive to simplistically conclude that more risk is always better. By definition, every risk entails possible danger. This swim happened to work out well for me, but there are never guarantees. Decision making should always look at both the potential risks (downsides) and rewards (upsides), and the bigger the decision the more looking is advisable. There are some people who tend to leap to far without a good luck and need to exercise more caution. This article is not really for them, except as perhaps a study of the mind of a more cautious type of person. I think far more of us are like me, with a tendency to underestimate ourselves and play it a bit too small. For us, some conscious fear-facing may lead to a corrective emotional experience of increased confidence and aliveness.