‘Honestly I just don’t get it!! Sorry this ones totally lost on me!’

This is what one of my close friends said to me the other day when I shared a video of me practising my latest challenge of swimming in freezing cold water during the winter here in the UK, and I understand why she would say it.

But for me it makes perfect sense and it’s quite simple.

Granted, the act of me climbing into cold UK winter water for no apparent reason may seem a mental health issue in its self and on the surface seem pointless.

However, symbolically I think it’s the perfect metaphor for any change work.

Many people come to me, hoping that I will hypnotise them in order to instantly make the changes they want under a magic trance that allows them to do nothing themselves, but yet magically wake up and reap the benefits of a new and improved version of themselves, minus all the bad stuff.

And I don’t blame them. It’s what’s been sold to us in an ever increasing barrage of pseudo-science and self-help mumbo jumbo.

And even when this instant turnaround is the case, those issues are often resolved without any understanding or awareness by the individual of what that is.

And because of this, more often than not, they just develop another equally deliberating condition or habit to replace the old one, because under the surface nothings really changed, other than the fact that we’ve simply taken away the very survival strategy that used to pacify the underlying and still existing problem.

I don’t know or have any magic wands or individual techniques/methods that can make the often painful process that is required ‘to get us from where we are to where we want to be’, available.

I just don’t have a totally pain free solution for change.

Like I said, many people come to me looking to avoid ‘the process’ like getting an instant degree but without doing three years of graft.

But I don’t know if it really exists, or that it even should, because I think that we almost rob ourselves of the solution to our problems by metaphorically asking to get flown straight to the summit.

Let’s not kid ourselves, being Heli dropped onto the summit of Everest would no doubt be amazing and remembered for ever.

However it would be dwarfed by the experience, memories, life lessons and the self-discovery of someone who had conquered the Summit after having struggled to climb there for months, often in pain and despair, drained all their resolve and tenacity, especially at the last stages of the Accent,

When I get home after doing things like the WHM I feel a sense of contentment that like many of us, I very rarely get from my day to day existence.

It is a bit of a sad fact that the majority of us do not feel at the end of the day that our potential quota for that day has been fully used up.

When my clients ask me to give them confidence, I tell them I’m not the right person to help them.

Why? Well let’s take today for example. Sitting on the train going towards the Lido I felt the same nerves I’d have going to a competition, a race or an interview.

I don’t actually consider myself as a particularly confident person especially where I have to step into uncertainty or against convention.

I especially dread the idea of doing things that could make me discover I’m not the man I think I am or wish I was and instead that I am actually a man I resent.

Safety is a funny duality.

On one hand it does what it implies.

It keeps us safe or at least anaesthetised to the pain we feel in certain situation or how we anticipate certain scenarios panning out.

It keeps us away from ever feeling the crushing feeling of defeat and self-loathing at full volume.

However it also prevents us feeling alive and on the edge of who we are and can be.

It prevents us ever having to look at our real selves in the mirror.

It prevents growth and the feeling of elation when we conquer what only a few hours ago seemed impossible or an opponent we just didn’t believe we could beat.

It prevents us the opportunity to re-evaluate who we are and what we are capable of.

Safety may keep us from experiencing failure, to help us prevent serious injury and even death but with its gift comes the restraints of our liberation to explore and to discover what we are really capable of.

Whatever I do or learn that promises to eradicate this familiar reality to many of us, nothing really changes how I feel before a new endeavour because of this duality I mentioned.

But I know this and to a degree accept it.

I know that ‘one foot in front of the other’ is a powerful and true mantra when we need to take action as it my ‘Dav I’m shitting it’ statement prior to a strongman competition, which my mate Dav responded to me ‘so am I, that’s why we have to do it’

I think I will always ‘shit it’ when faced with an event that offers potential failure, but what keeps me going is the desire to be courageous – and even more so not to think of myself as a coward – regardless of my fear.

And this is what I promote and help develop in others.

Courage rather than confidence is what I believe is the foundation of personal discovery and where change work takes its first step of ‘one foot in front of the other.’

And that’s what this latest challenge of the WHM is about for me.

And it’s not about just being daft, sitting in an ice bath of an evening or splashing around in a pond and whether you think I’m talking a load of old bullshit or not, but rather it is a great metaphor of what change really looks like.

It’s easier to stay in the warm than to take action which is inevitably uncomfortable or in the case of the WHM, bloody painful at times both mentally and physically!

And let’s face it just because I’m doing this today, after the initial euphoria of following through, life tomorrow will be the same.

Nothing magically transformative is instantly going to happen, I’m unlikely to have a life changing epiphany afterwards and I’m still going to be me.

Whether it’s quitting the fags, stopping eating cakes, trying to be less anxious and more confident, losing weight or gaining weight, getting a beach body or after listening to this, being less depressed or any other of the plethora of conditions people want to change in their mental and physical lives, the reason most change efforts fail is because there’s often more pain than pleasure, especially at the start and progress is often a lot slower coming forwards than we would like.

However it’s in the discomfort that the real knowledge of our underlying issues are exposed rather than band aiding over them.

Nelson Mandela said something that I think is really poignant in terms of any personal change work we want to embark on, including the WHM, especially if we are doing it independently.

He said ‘I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.’

Prior to actually taking action and getting in the water it I was worried I would fail. I could not help playing over and over in my mind a film of me turning out to be the type of man I would resent being, crumpling into the foetal position mumbling to myself, unable to get into the water before being carried away from the ponds edge.

And that’s what the Wim Hof Method is about right now for me.

Learning to corner and control my inner animal instincts of fight, flight, freeze and fawn.

I’m interested in Individual potential. Almost obsessed with finding ways to hack our limiting beliefs and emotional responses, recognising sticking points, adapting to them and overcoming them.

What’s important to me is that I show people what I consider the truth about change work rather than a heavily marketed version, one which I think is predominately detrimental to our success and self-esteem.

By going first and showing myself struggling despite having studied extensively many different models and techniques in personal development and therapeutic change, I want the penny to drop for everyone and there’s no magic bullet. But despite this change is possible!

I want to show a very human reality rather than a marketed finished and hugely idealistic version of what real change looks, feels and sounds like.

So once again ‘Why the WHM?’

It’s the curiosity of the ‘impossible possibility’ of it for me.

There’s people who will make what you struggle with look easy – but what you are experiencing is all you should be focusing on and working with if success is to be obtained.

People talk about ‘get out of the comfort zone’ but it’s just a throwaway line these days. It’s easy to say but the process is always bloody hard to do.

I heard the expression today from some Irish outdoor swimmers regarding ‘Going into the water to drown the miserable man.’

For me the WHM is about ‘going into the water to build the courageous man’.(or woman!)

Here’s my coverage of today’s WHM adventure from start to finish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch…