This weekend marked the end of my WHM challenge.

Several months ago with much apprehension and scepticism I enrolled on the 10 week course.

It’s rare now a days that I buy into anything that promises astonishing and life changing results because it inadvertently turns out most of the time to be the unscrupulous work of the marketing spin doctors down at the self-help and personal development BS factory.

I wasn’t interested in all the health claims. I just wanted to learn to handle the cold better, especially my relationship with cold water.

The idea of becoming impervious to the cold sounded both implausible and yet alluring.

I’ve disliked the cold for as long as I can remember.

And as the years have gone on I have learnt to allude it’s icy tentacles by wearing more and more layers, a 5mm wetsuit all year round during water sports and total avoidance regarding obstacle racing during the winter months.

And it was this demarcation of the cold that made me reach out to the WHM for my liberation from its icy bondage!

Ok so that’s all a bit dramatic!

So another way of saying it is, I just wanted to see if I could stop feeling like I was being mildly, but continually electrocuted whilst doing an impression of a shitting dog whose spine was about to snap every time I found myself in events that involved jumping in and out cold water that was usually accompanied by a skin flaying north wind.

So not much to ask!

And as if to punish myself further for my insolence and ideas of grandeur, the idea of swimming in the Serpentine during the winter months seemed hell bent on lodging itself into my imagination.

This unsurmountable destination was, somewhere in my psyche, a place that I must venture in order to prove my valour and also a tangible testimony to the WHM proclamations of one’s ability to have a happy matrimony with the cold.

To cut a long story short regarding the provocative journey of cold shower virgin, whose inexperience meant I could initially only last five seconds with the shower door open for a hasty evac or my ensuing emotional and physical growing pains over the 10 weeks of the online course, the actual reason for this posts was to both to acknowledge and celebrate my final baptism of this initial part of the WHM.

So what is this thing that you join me here to rejoice at?

Well this weekend found me at the bank of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, donning only a pair of swimming shorts in an attempt to plough a furrow of victory through its aqueous acreage.

Now I have to admit something before we go on.

I was not the only mad soul doing this.

In fact there where, as well as my friend Martin Pertus, who is a WHM instructor, about 40 other outdoor swimmers from the Hyde park club, both men and women and of all ages, some clearly veterans of many years’ experience with the cold.

And although I joke a bit here, with my exaggerations more sutted to Greek mythology, I know what I am doing is far from impossible or reserved for the select few.

I know there’s people, perhaps even myself prior to doing the WHM, who can or could, if push came to shove, simply thug it into the same freezing water I have been in so far without going through the WHM process and be fine.

But for me, this has been more than just getting from A to B, although that was the initial idea.

It’s been a considerable mental challenge and one that has highlighted perfectly, as a bi product, my vulnerabilities and fears and also exposed and drawn from my strengths, values and intrinsic drivers in order to allow me to keep going and succeed.

Like all of us I’m sure, after each successful attempt at getting into the water, whether it’s the cold shower, ice bath, rivers lakes, ponds or the sea, we feel great.

I often have a euphoric and satisfied feeling which always leaves me feeling totally content for the day.

However, also like most of us I’m sure, prior to actually getting in the water, especially at five in the morning, which was the case for me this Saturday in order to get to the Serpentine in time to swim, we do not always feel so enraptured at the idea regardless of how great it made us feel last time!

And that’s the comfort zone!
In fact, speaking to one of the swimmers at the park on the day, he interestingly said to me
‘I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I still feel anticipation before getting into the water at this time of year!’

Testimony in itself that doing extreme stuff never gets easier!

Not only this, but another realisation I had regarding the ‘comfort zone’ is that there’s no rush to bypass our own limitations. We just need to acknowledge what it is that holds us back and move towards it overcoming it.

To give an example of what I mean, on this particular day, the first swimming race of the year was held.

Due to the temperature it is only 55 metres distance, but that’s enough when the waters cold as it can sap your energy pretty quickly.

I thought to myself how great it would be if, for my final challenge that I didn’t only swim in the Serpentine but that I entered a race as well.

I got up deliberately early to give myself the option.

However when the races started, and despite being encouraged to just go for it by the other swimmers, due to the quick succession of the races, on the third and last race, despite momentarily going to take my tracksuit trousers off and go for it, I aborted the chance.

I was annoyed with myself because there where old ladies and new recruits all leaping in and going for it which added to my disappointment in myself.

My initial concern was that I would not have time to do my breathing prior to submerging and acclimatising myself in the water as I always do, prior to the whistle blowing.

I imagined myself leaping into the cold water, physiologically unprepared and floundering around gasping for air as I surfaced, unable to swim and looking like an absolute tit!

But this was something else I learnt, that there’s a difference between the comfort zone and the danger zone.

Anytime we feel unsure due to our safety it’s always best to steer on the side of caution because that way there’s always tomorrow, whereas if you don’t and you are wrong, perhaps there won’t be.

Now I appreciate I wouldn’t have died but sometimes we need to go slowly to go quickly.

And once the races where done and everyone had cleared off, I went ahead and test drove what I feared.

I didn’t do my breathing ritual and instead just got in the water and swam the race distance.

I had time to monitor my reactions and also my breathing as I swam and the effect the cold water had on me.

As is often the case, I realised I had made a fuss about nothing and could easily have done the race, but accepted my requirement for safety and caution which in more extreme situations is my an asset and one I should respect rather than sneer at.

I think we all have a sense that we are two different people.

I certainly do and I continually have to negotiate with those almost polar opposites sides of my personality.

One that is overly cautious and full of doubt and the other that is more of a reckless, spur of the moment, live for today, just fucking do it persona.

Both of whom couldn’t function alone.

The worried one wouldn’t leave the house and the bloody minded one could not operate day to day without upsetting everyone and either ending up dead, banged up or on the street!

But this is what I mean when I’ve previously compared the cold water as a wise mentor that helps reveal ourselves to ourselves, challenging us to expose our weaknesses and strengths and offering us ways to grow and to understand who we are at a base level with all the self-deceiving shit stripped back.

And it’s not just the 10 minutes in the water that we are getting the lessons, its in the time we are getting ourselves ready for each new challenge and also afterwards as we reflect and build on what we have learnt ready for the next taunt from our watery coach.

The water, the cold or so many other situations in nature teach us so much about ourselves.

It shows us our truth and the personal rules that we navigate our lives with, which, untested we obey obliviously, often at our detriment.

It shows us who we are, rather than who we wish, or worse, hoped we were.

But at the same time, it offers us the chance to be all we are capable of being.

Fear is where we cultivate and grow courage.

My final challenge wasn’t about swimming in the coldest water I’ve swam in this winter, although that would have been the cherry on the cake.

I couldn’t control that side of it.
But what it did prove which is very important to me is that regardless of how I felt, I would do what I said I would do.

And for me it highlights one of my other highest values, trust.

Trust to do what needs to be done because I said I would, even if at times I don’t trust myself.