1,000 Mornings The Cold Didn’t Change. I Did.

This morning I stepped into freezing cold water for the 1,000th consecutive day.

It's actually difficult to comprehend that number.

On January 1, 2024, I decided I was going to start doing cold-water immersion every morning. I wasn't thinking about 1,000 days. I'm not sure I was even thinking about a year. I just knew I wanted to make a change and challenge myself to do something difficult every morning.

Today, September 26, 2026, I finished Day 1,000.

I thought I would be incredibly emotional when I got out of the water this morning. Surprisingly, I wasn't. It was definitely bittersweet, but I mostly stood there thinking about what I had just accomplished.

The emotion came later.

It came when I sat down with a coffee and really started thinking about what those 1,000 mornings represented.

The timing of today also couldn't have been more fitting. Laura is away for the weekend. Gracie is at university. Ella is home, but she was still sleeping.

So this morning there was nobody standing around the cold plunge. Nobody counting down the last few seconds or waiting for me to finish.

It was just me.

That's pretty much how this whole thing started on January 1, 2024. Just me, some really cold water and a decision I had made.

The difference is that the guy who climbed into the water on Day 1 and the guy who climbed out this morning are very different people.

The cold didn't change. I did.

How It Started

When I started this, I was doing three minutes every morning. On December 1, 2024, I increased it to five minutes and that's where it stayed.

I don't remember exactly when I started calling it my daily dose of unfiltered discipline, but that's exactly what it became.

I know people who cold plunge later in the day and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. For me, it needed to happen first thing in the morning.

I wanted to do something hard before I did anything else.

Before emails, phone calls, work, problems or whatever else the day was going to throw at me, I had already done something that I really didn't want to do.

There is an interesting conversation that happens in your head when you're standing in front of really cold water at 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning.

Your brain can come up with some pretty convincing reasons why today might be a good day to skip it. You're tired. You're travelling. You didn't sleep well. You're sore. It's freezing outside. You're on vacation. You have an early meeting. You can always do it tomorrow.

Eventually I stopped having that conversation with myself.

Getting in was simply what I did.

That turned out to be one of the most valuable things I learned from this entire experience.

Motivation Only Gets You So Far

I definitely wasn't motivated for 1,000 straight mornings.

There were mornings when I actually looked forward to it, but there were plenty when I absolutely did not want to get into that water.

If this challenge depended on motivation, I probably wouldn't have made it very far.

What carried me through was the decision I had already made.

I think we spend a lot of time waiting until we feel ready to do things. We wait for Monday, January 1, the right opportunity, the right mood or whatever else we think will make something easier.

At some point during these 1,000 days I realized I didn't need to feel like doing it. I had already decided I was going to do it.

That may sound like a small distinction, but for me it changed everything.

Every morning I followed through was another little deposit into the trust I had in myself.

If I said I was going to do something, I wanted to become the guy who did it.

That started with cold water, but it certainly didn't stay there. I began to notice it in business, difficult conversations, relationships and the way I approached problems. Doing hard things didn't suddenly become easy. I just became much more comfortable knowing I could handle being uncomfortable.

These Weren't 1,000 Perfect Days

I want to make this part clear because it's easy to look at a number like 1,000 and assume the person doing it had everything figured out.

I certainly didn't.

There were periods over these last almost three years when I was absolutely crushing my routines. There were other periods when my eating wasn't good, my workouts fell off, I wasn't playing hockey, my weight went in the wrong direction or I just wasn't feeling like myself.

Life continued to happen.

There were great days and some really difficult ones.

The cold was simply one thing I continued to show up for.

Looking back, I think that's one of the things I'm most proud of. I didn't need everything else in my life to be perfect to keep this one promise to myself.

Sometimes we make change much more complicated than it needs to be because we decide we're going to fix ten things at once.

Maybe real change can start with one.

For me, this was mine.

Nobody Is Coming With Balloons

This thought hit me pretty hard this morning.

Most people don't know today is my 1,000th straight day.

Even some of the people I've told probably don't remember, and really, why would they?

This was my thing.

There are no balloons waiting for me today. There are no chairs set up, no finish line, no award and no crowd waiting to congratulate me.

I'm sitting at the trailer right now in one of my favorite spots. My coffee is brewing and the sun is shining in my face.

And honestly, it feels perfect.

We live in a world where it's very easy to measure things by how much recognition they receive. How many people noticed? How many people liked it? Who congratulated you?

This morning reminded me that some of the accomplishments that mean the most happen when almost nobody is watching.

I didn't start this on January 1, 2024 because I wanted someone to congratulate me 1,000 days later.

I started because I wanted to change something about myself.

Sitting here this morning, that realization is where the emotion finally came.

I did change.

The cold water wasn't some magic solution. It simply gave me a place every morning where I could practice doing exactly what I said I was going to do.

Nobody had to remind me. Nobody had to hold me accountable. Most mornings nobody even knew whether I did it or not.

I knew.

That was enough.

Day 1 and Day 1,000

The water this morning was brutally cold because of the cooler weather we've had recently.

I couldn't have asked for a more fitting final day.

If I was going to finish this streak, I didn't want Day 1,000 handed to me with warm water and sunshine. I wanted the cold to remind me one more time what I had signed up for.

I hit the timer.

Five minutes and 0.81 seconds later, it was done.

1,000 straight.

I stood there for a minute and thought about Day 1.

There was something pretty special about realizing both days happened almost exactly the same way.

On Day 1, I was alone with a decision.

This morning I was alone again, only this time I had the result of that decision staring back at me.

Tomorrow Is the Part I'm Nervous About

I've thought a lot about whether I should keep the streak going.

Why stop at 1,000?

I could do 1,001 tomorrow. Then 1,002. Maybe 1,500.

The strange thing is, I know I could.

And that's part of why I think I'm ready to stop counting.

My good friend Andre went through something similar after reaching 1,000 days. He broke his streak and continued using cold water two, three or four times a week because he still valued what it gave him.

I think that's where I'm heading.

Tomorrow morning I'm planning to wake up and, for the first time in 1,000 days, not get into cold water.

I'm actually more nervous about that than I was about getting in this morning.

I want to know what happens. Will I notice anything physically? Will my body feel different? Will I miss the cold itself, or will I miss the routine and the identity that became attached to doing it every single day?

I don't know yet.

What I do know is that ending the streak doesn't undo what happened during it.

The discipline isn't sitting in a cold plunge waiting for me.

I get to take that with me.

What 1,000 Days Taught Me

If someone reading this thinks I'm suggesting they need to spend the next 1,000 mornings sitting in freezing cold water, I'm definitely not.

Cold water was simply my thing.

Yours could be completely different.

Maybe you've been telling yourself you're going to start exercising. Maybe you want to lose weight, write something, start a business, stop drinking, repair a relationship or finally deal with something you've been avoiding.

Whatever it is, I wouldn't worry too much about Day 1,000.

That number would have seemed ridiculous to me when I started.

I never had to do 1,000 cold plunges at once. I only had to deal with the one that was waiting for me that morning.

Then I woke up the next day and did it again.

That's how I eventually got here.

We tend to think big accomplishments require some extraordinary moment of courage or motivation. My experience has been much less exciting than that.

It was mostly ordinary mornings.

Some were freezing. Some were beautiful. Some sucked.

But they kept adding up.

And this morning they added up to 1,000.

The View From Here

I'm still sitting at the trailer as I finish writing this.

The coffee is here now. The sun is still hitting my face. It's quiet.

There isn't anywhere else I'd rather be.

I've spent a lot of time this morning thinking about the guy who made that decision on January 1, 2024.

He didn't know whether he'd make it a month, a year or anywhere close to where I'm sitting today.

I'm proud of him for starting.

I'm even more proud that he kept going.

Tomorrow morning is going to feel strange. I'm sure I'll wake up and part of me will automatically think about getting into that water.

Maybe I'll miss it. Maybe I'll enjoy not having to do it. I'll find out tomorrow.

But today I'm going to allow myself to sit here for a little while and appreciate what happened.

One thousand mornings ago, I made myself a promise.

This morning I kept it for the 1,000th time.

I don't need a trophy for that. I don't need balloons. I don't even need anybody else to understand why it means so much to me.

I know what I did.

And whatever happens tomorrow, one thing isn't changing.

My daily dose of unfiltered discipline taught me that I can do really hard things when I decide they matter enough.

That's something I'll carry with me long after the water warms up.

1,000 straight.

The streak ends here. The discipline doesn't.