By Vincent B. Davis II @VBDavis11

Life as a writer is extremely rewarding, but it can also be taxing. Most of us aren’t fortunate enough to write full time, so we attempt to balance work, family, education, and social obligations all while trying to write our books. Even for those who are writing full time often fine their plates no less full, as they must constantly be pushing forward if they’re going to put bread on the table with their royalties.

Most writers have to work through their evenings and ignore leisure. They will occasionally love weekends to catch up on work they’ve missed. On top of that, we have to constantly tend to building our platforms, speaking or book signing events, building a website, collaborating with editors and agents, crafting the perfect pitch… the list goes on.

So how do we chart the waters? How do we maintain the best level of output without going completely bonkers? It isn’t easy, and there are always going to be moments of fatigue and doubt, but the longer I’ve been writing the more I’ve understood the truth of an old adage “no writer is an island”. Well, it goes something like that. But here I’m not preaching the virtues of relying on others, although there is a definite need for that as well, but rather a call to remember that our writing lives never operate in isolation from the rest of our lives. If we aren’t building ourselves up, if we aren’t utilizing healthy habits and living as healthy as possible, we are likely to putter out and our careers will follow. What I’m interested in is working as much as my body will allow me to, so that I can write as much as possible and continue to fulfil my calling. Do you feel the same?

If so, we have to start considering our health and our brains a bit more often.

For those of you who haven’t heard, I’ve dealt with chronic fatigue and paralyzing stress for a few years now. I am 24 years old, active, and eat (relatively clean). Why am I not on top of the world right now? I asked myself the same question many times before finally consulting with doctors. Before it was all said and done, I was being tested for all kinds of autoimmune diseases and given terrifying possible explanations for what might be behind it all.

When none of the tests resulted with anything negative and none of the suggestions they made seemed to fit, I decided to take things into my own hands.

Since then, I’ve tried about every lifehack, biohack, and human-optimization tool I could get my hands on. And believe it or not, they’ve worked. I still feel fatigued occasionally, and sometimes I fight a war with myself to get out of bed in the morning, but these tools have changed my life. Maybe they can change yours too.

Cold showers-

Hear me out. Nothing sounds more abrasive than starting your day standing in freezing cold water. But, that’s kind of the point. In modern society, everyone seems stressed all the time. “Hey friend, how are you?” one says to another as they pass through the halls of a church. “Doing well, a bit stressed, but well,” the other promptly replies. We hear it all the time. Everyone is stressed. Working two jobs or unemployed, single or with a family of six, published or preparing manuscripts… everyone seems to be stressed. And we see this as a negative. In a way, of course, it is. It’s because our bodies and minds are experiencing what some call “chronic stress”, it’s the kind of debilitating stress that paralyzes rather than empowers. We sit and tremble as we stare at our growing to-do lists. Why? Stress.

But our ancestors experienced stress in a different way. It was a fundamentally important experience, one that God gave to us for a specific purpose. Those stresses were, for the most part, initially limited to a few certain things, and without stress, many would have been unaware of the causes. If you haven’t guessed it quite yet, one of those initial stresses was cold and exposure. So, without spending too much time babbling on about our biology, cold showers expose us to stress. Not the kind of chronic, paralyzing kind, but the type God endowed us with. It makes our minds fire on all cylinders. It wakes us up in a way that coffee can’t. It enables us to handle chronic stress more efficiently.

I’m not an expert on the physiological experience of cold showers, or what some call “cryotherapy”, but I’m someone who has been doing this for several months now, and I can’t preach the benefits enough.

Not only has it helped me get over my fatigue issues, I’ve experienced a sense of calm throughout the day that I was unused to before. Stressors and to-do lists don’t terrify me like they used to. Here is a link to someone who can explain this far better than I.

Vincent B. Davis II is an author, entrepreneur, speaker, and soldier. His first novel “The Man with Two Names” was published in July 2017, and has since become an Amazon International Best Seller. He is passionate about helping authors improve their brand and platform. He created Warrior Book Marketing Group in 2018 and now works with publishing companies and individual clients to help them sell more books in the modern publishing environment.