The Ice Cold Leader

We are on the tail end of a snow and ice storm that rocked much of the country over the weekend. I hope you took the chance to step out into the cold, and find your breath!

In case you forgot how amazing cold exposure is, here are the top 4 reasons you should be getting cold as much as possible:

1 - Dopamine surge = Unshakeable Motivation
Cold exposure triggers a 250% increase in dopamine, the chemical that drives focus, momentum and resilience. Leaders who struggle with motivation and follow-through are often chemically depleted — this fixes that.

2 - Stress resilience = Faster, Smarter Decision Making
Your first reaction to an ice bath? Panic. But when you train yourself to stay calm, control your breath, and override the stress response, you’re retiring your brain to handle pressure. Imagine what that does in a high-stakes meeting, negotiation, or crisis.

3 - Blow Flow Boost = Instant Mental & Physical Reboot
The second you step out of the cold, your circulatory system floods your body with oxygen and nutrients, improving cognitive function, clarity, and energy levels. It’s like hitting reset on a long, draining workday.

4 - Controlled Stress = A Bulletproof Leadership Mindset
Cold exposure is voluntary suffering — and that’s exactly why it works. Every time you step into discomfort, you get stronger. Leaders who push limits in training push limits in life.

What this means for you:

- Need to stay composed in crisis? Cold exposure trains emotional control.
- Want to avoid burnout and stay mentally sharp? It reboots your focus and energy.
- Looking for an edge in motivation and resilience? The dopamine hit from cold exposure is a natural performance enhancer.

The best leaders aren’t the ones who talk about resilience. They’re the ones who train it.

Did you get cold this weekend? Drop a comment and let me know how it made you feel.

👉 There is a very real point where your body can keep going… but your brain stops making good decisions.

During Hell Week, we stayed awake for days. What surprised me wasn’t how far I could push physically.

It was noticing the exact point where my judgment started to slip:

I could still run, swim, carry a boat.

I couldn’t always trust my thinking, my reactions, or my choices.

That awareness changed everything for me as a SEAL.

And it’s changed everything for me as a CEO and coach.

Because here’s the leadership trap:

In business, most high performers treat fatigue like a badge of honor. They keep stacking decisions, meetings, and crises on top of 4–5 bad nights of sleep… then act surprised when their judgment, emotional control, and culture start to suffer.

What Hell Week taught me is this:

You need to find your limits under stress on purpose.

Then you build systems so you don’t operate past them by accident.

Today, that looks like:

Protecting sleep before important decisions

Designing schedules so my best thinking hours match my highest-impact work

Helping clients recognize when their “grind” is actually sabotaging their leadership

You can’t lead at a high level if your brain is running on fumes.

👊 Question for you:
Do you know where your decision-making starts to break down—and what you do to prevent it?

(I unpack this more in my latest blog on Hell Week and corporate burnout. If you want the link, drop a 🔥 in the comments.)

In 2026, my rule is simple:

Create more than I consume.

In the SEAL Teams, action was the default.
If you sat back, the environment acted on you.
If you moved, you shaped it.

Today, most of us are drowning in consumption:
endless feeds, “one more” podcast, “one more” scroll.

Your brain wasn’t built just to absorb.
It was built to make, solve, build, express.

So here’s my 2026 experiment:

👉 90 days. 1 hour of writing every day.
Before I open the firehose of content, I create something of my own.

“Create more than you consume” doesn’t have to be a book:

10 minutes of journaling

Sketching or building something with your hands

Mapping one hard decision instead of doom-scrolling

The goal isn’t perfection.
The goal is agency.

You don’t just watch the world.
You shape it.

👊🏻 Your turn:
What’s one small way you’ll create more than you consume this month? Tell me below. ⬇️

Happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours.