Can you think of a true story of someone saving a person from icy water (something meaningful) and saying as the defining point "Yeah, I totally bitch-slapped that cold water since I'M A MAN."? Hollywood likes to use it as a cheap 'challenge to overcome' (again though with the meaningful goal of advancing the plot), but that's not how it works in real life.

Edit: you argued elsewhere that it could be a 'tree in a forest'. Maybe in general. But not in this specific case. Cold water for a few minutes in the morning is not even a sprout.