SIMPLE BY DESIGN: The beauty of less.
Simplicity is a word and a concept that’s been rolling around in my head lately. It keeps coming up… in the character Eli Whipp’s quote “the difference between what you need and what you want is what you can fit on a horse” from ‘The English’ that I finally got round to watching (harrowing but epic!). In the statement of a friend that “life is just better once you’ve had a Swedish Death Clean”. Or in the article I read last week, Steven Cotler’s “The Hidden Cost of Ownership”, wherein he explains the effects of excess (thoughts, gear, anything!) on our ability to access flow. In it he highlights the fact that these excesses take up space as objects in our minds, greatly impairing our creativity and cognition, and that “the average number of objects an individual can hold in their short-term memory is around seven”… I’m in trouble. A way through he suggests, is “the intentional promotion of the things we value most, and the removal of everything that distracts us from it.” You might be wondering what all this has to do with a water enhancer? It’s not an obvious link but let me explain further.
The English
When we started down this path of creating the kind of water enhancer we were looking for but could not find, we kept our goal simple. We wanted something premium, real tasting from real ingredients, and we wanted it to be easy to drink all throughout the day without it overpowering the body, our senses or the water itself.
This theme kept coming up. Our marketing mentors prompting us to “promise the world in one product” created a little bit (a lot) of pushback in our response. It was always, “we’re not saving the world, we’re just wanting to help people drink more water, healthily. It's that simple ''. Not what they want to hear obviously, but it is the truth.
We’ve been asked? Does Drinke contain nootropics, vitamins, essential amino acids? Does it offer anything for pre-workouts… what else does it do?” When it comes to functional ingredients, we LOVE these as much as anyone can, however, as wonderful as they are, we don't yet know if we can consume them in the quantities that we’re hoping to reach for our daily water intake. We wanted Drinke to be safe for adults but also kiddo’s too.
Which brings me back to my point. This discussion around Drinke and the pressure to overcomplicate it got us thinking about that idea in relation to all things. Letting things be as they are has become our mantra and we’ve realised that in a funny way, this start up, the initial concept of the product and our first foray into the world of business have been staring us towards this thing that we’ve been longing for most in our lives. To find pleasure in the simple things. To want less and to be more (more of what we already are… on the inside). To appreciate who we are, in all of our weirdness, and to go with the flow of life, rather than continuing to wrestle with it. The way we view Drinke is the way we want to view our lives… with lightness, simplicity, appreciation and fun!
We’ve, each of us, been on quite the journey of self-exploration. We’ve taken major dives into the world of ‘what makes us well’, formally studied it (didn’t love that it more often centres around sickness more than it does health). We’ve been relentless in our inquiry into what is required to live our happiest lives … that research has taken us to some very interesting places for sure 👀 And as most of us know, it’s an Alice-in-Wonderland-like maze with no beginning and no visible end.
But through the thick haze of do’s and don'ts we can say there are a few things we know for sure:
This is far from new but - Things don’t bring us happiness. Not that having things is bad.. we love things. But yea, happiness is an inside job.
More often than we can imagine, what's actually required is to JUST LET GO. Non-resistance to ‘what is’ brings with it a surprising awakening experience, that more often than not results in delivering to us the very thing we were so desperately fighting to bring about through struggle. I think it’s the universe’s version of a face slap!
You are never truly alone! Even your little house plant has got your back. Check out Peter Tompkins “The Secret Life of Plants” for some mind blowing research around the connection between humans and nature. You’ll never look at a plant the same way again.
You are what you believe. Who you think you can be, what you can create, how you view the world and your place in it all stems from belief. Maybe not even your own, but it’s the engine that’s always running there in the background. The lesson (I’m still very much learning) is to expand those beliefs… and also loose some.
These things, along with many others are some of the considerations that the four of us bring through our days, and into whatever it is we are wanting to create. We want to feel the fullness of this life without taking it too seriously and without overcomplicating it.
So we’ve decided to take this idea of simplicity and make it our motto for this blog as it has become for the brand. We only want to provide what information or topics we are deeply interested in and what will ideally make your life simpler. We want to give you something that’s within your ability to achieve, digest, and what will enrich your life, rather than weigh it down.
Simple is the new quiet luxury, or perhaps better said by Leonardo Da Vinci some time long ago, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."
DRINKE member x
Images via: pinterest
