A cultural creative is only as effective as the products that support his or her world-changing ambitions. As social entrepreneurs, we are also always on the go in pursuit of our mission. During our journey, it’s crucial to remain conscious of our impact and optimize our life for peak performance.
In an effort to create positive impact in smart and meaningful ways, we’ve compiled some of the latest and greatest products for cultural creatives to support your dreams and fuel your passions. Check them out below:
ALEX Bottle: Innovative Reusable Water Bottle
The ALEX Bottle is a revolutionary reusable water bottle that stands for “Always Live Extraordinarily”. It’s the first ever bottle of its kind to separate in the middle to allow versatile usage, easier cleaning and more efficient storage — whether you are on the go, scoring some surf or hitting the slopes. We love it because it’s stylish, functional and helps us live more sustainably.
The ALEX Bottle was created Olympic Snowboard and CC interviewee Gretchen Bleier along with her husband Chris Hotell, a veteran of the consumer marketing industry. Together they came up with the idea for ALEX with a belief that innovation with a conscience is an idea that people can get behind. By personifying ALEX, it becomes more than just a water bottle; it becomes a part of your family!
Five Minute Journal: Daily Gratitude Book
The Five Minute Journal is designed to help you cultivate gratitude on a daily basis. The practice of gratitude has been proven over and over again to dramatically improve your happiness while reducing depression and anxiety. The key is consistency, and that’s where The Five Minute Journal comes into play.
It works by providing you a daily template for recording your gratitude. Each morning you open to a new page in the journal which prompts you to express gratitude for three things in your life. Next, it asks you to list three things that would make today great along with a daily affirmation. Five minutes later, and you’re ready to start the day on a high note. With this simple daily practice, you will begin see that things automatically fall in place, every day.
Ending the day right is just as easy. Simply open to the same page as this morning and fill in three amazing things that happened today and one sentence on how today could have been better. This simple regimen will help with a good night’s sleep, eliminating negative thought loops and learning more about yourself in the process.
We have found the The Five Minute Journal to be a great way to start and end the day.
Book Block Original Custom Notebooks
As cultural creatives, we know that many of our creative ideas start inside a notebook. So why not make that notebook your own and jazz up the cover with something awesome that’s personal to you? We did with the above custom notebooks from Bookblock Original.
Bookblock Original is the brainchild of custom notebook manufacturers Book Block. Bookblock creates fully customised notebooks for businesses, brands and organisations in high-volumes. As a team of people who are passionate about art and design and involved in the creative world, they realized that more and more people wanted to be able to create products that were completely personal to them. So they created Bookblock Original — a simple online tool for anyone to create individual custom notebooks of their very own.
SOLO Eyewear: Handcrafted Socially Responsible Shades
At SOLO Eyewear each pair of handcrafted sunglasses funds eye care for people in need. Their belief is that one person, one idea and one action can change the world — and we tend to agree. SOLO creates environmentally responsible sunglasses that fund eye care, encourage adventure and inspire individuals to change the world. We absolutely loved the pairs we received for the sleek style, polarized lenses, and of course, the positive social impact.
The concept for SOLO Eyewear was developed as a class project at San Diego State University. While completing an International Entrepreneurship course, Jenny Amaraneni read Paul Polak’s Out of Poverty where she discovered the great need for eye care around the world. She decided to research the issue further. Jenny, who has poor vision, encountered two startling statistics: approximately 1 billion people do not have access to eye care and nearly 80% of the world’s blindness is preventable.
These statistics were a call to action… the idea for SOLO Eyewear was born. Jenny partnered with her colleague and fellow student, Dana Holliday, to launch the company. To date, SOLO has restored vision for 11,000+ people in need across 32 countries and it’s only the beginning. With the support of a stellar team, Jenny and Dana are leading the vision restoring efforts at SOLO.