Trends with Benefits | Volume 307 | 06/16/2026
MUDWTR fam, For a long time I thought creativity was something that arrived. | A bolt. | A muse. | Some external force that showed up if you lit the right candle and sat very still. | Turns out it's closer to a setting on a dial. | Here's a thing I can't stop thinking about. | Your best ideas almost never show up when you're locked in and grinding. | They show up in the shower. | On a walk. | Halfway through making coffee while thinking about nothing in particular. | That's not a coincidence. | It's neuroscience. | When your mind is relaxed and wandering, a system called the default mode network switches on. | It's the part of your brain that quietly wanders the archives, picking up unrelated things and noticing they fit. | The thing you were stuck on connects to the thing you saw on a walk three days ago. | That's where ideas actually come from. | But there's a catch. | That state is fragile. | The second you slam yourself into high alert, wired, jittery, white-knuckling your focus, the brain flips into bouncer mode. | It filters. | It stays on task. | It throws out the weird, half-formed, irrelevant thoughts before they reach the door. | And weird, half-formed, irrelevant thoughts are exactly the raw material you're trying to protect. | This is the part most people get backwards. | They try to *force* their way to a good idea with more caffeine and more pressure. | But you can't grind your way into the wandering state. | You can only create the conditions for it. | Which is the whole point of a morning ritual. | A good ritual isn't a launch sequence to get you to maximum sharpness as fast as possible. | It's the opposite. | It's a way of arriving at the day *awake but unhurried,* alert enough to do the work, calm enough that the connections can still happen. | That calm, awake, slightly-open state is the most valuable real estate you own. | It's where your you-ness lives. | The specific, irreplaceable way you connect things that nobody else would connect. | A good morning ritual is just you, protecting that state before the day tries to grind it into something else. — Shane
A Message from Shane – I have something a little different this week. | A short video, about how I messed up, the parts of the journey I don't usually talk about, and where we're actually headed next. | Watch
A word on the cup in your hand – This one's not a pivot, it's a confession: I'm still drinking the same thing I was on day one. | OG. The original. | The one that started the company and never left the rotation. | Here's why it fits everything I just said. A big coffee gives you the spike, wired, narrow, bouncer-brain. | OG gives you about 35mg of caffeine, roughly a third of a cup of coffee. | Enough to feel genuinely awake. | Not so much that you slam the door on the calm, wandering state where the good ideas live. | Underneath it: cacao and masala chai, plus four functional mushrooms, lion's mane, chaga, reishi, and cordyceps. | Steady, grounded energy instead of a jolt and a crash. | It was the first thing we made because it was the thing I actually wanted to drink in the morning. | The morning is where creativity gets won or lost. | OG is how I protect mine. | Start Your Morning With OG
Inspiration – "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. | The creative mind plays with the objects it loves."* — Carl Jung
MUDWTR
Your Morning Ritual
Your Mind & Body Protein
Your Calming Ritual
Merch
Instagram
YouTube
X
LinkedIn
 
Manage Preferences| Unsubscribe | View in Your Browser
 
Copyright © 2026 MUDWTR.
2515 Main Street Santa Monica, CA 90406
All rights reserved.