Ten years ago, in 2015, I got my first tattoo. It wasn’t planned, but I’d jumped a 40ft waterfall in Costa Rica and broken my coccyx. What else to do, confined to a hammock for six weeks?
I remember thinking, why wouldn’t I want to live by three words I’d chosen whilst in Australia, in 2012, for the rest of my life. I’d repeat them often, always in the same order; not only were they banana word-perfect, they were prophecies for my life, from that moment on.
One of the three words: simplicity.
With 2025 being the Year of the Snake, it’s an invitation to simplify, to move towards simplicity, and to shed – shedding is powerful.
When I think about simplicity there’s a lot of ‘un’s’ because, for me, it’s less about becoming anything; it’s about unbecoming; unlearning; uncluttering, unmasking, unburdening, undecorating … Simply, uncomplicating.
And that’s not because I’m simple, but because I know how it feels to drown in complexity. I saw an alternative in 2012, I committed to it for the rest of my life in 2015 (the tattoo) and I’ve made it a daily practice to move towards that love of simplicity.
In a noisy, modern world of convenience, overwhelming choice, too much information and too many competing and comparing portrayals of success and joy, simplicity can feel both illusive and desirable.
The year of the simplicity tattoo, 2015, was also the year I spent six months travelling solo through South America, with a backpack. Simple.
From (adult) years of first class travel, five star boutique hotels and Michelin starred dining, as standard, I swung the pendulum (deliberately) to experience locals’ buses, hostel life, and food as close to the earth as possible. Simple.
The tattoo theme continued, by way of my gradual and deliberate ‘undecorating’ – removing my expensive jewellery (to make way for more adventures and realising the bananas vision) and, most recently, my smartwatch. I noticed my smartwatch wasn’t contributing to my inner simplicity – it was an unhelpful voice in my head – so I replaced it with a tattoo of the sanskrit symbol for ‘air’ (breathe).
For me, inner simplicity starts with making decisions from feeling, not overthinking. This is possibly still my biggest practice. I’m often found ‘on the path’ from my head to my heart.
Simplicity, for me, is also enoughness. A practice of knowing my own self worth and knowing that my busy-ness does not determine my worthiness, nor do my numbers in sales or on the scales determine my worthiness. Love is not meant to be earnt or achieved. Simple.
To live in my truth with no masks; to feel safe with no requirement for armour and to feel enough with no need for embellishments is, for me, to live a simple life.
If you’re on a path of moving towards simplicity; shedding starts with clarity, get clear on what’s important and who’s important.
Simplicity, like most words, means something to you yet might mean something entirely different to me. The same goes for words the bunch scribble on bananas. When you show me your banana word, in the POWER space, it inspires my bananachat – the mantras, mindfulness and mental strength that I practice, related to that word. You might have different meaning to share, and that’s the power of starting a conversation and sharing stories that we encourage outside of the immersive movement element of POWER.
What does simplicity mean to you?
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