Keep The Bar Full

Welcome to The Brighter Side of Everything.

This newsletter serves a simple purpose → To help you build optimism, resilience and a solution-focused perspective.

Each week, I’ll share actionable insights that not only brighten your day but position you to be a leader within your own life and seize life’s opportunities.

Read time: 20-30 minutes.

Hello, Brighter Side readers! ☀️

A big welcome to all readers new and old, I hope the weekend was good to you.

This week we’re stacking gratitude on the good days, so there’s always something to draw on when the hard ones come.

Think of it as topping up your health bar.

We also meet Merope Mills, a mother who turned an unimaginable loss into a rule that’s helping other families be heard.

Then we recommend Amy Herman’s book, Visual Intelligence, which explains why sometimes you can’t find the butter in the fridge and we finish up with a bright idea about walking our way out of feeling stuck.

Enjoy the week ahead!

See you on the Brighter Side,

Chris

P.S. Please feel free to send me feedback on how I can improve. I respond to every email.

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I don't think we stack enough gratitude.

Humans in general, I mean.

Not even close.

Most days, there's plenty more good coming our way than we realise.

Subtle things.

A colleague saying they like your shoes, a text out of the blue from an old friend, the way the sun shines through your window in the afternoon, a smile from a stranger passing by, or the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the morning.

Most of the time, we let it pass straight through us.

We enjoy it for a second.

Then move on to whatever's next.

Then … something hard arrives.

Something that makes us anxious.

Something challenging.

Something we didn't see coming.

And when we reach for the strength to deal with it?

There isn't much there to draw from.

This scenario has played out in my favour many times throughout my life.

Why?

Because I've always placed a real emphasis on human connection and most importantly, friendships.

Never treating them as an afterthought, or a nice to have.

More so as an necessity.

This has ensured I have strong network of relationships, resulting in great people around me when life gets complicated.

Which it inevitably does.

I've always found that the best way to find a good friend is to be one.

I see it a bit like setting the table.

If you set the table, people will come and sit down for dinner.

But if you never set it?

Life will come knocking, you open the door, and there's no one there.

No one to sit at the table with you during the most challenging moments.

I'm so grateful to have set and maintained that table over the years.

Because when the time came that I had to lean on others?

They were there.

I can't put into words how much gratitude I feel towards these people.

It’s also a big part of what grounded optimism means to me.

It requires putting in the effort long before life comes knocking.

Because by the time it does, it can be too late to start.

It also reminds me of a video game.

You know that health bar that sits in the top corner of the screen?

If it's full when you take a punch?

You might stagger for a moment, but you're still alive and you can keep going.

If it's down to a final sliver?

That same punch can mean game over.

What decides it is everything you picked up along the way. All those health packs you grabbed when things were calm and you didn't even need them yet.

Gratitude works the same way.

Stack it on the good days, and when the bad ones arrive, you've got the juice to fight back.

Ever noticed how most people tend to go looking for gratitude after something goes wrong?

Someone gets sick, and suddenly everyone is grateful for their own health.

A friend loses their job, and we feel a bit more thankful for our pay cheque.

That's a completely human response.

But searching for gratitude in the middle of a crisis is a bit like searching for candles after the power’s already gone out.

You'll probably find some, it's just a lot harder to do in the dark.

There's a reason we tend to let the good slip by so easily.

Psychologist Rick Hanson describes the brain as Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.

One harsh comment can stay on your mind for days.

A compliment, though?

Might be gone before lunch.

For our ancestors, this made a lot of sense.

Remembering where the predator was hiding mattered far more than acknowledging a beautiful sunset.

In modern life, that same wiring will happily drain your bar and never consider filling it back up.

The good news is it can be trained.

Hanson's advice is quite simple.

When something good happens, stick with it for at least 10, but even 20, 30 seconds.

Let it sink right in, like water soaking into a sponge.

This process may sound small, but that conscious pause is the difference between spotting a health pack in the game and actually picking it up.

There's a fascinating study that shows just how much this actually matters.

In early 2001, psychologist Barbara Fredrickson and her colleagues measured a group of university students on resilience and emotional well-being.

Pretty standard stuff.

Then the events of September 11th happened.

In the weeks after the attacks, the researchers returned to those same students.

Understandably, everyone was shaken.

But the students who were more resilient to begin with were still finding moments of gratitude, love and interest, right alongside the shock and the fear.

And those moments had a real impact.

They were less likely to slide into depression, and they came out the other side stronger than they went in.

Through one of the darkest chapters in modern history, they grew.

So how can we build that kind of strength before we need it?

A few years later, Fredrickson's team set out to learn more.

They asked 86 people to track their emotions every day for a month.

Those who regularly felt small, everyday positive emotions became more resilient over those weeks.

They also became more satisfied with their lives as a byproduct.

And the most important thing?

The moments didn't need to be big.

Fredrickson stated following the study that the levels of positive emotion required to make a difference "weren't extreme."

Nobody in that study was preparing for a crisis.

They were simply filling the bar, one small moment at a time.

Remember that table I mentioned earlier?

Gratitude is one of the simplest ways to keep it set.

Good people will still pull through for you if you call on them out of the blue.

That's what makes them good people.

But it's rarely to the same level you see when there's already a solid baseline of trust.

When you’ve been a good friend to them.

When they've heard you say thank you (and mean it) more times than either of you could count.

When they know exactly where they stand with you.

And when they’ve seen you show up for them not just in times of need but in everyday life.

It's that consistency of being present for one another that develops the strength of a friendship.

Psychologist Sara Algoe from the University of North Carolina has spent years studying how gratitude shapes our relationships.

She calls her idea the find-remind-and-bind theory.

Put simply, gratitude helps us identify the people worth investing in, reminds us of the good ones we already have, and also pulls us closer to them.

It works best when you say it out loud.

When you thank someone for something specific, you're letting them know you noticed.

And people are naturally drawn to those who notice them.

Yet most of us still hold back.

We worry it'll feel awkward, or that it won't mean much to the other person.

Research by Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley suggests we've got that completely backwards.

In their studies, people who wrote thank-you letters underestimated how good the letters would make the other person feel.

And overestimated how awkward it would be.

Each thank you fills two bars at once.

Both yours, and theirs.

If your bar feels low right now?

That's okay.

You haven't missed your chance.

The best time to start was years ago but the next best is now.

The next good moment counts just as much as the ones that slipped by.

Start there.

Hold Onto It: When something good happens, don't just notice it and move on. Pause for 20 seconds or so and let it sink in. That's when it sticks.

Learn to Say Thank You Properly: Tell people what they did and what it meant to you. Don’t overthink the wording, it’s the genuine warmth that lands. So send that message or make the call, they’ll be happier to hear from you than you think.

Be Specific: "I'm grateful for my family" is a lovely thought, but it tends to slide off. "I'm grateful that my partner brings me a green tea each day at 3pm" stays with you. The detail is what makes it real (and she does).

Keep a Record: A note on your phone, a journal by your bed or a running thread with someone you love. On a tough day, scroll back through it. It's the closest thing to a video game health pack real life has to offer.

I've always been a generally positive person.

But even I sometimes let the good moments slide by without stacking them as often as I should.

Some days, I feel it.

It's okay to have bad days.

Just don't let them define you.

Take a break.

Talk to someone you love.

Do things that bring you joy.

And always remember that tomorrow is a new day.

When I think about the people who’ve come through for me?

None of it was built in a day.

They’re relationships built across years of small moments that didn't feel like much at the time.

Gratitude is no different.

Those small moments rarely feel like they matter, when they're happening.

It's only when a hard season arrives that you realise how much they've been holding you up.

Now …

I can't promise you a year absent of hits.

Nobody can.

The hits will come.

Because they come for all of us, often when we least expect them.

But if your bar is full when they arrive?

You're better positioned to take a hit, or three.

It might hurt and you might wobble around a bit, but you’ll stay on your feet and can keep moving yourself forward.

If your bar is close to empty?

The initial blow might knock you straight down.

So absorb the good while it's happening.

Notice it, and say thank you for it.

Keep that bar full.

Then do it all again tomorrow.

If this week’s piece struck a chord, this 14-minute TED talk from David Steindl-Rast is well worth your time.

Watch it here:

🔋 Why a Little Time on Your Own Might Be the Stress Relief You’re Missing - Durham University psychologist Dr Thuy-Vy Nguyen has found that 15 to 30 minutes alone can visibly calm stressed people and lower their cortisol, and she says it works best when you give your hands something to do, like gardening, sketching or a jigsaw, and leave the phone in another room. Read more → (BBC Science Focus)

🪸 A Coral That Tipped Over in a Tank Showed Scientists How to Bring Bleached Reefs Back to Life - When a healthy coral fell against its bleached twin in a Stanford lab and colour began returning where they touched, researchers tested the idea properly and watched pale corals fully recover in just seven weeks, the fastest recovery ever recorded, leaving the lead scientist convinced that bleached corals “are not a lost cause.” Read more → (KQED)

🍽️ London’s Oldest Restaurant Has Been Given Away So It Can Stay Open for Generations - Rules has served diners in Covent Garden since 1798, surviving the Blitz and a plan to bulldoze the street for a dual carriageway, and now its owner of 40 years has gifted the £11 million building and its collection to the National Trust so the dining rooms Dickens loved, and the treacle sponge, are protected for good. Read more → (ITV News)

👶 A Wearable Incubator Let These Parents Hold Their Tiny Twins Close for the First Time - After nearly two weeks of only reaching through incubator portholes to touch Silas and Simone, born at 26 weeks, a Houston couple got to hold them skin-to-skin thanks to the “Skincubator,” a new device that keeps fragile newborns connected to their life-support equipment while resting on a parent’s chest. Read more → (FOX 26 Houston)

🎬 The 50 Greatest Documentaries of All Time, Chosen by 237 Critics- Sight and Sound polled critics, curators and academics to build a watchlist that runs from a 1929 silent film at number one, Dziga Vertov’s exuberant Man with a Movie Camera, to Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I, Hoop Dreams, Man on Wire and the Up series, with each of the top ten introduced by a short essay on why it still matters. Read more → (BFI Sight and Sound)

On what would have been her daughter's sixteenth birthday, Merope Mills went on national radio in the UK.

She was asking for a way for families to raise the alarm.

An alarm that could potentially save lives by alerting medical professionals to critical situations.

Her plea was driven by the tragic loss of her daughter, and she hoped to prevent similar situations for other families.

By advocating for a healthcare system that is more responsive and attentive, her efforts benefiting countless families she would never meet.

Some night in the future they’d be standing at a hospital bed, certain that the condition of someone they love was getting worse and unsure whether anyone would listen.

To understand why Merope asked for help?

We have to go back to 2021.

Martha Mills was thirteen.

Towards the end of July 2021 she skidded on sand while riding her bike near a beach.

A fall most young riders have experienced at some point.

She injured her pancreas and was admitted to King's College Hospital in London, one of three pediatric liver units in England.

Her doctors were confident in her recovery.

She spent the following weeks at the ward with friends visiting and TV and video games for extra company.

Her parents, Merope Mills and Paul Laity, kept watch.

As the weeks passed, something felt wrong to them.

And they did speak up on multiple occasions.

Sadly, Martha died of septic shock on 31 August 2021, at Great Ormond Street Hospital, after about five weeks at King’s College Hospital.

During the inquest the following February, the coroner stated that had she been moved to intensive care earlier, she would likely have survived.

King’s College Hospital admitted a breach of duty.

And Paul has since mentioned that the hospital's director of child health acknowledged the parents had not been listened to.

Merope is an editor at the Guardian, a major British newspaper.

About a year after Martha died, she decided to write about the experience.

Paul has stated that, by one account, tens of thousands of staff in England's National Health Service read it, thought about it and discussed it.

Some doctors angrily pushed back on the piece online.

Then the radio interview came next.

In September 2023, with a specific request.

A reliable way for patients, families, and staff to quickly request an immediate evaluation when a person's condition is deteriorating and no action is being taken.

The request was honoured, and it became known as Martha's Rule.

With the NHS adding it into hospital operations for inpatients in 2024.

In practice, it's a phone number.

So what has it done?

NHS England has counted 16,160 calls between September 2024 and May 2026.

70% came from families and carers.

And 664 of those resulted in a patient moving to intensive care, a higher level of care or to a specialist.

Another 2,301 led to a change in treatment without a move being required.

There’s one other figure that’s worth paying attention to.

Hospitals were already equipped with a safety mechanism known as an early warning score.

This system continuously monitors a patient's vital signs and triggers an alert when the readings exceed predetermined levels.

In the year leading up to May 2026, the NHS examined the calls they received regarding the deterioration of a patient's condition.

In 82 percent of cases?

The score wouldn’t have sounded the alarm.

The numbers looked fine to the system, but someone at the bedside was worried anyway.

In a nod to the succes of the new rule, it’s about to reach even further.

On 22 September 2026, NHS England announced that it will cover every emergency department in England by March 2028.

Martha’s Rule isn't a second-opinion service, and it can't promise a particular approach to treatment.

An early review flagged that awareness is uneven and that some people are still finding it hard to speak up.

For the family, other doors stayed shut.

Paul has written that the collapse of the Care Quality Commission's criminal investigation was their greatest disappointment.

A rule doesn't bring Martha back.

Imagine the strength it takes to absorb such a loss and still choose to advocate for change.

Despite the immense grief and the challenges they faced, the family channeled their pain into the drive to improve the system for others.

Their resilience and determination to push for better healthcare practices and accountability demonstrate a steadfast commitment to preventing other families from experiencing a similar tragedy.

A loss like that would be easy to keep private.

Merope made hers public and sought protection for other families.

Which means believing that a system can listen better than it actually did.

And also realising your toughest moments can be of real use to someone else.

Say it plainly, then say it again: A hunch isn't proof, and it doesn't have to be. Martha's parents spoke up more than once. If something continues to feel wrong, you're allowed to keep saying so.

Find the route before you need it: If someone you love is in hospital, ask the ward how to raise a concern urgently. In England that's known as Martha's Rule. Elsewhere, ask what the equivalent is.

Write your story down: Merope's article and radio interview helped set in motion a change in how a health system operates and listens. Personal sorrow can sometimes provide a lesson for others to use.

While I was reading about this tragic but also inspiring story, what stood out to me is when Merope chose to ask.

In September 2023, the inquiries into Martha's care were still ongoing.

To that point, nothing had been settled.

No one would have blamed her for staying inside her own family's story.

She chose to go on the radio with everyone else’s family in mind.

That takes strength.

I'd call it optimism too.

And I mean the grounded, solution-focused kind.

She acted as though the next family's night would (and could) go differently to hers.

Then set about making it so.

Merope and Paul have every reason to be proud of what has come of their efforts.

Thousands of families have been heard because of their actions.

Merope's decision to share her story publicly not only brought attention to the issues at hand but also inspired many others to join the cause.

Creating a ripple effect of awareness and empowerment.

Now, the vast majority of us will never call that number.

But sooner or later, someone close to us will have a feeling they can't prove and they'll watch our face to see if it's safe to say it out loud.

Merope asked an entire health system to listen.

The rest of us can start with whoever is standing closest.

If you’d like to hear Merope tell Martha’s story in her own words, this recent video is a great place to start. It’s a brief but honest watch:

You know those moments when you open the fridge looking for some butter and you check the usual spot.

Nope.

Then you scan every shelf … ish.

It isn't there.

Then someone else wanders over, reaches past you and lifts it out from behind something.

Right where it's always been.

Amy Herman has a name for this exact moment:

Refrigerator blindness.

Books about how our minds work, how we behave and how we interact with others are my kind of reading.

I first read Visual Intelligence seven or eight years ago, soon after it was released.

Many of the ideas and concepts I’ve read over the years have faded.

This one hasn't.

Herman is both an art historian and a lawyer.

An odd pairing until you see what she does with it.

She created a course called The Art of Perception at the Frick Collection in New York, first to help medical students become better at diagnosis.

The NYPD came next.

Since then she's trained FBI agents, the Secret Service, Scotland Yard, Navy SEALs and Fortune 500 teams.

Mostly by standing them in front of paintings and asking them to describe what they see.

This book turns that course into a framework she refers to as the four A's.

Assess, Analyse, Articulate and Adapt.

For me, the first one, assess, tends to be the gateway to the rest.

Assess means gathering the facts before you decide what they mean.

That’s right, before.

The trouble is that the brain hates waiting.

It fills the gaps with what it expects to find, and when the real thing doesn't match the picture in your head?

You look straight past it.

This explains the butter.

What's stayed with me longest is how physical Herman makes it.

Get closer.

Step back.

Shift yourself a few paces to one side.

Every new position reveals something the last one hid, and things you could have sworn weren't there?

They start to show up.

We can't see a different perspective by simply deciding to.

We have to go and stand where it is.

Read that again ⬆️

Travel is the quickest way I know to change where you're standing.

Moving away from Australia, working in travel for 20 years and the trips over the years, have forced countless new points of view on me.

But, I get it.

Not everyone wants to travel.

Not everyone can travel.

What we all have though?

Is other people.

Herman builds other people into the first A.

When you assess, she suggests more regularly asking others what they see.

No two people take in a painting the same way, interpreting its colours, shapes and emotions through their own lens.

Comparing notes widens the view for everyone in the room.

Life itself, is one human interaction after another, over and over, for as long as we’re around.

Each one of them is a chance to stand somewhere new for a few minutes.

If you ask real questions and listen long enough to see what the other person sees, that is.

You’ll have thousands of these conversations in a lifetime.

Whether you plan to or not.

May as well walk away from each one with more than you brought into it.

Stay parked on your own patch of grass, surrounded by the same voices, and you'll still see plenty.

Just from the same angle.

Every time.

Then after a while?

You forget you're wearing blinders.

Move your feet first: When something doesn't add up, go and look at it from somewhere else. Walk over to your colleague's desk. Stand where the customer stands. Sit on the floor at your kid's height. Change your position before you change your opinion.

Separate what you see from what you assume: "He walked out of the meeting" is a fact. "He walked out because he was angry" is a story. It’s better to see the facts on the table before making any judgement.

Borrow someone else's patch of grass: You don't need a passport for this. Next time you're talking with someone whose life looks nothing like yours, ask how they see things. Hold off on your own view until you can properly describe theirs.

This book often still comes to mind when I catch myself feeling certain about something I've only seen from one side.

When I've got something badly wrong, it's usually because I stayed put.

Same chair, same view, and an assumption that grew a bit stronger every time I looked.

Action tends to solve problems.

Inaction creates them.

Visual Intelligence is a practical nudge to get up and move.

The core idea lands early in the book.

While the rest focuses more on practice, with plenty of paintings and real cases to hammer it home.

If you’re new to this concept, that practice is well worth doing.

But you'll have the gist of the message well before you reach the end.

And that gist is one of the most useful things to understand about being human.

I'd recommend it to anyone who leads people, anyone that struggles to see other people’s POV and anyone who was certain there was no butter in the fridge.

Most of what we miss is sitting off to the side, in plain view.

We just haven't moved yet.

Want to test your own eyes? In this short video, Herman puts a painting of a train bursting out of a fireplace in front of you and asks what you notice, and what you don’t:

Please share; I'm always keen for great suggestions.

Researchers at Stanford once asked people to think up as many uses as they could for a button.

The ideas and answers varied greatly with one person suggesting: “a doorknob for a dollhouse.”

Most people came up with more of them while walking than while sitting still.

Anyone who’s ever sorted out a problem while halfway round the block won’t be surprised to read that.

Still, the result runs in the opposite direction of how most humans work.

We tend to sit down to think.

Often at a desk, with a screen, and the problem right in front of us.

Because staying put feels like the serious way to problem solve.

This week’s bright idea is that staying put is actually the slow way.

When you’re stuck?

Moving can do more for your thinking than another hour in a chair.

The study, conducted by Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz, involved four experiments and 176 people.

In the first, everyone completed the task twice, once while sitting and once while walking on a treadmill.

Walking won.

Eighty-one per cent of people did better while on their feet, and on average their creative output rose by approximately 60 per cent.

That’s a sizable jump.

It also worked on an indoor treadmill.

Meaning no gorgeous scenic trail is required for you to get a result.

And when people sat back down after walking?

Some of the boost they received lingered.

Not everything improved, though.

Another task gave people three words, such as cottage, Swiss and cake.

Then asked for the one word that links them.

(It’s cheese.)

Walking didn’t help in this instance.

People got slightly fewer right while on their feet, and only 23 per cent did better than they had sitting down.

So walking is most useful when you need or have options.

When you need the one right answer, stay firmly in your chair.

The authors have yet to pin down why walking works and these samples were small and mostly students.

But this result aligns with what many have felt for years.

That our mind can wander and generate new ideas when we're physically moving.

Walking seems to stimulate creative thinking, allowing us to explore and embrace different perspectives and possibilities.

While the exact mechanisms are still being studied, one thing that seems clear is that the act of walking can help free our minds from the constraints of focused concentration.

Creating an environment of ease and openness more conducive to creativity.

So, I'm not waiting on the offical explanation.

I’ll just keep walking.

Walk before you just push harder: When you're stuck on something that needs fresh ideas, give it a ten-minute walk before you try again at your desk. Then make a note of whatever comes to you as you return.

Try your next brainstorm on foot: The next time you need to work out "what should we do about this?" with someone, do it side by side on a walk. It's an easy experiment to test and it works.

Sit down for the single answer: Anything with one correct solution, like a crossword clue, or a math problem is sit down work. It’s the more nuanced problems that become more accesible through movement.

I get it, staying at your desk and working harder on a problem feels like effort.

And stepping away from the problem can feel like quitting.

So when we're stuck, many stay put and try to push harder on a door that is unlikely to open that way.

A walk asks very little of us.

Just a pair of shoes, a few minutes and a chance to let your mind do it’s work.

The harder the problem gets?

The more wrong it feels to walk away from it.

But that's precisely the moment to make your move.

Stuck is a place.

You can walk your way out of it.

Transform your daily routine with my specially crafted gratitude journal.

Start (or end) each day with a moment of reflection and positivity.

As you develop daily your gratitude, you're also helping grant wishes to children facing critical illnesses.

It's a powerful cycle of hope and optimism.

🌟 What's Inside:

Ready to embrace the power of gratitude?

Click here to order a copy now!

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