Stacking the Odds

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! ☀️

I hope you had an enjoyable weekend.

If you've been here a while, it’s great to have you back and if this is your first edition, welcome aboard!

This week we cover what sits behind the things that actually work out in life.

A mindset that keeps you moving forward when the path ahead isn't always clear and why stacking the odds in your favour, one choice at a time, beats hoping for the best or bracing for the worst.

We're spending time with a remarkable young girl from Flint and a masked duo from Quebec who might just be the most interesting band in the world right now and finish with a reminder that the things worth protecting most, rarely show up on a scoreboard.

Let's get into it.

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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You don't get to know how the story ends.

You can’t flick to the back of the book and read the last page.

This is true for the big moments in life.

Careers, health, relationships, the lives we're trying to build.

It's also true for much smaller ones.

You can do practically everything right and have something not work out.

You can do everything exactly the same a second time and get a different result.

Because, more often than not, the result is uncertain.

Most people respond to this uncertainty in one of two ways.

They brace for the worst, because, well, at least then you're prepared it.

Or they cross their fingers and hope, because it feels nicer to do.

Both might feel like a strategy, but neither actually is.

There's a third option, and it's the one I’ve been coming back to for years.

It's a way of stacking the odds in your favour, one choice at a time.

In business its referred to as probability management.

I just call it grounded optimism.

This newsletter exists due to something I've seen play out over and over.

At some stage, life will come at you.

It will come at you in ways you never expected.

Relationships end.

People change, or move, or fade out of the picture.

Jobs end.

Careers shift.

And if you don't know how to approach those moments mentally?

They can break you.

I've watched tough moments break people, and I've watched tough moments grow people.

The difference is vast.

What sits between those two outcomes is whether you face what's happening, and acknowledge it and address it, rather than push it away or pretend it isn't there.

Honest engagement with reality is what positions you to rebound stronger.

I sometimes wonder how the last few years would have unfolded if I hadn't studied behavioural science, or hadn't built the practice of grounded optimism, or hadn't surrounded myself with relationships I value more than I can put into words.

There isn't much point spending too long on that question.

I'd rather spend my energy helping as many people as I can set themselves up for what's coming.

Because whether you're prepared for it or not?

Life will come at you hard, at some stage.

When you strip away the positivity slogans that exist around it, what's left is so much more than fluff.

What’s left is a way of thinking that helps you keep moving forward while everything around you is uncertain.

Markets crash.

People get sick.

Plans collapse.

Relationships fracture.

Jobs disappear and reappear in different shapes.

If your default setting tends to be that this is all going to fall apart?

Your nervous system will never find its way out of the brace position.

You stay locked in fight or flight long after the actual threat has passed.

When you’re in that state, your best thinking doesn't show up and your ability to make clear, rational decisions is compromised.

Optimism says with pure honesty, that bad things may happen, but I'm capable of overcoming whatever comes my way.

It doesn't come with a label that promises nothing bad will ever happen to you.

The reality is, every problem you've ever solved was once a problem you didn't know how to solve.

Because we’re capable of more than we think.

This belief changes what you notice.

What you try.

What you stick with long enough to see results.

Optimism is a conscious decision to see the world through a lens of possibility.

A way of interpreting setbacks, choosing where to focus your attention and calculating the odds of your efforts actually mattering.

It’s not a personality trait you’re either born with or without but an approach you can train and develop.

The psychologist Martin Seligman, who spent his early career proving that helplessness is learned, spent the rest of it proving that optimism is too.

His work on "learned optimism" remains the cornerstone for the idea that your default outlook is far more changeable than most people believe.

Here's the part that is overlooked so often.

Optimism doesn't guarantee outcomes but increases the probability of better ones, because of what it does to the person carrying it.

Three subtle shifts make the difference.

The first is mental bandwidth.

When pessimism reaches for questions like, “why does this always happen to me?” or “what if this is the start of something worse?”

These questions act as walls and fail to guide you through an open door.

They loop your brain into rumination and self‑blame while your stress hormones surge.

And rumination, or worry, is like a rocking chair:

It gives you something to do but it will never get you anywhere.

Meanwhile, the creative, solution-finding part of your brain switches off completely.

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson calls this the "broaden-and-build" effect.

Positive emotions widen your thinking and unlock new options, while negative ones narrow your focus down to threat and survival.

The optimismistic approach flips the script completely to “Okay, this sucks. What’s the next step I can take?"

You acknowledge the situation and move yourself forward.

Changing your words slightly gives your mind something else to focus on, instead of just looking for reasons why things can go wrong.

The second shift is persistence under delayed reward.

Most things worth building take years.

You (generally) don't grow a career, a strong body, a meaningful relationship or financial stability in a weekend.

There are long stretches where your effort and the results that follow don't appear to be on speaking terms.

Without some form of optimism, staying in motion stops making sense.

It’s the fuel that keeps you moving forward long enough to find the bend in the road that pessimism never sees because it stopped miles ago.

The third shift is how you handle failure.

Pessimism writes one story when things go wrong.

"I'm the problem. I'm not cut out for this. Nothing changes."

Once you swallow that story, you start to internalise helplessness.

Optimism draws a much cleaner line.

That launch failed.

That conversation went badly.

That attempt didn't land.

Notice the difference?

It's the event that failed, not your whole being.

From there, you can mine the experience for helpful lessons rather than treating it as proof you're hopeless.

You ask, "what’s this teaching me?" instead of "what's wrong with me?”

That distinction decides whether you dust yourself off and get back up or sit the rest of your life out.

It's worth being honest here.

There's a version of optimism that is dangerous.

It’s the one that says it'll all be fine, while refusing to look at the data, the risks or the real impact on real people.

That is less optimism and more delusion.

Strip the smile away and all you're left with is avoidance.

What we're highlighting here is a completely different beast.

It’s calibrated.

And strategic.

And grounded.

You gather accurate information.

You acknowledge the constraints you faced and what the downsides are.

You prepare for what could go wrong.

Then, after all that, you act with the intent that your efforts will move the needle.

So instead of nothing bad will happen, it becomes things may go wrong but I'm equipped to handle them.

That's what makes optimism a survival skill and less a personality trait.

It's an intentional, deliberate decision about how you think and act inside uncertainty.

Add the fact that an “I’ll figure it out” attitude is one of the most sought after and valuable mindsets you can develop.

Because it encourages resilience, adaptability and a proactive approach to problem-solving.

Almost every meaningful shift in history was driven by people who believed improvement was possible, before there was common evidence it would work.

Civil rights.

Scientific breakthroughs.

Public health.

The technology you used to open this email.

Pessimists are often right in the short term.

Things do go wrong.

Plans do fall apart.

People do let us down.

But over and over again, it's the optimists who keep building what everyone else eventually stands on.

You can see the same pattern in everyday life.

Teams collaborate more readily with leaders who believe progress is possible.

Employers invest in people who show growth, adaptability and a future‑oriented mindset.

In close relationships, optimism keeps the door open for repair instead of simply declaring something broken forever.

It will never promise success but ensures you’re present and available for it to happen.

Here are a few simple ways to put this into practice:

Watch the questions you're asking yourself: When something goes sideways, the pessimistic brain reaches for "why is this happening to me?" The optimistic brain reaches for "from here, what is one step I can take?" Different questions open different doors. Notice which one you tend to default to.

Treat persistence as probability: Each day you move yourself forward on something that matters, is a small bet the odds will break in your favour. Missing a day isn't a failure but walking away from the whole thing is. Stay close to the game.

Separate the event from the identity: When something doesn't work, name exactly what failed. That launch. That conversation. That attempt. Then notice your language. If "I failed" shows up, edit it to "that failed.” The slightest change in grammar protects a lot of self‑trust over time.

Pick one place you've been betting against yourself: A project, a habit, a relationship or maybe a goal you stopped saying out loud. Then take one small action this week backed with the belief that your effort still matters. Pay attention to your energy when you do, that feedback is data.

Simple for sure, but also highly effective, and these approaches are simple on purpose.

Probability management is a long game and the point isn't just to feel inspired today.

It's to keep showing up tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.

The simpler it is, the more likely it will stick.

Optimism is how you stay in the game.

It’s a repeated decision and internal agreement to keep showing up as life keeps doing what life tends to do.

You don't get to control what happens.

But you do get to influence what gets built, what gets noticed and how long you stay in the game.

When you choose to assume there might be a way forward.

When you treat effort as meaningful rather than pointless.

When you see setbacks as feedback and not a final verdict.

You're not removing the uncertainty from the situation but learning to live more powerfully within it.

It’s the brave, and grounded version of optimism.

Not everything will work out, that’s something I’m sure of.

But when I keep stacking the odds in favour of the life I'm trying to build, and stay in the game long enough to find out what's possible?

I know I'll create opportunities that align with my goals and aspirations, and I know that setbacks become setups, because I’m acknowledging and learning from each challenge I face.

Pessimism may sound clever, but it doesn't build much.

It doesn't solve much either.

Optimism is the slower, harder, more honest choice.

It's also the one that turns "what if it all collapses?" into a much braver question.

What if the result was better and brighter than I could’ve imagined?

Only those who stay in the game ever find out.

For a deeper dive into the neuroscience behind all this, Tali Sharot's TED talk is a great watch:

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In March 2016, an eight-year-old girl from Flint, Michigan sat down and wrote a letter to the President of the United States.

Her name was Mari Copeny.

At the time, her family couldn't use their tap water along with everyone else across her city.

The water that came out of the taps was brown, it smelled wrong and was poisoned with lead.

Close to 9,000 children had been drinking it for over a year.

The adults in charge knew.

They'd known for months.

And worse still, they hadn't fixed it.

So Mari wrote to Barack Obama.

She told him she was coming to Washington with her mother to watch the congressional hearings on the crisis.

She asked if he'd be willing to meet with her and with the people of Flint.

When she wrote this letter, Mari was in second grade.

Obama wrote back.

And then he flew to Flint.

A quick bit of context, because the scale of what happened to this city still shocks me.

In April 2014, officials in Flint switched the city's water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River in order to save money.

The river water was corrosive as the city had failed to treat it properly and as a result, lead leached from ageing pipes into the drinking water of nearly 100,000 people.

The residents complained immediately.

The water looked wrong, smelled awful and tasted wrong.

The response from officials was nothing other than “it was fine.”

It took over a year, and a paediatrician named Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha publicly releasing blood-lead data showing elevated levels in Flint's children, before the state finally acknowledged the crisis.

Twelve people had died from a related outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease and thousands of children were exposed to lead during critical years of their brain development.

Every warning was raised.

Yet every warning was ignored.

And the community left to deal with the consequences was predominantly Black, predominantly low-income, and predominantly voiceless in the halls where the decisions were made.

That's the world Mari Copeny grew up in.

And instead of waiting for someone else to act, she chose to pick up a pen.

Obama's visit to Flint in May 2016 drew national attention to the crisis and led to $100 million in federal funding to repair the city's water system.

Having succeeded, Mari could have stopped there.

She'd written the letter and remarkably the president came.

The money then followed.

For most people, let alone most eight-year-olds, that would have been the whole story.

Mari kept going.

When the state of Michigan stopped providing free bottled water to Flint residents in 2018, Mari raised over $280,000 and distributed more than a million bottles of water.

She partnered with a water filtration company called Hydroviv to develop her own water filter, then raised over $400,000 to get those filters into homes across Flint and other communities dealing with contaminated water.

She began hosting annual events in order to provide backpacks and school supplies for Flint children.

She became a youth ambassador for the Women's March on Washington and the National Climate March.

In 2022, she was named Billboard's Change Maker of the Year, at fourteen, the youngest and first female recipient of the award.

Her website states she plans to run for president in 2044.

Given her trajectory and commitment, it’d be unwise to bet against her.

There's something about Mari's story that reminds me of a pattern I've seen play out in business over the years.

In meetings, strategy sessions and rooms full of experienced people.

It’s often the person with the freshest eyes who spots the problem everyone else has learned to walk past.

The person who hasn't been around long enough to accept the way things are as the way things have to be.

We dismiss fresh perspectives more than we realise.

We mistake familiarity with a problem for the understanding of it.

And sometimes it takes someone who hasn't been taught to look away to finally say, clearly and simply, this is wrong.

Mari Copeny was eight.

She hadn't learned to look away yet.

And that turned out to be her greatest advantage.

The Flint water crisis was declared resolved years ago.

Though Mari's family still drinks bottled water.

That tells you something about the distance between an official statement and a lived reality.

I keep coming back to the simplicity of what Mari did.

She wrote a letter.

A child in a city full of poisoned water, sitting down and write to the most powerful person she could think of, because the people closer to the problem weren't doing enough.

She had no platform or strategy, just a pen and the stubborn refusal to accept that the adults in the room had it covered.

Most of us have been in a moment where we recognised something as wrong or unjust.

The question is always what we do next.

That's the lesson I take from her story.

When you see something that's wrong?

Say something. Defend someone. Write the letter. Make the call.

The action itself is almost always smaller than we imagine it to be.

Mari is eighteen now and has been doing this for a decade.

The water filters she helped to create are sitting in homes across America because a second grader decided that recognising a problem and doing something about it were the same responsibility.

We don't need to be activists to carry that with us.

We just need to stop convincing ourselves that someone else will handle it.

If she could pick up a pen at eight, the rest of us can find the inspiration to do the same.

If you'd like to see Mari in her own words, this short BBC documentary captures her fight for clean water in Flint and beyond:

Several months back I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole.

I’d landed on a live KEXP session from a band I'd never heard of.

It was two guys wearing enormous papier-mâché masks with polka dots covering their bodies.

No real vocals to speak of and music that made me stop and ask - what on earth am I listening to?

I nearly turned it off and moved on

Not because it was bad, it was just strange.

The type of strange that makes you wonder if your ears need time to adjust before they catch up to what's happening.

That was actually the case.

I watched the whole thing.

Then I read the comments, oh my they’re hilarious, do yourself a favour if you like laughing.

Then I went straight to their first album and listened to it on repeat for a few days.

When their latest album Vol. II dropped in April, I liked it even more.

These odd little polka dot fellows were growing on me.

The band is Angine de Poitrine.

In recent weeks I've had a few friends reach out asking if I'm across their music, responding in a similar way.

That's often the moment you know something real is happening.

Angine de Poitrine are a duo from Saguenay, Quebec.

Two guys who've been playing music together since they were 13 years old.

They perform anonymously as Khn and Klek de Poitrine, and are the ones behind the masks.

When their KEXP session went viral in February this year, it hit five million views within a month and the momentum hasn't slowed since.

Their second album, Vol. II, landed in April to near-universal critical acclaim, and their Toronto shows this summer sold out before most even knew they were on sale.

They're Canadian.

They're independent.

They're different in a way that feels earned and not manufactured.

And if you're one of the people who is only just hearing about them now?

Welcome, you're right on time.

Vol. II is six tracks averaging six minutes each.

There are no vocals and no notable hooks in the conventional sense.

What there is instead?

Microtonal guitars that bend and coil around each other in ways that feel slightly off-centre, drums that drive everything forward with mechanical precision, and a low-frequency groove that takes its time building but, but once it arrives, it grabs you with both hands.

Pitchfork described it as taking "some of the unsexiest music in history and giving it the type of groove that renders it undeniable."

That's pretty much sum it up, and I'd add that the undeniability is the whole point.

This is math rock that moves.

Experimental music that makes you want (need) to nod your head.

"Fabienk" is the track that grabbed me first.

It’s one that featured in the viral KEXP session, and the one that likely converted more than a few sceptics.

It starts with an awkward almost unresolved sound, like a musical sentence that hasn't found its end yet.

And then, piece by piece, it locks in.

Tracks like "Mata Zyklek," "Utzp" and "Angor" don't give much away, and that’s kind of the point.

These two aren't interested in telling you what to feel.

They're more interested in seeing what happens when you stay with it long enough to find out for yourself.

Give it at least three listens before you decide anything: The first listen is disorienting by design. The second, you start to recognise the patterns. By the third, the groove has found you. Don't judge this one early, wait until you’re bouncing around the kitchen.

Watch the KEXP session first: Seeing them perform live, their masks, costumes, the entire utterly absurd spectacle, is an easier entrance point to the music. There's something about understanding the full context and their commitment that unlocks your listening experience.

Pay attention to the drums: Klek de Poitrine is remarkable. Throughout a record built on guitar work that is constantly shifting under your feet, it's the drumming that holds everything together and gives it its pulse. Once you start following the rhythm, the rest starts to make sense.

I tried to get tickets to one of their three sold-out shows in Toronto this summer.

With no luck.

I was surprised, not because their music isn't deserving but because this is an independent duo from Quebec playing instrumental math rock in oversized papier-mache masks.

They’ve blown up and sold out three shows.

That tells you something.

I discovered them six months ago and thought I was in on a little secret.

Then the messages started coming in.

Friends reaching out asking if I’d heard them, sending me the KEXP video, asking what I thought.

I thought: something real is happening here.

That's the thing about music that earns its following the honest way.

It doesn't need a machine behind it.

It just needs to be good enough that people can't stop themselves from passing it along.

Vol. II won't be for everyone and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But whether or not the sound becomes your thing, you can’t listen to this record and come away doubting the talent, the creativity, or the vision behind it.

These two have been playing together for over two decades and have created something that sounds like nothing else in the world right now.

And the best part, they're doing it entirely on their own terms.

That combination is rare.

When you find it, it's worth paying attention.

Maybe I should have another crack at those tickets.

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

William Bruce Cameron once wrote: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

We live in a world that loves to assign a number to everything.

Followers, salaries, steps walked, hours logged, quarterly targets.

Numbers give us something to point at.

They give us something that feels certain.

But the things that shape our lives most deeply, like the trust between two people, the patience you showed on a hard morning, they rarely show up on any dashboard.

Neither will the impact of being someone others feel safe around.

There's a reason we gravitate toward what's measurable.

Numbers feel objective.

They give us a sense of progress and a way to compare.

The trouble starts when we start optimising for the metric itself.

Once that happens, we can lose sight of why it mattered in the first place.

A manager who tracks hours logged instead of the quality of thinking produced.

A friendship reduced to how often someone texts back.

Or a parent fixated on report cards when the greatest progress was made during a conversation at the dinner table that’ll never be graded.

Researchers call this surrogation.

When we swap the meaningful goal for the metric that was only ever supposed to represent it.

The number becomes the target, and the original purpose slips away.

This plays out at work, in relationships and in how we evaluate ourselves.

The risk?

A life full of impressive numbers and a nagging feeling that something essential was missed along the way.

Read that again. ⬆️

Ask what the number is actually measuring: Before chasing a target, pause and check whether it reflects what you care about. A metric represents a map, not the entire territory.

Acknowledge what you can't quantify: The colleague who makes meetings calmer. The friend who remembers what you said last time. The way your family feels when you're fully present. They’re not on the scoreboard but they matter more than most things that are.

Audit your personal scorecard: We all carry an invisible list of how we judge if we're doing well. How much of yours is built on numbers? And how much on things you'd actually want to be remembered for?

I've caught myself doing this plenty over the years.

But that’s the key, catching myself.

When I ask my kids how their day was straight up, I get a one-word answer.

Fine. Good. OK.

But when I meet them where they are?

When we play for a bit, talk about what they want to talk about and simply follow their lead.

The best parts of their day bubble to the surface naturally.

No checklist produced that.

No metric captured it.

It’s all created through presence.

Cameron's quote is a great reminder to zoom out.

Numbers are useful when kept in their place, they become a problem when they start running the show.

The things worth protecting most, your peace, your relationships, the kind of person you're becoming?

They’ll rarely announce themselves through data.

Pay close attention to them anyway.

Your future self will thank you.

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:

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