Stop Waiting. Start Choosing.

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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! ☀️

Thanks once again for letting me keep you company via your inbox.

This week I’m sharing a story from my recent trip to Sri Lanka.

Some thoughts on self-responsibility followed by a look at what fear can teach us when we stop letting it run the show.

It all comes back to this: No matter what’s happening around us, we have more power than we think.

In both how we respond and how we move forward.

I hope something in here meets you where you are and gives you a nudge in the right direction.

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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Travel has been one of the greatest teachers in my life.

Actually, scratch that.

Travel has been the greatest teacher in my life.

Over the last 25 years, I’ve been fortunate enough to visit more than 75 countries.

That kind of exposure changes how you see the world.

Places stop being dots on a map and start becoming living, breathing experiences.

Shaped by the people you meet, the conversations you have and how a place makes you feel.

From the moment you arrive through to the moment you leave.

Sri Lanka is one of those places that settles into you.

I was completely drawn in by the people, the culture, the food and the landscape.

It’s a spectacular country with so much to offer.

Yet what stands out most is simple.

The people.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been to a country where everyone was so genuinely happy to see me.

Not just those working in tourism or hospitality, but everyone.

The person passing you on the street.

The stranger who catches your eye and offers you a smile for no particular reason.

The kids waving energetically as you drive by.

It has a grounded, welcoming energy that makes you feel less like a visitor and more like you’re part of the community.

Sri Lanka sits in sharp focus in my mind.

There’s something comforting in the way people show up.

With kindness, with presence and a relaxed joy.

It makes you pause and ask a deeper question?

What shapes people to be this open, this generous, this genuinely happy to connect?

That question led to a conversation that has stayed with me since.

During a tour on our trip, I found myself in a series of deep, meandering conversations with our guide about Buddhist philosophies and principles.

We weren’t talking to sound wise.

We were talking about how these ideas actually appear in everyday life.

One idea in particular really landed.

The focus on the self.

Not in a selfish way, but in a deeply responsible way.

The sense that, at the end of the day, your experience of life is shaped far more by how you respond than by what happens to you.

At that time, it explained so much about why the people felt so warm, grounded and welcoming.

When you grow up with an understanding that your mindset, your reactions and your choices are yours to own?

It changes the way you move through the world.

You lean less on blame and more on personal agency.

That shift is subtle, and it’s powerful.

There’s a truth buried inside all of this that many of us resist.

Even if you didn’t cause the troubles in your life?

It will very likely be you who has to take action to address them.

That can feel confronting.

It can feel unfair.

Maybe someone did wrong by you.

Maybe you were put in a situation you would never have chosen.

Maybe life handed you something you never asked for and absolutely didn’t deserve.

All of that is real.

The challenge though is this.

If you wait for others to make things better.

To apologise, to take responsibility for the messes they’ve created?

You could be waiting for a very long time.

In some cases, you might be waiting forever.

And that waiting has a cost.

While you wait for someone else to change, your life sits on hold.

Your happiness sits on lay-by.

Your peace is postponed.

Your growth is paused.

Without even noticing, you begin to hand your power away.

There’s exactly one person whose actions you can truly influence.

You.

You don’t control everything that happens to you.

None of us do.

But if change is going to happen in your life, you’re almost always going to be the one who has to initiate it.

At first, that can feel heavy.

Then, if you stay with it, it starts to feel freeing.

Life isn’t fair.

Once you realise this to be true, it somehow all becomes a little easier.

This is the point where people often shut down, so it’s worth drawing a clear line.

Taking responsibility for your life isn’t the same as blaming yourself for everything that’s happened to you.

It’s not about pretending people didn’t hurt you.

Or that systems aren’t unfair.

Or that your pain somehow doesn’t count.

Your pain is real.

Your experiences are valid.

Self-responsibility just invites you to ask a different question.

Not whose fault is this?

But what can I do from here?

That one question moves your focus.

It pulls you out of the past.

What they did, what you lost, how you wish it had been.

And brings you back into the present.

What you can choose, change, or create now.

It’s less about fault and more about ownership.

Less about punishment and more about possibility.

In your own life, this can look like:

None of these actions erase what happened.

They do, however, change what happens next.

In Sri Lanka, you feel these principles in motion without anyone needing to explain them.

You see it in the way people greet you.

With absolute presence, not rush.

You see it in the way they help, genuinely, without making it a performance.

You see it in how they seem to carry both hardship and joy in the same pair of hands.

Without collapsing into bitterness.

No country is perfect.

No culture has everything figured out.

Still, there’s a noticeable undercurrent there.

An acceptance that life can be difficult, held together with a deep sense of personal agency in how to meet that difficulty.

When you travel as much as I am grateful to have?

You begin to notice patterns.

You visit places where blame feels like a national pastime.

Where resentment hangs in the air.

You also land in places where people seem to understand (consciously or not) that while they can’t control everything.

They control how they show up.

That difference shapes the energy of a place.

It shapes how strangers treat each other.

It shapes how it feels to walk down the street or sit in a café.

Or how it feels to stand in conversation with someone who speaks to you as a fellow human being.

As you both navigate this wild, complicated but exhilarating journey called life.

If you’re reading this and thinking but what do I actually do with this?

Here’s a few practical places to start:

Waiting: Ask yourself: “Where in my life am I waiting for someone else to act, apologise, change, or notice me?” Write it down. Clarity is power.

Pain: Acknowledge what hurt you. Honestly, without minimising it. Then ask, “Given that this did happen, what’s one step I can take now that’s within my control?”

Boundaries: Choose one small boundary. It might be saying no to a request that drains you, turning your phone off at a certain time or deciding not to engage in certain conversations. Start tiny, but start.

Stories: Notice the sentences you repeat in your mind: “They always…”, “I never…”, “It’s just how it is.” Question them. Honestly. Are they facts, or are they old narratives you’ve outgrown?

Agency: Every day, do one thing (however small) that reminds you I can choose. It might be what you eat, who you spend time with, how you speak to yourself or how you begin each morning.

You don’t have to overhaul your entire life in a week.

You just need to begin moving from waiting to choosing.

Sri Lanka reminded me of something uncomfortable and liberating.

Waiting for someone else to fix your life is like waiting for someone else to eat so you feel full.

You could be waiting forever.

You might not have caused what happened.

You might not deserve it.

You might still be healing from it.

All of that is real.

And still, the next step is yours.

You’re the only person guaranteed to walk with you for your rest of your life.

The only person whose actions you can directly influence.

The only person you can count on to act on your behalf.

That reality can feel heavy, but within that weight lives freedom.

Because once you accept this, something shifts.

You stop waiting and start choosing.

You stop placing your life on hold and begin living on purpose.

You start reclaiming your power, one courageous decision at a time.

And as you do, you radiate a little more warmth.

A little more groundedness.

A little more understanding.

And a LOT more joy.

Like the people I met in Sri Lanka.

Not because life suddenly became easy or because everyone who hurt you apologised.

Because you decided to be the one who always shows up for you.

That’s the moment everything starts to change.

You’re in control.

Stop waiting.

Start choosing.

To close, I wanted to share a passage I’ve read and shared many times, because it captures so perfectly why travel (and stepping into the unknown) matters:

That is why we need to travel.

If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull.

Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder.

Our eyes don't lift to the horizon; our ears don't hear the sounds around us.

The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting.

We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.

Don't let yourself become one of these people.

The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances the traveller has to take.

But if you take them, you will never regret your choice.

To be sure, there will be moments of doubt when you stand alone on an empty road in an icy rain, or when you are ill with fever in a rented bed.

But as the pains of the moment will come, so too will they fall away.

In the end, you will be so much richer, so much stronger, so much clearer, so much happier, and so much better a person that all the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge and wisdom you have gained.

🖊️ - Kent Nerburn, Letters to my Sons

On paper, Alex Honnold is the guy who climbed El Capitan without a rope.

In reality, he’s a living case study of how preparation, values and a very particular relationship with fear can reshape what we believe is possible.

In 2008, he became the first climber to scale the sheer granite face of Half Dome alone and without a rope.

Edging across the famous “Thank God Ledge” with his heels to the wall and his toes touching the void.

On big solo climb days, he spends hours in what climbers call the death zone.

Aptly named as it’s where a fall would almost certainly be fatal.

Just watching those climbs is enough to make many people’s palms sweat.

Even Alex admits his own hands sweat when he watches himself on film.

What fascinates me most is not only that he does these things, but how he’s shaped his brain and habits to meet fear.

Head on.

And what that can teach us about our own everyday leaps of faith.

A few years ago, neuroscientist Jane Joseph put Alex into a brain scanner to see how he responds to images that usually make our inner alarm bells ring.

Most people’s amygdala (the part of the brain involved in detecting threats) lights up when they see disturbing or highly charged pictures.

In Alex’s scans, those same images barely moved the needle.

Even when his reactions were compared to other adventurous climbers?

The contrast was striking.

The other climber’s fear centre lit up clearly.

While Alex’s stayed almost completely quiet.

In a separate task designed to trigger the brain’s reward circuits with small monetary wins, the control brain looked like a lit‑up Christmas tree.

Again, Alex’s showed far less activity.

Put this in simple terms?

His amygdala looks healthy and intact, but it seems to need a much higher volume of danger and reward before it reacts in the usual way.

His threat and reward systems sit at a very, very calm end of the spectrum.

And yet, he still insists he does feel fear.

He talks about early solos, like the 300‑foot Corrugation Corner in California, as genuinely scary.

He remembers over‑gripping the rock and feeling the truth of “you fall you die” in his body.

Over time, he says, he put on mental armour and kept returning to that same edge in thoughtful, deliberate ways.

It’s tempting to say he just doesn’t feel fear and leave it there.

The fuller picture is much more interesting:

Fear, for Alex, becomes both biology and training.

His amygdala may stay quieter than most, yet his behaviour shows years of re‑working fear memories.

Re‑experiencing them in controlled ways until they sting less.

Each time he solos an easy route (easy is very tongue in cheek here), feels a spike of fear and successfully works his way through it?

His brain stores another example of I can handle this.

Psychologists describe this as a classic way fear can be reshaped.

You encounter the trigger again, this time in a safer or better‑prepared context.

Your brain updates the story it tells you about that experience.

Over time, I’m in danger can soften into I’ve been here before.

And I know what to do.

Each of us might not share Alex’s extreme wiring but we can borrow his long‑term, more compassionate training approach and apply it to our own fears.

You don’t need to step onto a rock face to draw something useful from his story:

Use fear as a signal, then add context: A rush of anxiety tends to arrive before your thinking brain has caught up. Pausing yourself and ask, what’s this really about? This gives your reflective mind a chance to put that alarm in context. Instead of letting it run the show.

Revisit scary moments on your terms: Alex keeps a climbing journal and mentally replays routes, including what went wrong and how he could respond better next time. You can do the same after a tough meeting or conversation. Write it down, revisit it later and rewrite the story with what you know now.

Practice in smaller, safer doses: Before his biggest solo climbs, he rehearses moves with a rope. Sometimes over and over and visualises the entire climb move by move. In everyday life, that could be role‑playing a conversation, practicing a presentation with a friend or trying something new in a low‑stakes way first. Anything worth doing takes practice.

We often hear what would you do if you weren’t afraid?

It sounds inspiring, but it also suggests fear has to vanish before we can move.

Fear rarely vanishes.

A more practical version might be:

What would you do if your fear could speak, but not make your final decision?

Fear could be pointing to a real risk.

Maybe a skills gap or a need for more support.

Or it could simply be a deeper desire you have yet to honour.

Courage then becomes less about erasing fear and more about taking a step that matches your values and preparation.

That way fear rides along but doesn’t get to steer.

Preparation, in that sense, becomes an act of self‑kindness, not a chore.

It’s how you learn to take bolder steps while still ensuring your safety.

In your own life, it might look like reaching out to someone you admire or sharing a piece of writing.

Planning a trip, applying for a role that stretches you or finally saying yes to an idea that has been calling your name.

What stays with me about Alex Honnold is the way his story holds science and humanity side by side.

His brain scans show an unusually quiet amygdala and a nervous system that doesn’t react to threat in the way many of ours do.

His life shows thousands of hours spent meeting fear on purpose.

Reflecting, rehearsing and aligning risk with what matters most to him.

On one side, there’s a person whose physiology allows him to stand in places that would make many of us crumble.

On the other, there’s a set of practices any of us can borrow in simpler forms.

Revisiting fear with curiosity.

Building mental armour one exposure at a time.

Choosing challenges that grow us instead of shrinking us.

It reminds me that the brighter side of fear doesn’t lie in never feeling it.

It lives in the ongoing work made up of listening, learning and choosing to step forward anyway.

Even if your version of the death zone is nothing more than a new idea, a new job or a new chapter of your life.

Overcoming your fear is how you stop standing at the edge of your life and finally step into it.

Check out this video for some of the highlights of Alex’s recent history making free solo of Taipei 101:

If reading about Alex Honnold’s “death zone” climbs gets your heart rate up?

Free Solo lets you feel the full weight of those choices in real time.

This Oscar‑winning documentary follows him as he prepares for and attempts a free solo climb of El Capitan’s 3,000‑foot vertical face in Yosemite

No ropes, no second chances.

It’s the kind of film that makes your palms sweat while you sit safely on the couch.

But it also invites you into the mindset behind such a massive, personal goal.

On the surface, Free Solo is jaw‑dropping.

Vast shots of granite walls with a tiny climber and huge exposure.

But what makes it really worth your time is how much space it gives to Alex’s inner working.

Doubt, discipline and the constant negotiation between risk and meaning.

You see him rehearsing sections over and over (just as we mentioned earlier), calling off attempts when it doesn’t feel right.

Navigating the impact his choices have on his partner, his friends and even the film crew.

It becomes less a story about having no fear and more a case study in knowing yourself well enough to match preparation to your ambition.

The documentary balances three threads beautifully.

Alex’s internal world, the intimate dynamics of his relationship and the ethical tension of the film crew.

Essentially how they feel about filming a climb where a mistake could be fatal.

That mix keeps it from becoming a simple hero story and turns it into something far more layered.

The cameras capture both the scale of the wall and also the tiniest details.

A micro‑adjustment of a foot.

A pause.

A deep breath.

By the time he makes his final attempt?

You feel how many small decisions, values and rituals have been layered into that one morning on the wall.

You don’t need to love climbing to take something from Free Solo:

Big moments are built long before they are visible: The film underlines how much repetition, review and refinement sits behind any seemingly effortless performance.

Fear can inform, not control: Instead of trying to erase fear, Alex treats it as information. Sometimes a cue to rehearse more. Sometimes a signal to wait. Sometimes a sign that he’s ready.

Clarity of values simplifies hard decisions: Knowing what matters most to him helps him decide when a risk is acceptable. And when it’s not. That same kind of clarity can help in everyday decisions about career, relationships and personal goals.

The most striking thing about Free Solo is how ordinary so much of the process looks right up until the moment it becomes extraordinary.

His training sessions, note‑taking, conversations, doubt, discomfort.

Then, eventually, a single morning on the wall that reflects it all in action.

It also felt like a masterclass in the kind of grounded courage I really believe in.

Not chasing fearlessness but learning to move alongside fear with clarity and intention.

Watching Alex decide when to push, when to pause and when to walk away?

Is a vivid reminder that bold steps can still be thoughtful, driven by your values and kind to your future self.

By the time the credits roll, the real invitation is not to dream of climbing El Capitan yourself.

But to notice when you might be standing at the base of your own wall.

A change, a new relationship, a conversation you keep postponing.

And to ask?

What would it look like to prepare for that with a little more honesty?

With more repetition, and care.

As viewing goes, it’s a breathtaking sight.

As a nudge to step toward the life you actually want, it’s even more powerful.

You can check out the trailer for Free Solo here:

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

This week’s idea is about learning to hold your own emotions with care instead of pouring them all over everyone around you.

Venting can feel good in the moment.

But when it’s all we do?

It often keeps those negative thoughts circling instead of settling.

You don’t have to be strong all the time or never ask for help.

You simply need to recognise that healing is your responsibility.

You have more power than you think to soothe yourself.

To process what you feel and choose what you do with it.

Most were taught how to talk it all out but not always how to calm things within ourselves.

It’s a skill you can learn.

It’s often easier to offload everything onto a friend than to pause and notice what’s really happening inside.

Over time, though, constant venting can leave you feeling stuck in the same story.

Instead of moving through it.

Learning to quiet your own storm requires building emotional self-trust.

You start to realise you can be with your feelings without drowning in them.

You can choose what you share and how you share it but also when you just need to breathe.

Or move, or write, or rest.

When you practice staying with your feelings?

You slowly build emotional muscles.

Self-awareness, self-compassion and regulation.

These make future storms easier to weather.

That kind of inner steadiness is a gift to yourself AND the people around you.

Here are a few gentle ways to practice this idea this week:

Before venting, pause and ask yourself what you are actually feeling: Sad, angry, overwhelmed, disappointed. Naming it will often soften it.

Reach for a self-soothing outlet first: Journalling, a walk, stretching, deep breathing or a few quiet minutes alone. These practices help your nervous system settle and give your mind space to process.

If you still want to share with someone, be intentional: Let them know whether you’re looking for support, listening, or ideas. This way the conversation feels lighter and more helpful for both of you.

Notice when retelling the story is keeping it alive: When that happens, find something that helps you shift back to the present moment and focus on it.

The more I’ve learned to quiet my own storm?

The less I feel at the mercy of everything around me.

Of course I can still lean on people I trust.

But I no longer hand them all the responsibility for how I’m feeling.

Every time I stay with my emotions by writing them out or moving them through my body?

I build trust in myself.

Healing grows from that inner trust.

So next time the clouds gather?

Try turning inward with care before turning outward for help.

And then notice what shifts.

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