The Worst Advice I Ever Heard

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! ☀️

Welcome to all who’ve joined recently, appreciate you being here.

It means a lot that you make some time for a little optimism in your week.

This one is all about trust, and what we miss when we hold everyone at arm’s length.

We also head to the Galápagos to meet a remarkable marine biologist who’s protecting a rare seabird, and there’s a recommendation for a great new album I’ve had on repeat.

And I’ll leave you with a Norwegian saying to consider as the clocks change this weekend.

If they are, where you are, that is.

Grab yourself a cuppa ☕️ and let’s dig in.

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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Never trust anyone.

It might be the worst advice you can receive as a young adult.

I get why it’s important as a small child.

And I also get why people tend to say it.

Usually, they've been burned in some way, and don't want to see you experience the same thing.

The intent being to protect you from potential harm and disappointment, and they aren’t wrong that people will let you down throughout life.

They will.

Some will do it carelessly, and others will do it on purpose.

However, this advice can lead to isolation and hinder your ability to form meaningful relationships.

When you live your life this way?

You miss out on the people, and the experiences, that absolutely make it worthwhile.

Rather than avoiding trust completely, it's more effective to learn how to build trust carefully.

Those who live by this rule will generally appear content.

They have friends.

They turn up to the barbecue and laugh at the right moments.

The part that’s missing is a little harder to see.

Conversations remain on the surface.

The more vulnerable story that may bring context and explain who they are, stays untold.

New people are always run through an internal test, and the moment a relationship starts to blossom, a reason to step back appears.

Within them, it feels like good judgment, and it might well be.

The trouble is, trust runs both ways.

Other people can sense when you're holding something back, and then, many of them will choose to hold back too.

You keep your distance and they keep theirs, the friendship settling at a polite, safe depth that will never ask much of anyone.

Allow enough years to pass by, and that caution can curdle into something more.

Every letdown experienced becomes filed away as evidence, and every kindness is met with the suspicion of hidden motives.

A shallow life morphs into a bitter one, and that now very guarded person decides that nobody can be trusted.

The rule may seem as though it’s been validated, but in reality, it never had a chance to be wrong.

Across the globe we're currently seeing this same situation play out on a much bigger scale.

In 1972, 46% of Americans surveyed said most people can be trusted.

As of today it's dropped to about a third, and among adults under 30 it's closer to one in four.

Here in Canada, 73% of people told this year's Edelman Trust Barometer they're unwilling or hesitant to trust someone with different values or a different background.

That's a lot of people waiting for everyone else to prove themselves first.

The good news?

We're underestimating each other.

In a 2019 study, researchers handed in more than 17,000 wallets at banks, hotels and post offices across 40 countries, each time saying they'd found it.

In 38 of those countries, wallets with cash in them came back more often than empty ones, and the more money inside, the more likely it made it home.

Before the study, 279 economists were asked to predict the result.

And guess what?

Most expected the opposite.

I'm not surprised, though.

My travels have put me in plenty of tricky spots.

Spots where all I could do was trust that someone would turn up when they said they would, or that they’d follow through the way I hoped.

Faaaar more often than not, they did.

And if most strangers deserve more credit than we give them, think about what we might be holding back from the people closest to us.

There really is no point trying to pretend otherwise.

If you live with your guard down a little?

You're going to get burned.

It might be a friend who repeats something you told them in confidence, or a partner you thought you were sure of who waltzes straight out the door.

That hurt is so much more than just a figure of speech.

When UCLA psychologist Naomi Eisenberger scanned the brains of people being left out of a simple ball-tossing game, the regions that lit up overlapped with those involved in physical pain.

Those who tell us never to trust anyone aren't imagining things.

They’re trying to spare us from that experience, and they’re right about the pain.

Just wrong about the cure.

I've been burned plenty of times and the vast majority were pretty insignificant.

Some cost me a few dollars, an injury here and there, and some temporarily disrupted my peace of mind.

More importantly though, each experience taught me a valuable lesson about the importance of discernment.

And the need to protect myself from potential harm.

Trust is a precious commodity.

And while it's essential for building stronger relationships, it's equally important to be cautious and aware of the risks.

One of my closest calls came in Bolivia almost 20 years ago.

My wife and I were excited to ride mountain bikes along what's known (or at least was known at the time) as the world's most dangerous road.

It was about 64 kilometres of narrow, unfenced road cut into the side of the mountains, with nothing between you and a drop of up to 600 metres.

Peer over the edge and you can see the wrecks of cars and trucks that hadn't made it.

When you see something like that?

You trust that whoever’s running the show has kept the bikes in good shape.

As I made my way along one of the faster stretches, I was reminding myself to stay on the road.

Just as you would on any normal road.

I’ve never once run my bike off a road before, so why would I do that now?

Then my brakes failed … uh oh!

I couldn’t slow down.

Though, in truth, the story makes it sound much more dramatic than it was.

I trusted myself to control the bike and ease my way to a more level stretch with faulty brakes.

I'm not defending the safety standards on that particular tour, and the brakes seemed fine on our initial inspection.

But even knowing what I know now?

I'd still do that ride again.

If I'd skipped it to play it safe, I would have regretted it.

Opportunities like that don't wait.

You make the most of them as they come, and you back yourself to handle the rest.

Most of the burns we experience are more like accidentally touching the saucepan while it’s on the stove.

It stings, you pull your hand back, run it under the tap, then it heals.

You then agree with yourself to be more careful next time.

The regret of never trusting at all operates very differently.

The burns will heal.

Regret does not.

For all the constant warnings we hear about trust, it’s much rarer to hear tales from the other side.

There's a feeling that joins you for the ride when you let your guard down with someone else.

When you just let things be, and they turn out to be a pleasant surprise.

You say the thing you've never said out loud, and they don't flinch.

You hand over the most fragile parts of yourself, and they handle them with care.

It's really hard to put that feeling into words.

The closest I can get is otherworldly.

It’s a feeling unlike any other you can experience in this lifetime.

I’m grateful to say I’ve felt it many times in my life, and it didn't always look the way you'd expect.

The first step was trusting myself.

When I finished university, I had no concrete plan for what came next.

Instead of forcing one, I trusted myself enough to pause, travel and see some of the world.

That trust opened up a career path I'd never have found otherwise.

Then there's my wife.

When she was still my girlfriend, we packed up our lives, spent six months travelling through South and Central America, and then moved to Canada.

That was over 18 years ago.

We're still here, and we've loved every minute of it.

There was also a leader I worked with, someone I still have enormous respect for.

Because I trusted them completely, I applied for a role on the opposite side of the country.

I got it.

And it led to some of the most fulfilling years of my life.

It shows up in smaller ways too.

A friend you can call with a half-formed idea you'd be embarrassed to say anywhere else.

Family who knew you long before you had anything at all figured out.

That kind of trust opens up something inside you.

Psychologists Arthur and Elaine Aron have spent decades studying what close relationships do to us.

Their answer is that we grow.

The people we let in widen how we see the world, and over time their perspectives and even parts of who they are become part of us.

In one of their studies, people took noticeably longer to decide whether a trait described them when it described someone close to them instead.

The line between me and you had started to blur.

With the right people, you get to explore parts of yourself you'd never risk showing anyone else.

Things like the idea you're not sure about yet, or the person you might be becoming.

There's a whole extra level to life when you allow yourself to live it, to feel it, and to be part of a shared experience.

None of this comes free, though.

Anything you let yourself love that deeply, you can also lose.

Relationships end.

People change.

Everyone we love will eventually leave us or be left by us, and the grief can run as deep as the love did.

After the September 11 attacks, Queen Elizabeth II sent a message to a memorial service in New York.

In it was a line drawn from the work of psychiatrist Colin Murray Parkes: grief is the price we pay for love.

I’ve shared that line many times, and I likely will again.

A price means a trade.

You pay it because you received something worth having.

Those who choose to never trust will avoid ever receiving that bill.

But they also never experience what it buys.

Now, let’s make two things clear.

First, some people will make the decision to never trust anyone, fully understanding all of the above, because they feel it’s the best decision for themselves.

That’s their decision to make, and I respect that.

My issue is making that decision on behalf of others who have yet to appreciate what they’re giving up by doing so.

Second, none of this means sharing everything about yourself to everyone on day one.

That's a different kind of mistake.

Healthy trust is built through small steps.

Brené Brown borrowed an image from her daughter's Grade 3 classroom in relation to this concept: a marble jar.

Every time someone keeps something in confidence or turns up when they said they would?

A marble goes in.

Break that trust and marbles come out.

The jar fills slowly, via smaller moments far more often than any grand gesture.

Last week I mentioned setting the table before it's time for dinner, referencing building relationships you’ll need before you need them.

Trust works the same way.

Nobody fills the marble jar easily in the moment, or the week, they finally realise they need it.

The best way to build it is the same as the best way to find a good friend.

Be someone worth trusting.

Here are a few ideas regarding trust worth pondering:

Go first, a little: Share something real, a worry or a story you usually keep to yourself, and see what comes back to you. Most people will meet openness with openness.

Don't let a burn harden into a rule: When someone lets you down, give yourself time to be hurt, and talk it through with someone that’s in your corner. What you want to avoid is that hurt becoming a steadfast rule for everyone who comes after.

Notice when caution has outlived its purpose: Some wariness is wisdom. Some of it may be an old betrayal that’s still making decisions for you. If you catch yourself testing people who have done nothing but stand by you, it might be time to leave the test behind.

Think about what you pass on: If you have kids, or younger people who look up to you, the way you talk about trust will shape how they love. "Trust carefully and let people earn it" will serve them far better than "trust no one."

The worst advice I ever heard was to never trust anyone.

Ok, maybe ’the worst’ is an exaggeration but it’s pretty darn close.

It robs someone of something precious, without them ever getting a say.

The best advice I ever heard was the opposite.

Trust people.

Build relationships that go far deeper than just the surface.

Fall in love.

Have your heart broken.

Go all in on the things you love, and do the things that lift you and inspire you.

Live your life.

Don't skirt around the edges of it, hoping nothing goes wrong.

That's being, not living.

The most unforgettable moments in my life have been those shared with people I trusted wholeheartedly (and wholeheadedly).

If I’m honest, so have some of the hardest.

But I wouldn't trade either.

The burns healed, and each of them taught me a useful lesson.

The highs are so worth it.

Those moments of being fully seen and completely safe with another person are like nothing else I've felt.

Life itself is one human interaction over and over again.

That's just the way it goes.

You can spend every one of them with your guard up, or you can choose to let a few people all the way in.

If I could sit down with my younger self?

I'd skip the warning and pass on the best advice instead.

Yes, he'll get burned.

He'll grieve.

But he'll also experience the peaks and valleys that make up a fulfilling life and end up surrounded by people who appreciate him completely.

Not just the image of him.

And you know what?

I’ve yet to meet anyone who looked back and wished they’d let fewer people in.

If you have 15 minutes (even if you don’t), check out Frances Frei’s talk on “How to build (and rebuild) trust.”

Frei is a Harvard Business School professor who joined Uber to help rebuild its culture. She breaks trust into three parts: authenticity, logic and empathy.

Watch it here:

🤝 Children Around the World Share the Same Instinct to Help - Researchers watched 336 children aged 4 to 9, from a German town to a herding village in Kenya, play the same games, and in all six communities most kids stepped in when a partner got stuck on a box (an estimated 75% to 88% of them), with culture shaping mostly how they helped rather than whether they did. Read more → (Earth.com)

🦌 North America’s Largest Wildlife Bridge Has Cut Collisions on a Busy Highway by 91% - Elk, bears and pronghorn were once struck on Colorado’s I-25 as often as once a day in migration season, so the state built a grass-covered overpass across all six lanes, and within nine months of it opening, wildlife-vehicle collisions had fallen by 91%, and one biologist’s favourite moment was a photo of a mother elk leading her calf safely under the highway. Read more → (Colossal)

🧬 Scientists Found a Way to Grow a Never-Ending Supply of Cancer-Fighting Cells - Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of USC worked out how to multiply immature immune cells in the lab while keeping their ability to mature, then engineered them to recognize cancer, and in mice the cells slowed both blood cancers and solid tumours, which is early-stage work but a hopeful step toward more accessible treatments. Read more → (ScienceDaily)

📚 A Tokyo Nightclub Swapped Dancing for Reading, and People Loved It - For one daytime session, the underground club SPREAD in Shimokitazawa turned its dancefloor into a low-lit reading lounge where guests settled in with books they brought or bought on the day while DJs played ambient music, with books swapped between strangers and the option to get up and dance once the session wound on. Read more → (DJ Mag)

📜 The World’s Most Mysterious Book May Simply Have Been Put Together in the Wrong Order - No one has managed to read the 600-year-old Voynich manuscript in more than a century of trying, and two researchers now think they know one reason why: its pages were probably bound out of sequence by someone who couldn’t read it either, a finding that won’t crack the code yet but gives every future codebreaker a far better place to start. Read more → (Live Science)

Galápagos petrels can fly up to 2,000 kilometres across the Pacific to feed.

That’s like flying from Toronto to Miami just to grab a quick bite.

After feasting at sea, some of them come home to nest on farms.

They return after dark has fallen and tuck their nests into burrows and crevices within the green highlands of Santa Cruz Island.

Blending their natural instincts with the agricultural landscape that surrounds them.

They were so good at keeping out of sight that many of the farmers whose land they nest on had no idea they were there.

Then Paola Sangolquí's team discovered more than 70 of their nests.

Paola grew up on Santa Cruz.

Spending her childhood on the beach amongst the sea lions, iguanas and bright red crabs the locals call zayapas.

Her father is a bird guide and he taught her how to tell the Galápagos petrel from its lookalike, the Galápagos shearwater.

This became her passion as she became a marine biologist, and for the last three years she’s led the petrel work at Fundación Jocotoco, an Ecuadorian conservation group.

In April of this year, Princess Anne handed Paola a Whitley Award in London, a prize often called the Green Oscar.

She is the second Ecuadorian to win one, and she chose to share the credit with the rangers, farmers and fishers she works alongside.

A Galápagos petrel weighs about half a kilogram and spends most of its life at sea.

In the 1970s there were around 27,000 breeding pairs in total.

Roughly a decade later, fewer than 3,500 remained.

What happened?

Introduced rats did plenty of damage, as did farming stretching its way into the highlands where the birds nest.

Today, the petrel is listed as critically endangered.

Practically all of the Galápagos is protected with about 97% of the islands’ land designated as national park.

The nests Paola's team discovered sit outside the park in the other 3%, on private farms.

It was farming that unknowingly pushed the bird toward extinction.

Now Paola is working with the farmers to pull it back from the edge.

On land, the danger surfaces from animals that people brought with them.

Rats, feral cats and pigs all love to feast on petrel eggs, and their chicks.

When the team uncovered the Santa Cruz colony, their nesting season was nearing completion and many of their chicks had already been attacked.

As a result, only two made their way out to sea.

After surrounding the colony with strategically placed bait stations, the team installed motion cameras designed to instantly detect and alert them to any activity, most specifically, rats.

Guess what happened after the bait stations were set up?

24 chicks survived.

So, what was in it for the farmers?

Well, for starters, the rats that eat petrel eggs also eat crops.

On Floreana Island, where Jocotoco is also active, rodents managed to wipe out 80% of their corn produced in 2023.

After the initial attempt to clear them?

Farmers then reported harvesting 90% of their corn.

Win-win.

Ok, so twenty-four chicks from one colony is a great result.

But that won't save a species.

Paola's team have now satellite-tagged 15 of the birds in order to learn where they go once they depart the island.

Because out there above the ocean?

No bait station will help them and no tracking device could guide them back.

The expanse of the ocean presents a new set of challenges with the birds now facing warmer water, plastic they mistake for food, and longline fishing boats operating out beyond the marine reserve.

Paola has also stated that rising sea temperatures make their trips for food longer and tend to cost them more energy.

By studying the data from the satellite tags, her team hopes to gain valuable insights outlining where they feed, and where their routes cross paths with fishing boats.

Further helping to protect them and to learn more about what they need to survive.

Make the help worth saying yes to: The same rat control that saves petrel chicks protects farmers' crops. People find it easier to protect something when it protects them back.

Start with the patch you can change: Paola can't control what happens out at sea. She can control the rats around one colony, and there the chick count went from two to 24.

Pass on what you know: Paola's father set the table by inspiring her love of seabirds. Now, years later, her project takes local schoolkids out to the nests to educate on what the birds are up against.

I love Ecuador, and have been lucky enough to visit twice.

It's a stunning country with beautiful countryside, fantastic people and incredible food.

One specific memory from those trips has never left me.

We took a day trip up into the volcanoes above Quito, where the mountains look back over the city.

At the top, there’s a swing, just rope and a wooden seat.

When it swings out, the ground drops away and it feels as if you're hovering above Quito.

It's one of the strongest memories I have of anywhere I’ve been.

I can vividly recall thinking to myself “this is what it must feel like to be a bird.”

Yet in those two trips, I never made it to the Galápagos.

As someone who loves to explore the globe, has an appreciation for our natural surroundings and the animals we share this planet with, I’ll make it there someday.

Most of us have to travel a long way to experience something rare.

Paola came across hers right at home, in her backyard.

The island.

Then, she chose to take decisive action and team up with the local farmers and help look after it.

When I do finally make it there?

I'll still be going for the tortoises and the sea lions just like everyone else.

But I'll be thinking about Paola and keeping an eye out for her petrels.

If you’d like to see Paola and the petrels for yourself, here’s a short video on her work:

There's likely a bunch of old jingles living inside your head.

Maybe it's a breakfast cereal or a chocolate bar or something totally random that became an earworm specifically for you.

For those who grew up in Australia like I did, it might be Louie the Fly, or Sid the Seagull telling us all to slip, slop, slap.

They’re sounds we haven't thought about it in decades.

Then we hear four notes and all of a sudden we're eight years old again, cross-legged in front of the telly.

The Avalanches, an electronic duo from Australia known for their innovative use of sampling and eclectic soundscapes, have created an entire album out of that feeling.

I see these guys as Australia's sample kings.

Their ability to weave together sounds and genres into cohesive and emotionally resonant tracks is impressive.

It’s earned them a reputation for pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved through sampling and this album has done nothing to change my mind.

Their latest effort, No Bad Memories, was released earlier this month.

And I've barely listened to anything else since.

No Bad Memories is their fourth album, marking a significant milestone in their impressive 26-year career.

Robbie Chater, of the Avalanches, said the plan this time was "eight to 10 songs, with no concept,” resulting in a feel-good party record they'd hoped to knock out in six months.

It didn't quite go that way.

The resulting album is packed with 31 tracks and more than twenty guests.

And what a guest list it is.

Karen O. Jamie xx. Panda Bear. Rivers Cuomo from Weezer.

Mike Patton from Faith No More.

Haley Joel Osment, the kid from The Sixth Sense, all grown up and doing voiceovers.

Even Carly Simon drops in, by way of a sample.

Somewhere along their creative journey, the album revealed its concept after all.

Advertising.

The jingles, start-up chimes and shiny three-second logos of the eighties and nineties.

Chopped up and flipped into catchy pop songs.

If you're from my generation (or even the one before it), this record will absolutely tickle your nostalgic funny bone.

The first single, Together, builds a garage-inspired dance track out of an old Nokia ringtone.

Anyone who owned one of those indestructible bricks will recognise it within seconds.

Then Suzanne Ciani appears on Our Love Is Alive.

She's the synth pioneer behind the pop and pour of a Coke bottle in the famous commercials, with Chater referring to her as "one of our heroes."

Superfun! is a games console that never existed, and Mike Patton narrates its ads in a send-up of the Sega versus Nintendo wars.

If you picked a side in that fight as a kid, you'll grin the whole way through.

And then there's Blue Shadows with Karen O, where everything slows down and becomes beautiful.

I find the best albums are those you can put on and let run from start to finish.

This is one of those.

Not every track is a winner.

With thirty-one songs in about 52 minutes several are linked by sketches or fake ad breaks and those interruptions can wear thin at times.

But the vast majority of this album absolutely slaps.

With one NME review referring to it as "as good as pop music gets."

You won’t get an argument from me.

Play it front to back: It’s an album so treat it as such. The ad breaks and interludes are the glue, and they make far more sense in order than on shuffle.

Ask what you’re really missing: When one of those jingles hits, notice where it takes you. The sound is just the inspiration, the memory was always yours.

Listen with someone your age: Half the fun is turning to the person next to you and asking, "Hang on, was that...?"

This record plays tricks on my memory.

Some of the sounds take me straight back to a specific moment in life.

Others, I just recognise as familiar sounds.

Like the whirrr of a hard drive booting up or a beep I'd forgotten I ever knew.

While plenty of them just let me drift away, and they’re the ones I love most.

Chater was able to put his finger on why in an interview with SPIN.

Talking about the ads he grew up with, he said, "It was a shared experience. It's much more fragmented now."

These days, he says, "We don't even share the same ads as each other anymore."

He's right.

When I was growing up, there were only a handful of TV channels or radio stations, so everyone knew the same jingles.

Today, two people can sit side by side on the same couch and experience two completely different worlds.

So those tunes have become something rare.

Memories millions of us share, down to the last note.

It’s easy to be cynical about where the sounds came from.

The band certainly are.

It’s quite remarkable to consider they've taken a pile of leftover sales pitches and served them back to us as music.

The album title was inspired by an old floppy disk ad.

And while those disks are long gone, likely along with everything we ever saved on them.

The jingles are still here with us.

Before you move on, here’s the recently released video for I Give Everything I Have 2 U with Loaded Honey, featuring a grown-up Haley Joel Osment:

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

The clocks shifted back here in Canada this weekend.

For the next few months, darkness will arrive before dinner.

In Tromsø, in northern Norway, the sun doesn't rise at all from late November to mid-January.

And the locals have a saying for it: "There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing."

When said in Norwegian, it rhymes: Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlige klær.

It reads as advice about your choice of jacket, and essentially, it is.

Think of it this way.

When you dress for the day you've got, not the day you wish you had, the day becomes easier.

Kari Leibowitz grew up hating winter.

Then the psychologist spent a year at the University of Tromsø.

"I originally went to understand how they survived during the winter," she said.

In doing so, she found countless people who loved it.

Together with psychologist Joar Vittersø, she embarked on a mission to measure it.

Their study surveyed 238 people in the middle of winter, spread across Oslo, the Tromsø region and Svalbard, where winter averages approximiately -16°C.

Each person rated ten varied statements about the season, like "I love the coziness of the winter months" or "I find the winter months dark and depressing."

The further north people lived, the more they liked winter.

Svalbard scored highest.

Oslo scored lowest.

So were the northerners worse off, living in all that dark?

No.

Wellbeing came out the same in all three places.

What lined up most with wellbeing was mindset.

Wherever people lived, those who saw winter in a better light were more satisfied with life and felt more positive emotions.

It was a survey, though, so it can't and won’t prove the mindset came first.

Also, only about 16% of the people they wrote to replied.

Start with your socks: If the cold keeps you indoors, fix that first. Leibowitz swears by wool base layers. A proper toque/beanie helps too, especially with a head like mine 😆

Book one winter-only thing: Pick something you can only do this time of year, like an outdoor skate or a night by the fire, then put it in the calendar and stick to it.

Change the commentary: Notice how often you announce that you hate the dark. Once a day, swap the complaint for something you can enjoy about it. Leibowitz's example is watching the sunset from your window while you work. Magic!

It’s common to review the weather forecast soon after we surface each morning.

Then read it as though it’s an actual verdict on the day ahead.

It’s raining today so we can’t do X.

It’s too cold today so we can’t do Y.

In reality, the weather only represents half of the conversation.

The other half happens in how you prepare for the day.

Like when you reach for warmer socks and your winter coat.

Just like when we prepare for anything in life, make a sound decision, and you can embrace the conditions with confidence.

Make poor choices and you’ll be uncomfortable all day.

Adapt to current circumstances and make thoughtful choices, though.

You can still find plenty of joy in the day, regardless of what the forecast says.

Maybe that's why the Norwegians made their saying rhyme?

It has to be easy enough to remember at seven in the morning, in the dark, with one boot already on and the other awkwardly just out of reach.

It’s a great reminder that the weather can be unpredictable, and it's best to be prepared for anything.

So let the forecast have its say.

Then dress yourself properly and always have the last word.

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.

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