BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM After two years of conversations with founders, executives, and leaders across industries, Liz Tran kept noticing the same thing: the most successful and fulfilled among them were not the ones who knew the most. They were the ones who had made peace with not knowing. Tran, a leadership coach and the author of AQ: A New Kind of Intelligence for a World That’s Always Changing, calls this the Agility Quotient. In a job market reshaped by artificial intelligence, IQ, the capacity to absorb and process information, is becoming less differentiating. What matters now, she argues, is the ability to adapt when circumstances change, fail without shutting down, and keep moving. Building AQ starts with a willingness to get better at something most people would rather avoid: risk and failure. Where you actually are with risk right now Before building anything, Tran suggests starting with an honest assessment. She offers a three-level framework in her book. Think of a stressful situation you have faced recently and consider how you handled it. At the lowest level, you find yourself avoiding the problem or minimizing it without actually addressing it. At the middle level, you acknowledge the difficulty and try to improve your situation, but you are still fighting it. “There’s a sense that you’re feeling like, ‘why is this happening to me?’… There’s a resentment and maybe even an anger about what your situation is,” Tran says. The highest level is choosing to meet whatever comes, failure included. It does not mean you like the circumstances, but it does mean “you’re seeing it as something to move through,” Tran says, “rather than just something you resent.” That shift also, she adds, helps protect against burnout. Trade “know-it-all” for “learn-it-all” One of the most actionable shifts Tran recommends is reorienting from expertise to learning. She draws on the transformation Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella led, changing the company’s culture from one that prized being “know-it-alls” to one that rewarded “learn-it-alls.” In an environment where AI can absorb information faster than any person, the edge no longer lives in what you already know. It lives in how quickly you are willing to experiment, pivot, and reinvent yourself. The new work environment, Tran says, “rewards people who move fast.” That requires letting go of the ego investment in always having the answer. Build an anchor before you take risks Here is where Tran’s approach surprises most people. “Agility requires stability,” she says. The freedom to take risks requires a foundation of security elsewhere. That might be a close relationship, a consistent exercise routine, or a physical place that feels like home, anything that creates reliable groundedness in areas of life you can control. “In order to feel psychologically grounded and stable enough to go out there and take risks, you actually need a cushion of comfort and security,” Tran says. Without it, pushing too far into uncertainty can tip the nervous system into fight-or-flight, which impairs the cognitive functioning you need to navigate that uncertainty well. The goal, she says, is a sweet spot: stretched, but not overwhelmed. Practice discomfort in low-stakes situations Tran recommends building a habit of regular small discomforts to condition yourself for larger ones. She reframes “risk” as “bet.” A risk implies a downside. A bet implies an unknown outcome with a real chance of winning. The psychological difference matters. “You start with risks that are tolerable,” she says. Reaching out to someone outside your existing network. Trying a new setting for a meeting. Setting a goal you are not sure you can achieve. Over time, the threshold for what feels tolerable shifts, and things that once felt anxiety-inducing start to feel manageable. Track recovery rate, not outcomes When Tran began taking more risks herself, she stopped measuring success by results and started measuring it by recovery speed. If you make seven attempts in a week and none of them succeed, “even though that’s to be expected when you’re putting yourself out there for risk-taking and failure all the time,” and you evaluate only the outcomes, you will feel like you have failed. But if you track how quickly you got back up, you begin to see real progress. “What you actually want to do is to track your recovery rate,” she says. The goal is a shortening gap between setback and forward motion. That narrowing gap, over time, is evidence that the tolerance is genuine. See setbacks as doors that didn’t exist before If you optimize for outcomes all the time, Tran argues, “we’re actually missing the broader target, which is to learn and become agile enough to succeed.” Failure, reframed, is how you end up somewhere you couldn’t have planned. She speaks from personal experience. “In my career, I have failed so spectacularly,” she says. But those failures made her current work possible. “What I had planned didn’t work out, but actually, it helped open my eyes to a different path that I never would have mapped out for myself.” The point of building AQ is not that you start to enjoy failure. It is that you start to trust what tends to follow it, and that trust, built through small daily bets over time, is what makes the next risk feel worth taking.     Did this solution stand out? 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BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Wildflowers are associated with rolling meadows, ancient grasslands, and a pastoral world that is rapidly disappearing. The UK has lost 97 percent of its wildflower meadows over the past century, driven largely by agricultural intensification. As Nadine Mitschunas, a pollinator ecologist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, puts it: “Arable land is heavily managed, and everything that’s not a crop is taken out.” But the conditions that make cities hostile to most plants are exactly what wildflowers love. Stress keeps competition down, Mitschunas explains, and without competition, wildflowers can establish and spread. “They need an unstable environment, because in stable environments, only a few species survive.” A perfectly fertilised, well-watered lawn is, paradoxically, a harder place for wildflowers than a cracked pavement or a neglected roadside verge. Cities as patchwork habitats Part of what makes urban environments so hospitable is their variety. Pavements, walls, rooftop patches, riverbanks, and railway sidings each create their own microclimate. That fragmentation, which would be a liability in conventional ecology, becomes an asset for species that would otherwise lose out to dominant grasses or shrubs. “In urban areas they can find their niche, because there are all these specialist habitats,” says Mitschunas. Even defining what counts as a wildflower gets complicated in this context. Cicely Marshall, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences, notes that the line between weed and wildflower is rarely objective. “A weed is any plant growing in the wrong place; one person’s weeds are another person’s wildflowers,” she says. That ambiguity is part of what makes urban ecology so interesting: a neglected strip of scrub that looks like an eyesore to one person may represent prime habitat to another. The brownfield surprise Nowhere is this clearer than on brownfield land, former industrial and commercial sites now largely abandoned on the edges of cities. Contaminated soil, heavy metals, alkaline ground, and low nutrients are conditions that would devastate a conventional garden. For wildflower communities, they can be ideal. Heather Rumble, senior lecturer in healthy urban environments at the University of the West of England in Bristol, notes that the contaminants left behind by industry are not always the enemy. “Sometimes they also have pollutants that some species love, such as heavy metals,” she says. “Species have evolved to use what’s around; heavy metals are naturally occurring, we just move them and concentrate them.” Historically, miners used certain plants, sheep’s fescue and spring sandwort, to locate lead veins underground. The relationship between plants and disturbed soil is nothing new. Low footfall, thin soil, and chemical stress together create conditions where many competing plants cannot survive, leaving space for a surprising range of specialists to move in. What happens when wildflowers take hold The effects reach well beyond the plants themselves. Marshall’s research at King’s College Cambridge found that a single small patch of unmown lawn, converted to a wildflower meadow in 2020, had three times as many species of plants, spiders, and insects as the surrounding grass, and attracted more bats, including more species of bats. “The higher the population of wildflowers, the more invertebrates you have in terms of species richness and overall numbers, and this has effects up the food chain,” Marshall says. Research from Warsaw, Poland, found no meaningful difference in the diversity of species visiting urban wildflower meadows compared with natural ones, suggesting that location matters far less than the presence of the flowers. The timing advantage of urban patches has also begun reshaping pollinator behaviour in ways researchers are still tracking. Bumblebees, which typically disappear in autumn, have now established winter colonies in cities, feeding on non-native wildflowers that bloom outside the traditional season. “In winter you also find other pollinators, like hoverflies, still active in urban areas because of wildflowers, which are a food source,” says Mitschunas. The culture war over long grass Not everyone welcomes the shift. Rumble identifies a social friction running through any attempt to introduce managed wildness into public spaces. “There’s a culture war over urban meadows,” she says. “Local authorities like planting them because it gives them good biodiversity credentials and they’re lower maintenance, but people complain that it looks scruffy at certain times of the year.” That complaint, she argues, is rooted in a cultural preference for manicured green lawns that has come to define what a well-kept public space looks like. In colder months, wildflower meadows are mostly long brown grass, and for many people, that reads as neglect rather than intention. Rumble also notes that the field has long been under-resourced: “There aren’t many urban ecologists and it’s generally an overlooked area in ecology. The research is really complicated, with people getting in the way and all the private land, but it’s getting more attention as people realise how important nature is for people.” Mitschunas sees the attitude shift as necessary, not optional. “We need to accept a bit of wildness and untidiness. We can’t exist as humans alone; we’re part of nature and we need to let nature in.” Across the UK, local authorities are beginning to let verges go unmown, and results are accumulating. Changing the ecology turns out to be the straightforward part; the harder work is persuading people that long grass and abandonment are not the same thing.     Did this solution stand out? 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Reaching the milestone just before Earth Day, Ecosia, the nonprofit search engine, is celebrating 250 million trees planted worldwide, becoming the world’s largest planter of native trees. Since its founding in 2009, Ecosia has built the world’s largest network of local reforestation operations, numbering more than 200,000 tree planters and 125 organizations worldwide. Users’ clicks […] The post 250 Millionth Tree Planted by this Tree-Planting Search Engine Just Ahead of Earth Day appeared first on Good News Network.

Robert Gallery looks like a picture of perfect strength. Broad-shouldered at 6-foot-7, heavily muscled arms inked, the former NFL offensive lineman’s frame fills the chair at his home in Lake Tahoe, California. For eight seasons with the Oakland Raiders and Seattle Seahawks, and before that at the University of Iowa, he built a career on absorbing impact. The damage he carries is harder to see. Gallery estimates he sustained “hundreds and hundreds of concussions.” At the time, he barely registered them. “We called it getting your bell rung,” he recalls. “You see stars, you’re dizzy, staggering, but that was just part of the game.” “You see stars, you’re dizzy, staggering, but that was just part of the game,” recalls Gallery. Courtesy of Robert Gallery Only later did he realize those hits were accumulating into a serious medical issue.  Toward the end of his career, the symptoms became impossible to ignore. He often found himself in a brain fog. The ringing in his ears wouldn’t stop. On the field, he would turn to teammates and ask, “Where are we? What am I supposed to do?” Like many athletes, he didn’t ask for help, and he self-medicated. “When you’re playing in the NFL, you don’t want to give anybody a reason to not have you in the game,” he says, his blue eyes flashing above an easy smile. “There are hundreds of guys who would love to have your job. You never show weakness.” After retiring in 2012 at age 32, Gallery expected to recover. Instead, the symptoms intensified. “The brain fog got worse, the ringing in my ears, the mood swings,” he says. Nightmares turned violent. He thought about ending his life. Even the laughter of his young children could set him off. “I would be sitting in my chair, just shaking with rage, trying not to hurt them.” A brain scan finally made the invisible visible. A neurologist placed his scan next to that of a healthy brain. “There was no denying it,” Gallery says. “My brain looked like it was crumbling.” Weighed down by negative news? Our smart, bright, weekly newsletter is the uplift you’ve been looking for. [contact-form-7] Though chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative condition linked to repeated blows to the head, can only be definitively diagnosed after death, doctors told him his symptoms strongly suggested it. It has been found in the brains of numerous deceased athletes, including NFL players Junior Seau and Aaron Hernandez. Gallery attacked treatment with the same diligence that made him successful as an athlete. He talked with therapists, spent hours in hyperbaric oxygen chambers, tried hormone treatments to lower his cortisol, took antidepressants and supplements. “I did everything they threw at me,” he says. “But I felt minimal relief.” At times, he couldn’t remember his daughter’s name. Gallery says his relationship with his family changed for the better after ibogaine treatment. Courtesy of Robert Gallery His experience reflects a broader gap in medicine. Each year, an estimated 69 million people worldwide suffer traumatic brain injuries from sports, accidents and violence. For 10 to 30 percent, symptoms like cognitive impairment, depression and anxiety persist. And as Gallery experienced, there are few treatment options — and no approved cures.  Gallery’s turning point came from an unlikely source: a podcast. Listening to former Navy SEAL Marcus Capone describe his recovery from trauma and brain damage, he recognized himself in every symptom.  “I literally checked every single box — substance abuse, depression, [thoughts of] suicide,” Gallery says. “I didn’t know if I was going to survive.” He heard Capone say that psychedelic therapy “gave me my life back.” Through their nonprofit VETS (Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions), Capone and his wife Amber have helped thousands of veterans access psychedelic treatment abroad, because it is illegal in the U.S. “Athletes and veterans have a lot in common,” Gallery says. “We’re used to pushing through. Not talking about what’s wrong.” Within weeks, Capone offered him a place in a treatment program in Mexico. Gallery got an EKG to make sure his heart was healthy enough for the treatments and told his therapist he was going to Mexico. She encouraged him but also cautioned him, pointing out psychedelics were illegal in the U.S. and warning him not to go cold turkey on his medications. But he had already made up his mind. “I’m an all-in kind of guy,” he says.  In 2021, Gallery flew to San Diego, then crossed into Mexico with a group of veterans for a three-day treatment at a clinic called Mission Within. He was terrified. “I thought I might not come back,” he says. “But what scared me more was, what if it doesn’t work?” The treatment centered on ibogaine, a psychoactive alkaloid derived from a West African shrub. It is unregulated in Mexico, Costa Rica, the Bahamas and other countries where treatment centers offer therapy in a legal gray area. In Canada, doctors can prescribe ibogaine for medical use.  Robert Gallery and his wife, Becca. Courtesy of Robert Gallery Soon, people like Gallery may not need to leave the U.S. to seek treatment: The Trump administration has granted breakthrough therapy status to certain psychedelics, including ibogaine, to accelerate research. “Psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine compounds, show potential in clinical studies to address serious mental illnesses for patients whose conditions persist after completing standard therapy,” Donald Trump’s executive order states. “It is the policy of my Administration to accelerate innovative research models and appropriate drug approvals to increase access to psychedelic drugs that could save lives and reverse the crisis of serious mental illness in America.” Treatments with ibogaine are infamously unpleasant and intense. “It was like watching a movie of my life playing in the sky,” Gallery remembers. “You’re literally melted into the floor. You can’t move. You just have to deal with all these emotions and feelings that are coming up.” The aftermath was brutal. “The worst hangover times 100,” he says. “I couldn’t function. My motor skills weren’t working. I couldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom.” Staff put him in a wheelchair, and Gallery wondered if he had done permanent damage to himself.  Because these side effects are not uncommon, the clinic follows the ibogaine trip with another treatment: On the last day, participants smoke 5-MeO-DMT, a fast-acting psychedelic found in toad venom. “It put the breaker box back on,” Gallery recalls. “All this weight lifted off my shoulders. The ringing in my ears was gone. The brain fog was gone. I felt like a completely different person.” “As soon as I got back home, I rolled around on the floor with my kids and tickled them, and I enjoyed their laughter,” says Gallery. Courtesy of Robert Gallery Gallery is careful not to frame psychedelics as a “magic bullet.” He still had to work through his difficulties with his therapist and a support group of veterans. Yet he credits the psychedelics journey with his remarkable change. “As soon as I got back home, I rolled around on the floor with my kids and tickled them, and I enjoyed their laughter,” says Gallery, “whereas before, their playing would enrage me.” He says his wife was “flabbergasted” as she watched much of his macho bravado melt away. His suicidal thoughts, mood swings and self-medication disappeared. “I haven’t had a drink since,” he says, disbelief swinging in his own voice. Stories like Gallery’s are tentatively backed by emerging research. A 2024 study led by Nolan Williams at Stanford found that ibogaine significantly reduced depression, anxiety and cognitive symptoms in veterans with traumatic brain injuries. “The results are dramatic,” Williams said. “No other drug has ever been able to alleviate these symptoms.” A follow-up study in 2025 found measurable physical changes: increased cortical thickness and a “younger” brain age after treatment.  Researchers believe psychedelics may help to increase neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to form new connections. Studies suggest compounds like psilocybin reduce inflammation while boosting the brain’s ability to form new pathways. Experiments simulating repeated head trauma in rats found psilocybin helped restore lost brain function. Separate research on brain injuries related to intimate partner violence showed improvements in cognition, mood and inflammation after psilocybin treatment. Gallery co-founded Athletes for Care to help former athletes access treatment and advocate for research. Courtesy of Robert Gallery Still, experts like Frederick Barrett, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, caution about the risks of taking psychedelics, especially outside controlled settings. Psychedelics can trigger psychological distress or, in rare cases, prolonged psychosis. Ibogaine, in particular, can cause dangerous heart arrhythmias and must be administered under strict medical supervision. Now that the Trump administration is speeding up research and aiming to increase access to ibogaine, “we must be clear-eyed about both the opportunity and the responsibility ahead,” notes Betty Aldworth, co-executive director of MAPS (The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). “Psychedelic-assisted therapy is effective, but it’s not a simple treatment or a panacea. Without change, we risk repeating the past, where urgency outpaced evidence and people in need were left to find treatment in alleys or with snake oil. We can responsibly study and safely integrate promising psychedelic-assisted treatments into our healthcare system. Given the alternative, why would we choose anything else?” Despite the uncertainties, interest is surging. In one survey of athletes in the U.S. and Canada, roughly two-thirds of respondents said they would consider psychedelic therapy for concussion-related symptoms. Gallery has become part of a growing network of psychedelic therapy proponents trying to bridge the gap between emerging science and patient demand. In 2025, he co-founded Athletes for Care, modeled on VETS, to help former athletes access treatment and advocate for research. “There’s a lot of guys suffering in silence,” he says. “Just like I was.” In its first months, the organization has helped facilitate psychedelic therapy for about 10 athletes.  Legal and logistical hurdles remain significant. Psychedelics are still classified as Schedule I substances at the federal level in the U.S., though states like Oregon and Colorado have begun allowing supervised psilocybin therapy. Texas has committed $50 million to ibogaine drug development, while Arizona has approved funding for clinical trials, and the Department of Veterans Affairs is funding a $1.5 million grant to research ibogaine. The potential applications extend well beyond sports. Survivors of car accidents, domestic violence and other forms of repeated trauma often experience similar neurological and psychological symptoms.  For now, many patients continue to travel abroad — often, like Gallery, to clinics in Mexico. Experts emphasize caution. As demand grows, so does the risk of unregulated providers entering the space. “People are seeing dollar signs,” Gallery says. “You’ve got to be careful where you go.” Wait, you're not a member yet? Join the Reasons to be Cheerful community by supporting our nonprofit publication and giving what you can. Join Cancel anytime Gallery has been back to Mexico twice. The effects of his initial journey weren’t permanent. After about a year, symptoms began creeping back. He returned for additional treatments in 2023 and 2024. He continues to work on repairing the damage within his family and himself. He still journals, attends therapy and microdoses psilocybin. “I screwed up a lot of things,” he admits, reflecting on the years his family endured his anger and instability. “This didn’t erase that.” What it did, he suggests, was make change possible. “I know what it feels like to feel good now,” he says. “And I never want to go back.” The post Can Psychedelics Help Athletes Recover From Brain Injuries? appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

Taking children to church or teaching them from the Bible is not always easy. They might get bored or become loud, which can be frustrating for parents. On the other hand, there are many kids who really enjoy listening to their parents read Bible stories and who intently follow along. Of course, those little minds might interpret things a bit differently than what they hear, which makes it even sweeter. A mom shared a video of her daughter, Mia, reading the story of creation, and it might just be our new favorite thing. This Bible Creation Story Had Some Plot Twists Mia starts the creation story by explaining that God created heaven and Earth. That part of the story is just how we remember it. But when she gets to talking about the sun, things go a little off the rails. @martinakristian Yall she still working on her fruit ♬ original sound – Martina | Brand Strategist “The sun blowed up and the fire came on,” Mia reads. “Daddy said he was gonna turn it off, but it just hurt his hand.” When her brother tries to help, she wants none of it and makes that clear. Even though she gives her brother a little smack that knocks his glasses off, her mom can’t help but laugh at Mia’s attempt at the creation story. The video went viral, making many people giggle. “She said shut up interrupting me,” someone laughed. “Mia says ‘mind ya business, I know what happened,’” another person joked. “He didn’t say a word after that,” a follower wrote. We could’t help but notice that, too. When you get right down to it, Mia’s learned  the creation story somewhere. She’s just giving it her own dramatic flair. “Mia said this is her story don’t tell her nothing else,” a TikToker wrote. You can find this story’s featured image here.