Gratitude as a Growth Strategy: How Leaders RISE When They Learn to See What's Working

In this powerful and deeply personal episode, Erin unpacks the hidden relationship between resentment, worthiness, emotional capacity, and gratitude. You’ll learn why hustling for validation keeps leaders stuck, why gratitude is NOT soft — it’s strategic — and how "stacking the evidence" can rewire your identity, rebuild your confidence, and protect you from burnout.

If you've ever struggled to feel proud of what you’ve accomplished… or if you've been waiting for someone else to notice your work… this episode will shift something inside you.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why gratitude is the antidote to resentment
• How leaders numb themselves without realizing it
• Why “hustling for worthiness” keeps you stuck
• The neuroscience behind gratitude and identity
• The “Stack the Evidence” tool that builds confidence
• How to grow emotional capacity in high-pressure roles
• Why gratitude makes you a leader people want to follow

Key Concepts & Takeaways:

• The opposite of gratitude is resentment — and resentment is unprocessed disappointment
• You can’t feel joy when you’re still clinging to anger
• Gratitude is not soft; it rewires your brain for clarity and confidence
• Your brain believes what you rehearse
• You can stack evidence of failure… or evidence of growth
• Gratitude creates expansion, capacity, and alignment
• Leadership influence grows when leaders notice the right things

Reflection Questions:

1. What resentment am I still carrying that is blocking gratitude?
2. What evidence have I ignored about my success or growth?
3. What am I grateful for today that I used to pray for?

Links & Next Steps:

• Join the January 100% Leader Cohort
• Book a December Clarity Call
• Subscribe to Erin’s Saturday Morning Email

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Transcript

1:05

Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Aspire for More with Erin podcast, where I am so excited to welcome you to what I hope is a very impactful episode that I really want you to take in to not just hear, but I really want you to feel it because I believe that gratitude can change your life the way that it changed mine. But you have to be able to understand it, to understand its impact on your life, to understand the space that it creates in your life that can be filled with negativity if you don't have it. The opposite of gratitude is resentment. And if we can let go of resentment, we can actually open up and create space for gratitude. And I really wanna show you why gratitude is actually a growth strategy. and one that will strengthen your leadership, your confidence, your identity, because of the stories that we tell ourselves. And honestly, it will grow your capacity because you will now have the capacity to breathe again. It because you're gonna have to pause to see what's in front of you. And that goes back to the power of the pause and just truly how meaningful this is in our life. And we're gonna talk about why we don't pause. Hustling doesn't equal success. Hmm. Okay, so settle in folks. I hope my goal, my belief is that this one might just shift something inside of you. I really wanna start with a moment that completely caught me off guard. Um, a moment that I realized maybe something is off. Inside of me, you know, like, hmm, why can't I feel or see the good things in front of me? And that, I mean, gosh, there have been like several moments of that in my life, but I was reading the book, the gifts of imperfection by Brene Brown, and she was talking about her and she was talking about how she numbs her, or she has in the past numbed her life with constantly being busy. Now, there are many things that we can numb our life with. We've got shopping, we've got eating, we've got drinking, we've got drugs, we've got. Sex. Oh my gosh. I just said that on a podcast, We have gossip, we have anger, we have caregiving, we have controlling, and we have being needed. All these things, all these things can control your life. It doesn't have to be just the really bad ones. And she was talking about how the constant need to be busy and to never sit with yourself and, and to never really see everything that you've done caused her to constantly be busy and hustle. And she called it hustling for our worthiness. I have to say, I hustle for my worthiness. Why did I hustle for my worthiness? Why do you hustle? For your worthiness? For me, it was because if I worked harder, I thought somebody would see me. And when you work harder, you don't really see everything that you've done. You are waiting on somebody to say to you, Hey, good job. Hey, I see you. Hey, look at everything that you've done. You're waiting for somebody to say that to you. And the longer it takes for somebody to say that to you, the more angry you get, the harder you work, the more sacrifices you make and the more numb you feel to it all. Because when we hustle for our worthiness, we're numbing the emotions of our life because we're too busy. We're too busy to take the moment. We're too busy to stop and see, to stop and smell the roses, right? So when we numb our life, because we're getting angry, because we're feeling frustrated, because we're feeling resentment, we feel no joy. We feel no happiness, we feel nothing. And what happens is that this protective mechanism comes on and because I'm hustling for my worthiness and nobody's seeing me and saying, Hey, I see you working so hard. I'm working harder, I'm working harder, I'm making sure all this stuff is done. And then when somebody says that I'm doing something wrong, boom. The protective mechanism comes up. I am defensive and I can no longer receive any information. Oh, that's deep. What's your protective mechanism? How do you protect yourself? If I'm hustling for my worthiness, I'm not feeling worthy. So if somebody comes to me and they have some interesting feedback, some feedback that I need to hear, maybe I am not doing things. Maybe I'm working too hard in this area that I don't need to be, and I need to actually make my focus on somewhere else, which would actually be beneficial to me, and yet I don't want to hear it because I'm closed off. I'm protected, I'm defensive. I can't even be thankful that you're going to save me time and energy. Right? When she wrote those words in that book. I saw myself for the first time. I also understood slowly but surely over time. This was a definitely a process for me, but the more anger, resentment that I held onto, the less space I had to receive the joy, the positive feedback. It's like I ignored everybody's thank yous. You are so wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for this and thank you for that. And you've really changed our lives and you were such an asset to this community and we love you. Thank you for, for leading a community that takes care of my loved one because I was holding on to the resentment of the people who didn't see me. I never really felt the people who did, and I held so tightly to that anger because I was comfortable in it, that I never saw the impact that I had. I mean, I saw it, but I didn't feel it, and that kept me stuck. That kept me walled into a corner, and that was my fault, and that was something that I could fix. After I became aware of it and the moment I became aware of it, I saw the patterns of my life unfold in front of me and I'm like, oh my God, what have I done? and it just goes to show you that awareness. Awareness is the first step in the beginning of growth. When I become aware of everything that I resent, I can actually start making a list of everything that I'm grateful for. That is opposite of what I resent because it's there. I just had a habit of always looking at it from the angle of being resentful, and it was a pattern that I didn't know existed. So here's the core idea. I always thought rolled my eyes became very sarcastic when somebody said to me, let's talk about what we're grateful for. And I'm like, oh my God, I don't have time to talk about this. This is something that you teach to your kids in November. This is when they're wearing the pilgrim hats and the Turkey paper, brown bag vests. This is not what professional people do. We are busy. I do not have time. Big mistake, because I thought gratitude was so soft. It not even a skill, just I didn't have time for it. What I now understand on a very visceral personal human level is that gratitude, real conscious gratitude is strategic. When you practice gratitude, you are literally training your brain to look for what's working. Look for what you want rather than looking for what you think is there, right? Because what you want and what you're looking for specifically, that matters because your brain will believe whatever you rehearse. This is why the story you tell yourself is so important, and this is why as a leader if you can help influence the story that other people are telling themselves, then you can help create change for you. So if you rehearse stress, you are going to find more of it. If you're looking for stress, if you're looking for the the caregiver down the hall who's not doing what they're supposed to be doing, if you're looking for the next shoe to drop. You're going to find it because you're training your brain to look for it. just like if you were looking to buy a certain kind of car, all of a sudden you see that color everywhere. I really like this slate gray color. If I get a new car and now I'm seeing that slate gray color everywhere, it's because I became aware that it was a color, if I'm walking down the hall and I wanna feel stress subconsciously, not obviously consciously, I'm gonna be looking for somebody doing something they shouldn't be doing. God knows there's plenty of that. Right. If I want to rehearse self-doubt because I'm feeling imposter syndrome or I'm in a room that I feel like I don't belong in, I am going to be finding my brain's going to be scanning and looking for evidence that I don't belong evidence, that I'm gonna be disappointed. So I can expect it evidence of more work to be done. So if we know that's true, because we're doing it. Right. What happens when you flip the script and when you say, I'm gonna look for something to say nice. In this moment, I'm going to look for something to be thankful for in this moment. When you take 20 seconds to acknowledge what's going well in this moment, in the moment that you're looking for disappointment, self-doubt, stress, because that's like maybe our default. But if you take 20 seconds when you're in that room and you feel uncomfortable and you say, here's what's going well, I'm not sweating all the way through my clothes. Yes, I'm thankful for that, or they ask me to be in this room. I'm thankful for that. Or my perspective is different from theirs and I'm thankful for that. Guess what happens? Your brain slows down, your heart rate may slow down, and you start feeling a little bit more confident. Gratitude can start creating patterns of confidence for you because we're stacking evidence of proof rather than the evidence that you don't belong. Gratitude will restore your own agency and it will rewire your leadership identity. It is a practice that I practice all the time, and this isn't cute. This isn't some soft skill like woo woo up in the air like I used to think it was. It's actually neuroscience. It's actually science. It's provable. This is how transformation happens. Please take my life as an example of this. Although I fall off the gratitude wagon all the time and find myself in resentmentville a lot, I can literally say to myself, what are you thankful for now in this moment? Because I know that it can change. I know that I can get back on the wagon. Of gratitude as a growth strategy for me, because I know what's important to me and I know what I want. I know where I was, and I know that I don't wanna be there anymore because when you can see what's available, when you can see that I earned to be in this room, that my perspective is needed in this room, that I am valuable, that I am worthy, that I did all those things. And that now I finally see that I did it and I had the evidence to stack it up. I start transforming. It's those evidence stacking that's important. It's pattern recognition for you. I want you to be able to say, to identify and see these patterns that you find. When something negative happens to you, what is your first thought? When you are rejected, when your idea is not, um, accepted, what's your first thought? When you make a mistake, what's your first thought? That is a pattern, that's evidence stacking. If over time you're constantly believing what you're telling yourself, I'm not good enough. I knew that I would be wrong. Why would I ever get that? Right? Right. Whatever that thought is to you, I'm not enough. That's evidence stacking, but I wanna teach you what I do with my clients. Stack the evidence of your success, stack the proof. Some of us are wired to stack the evidence of our failures, of why we shouldn't be doing this, but we can actually stack the evidence of success as well. Every day your brain is collecting evidence. The question is. Are you collecting the evidence of your failure or the evidence of your growth? Because which one serves you? When you think about the last 30 days? Oh, let's break it down to 24 hours. Can you tell me five things that went good? I want you to do that. In fact, give me three to five things that went good. How long does that take you? Now give me three to five things that went bad. How long does that take you? We go home potentially. If you are a naturally optimistic person, then maybe you don't do this, but if you are a neutral in the optimistic viewpoint or the pessimistic viewpoint, maybe you do this. And I know if you're a pessimistic mindset, I know you're doing this. We go home thinking about what we missed, what went wrong, what we have left to do, what we're scared of, and we're stacking the evidence of failure. And that habit alone is what is fueling your burnout. That habit is not humility. It's not growing humility. It's not keeping you humble. That habit is making you small, unseen, frustrated, resentful, but when you are aware of the things that you still need to do. And you're going home thinking about what actually did I accomplish today? Because that's a valid question. What did we accomplish today? What went well? Where did I show up with courage today? When did I do something that I didn't want to do that I was scared of, and I did it anyway? What hard conversations did I navigate? Well, how did I stay grounded in that moment and not emotionally react? Did I respond or did I react? Right, and who really made a difference in my day today. These are all questions that can help you stack the evidence that you're actually doing a good job, that you're actually making forward progress, that you're not stuck, you're moving forward in very small steps. Or maybe today we made a huge step. We gotta give ourselves credit for that. And when you stack the evidence, you create expansion confidence, you're aligning your actions with purpose and progress, and you feel a smidge of peace, maybe just a little bit, and that's important. Gratitude. What I've learned is not saying that. Everything is wonderful that the sky is this beautiful pink and blue gold and orange colors and everything is just going great. That's not what gratitude is. Gratitude is saying even in the middle of the mess, the big hot mess, that is life inside of the community sometimes, that I can see myself growing. I can see my team growing and I can see the progress that we are making together. And if you can't see that now, know that you have to start stacking the evidence so you can, because your growth, your ability to be thankful for the opportunities that are growing your capacity, that is what's going to heal and. Help you avoid burnout. Your growth, your team's growth is what's going to rebuild the confidence after a tough mistake, a tough loss, a tough meeting. That's the growth that you need to build and rebuild your confidence, and it's that growth is what's going to change your identity. It's gonna rewrite the story that you may be telling yourself. About the experience that you're going through right now. Your gratitude as a growth strategy is what's going to help, help you get to the top faster, get to a hundred percent faster, to feel better in your own skin, and to be grounded in the vision and the goals that you have for your community. Gratitude does three things that every leader needs. And that works inside of a community. Three things. Gratitude will expand your emotional capacity. It makes you able to hold more, more change, more pressure, more success without breaking. It's the capacity that we need as leaders to be able to be successful every day inside of our community. The reason why burnout is becoming more prevalent inside of our communities is because Our responsibility grows faster than our capacity to handle and to meet and to solve the problems that are being thrown at us. So how do we grow our capacity? We are thankful for the experience. We take a time to set and pause and reflect and then figure out how we can do things better. It's that moment, that pause that helps us understand. How we can change, how we can handle more and how successful we were in the moment. Because if we just solve the problem and move on, we don't learn from the insights that we have from the data that we have. Number two, gratitude protects you from resentment. Again, resentment is the opposite of gratitude because we don't even know what we have because we're always looking for what we don't. Resentment is what grows inside of you when gratitude isn't being practiced. Resentment is unprocessed disappointment and uncommunicated expectations. We expect people to see us. Yeah. Rather than us defining what we want them to see in us and to communicate, I believe it's time for us to take the narrative back and we start telling people what they need to see in us instead of waiting for people to see that in us. gratitude. When you stack the evidence and you start creating the narrative for what people need to see in you, that you start talking about what you've done because you're stacking that evidence. People start changing the story that they are telling themselves about you, and in return, you have the gratitude that keeps your heart open, your mind clear, and your energy regulated because you see you. You see your impact, you see the work that you do, and there is so much gratitude for you. You're not giving that power to somebody else. You're keeping it for you. And number three, gratitude makes you a leader that people want to follow. I, I, I tell this story a lot, so if you've heard it, I apologize. But there is one resident who taught me that gratitude was the way to my associate's heart. He thanked them for everything, and he barely had to ask for anything. And I realized in a world where people are pulled in a thousand different directions, a simple loving gesture, a thank you. Hey honey, you didn't have to do that. A hug if it's appropriate. This lets people know that you see them, that they're safe with you, and when leaders or residents feel grateful, they're more observant. They, they're more present, they're more fair, and they're more human. That resident that I'm referring to in this story. Had the most influence of anyone inside of my community. he was the one who knew the most about my associates more than I did. He, the one who noticed the most of our associates, gratitude sharpens the awareness and I told his family how much I learned from him. And how powerful gratitude was and how my management style, my leadership style changed by watching the way that he interacted with the residents. I wanna give you something that you can put into action today. You know those three key points in awareness for you. Gratitude expands your emotional capacity. Gratitude will protect you from resentment and the baggage, the heavy baggage that resentment is for you to carry throughout your life. Trust me, when I let it go, I felt so free, and that gratitude makes you a leader that people want to follow. So every day, every morning or night, I want you to ask yourself evidence, gratitude questions, what went better than I expected today? A very simple question, what went better than I expected today? I was actually expecting this to go really bad, but it, it surprised me. That's important for you to know where did I show up as a leader that I want to be today? Who am I becoming? How did I show up in that and what am I grateful for today? That I used to pray for yesterday and I wanna say for to that question, and this whole year has been an exercise of me being thankful for every opportunity for every 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, up to however many people downloaded a podcast. I am so thankful for the opportunity. I am so thankful for the opportunity to pour into people's lives that I coach, that I meet on LinkedIn, that I meet when I speak. I am so thankful for that opportunity. I have learned to live in the moment and when people are asking me if I'm making money for these events, which sometimes I am and sometimes I'm not. I don't get resentful about that question because I am more thankful for the opportunity. Because when I'm thankful for the opportunity, I feel joy. There are no expectations, and I just wanna put my best face forward, my most authentic self forward, and pray, and hope and strategically plant opportunities for things in the future. And by doing that, I feel more calm, more clarity, more confidence in myself. To be myself, because gratitude doesn't just change your circumstances. It changes you inside of your circumstances, and that is the biggest asset that you have, the biggest accomplishment in your life because working inside of a community is hard. Working inside senior living is hard. We cannot change. The majority of what senior living is and the, the, the obstacles that come our way, the problems that constantly come our way, the situations that we have to navigate, but we can change how you interpret them, how you feel about them, and the capacity that you have to solve them. And I do believe that gratitude is a way. It is the way to change you inside of those circumstances. So I wanna leave you with this. You do not grow by hustling for your worthiness. You do not grow by being harsher in the stories that you tell yourself. The more you verbally beat yourself up, the stories that you tell yourself and you do not grow. By pretending that everything is fine and keep on accepting more responsibility that you do not have the capacity to meet, but you do grow when you pay attention to the truth of who you are by stacking the evidence of everything that you have done, and gratitude will build upon that evidence stack and it will make you stronger. It will make you more centered, more authentically, grounded into what you're capable of and what you can be capable of in the future to constantly rise again and again. And if no one has told you lately, you have come a very long way. And if you're listening to this podcast today. You are investing in yourself, and that's what matters. We need to stop waiting for people to see us and start believing in everything that we have accomplished and the fact that we survived another day, and we need to start telling ourselves. What we are capable of, what we've already done, where we're going, and we need to start creating the narrative of what people need to see in us because that's how we change the story. That's how we become unstuck, and that's the future. People are so busy they don't even see themselves or see the forest through the trees. And what makes you think that they can see you. You see you first, and then you start telling people what they need to see in you and watch the power transfer happen. But you gotta see you and the work that you've done first. So stack the evidence. And then start sharing what you see. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for being here and giving your time to me today. I want you to believe that gratitude really is a tool and a very strategic tool for your own growth. So if you want more content like this, you can sign up for my Saturday morning emails, look in the show notes, because there's a link there to do that. Also, we're opening up our next, um, a hundred percent leader cohort that's starting in January 13th. These last seven weeks have been amazing and looking forward to a next group of leaders that will be coming in, and you're about to enter a really fast paced next eight weeks. Take the time and find the evidence that you, what you've done this year. And I am actually opening up call Times in December that are going to be for Clarity coaching calls. So if you're interested in a clarity coaching call where we can talk about what you accomplished, how to stack the evidence and what to plan for in 2026, I'm excited to, to meet you. So look in the show notes for all the links and as always, aspire for more for you. Knowing that you're already enough and share this email with your team because they need to know how to look for the evidence and stack the evidence of their growth too, because gratitude is a growth strategy. Have a great holiday week. Talk to you soon friends.