If you’ve been in my orbit for a while, you know I’m picky about gratitude. Most of what’s out there feels fluffy, performative or totally disconnected from how confidence actually works in the real world. So when I say this conversation stopped me in my tracks, I mean it.

My guest is author, speaker, and creator of the GRASP method for confident leadership, Tara LaFon Gooch—and she didn’t come to this work from some polished, camera-ready place. She came to it terrified of visibility, of speaking of being seen at all. What drew me to her isn’t just that she teaches gratitude, but how she talks about it: not as a bypass or denial, but as a deliberate, responsibility-heavy practice that reshapes how we see ourselves.

And yes, we challenge each other a bit in this conversation—which only makes it better.

We get into the kind of gratitude nobody posts on Instagram. Gratitude for past versions of yourself you’re not proud of. Gratitude for moments that bruised your ego, cracked your confidence or left you questioning your worth. Not because those moments were “good,” but because pretending they didn’t shape you keeps you stuck and confidence doesn’t come from erasing your past—it comes from owning it without shame.

There’s also some real neuro-nerd satisfaction here. We talk about how the brain actually changes when gratitude is practiced the right way—not as affirmations you don’t believe, but as repetition that creates new neural paths. Tara shares a metaphor that stayed with me long after we recorded and genuinely shifted how I think about mental habits, resilience, and self-trust.

And maybe my favorite part of this episode: the move from gratitude to responsibility. Because at its heart, confidence is deciding who you are going to be next and acting like that person on purpose. Not overnight. Not perfectly. But consciously.

This Is Why You’ll Want to Listen

• A radically different take on gratitude that actually strengthens confidence instead of numbing reality
• Why being grateful for your past mistakes can be more powerful than forgiving yourself for them
• How confidence grows when you stop fighting your story and start integrating it
• A neuroscience-backed way to think about mindset shifts that doesn’t rely on fake positivity
• The subtle but critical link between responsibility, self-leadership, and real confidence

Tara LaFon Gooch is an award-winning Leadership Speaker, TEDx Speaker, and 2X Best-Selling Author specializing in the transformative power of confidence. Learn more about Tara and the GRASP method at taralafongooch.com.

Let’s talk about positivity—because if I hear one more person confuse it with denial, I might flip a table. I’m not talking about the smiley, everything’s-fine, toxic kind that makes you want to roll your eyes in a waiting room. I’m talking about the real version. The kind that exists even when life is messy, inconvenient, and objectively annoying. The kind that doesn’t require you to gaslight yourself into pretending everything is great when it clearly isn’t.

What got me thinking about this is how often positivity gets framed as naïve or fake, especially if you’re smart, skeptical or allergic to fluff (like I am!). Somewhere along the way, being realistic became synonymous with being negative. And honestly? That’s not confidence. That’s just living on edge.

I started wondering what it would look like to flip that default—assuming things are mostly okay unless proven otherwise, instead of waking up every day braced for impact.

This episode digs into the difference between performative positivity and the kind that actually supports confidence. The internal kind. The kind that changes how you interpret setbacks, how much stress you carry around and how much energy you waste on stuff that doesn’t deserve it. Not because you’re ignoring reality—but because you’re choosing how much power it gets to have over you.

If you’re tired, cynical or just done with self-help nonsense and want a version of positivity that actually makes you steadier, calmer and more confident (without turning you into that person), hit play.

This one might surprise you.

You know that tightness in your chest, the racing thoughts, the moments where you freeze because something tiny feels huge?

Hello, anxiety.

We all experience it one form or at one time or another and some of us live with a constant low-grade hum of it in the background.

So I wanted to find out how, exactly, we can be anxious AND still move through life confidently. Still make decisions, show up with presence, speak our truth and hold ground when our brains are freaking out.

To help me on that quest, I invited Danita Young, a transformational coach who’s spent years helping people untangle the knots anxiety ties around their lives, to join me on the podcast. I wanted to go deeper than symptoms and triggers and she was more than happy to get into how to keep our heads and hearts in the game when anxiety is closing in.

Danita didn’t promise a life free from tension or racing thought but she explained how to show up anyway, fully and confidently, and that, my friends, is a game changer.

One of the most eye-opening things for me was how much our bodies register anxiety long before our minds recognize it. Anxiety impacts our physical posture, breathing and even how we listen or respond in conversations. And while it can feel like anxiety is the boss of us, there really are concrete ways to root into your confidence best without pushing anxiety aside or trying to crush it.

By the end of our conversation, I had a toolkit, not an empty promise of magic pill we’re so often fed by the algorithms.

If you’ve ever felt paralyzed by anxiety or like it was shaping every move you made, make some time to tune in and really listen.

Takeaways from this episode include:

• Anxiety isn’t failure—it’s your survival brain running overtime.
• Most of what keeps us stuck is learned, not innate.
• Confidence doesn’t require erasing anxiety; it’s learning to move with it.
• Being aware of your emotional baseline (“your frequency”) helps you make conscious choices which are key to confidence.
• Surface fixes like distraction or medication can help, but they won’t free you from the root cause

Danita Young, Neuroscience Coach, CBT and NLP brings together neuroscience, nervous system regulation, physics and her own and Align™ tracking to help individuals overcome anxiety at the root. To learn more about Danita, connect with her on Instagram @danitayoung.