This is an ABC podcast.

Imagine you're an elite athlete.

You spend years pouring yourself into the singular goal

of being selected to the Olympics team.

Training at four o'clock in the morning,

every morning, every day, through the weekends, through holidays.

And then the day comes and you don't make the cut.

But your best friend does.

How much broken expectations and how much public humiliation that can be as well.

And if it's not handled, it can be a really huge cause of resentment. This is Dr. Carrie Howells. She's not an elite athlete, but she has

worked with them as part of her research on gratitude. And this scenario played out with an athlete

in one of her research projects, a woman named Jocelyn.

She made the Rio Olympics team, but her best friend Alice fell short.

And they'd been training together and best friends for eight years.

And this was huge disappointment and the resentment in Alice was huge.

So she turned that resentment on Jocelyn by backbiting her

and gossiping about her.

And that in turn made Jocelyn feel really resentful towards Alice.

So they were both in a stuck space of resentment,

not being able to name it up.

So when the finals came and it was a point where everything really counted and the pinnacle

of her career had led to this, even though she'd had all the training and focus attention

...