Reality Check: Gratitude Isn’t Always Easy
When people are asked “What are you grateful for?” the most common response by far is “family” — either the family you grew up in or the family you are building yourself.
Expressing gratitude for family can sound like an easy cliché, but in many cases, it is completely genuine.
If we’re honest, as parents of four young kids, we find this a bit curious.
Gratitude, we have learned, is not just something we feel, it’s something we do. When practiced, gratitude has a whole bunch of benefits, whether it’s the release of dopamine that relaxes us or the way it can strengthen relationships with the people around us.
But, just like most things we intuitively know will help us become the best versions of ourselves (eating well, regular exercise, or getting enough sleep), these things are just easier not to do.
Putting energy into positive behaviours should be easy, but it’s not. Life is busy and gets in the way for so many reasons, but among all the distractions we face, family is by far the biggest. And for parents of young kids, this is especially true.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor did a study in 2021 showing that a parent spends an average of 4.67 hours per day (31 hours per week) supporting a child under the age of six. Contrary to our expectations, that number steadily rises as kids get older, to 5.34 hours per day (37 hours per week) for children aged 13 to 17, because of time spent getting them to things like part-time jobs, activities, and friends.
These numbers reflect the time spent on a single child. For families with multiple children, the data was imprecise but suggested some “economies of scale” made the time investment per child less. Still, families with two or three kids easily surpassed 40 to 50 hours each week in labor.
Our experience with four kids absolutely reflects this.
Family getting in the way does not simply apply to children. Pets, parents, and partners all carry with them a heavy investment of time (10, 4 to 24, and 14 hours weekly, respectively), not to mention the emotional energy that goes into any of them.
All of this to say... family takes a lot of work. But for some reason, it’s still the thing we most often say we’re grateful for.
American social psychologist Leon Festinger’s theory of “cognitive dissonance” showed that people value things more highly, regardless of whether the outcomes justify it, if they have put a high level of effort into them. We value the things we put effort into, whether that thing is objectively good or not.
It turns out we can be grateful for, and deeply value, our family, even if the one we are building (or came from) has fallen below our expectations, purely because of the amount of effort we put into caring for and maintaining it.
So… does this mean that many of us put family on a pedestal because of sunk cost? Or does it imply that the things we spend time on are actually the ones we value the most?
Let us take you inside our lives for a minute. Over the past few weeks, we have been hustling hard, getting ready for and then actually running our retreat, Waypoint. If we’re being honest, we’ve been impatient, distracted, and distant from the kids and the daily tasks of running the house, which has, in turn, made the kids… how can we say this… challenging. In an effort to get our attention, they have each taken on their own form (and to varying degrees) of being an asshole. We said it.
As we have shared before, our family is an unconventional but beautiful blend of a few different families into one. We had to intentionally piece ourselves together, and now, years and thousands of hours later, we have built something truly special. Even so, once in a while, we can find ourselves feeling resentful of the time it takes to sustain it.
Those words themselves, that we find ourselves feeling resentful, are even hard to write, but they’re honest. It was only a matter of time before we got a reality check.
We packed our bags for Waypoint and left for three incredible days with everyone who joined us there. Without Wi-Fi or cell service, we were not able to consistently check in on the kids. On our last day, we packed up and made our way home, realizing we would be back just in time to see Cole’s football game. We stopped in and watched, proud to see him play. We had to leave a bit early to pick up the other three kids from school. When they saw us, they ran, shouting how much they had missed us while we were gone. They all asked, “How was the retreat?!” before even starting to tell us about their days.
Reality… check.
It did not take long for the problems to pop up again. Arguing over seats at dinner, bedtime routines, and packing lunches all came right back in full force. But stepping away and then coming back reminded us not to take the family we have built for granted. We have done so much work to put this together, and it’s one of the things we are the most grateful for. That feeling of gratitude re-energized us, reminding us to keep putting the work in to preserve and protect it, and to do the work to remember to be grateful for it, which is not always easy.
Gratitude, when practiced and paid attention to, can be a great guide for where our energy needs to flow. It’s a compass to help direct us toward the things that matter most.
We know we’re not alone in falling off course in practicing gratitude for the things we have and focusing instead on what is “wrong” or what we don’t have. So, as we do, to help us stay on track in the future, we developed this framework as a reminder and wanted to share it in case it helps you too. It’s called the GLOW gratitude framework, and it is all about staying connected to the practice of gratitude:
G = Ground yourself. Pause and shift your attention to something small you often overlook (a sip of coffee, sunlight on the floor, a text from a friend).
L = Linger. Savour it. Stay with that feeling for 20 to 30 seconds instead of rushing past it.
O = Observe. Notice how it shifts your mood, energy, or perspective. Gratitude works because it rewires your brain. This step makes it stick.
W = Write it down. Capture it in some way, jot it down in a journal or even on a scrap of paper. Seeing it written makes it more real.
We’re not perfect, far from it in fact, and we need to be reminded to stay grateful for the incredible things we have in our lives. We hope this framework helps you, and whether it’s gratitude for family, a friendship, or even just the day in front of you, we hope it helps you find contentment, intention, and happiness in your life, just as we are trying to have it happen for ours.