This time of year brings about many posts about gratitude and what we’re thankful for. I’ll admit American Thanksgiving is one of my most favorite holidays. It’s focus remains mostly on expressing gratitude and spending time with loved ones – whether they are friends or family. It is also a season where many focus on service and giving back to their communities. I love all of these things about this season and regularly practicing gratitude is proven to have many benefits.
So I am definitely on team grateful! Having a mindset of gratitude has so many benefits. If you don’t already have a regular gratitude practice, I highly recommend taking two minutes a day to reflect on something you are grateful for.
Where I get stuck is the narrative around being grateful despite or instead of other valid feelings and responses. As a kid the common response to not wanting what was served for dinner was “you should be thankful you have food, there are children starving in [insert any number of other places beside my family’s kitchen table].” When you wanted the trending sneakers or jeans the response sounded like “there are kids who don’t have warm clothes to wear so you should be thankful with what you have.” As a child of the 80s and 90s, this was parents way of trying to combat the rising consumerism and marketing directly to kids. They wanted to teach us that what we had was fine and we didn’t need the next new thing. As a parent now, this is a lesson I also want to impart on my own children and find it incredibly challenging given the marketing engine all around them.
I see the remnants of these messages in the way gratitude is leveraged in adulthood as well. “You should be happy you have a job.” “Some people don’t have __________ so you should be grateful you do.”
These statements on the surface don’t seem all that bad – I am fortunate to have a job and access to clean water and heat for my home. The problem is that when we use these statements as a way to minimize our feelings or frustrations. Complaining about having to do another load of laundry when you’re tired? You should be grateful you have access to laundry in your home. Dissatisfied with an element of you job? You should be grateful you have a job. Feeling stressed about getting dinner on the table before the evening activities? You should be grateful you have food to put on the table. All of these pushes toward gratitude may seem like reframing negative thoughts into positive ones but in reality they usually bring more negative thoughts. When gratitude comes along with shame, there is a problem. Let’s normalize that we can feel grateful and other emotions at the same time.
You can be grateful and frustrated.
You can be grateful and sad.
You can be grateful and angry.
You can be grateful and ______ fill in the blank here for you.
Begin grateful or having an attitude of gratitude doesn’t mean that you don’t have permission to also feel so many other things too and that is where I think many people miss the mark.
I enjoy writing and sharing ideas with you all through this blog. I do not always enjoy getting up early on the weekend when everyone else in my house is still asleep to write. I get to decide where I want my thoughts to hang out and what is the most productive for me in that moment. I know I want to build a business for consulting when I retire from the public schools. Having a social media presence can help with that and sharing through this blog is part of that.
Finding a way to fit writing into an already full life means carving out time when I could be doing other things. So while I didn’t want to get up this morning to write, I knew I had a good reason to and dragged myself out of bed. The bonus, I got to see the prettiest sunrise from my seat in the living room.
It is okay to be annoyed about getting up early and at the same time grateful to see such beauty in the world. These things can coexist without judgement or shame.
When you find yourself tempering you feelings with statements that start with “I should feel …” STOP! You get to feel however you are feeling. Then think about what is helpful in that moment.
I get to feel frustrated that there is another load of laundry to be done and no one helps. Are my kids old enough to be taught how to do their own? (spoiler alert – we taught our kids to use the washer and dryer around 7 or 8).
I get to feel decision fatigue after an entire day of principal-ing (or teaching or insert job). Deciding what’s for dinner and making dinner can feel like too much. Give yourself grace – cereal for dinner is still a dinner even if it doesn’t hit all the food groups. There’s no right way to feed your family so don’t let social media tell you that if you don’t have a perfectly packed lunch with cute containers and a seasonal toothpick or note then you aren’t really taking care of your family. A granola bar and water bottle in the backpack and buying school lunch is just a good. Same with dinner. If cooking for your family genuinely makes you happy – great! How can you set yourself for less stress here. Meal planning and prepping on the weekend when you grocery shop is one way. Writing the weekly dinners on the calendar or on the fridge so you don’t have to make a decision about what to cook when you get home is another way. Choose a night or two where you kids make dinner or you order take out also. You can be thankful to have access to food and thankful you have the skills for cooking and still not want to make dinner – set yourself up for success in different ways. Hate cooking and don’t want to even have to think about it? Okay. There’s no judgement there either. You can be thankful you have access to food that others prepare for you and your family. Ordering pizza and wings? add extra celery and carrots to the wing order – yay veggies! Look into premade or prepackaged options at your local grocery store or market. It’s okay to let someone else do the cooking.
The main idea here is you get to feel overwhelmed or frustrated or exhausted or whatever you feel. Then you need to decide what you want to do about it – what works for you. Don’t let “should” take up too much space in your brain. I should do this. I should want to do that or have that or make that. Why? Who says? I am thankful for the beautiful sunrise this morning doesn’t have to mean I should enjoy getting up early to write. It doesn’t. But I am thankful for this platform and the opportunity to share my thoughts with you. I get to choose to focus on that.
Don’t let gratitude stay married to shame. You can be grateful AND you can be an other number of feelings. You decide where you want to put your energy and thoughts. Let’s normalize feeling grateful and.
BetsyWright 