And it may not be family anymore
For years, my Thanksgiving message has always been about why we should be thankful for more than just this one week. A few years ago, I even wrote an op-ed for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about celebrating the holiday and finding ways to actualize gratitude in our daily lives.
This year, I’m thinking a little differently.
An article in last week’s Wall Street Journal by Suzy Welch prompted me to reflect on how many of us actually experience this holiday. While we welcome the chance to be with family, catch up on stories, pull out our favorite recipes, and enjoy the bounty of our lives, we also quietly make sure we don’t get overwhelmed by it. By the time we’ve watched some football, gone for a walk, and had our second helping of leftovers, a lot of us are ready for some “private time,” which often includes packing our suitcases to return to our regular lives.
Ms. Welch’s article reports on data from more than 90,000 assessments in which people were asked to rank their most important values. Only 11% of Americans put family as their number one value. Nearly half didn’t place family in their top five at all. As she writes, “Americans may love their families, but most don’t live for them.”
What ranked highest instead was the Greek concept of eudaimonia—happiness, contentment, and well-being. Sixty-two percent of respondents, especially younger people, put it in their top five. Authenticity, self-expression, helping others, and even affluence all ranked higher than family for many people.
In the comments section, readers pushed back hard. Some didn’t believe the data. Others insisted that family should be the number one value—as if admitting otherwise on Thanksgiving week would be sacrilegious.
I was reminded of this a few years ago during a family gathering. I found myself disappointed because I thought one relative wasn’t being particularly considerate in planning a dinner—he went off with his wife and kids and did their own thing. I remember venting to my brother Chuck, who listened and then said, “Not everyone is as considerate as you are. You’ve got to cut them some slack.” He was right. We all show up with different expectations, different needs, and different ideas of what a “good” family holiday looks like.
Now, I don’t see this as a problem. In fact, it may be one of the healthier shifts we’re making. People are paying more attention to what we all claim matters most—our own well-being. When we run into friends, the first question is almost always, “How are you doing?” long before anyone asks, “And how’s your family?” That tells us something. We’re tuning in to the state of the person in front of us, not just the people around them.
Most of us are carrying a lot these days. Work expectations that seem endless—and especially unsettling as AI recalibrates the workplace. Caring for kids, parents, spouses, or all three. Health concerns seem to be omnipresent for ourselves and our loved ones. And, of course, the ever-present hum of political noise in the background, which keeps our cortisol and stress levels running high. Given all that, it’s not surprising that many of us are putting a higher premium on well-being, sanity, and simply trying to feel okay in our own lives.
As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about what I call mental fitness—the steadiness, presence, and clarity we need to stay resilient in a complicated world—I didn’t find these results shocking. If anything, they felt like an honest snapshot of how people are trying to right-size their lives.
So instead of debating whether family should come first, maybe the more useful move is to take this data and begin asking the bigger questions I’ve been exploring in my What’s Next work:
What does it look like to build a good life now?
Not the life our parents expected.
Not the life others assume we should live.
But the life that fits who we are today.
For some people, family still comes first.
For others, it’s a purpose.
For others, it’s health, voice, or simply the desire for a little peace.
What is it for you?
Perhaps the real invitation this Thanksgiving isn’t to distance ourselves from family, but to recognize what truly sustains us—and to appreciate that different things may sustain the people we love. When we can hold both truths at once, the holiday becomes less about meeting expectations and more about understanding one another. It gives us room to show up honestly, enjoy the time we have together, and let others do the same in the way that works for them.
If you’re curious about how people are navigating these shifts in their own lives, I’m beginning a new project around mental fitness—how we stay grounded, steady, and well as we move into what’s next. If you’d like to be part of the early conversations, leave a comment or drop me a note.
