I don’t really care for my birthday anymore.
At least, that’s how I’ve been feeling for the past few years. The problem with birthdays is that they involve such a great deal of hype, for such a short amount of time. We set up our lives so that there’s one day a year for us to be celebrated in all the ways we want to be celebrated. We’ve got a 24 hour window to get all the gifts we want and to get all the acknowledgment we deserve. Everything has to be PERFECT - or it’s a disappointment.
So when my birthday is on its way, I tend to assume that things will be a little disappointing, that something will probably go wrong. I’ll invite people out and they won’t be able to make it, or we’ll book dinner reservations, but the restaurant won’t have the dessert that I want. I have come to expect my birthday to be a little bit of a bummer.
What's up with that??
This year, my coach challenged me to celebrate the hell out of my birthday. He challenged me to come from a place of celebration, to BE the celebration, rather than to come at it from a place of needing everything to be perfect in order to be satisfied. And I did!
When I look back on what I actually did on the day, there isn’t anything particularly special about it: I took a few work calls, my husband and I went to a nice restaurant, and then we had dessert. And things didn’t go perfectly either: We had to complain a little bit in order to get seated, and it took us a while to figure out where to get that all important dessert. But it felt different.
I came into the experience determined to have the day be special. It was special because I decided it was special. With that energy, I was able to see everything as an opportunity. The fact that we didn’t get seated on time led to us getting a bunch of tapas on the house! The hunt for the perfect dessert became an adventure, and we came out victorious in the end!
Celebration isn’t something that happens to us. Celebration is a way to BE.
So the next time you have a birthday (or any other special day), take a step away from the Facebook affirmation train and focus on bringing celebration from within, rather than searching for it out there. Birthdays are special because YOU are special, not the other way around.
Originally posted on Linked-In