The Birthday Expectation Trap — Why Do We Wait for Others to Celebrate Us?

0:00Hey there, if you're enjoying this podcast, please take a moment to leave a review and to follow or subscribe. Don't forget to share with anybody that you think might be interested. Your support is greatly appreciated. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful and it's the best way for us to reach more people and grow this wonderful community. Thanks again for listening. Well, they say that life is what you make it and if life is but a series of moments strung together one by one, then I got a real time reminder of how true life is what you make it really is. It was my birthday and I woke up with all the preconceived notions of how I was supposed to feel along with the high expectations for how others were supposed to make me feel. Our birthday is the one day of the year that we are encouraged, even expected, to brand us our entitlement card, a kind of 24 hour golden ticket to be selfish and indulgent.

1:00Honestly, shouldn't we actually be celebrating the mother who bore us? And so we plan our birthdays accordingly with all the associated expectations and attachments. Simultaneously setting the stage with cliches of what self-care looks like from the outside while on the inside we quietly keep score of how others are celebrating us. I'm done ready either way to provide an acceptable answer to the inevitable question. What are you doing for your birthday or a photo to respond to the hope your day was amazing comments? I resisted the urge to check my social media and feed my ego with a puffed up proof that I am liked or even loved and made myself a cup of tea instead. My husband had left a card propped up on the kitchen counter and I smiled thinking to myself that he always finds the funniest cards. My smile was quickly interrupted by the intrusive, judgemental voice of the scorekeeper in my head that said, yeah, but no flowers?

2:06I was proud of myself for calling the thought out for what it was, just a thought and disempowered its hold on me by replacing it with a thought that served me better and moved instead into the living room to do my morning reading. To my delight, my husband had made me a fire, score! Take that unwanted voice in my head, wait, who's playing the scorekeeping game now? Okay, I sat down, crossed the like it on the floor with my book and my tea feeling the warmth of the flame on my back. Life is good I thought. Then I noticed that the humidifier was on. Wait, he must have filled it up for me. He knows how the fire dries out my skin, how thoughtful and unexpected, big score again. I'm so fortunate I told myself and when he came into the room I was effusive with my gratitude for his knowing just what I needed. It was so thoughtful of you to think of filling him in a fire you must really love me I said, he looked back at me confused.

3:09I didn't do that. My scorekeeper was in its element, the thoughts came crashing in, oh I said and thanked him for the fire and the card read two points and reached for my phone. I repeat, life is made up of moments and each moment is what you make it. In that moment I allowed myself to be led by all the limiting beliefs of what a happy birthday is supposed to look like and instead of reading which is actually something that would have really brought me joy in that moment I resorted to external validation. The birthday wishes they were coming in at quite a pace already and out of the 36 or more people so far they were less than three that I could even recognize or tell you anything about. If you can't say something nice don't say anything at all came into my head and I wondered if just saying something nice without any associated true connection is worse than not saying anything at all. I started to think about the people I hadn't heard from yet, setting up more expectations

4:13for the people that I care about. Why do we do that? Why do we set the bar so high for others to celebrate us and so low for celebrating ourselves? Why can't we believe that we deserve to be celebrated the other 364 days of the year? How can we expect others to celebrate us if we don't celebrate ourselves every day? If I'm counting the conditional things that are met as wins and my judgy saboteur, score keeping voices keeping track of expectations that are not met, isn't that the same thing? What would be different if we lived up to our own expectations instead of relying on others to prove our worth? By the end of the day there were over 200 happy birthday wishes and as I write this the belated messages are still coming in. Don't get me wrong. If you wish me a happy birthday I'm grateful for the gesture but in this moment I am even more grateful for the reminder that it is up to me to celebrate and honor myself and I

5:16release you and by so doing release myself from all attachments of how we are supposed to be. Let's consider each and every day our birthday and celebrate the opportunity to consciously create our lives one moment at a time. I'm Lisa Hopkins thanks so much for listening, stay safe and healthy everyone and remember to live in the moment. If you enjoyed this episode I invite you to dive deeper into cultivating a life of creative possibilities with my new book, The Places Where There Are Spaces. It's filled with personal stories and insights to help you embrace living in the moment. You can grab your copy by following the link in the show notes or wherever books are sold. Let's keep the conversation going and growing.