The Lazy Genius Podcast - #294 - How to Celebrate Your Own Birthday

Episode Date: December 26, 2022

My birthday is December 27th, so tomorrow if you’re listening to this on the day it releases. I think that it is a very common problem for adults, maybe even especially for women, to know how to celebrate your own birthday. But y’all! It’s your birthday! It should be celebrated! So let’s talk about how.   Helpful Companion Links Jamie B. Golden’s Instagram post about birthdays Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius Kitchen or The Lazy Genius Way! Download a transcript of this episode.   This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, you are listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 294. How to celebrate your own birthday. My birthday is December 27th. So tomorrow, if you're listening to this on the day it releases, I am 41 years old and I am getting closer and closer to my inner self age of 43. I feel like I have been 43 for the last 20 years. But I think that it is a very common problem for adults, maybe even especially for women, to know how to celebrate your own birthday.

When you're a kid, the adults in your life plan your birthday for you. They throw a party or make your favorite food or, you know, any number of things. But once you become an adult, no one really does that for you anymore. Or you might have a parent who still wants to throw you a party, but for a lot of folks as you get older, you like celebrating with your family, but you also want a separate celebration with your friends, right? It shifts. And even for the friend stuff, you might feel weird throwing yourself a party or inviting people

out to celebrate your birthday. You want someone to remember or surprise you or not surprise you or whatever it is. There can be a lot of layers to it. But y'all, it's your birthday. It should be celebrated. So let's talk about how. I'm going to open this episode by reading a quote from a woman. who repeatedly tells me she is not my demographic, Jamie B. Golden. Jamie shared this post on her own

birthday just last month. And no, I will not read this in an Alabama accent. I would not disgrace Jamie's delightful voice with my poor attempts to sound like her. So here is Jamie's post. My best advice about birthdays is plan it yourself. If it means being alone with a great book and your favorite takeout, do it. If it means flying across the country and seeing your favorite musician, do it. If it means planning a shopping trip to your favorite store and booking your own group reservation at your favorite restaurant and asking your friends to prepare a 30-second presentation on the topic of their choosing and then playing a breakout game you love, do it. Me planning my day meant there were no unmet expectations. I met all of them.

Then there was room for extra delights. And then she lists some things that I will not list here, but I remember Jamie also saying at one point that we don't want to make other people be mind readers. We kind of want people to read our minds. And that does make sense in some ways. Like being surprised and delighted and known is so beautiful. But that's not the only way to be known. Sometimes people don't know what you want unless you tell them. And some of you might say that that takes the value out of it. That takes the fun out of it. If they don't know on their own, it doesn't really count. If a friend has to be asked by you to celebrate your birthday, then it doesn't really count.

So I do get that, but I want to offer an alternative way of thinking. If you stay in that place of wanting your mind read, of wanting to be surprised, wanting people to initiate, and then it doesn't happen what happens within you, what happens to you in that relationship? My guess is you're super disappointed, maybe even hurt. And that person did not mean to do. disappoint or hurt you. They just didn't know. It is rare as an adult, I think, that we have birthday traditions that people can count on or that we would even know what a friend's birthday

plans are. Like, I have friends that I love so much. And I know they'd like to celebrate their birthday with me. But I also know that I'm not their only friend. They might have other ways that they want to celebrate different people or groups of people to celebrate with. I'm not their only person. So even approaching them and saying, what do you want to do for your birthday? To me is an incomplete question. There are more variables than just me and that person. And sometimes those variables do keep us from just initiating birthday plans with a friend, let alone actually planning the thing, right?

I also think that because we as adults often have such specific ideas of what would make a great birthday, kind of like Jamie said with the books or the concert or the big day with friends. We also know that our friends with birthdays might have a different desire for their birthdays than we have for their birthdays. Like you might think that a surprise party for a friend would be so fun, but it's her worst nightmare, not only because she doesn't want to be surprised, but because she prefers one-on-one time, not group time, especially when people in the group don't know each other. But because you you might value that, it's easy to think that someone else will. We all value different things.

We're all such different people. And we're all trying to weigh those layered complexities of adult birthdays and our relationships and our friendships. Do they have plans? If I make plans, am I interfering in plans that already exist that make? didn't include me. Am I making it awkward? Like those things could be happening in the minds of your friends for your birthday and you're just sitting there waiting for someone to initiate celebrating with you and then you get really sad when they don't. I did not expect this episode to start this way because we're like super close to being a downer. But also I think a lot of us experience our birthdays as though they are a bit of a downer because we had unmet expectations. So if you're a

person who really loves for other people to celebrate you without prompting, you have have a choice to make. You can prioritize that desire. You can. And accept that it will often be unmet and will maybe bring disappointment and hurt feelings, at least sometimes, right? Or you can prioritize the desire, but communicate the desire to your people, to a partner or friend or a group of friends. You can say to a spouse, for example, that you would really love a surprise party one day. or you'd really love to wake up on your birthday and have the whole day planned. You know, you can communicate specifics of how you want to experience your birthday ahead of time and then kind of let the chips fall where they may.

That is a very valid approach to birthdays. But I'm going to say that for the rest of the episode, I'm going to align with Jamie's advice. Playing your own birthday. We are long past the days of getting surprised with a new doll or a bike or getting picked up early from school to go get ice cream, you know. Those kinds of birthday memories are. so fun as kids. And if you have kids yourself, you likely enjoy surprising them and making them

feel seen and known on their birthday. But adult birthdays, I think, are different. They just are. And the sooner we can embrace that and get comfortable planning our own birthday celebrations, the more birthdays will actually enjoy. We'll be right back. Aw, isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. So let's talk about how you could go about

planning your birthday. I have a short list of ideas and perspectives just to get things rolling. There isn't an order here. Just some thoughts to consider. Number one, what you do this year, does not have to be what you do every year. What you do this year does not have to be what you do every year. We love tradition. We love repetition, or at least some people do. And we also think that once we commit to something, it's locked in forever. You know, if you get fondue, do people still get fondue? If you get fondue with like these three girlfriends this year, you're not obligated to continue having fondue every year with these three friends. Traditions are lovely. And you can totally do them, but they're not the rule.

So take the pressure off that whatever you do this year is not what you'll have to do every year. Number two, take a whole day. This is bossy big sister time, but at minimum, you should have an entire day to celebrate your birthday. Now, it doesn't have to be on your birthday if you work, you know, and you can't take the day off or whatever, but at minimum, I want you to have an entire day. I'm not trying to be elitist with this either. I know that there are a lot of roadblocks for many of you. And taking a full day to have fun for yourself is hard.

If you're a single parent with no family around, that's incredibly hard. If you have an incredibly demanding job that doesn't allow for time off or at least time off without being accessible, that's hard. Maybe you have a parent you're taking care of and you can't just leave. I get it. I get it. And that is so challenging. So I want to say that I see you in that. And I recognize that it's not just simple for everyone.

And at the same time, I think there are perhaps things that maybe you can do to create that space. You can ask another relative to take care of your dad for the day. You can ask a coworker to cover for you while you're taking this day to yourself. You can hire a babysitter for your kids. Or if you simply just can't do that, you can do things with them that day that you love to do, right? Eat the food you love. Go to the park you love. let them watch their screen so you can watch the movie you love.

I think it's too easy for a lot of you listening to make excuses that are in some ways legitimate, but they're not deal breakers. And I just don't want you to do that. I want you to have a day, a full day to celebrate your own life, at minimum a full day. Do not fight me on this. If you want to fight me, swap rolls. Imagine someone that you love is super resistant to spending a day celebrating their own birthday. you would move heaven and earth.

You would not let them say that their birthday doesn't matter or that it's just too hard to take one day a year to do fun things. You would get bossy big sister with them just like I am with you. You are worth celebrating. Please celebrate yourself for a whole day at minimum. Okay. Number three. Spread out the celebration.

You don't have to do just like one thing, you know, one party. You might want to do something with your immediate. family and then something different with your parents and then something else with that group of friends from work and then another thing with friends from church or yoga or book club or whatever. You don't have to have just one single communal celebration. You can spread it out amongst different people if you don't want them to overlap. I know that's a simple one, but I think sometimes we forget that that's allowed. You can do more than one thing.

Number four, if you have someone who is in your life and has been for a long time and you you want to have a birthday anchor with them, make one, make your birthdays an anchor. Emily P. Freeman is my dearest friend and one of my oldest friends. And every year for each of our birthdays, we go out to lunch. Sometimes it's on the actual birthday. Sometimes it's a day or two before or after. But we always have lunch. We always have a birthday lunch. We either get burgers or Greek food, depending on the weather. And then we, like if we have time after to, you know, go for a walk or hang out at a coffee shop or whatever we do. But at minimum, we have a birthday lunch every year. My birthday is tomorrow. Hers is in April. And we've done that for years, years.

If there are other celebrations, birthday celebrations, sometimes we're at each other's and sometimes we're not. Remember what you do one year. Doesn't have to be what you do every year. But at minimum, we have lunch together for our birthdays. And if you are a person who feels a little guilty about doing something just for your birthday with a friend, maybe doing this birthday share type thing with a buddy or a group of buddies, it takes some of that guilt away because it's for everybody, right? I don't want you to have guilt at all. But if you do, that might help. It might take the edge off a little bit.

Okay. Number five, do whatever you love. Do whatever you love. And it can be a few things you love, right? This year, I'm going to go to a movie with my husband, which we never do. I'm going to have a meal with my family. I'm going to have my birthday lunch with Emily. I'm having dinner with a few friends at a favorite restaurant.

And I got a hotel room in my town. I'm going to be by myself. Maybe go shop at a favorite store or something. Just sit in a tub, read a book. I don't know how I'm going to spend those hours, but I know I'm going to be alone. I mentioned that to one of my friends last week that I had gotten a hotel room and was going to go be alone.

She was like, ew, I would never want to be alone. And it made me laugh. And also, that's normal, right? do whatever you love. The important word here is you because it's your birthday. It is okay and in fact quite normal to celebrate your birthday differently than other people celebrate theirs. Jamie loves breakout rooms. I cannot imagine spending a birthday in a breakout room, but that's because we're different people. Do whatever you love to do. What makes you come alive. What is super fun, what you rarely get to do and make it happen. Ask the people in your life to do the thing with you or to help

you create the space so you can do that something yourself. Just ask. Do whatever you love. Number six, plan a little. You don't have to plan a lot. You don't have to plan everything. But thinking about this earlier than the day before your birthday, it will go a long way. You can even think now, even if your birthday's in July. Like, what would be fun? Start thinking about it. Maybe plan a little. Mark off the day in your calendar.

Look to see if that favorite band is on tour. And if you can go see them. Ask the best friend who lives across the country if she wants to pencil in that birthday weekend and maybe y'all take a little trip together. Maybe. Just plan a little. And number seven, birthdays are meant to be fun, to be a celebration. If your birthday is not fun for you or a celebration of you, I want you to take a small step

in changing that. I mean, I'd love you to take a lot of them, but we're going to start small, right? There is nothing that should consistently and forever interfere with you being celebrated. I get that there are seasons with broken relationships or loss or unprocessed trauma or any number of huge heavy things that make you hate birthdays, but it does not have to stay that way. And I don't want it to for you. So if there's any part of you, big or small, intense or just kind of meh, that's just real shruggy about birthdays and you're just dismissing your own.

And I know that there are some of you like that listening. I want you to take a small step toward changing that, whatever it is. Because ultimately, birthdays are meant to be fun. They are a celebration of your life. And your life is beautiful and worth celebrating. I don't know you or know your life and I still know that that is true because every single person matters. Every single person deserves to be love and seen and what better time to do that than on that person's birthday. So don't feel guilty about inviting friends to do something with you.

Don't skip your birthday because it doesn't really matter. Don't get yourself a special coffee that day and then call it quits. No. Value your life and your own. time and a chance to do whatever you love for at minimum one day. Remember what you do this year? You don't have to do it again. You can celebrate different ways with different people. You don't even have to celebrate with people. But your birthday is worth celebrating. So right now, let go all the weirdness. Embrace that you're a grown-up and you might have to do it yourself and that's okay. And then maybe plan a little, just a little. Mark something down. Send a text. See if there are any specials on that cool downtown hotel that you've always wanted to stay in. Do a little something that moves

you towards celebrating yourself because you should. Y'all know I don't should you very often, right? So when I do, you know it's important. You should celebrate your birthday. It's really fun. I'm about to celebrate mine and I can't wait because I planned it. I'm doing what I want to do. And it's going to be so rad. So thank you, Jamie Golden, for being our. wonderful example of how to plan our own birthdays. All right, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This tip comes from Jesse Metzger, and it is a dream for parents who are stressed out by bedtime and or laundry.

This is what Jesse writes. My girls are four and six, and I have been driving me bananas when it comes to grabbing pajamas at bedtime. They rip through their pajama drawer, trying to find matching tops and bottoms. So I decided once that they will only sleep in one piece pajamas, either nightgowns or footy pajamas. It sounds so silly, but it has saved me so much grief every evening. A surprise benefit is that I'm not tempted to buy cute two-piece pajamas because I know it doesn't fit our lifestyle. Jesse, I love this so much.

This one is one of those like ridiculously simple, feels a little bit silly ideas that can legit change things in your life in major, major ways. I've said it 17,000 times if I've said it once, but I'll say it again. We think the answer to our stress is a big overhaul, big solutions, big systems, big changes. But that is never the answer. It's just not. The answer is tiny choices like this made day after day that create a life that is oriented toward what matters to you and these simple solutions to lower stress. is Jesse's bedtime routine with her girls completely without stress now? I bet not. But it's less stressful because of this simple decision. And I know I mentioned laundry earlier. Jesse didn't.

Jesse didn't mention that. But I feel like washing and putting away one piece pajamas is way easier than two piece matching ones, right? So this is just such a great tip. So thank you for sharing this with us, Jesse. And congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. Okay, y'all, that's it for today. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week. You ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called

Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to becoming you wherever you get your podcasts.