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Chapter 1: Why do birthdays often lead to feelings of disappointment?
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Pod squad, it is birthday month for Amanda and me. I actually am turning 50 this month. And if you've ever had a birthday that made you want to crawl into bed and also throw a parade and also cry in the shower and also text every person you've ever loved, like, are we okay? Welcome. God, birthdays can be hard and weird and great.
It's like birthdays are not just cake day. They're also this like like a pop quiz, like some kind of referendum on do I matter enough? Do I have enough friends? Am I loved? Have I achieved what I should have achieved? Am I really seen?
And if the answers don't arrive in the exact form we imagined with enough texts from friends, big plans made by our people, constant enthusiasm, proof we're loved, our brains go, well, that's that. I am unloved. Good times.
In this episode, we try to name why birthdays bring so many feels, how expectations set us up for failure, and how comparison eats us alive, how time turns into this tyrant with a clipboard.
And we talk about what actually helps, telling the truth about what we want, dropping the secret tests, practicing gratitude for what is, and most importantly, learning how to celebrate each other outside of one single day. So none of us is waiting once a year to find out if we're loved. Okay. Let's take a deep breath and let's fix birthdays. Okay, well then. What you doing, babe?
Why are you screaming like that?
I just had to do a yawn, ha, ha. I just needed, I needed to do a yawn, ha, ha.
Okay, what's a yawn, ha, ha? What is the ha, ha?
I just, you know, sometimes when you're like, yawn, ha, you ever do that? Like you need to like, ha, it out.
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Chapter 2: What are some revealing birthday stories shared by Glennon, Abby, and Amanda?
And as soon as he fell asleep, John sneezed and he woke up and I was like, This is your child now. Yeah, this is your child now. Forever. Wow. And then you feel crazy because you're like, you can't do anything to control that. Allegedly. But I feel like you can. I feel like you can too. It's so scary. I'm telling you, we can control it. I have done it. When I'm out in public, I'm like this.
I like swallow it. Oh, so I should have filed that day because I could have done it. No, but my eyeballs are about to pop out of my face. Well, so were mine. I was holding a baby for eight hours and basically with my body upside down. Yeah. Yeah.
This isn't either here nor there. Well, it is here and there is where it is. And everywhere. What I do because I am not a very good person is that I blatantly withhold my God bless you's when the sneezes are too loud. Are you kidding me? Nope. I can't believe you haven't noticed. I will not say God bless you to a loud sneezer.
I hope that the ancient teachings are right and that's where the devil gets right in your body. And that's what I do. I do not bless the devil out of your body. If you're going to be so loud as to instill the fear of God in me, then I'm going to hope the devil sneaks right in during that sneeze.
Oh my God. That is really embarrassing.
I'm bad.
I feel embarrassed for you.
Okay. So if you're having a bad day, karma is my boyfriend. Okay. Feeling a little possessed? Yeah. That's because I did not bless you.
Yeah, it's the back to school. Oh, I assumed you knew that the karma was coming back to you, Glennon.
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Chapter 3: How do birthdays serve as a test of worth and love?
Yonapalooza over here. I'm trying to record a podcast. It's just, I can't stop thinking about it. So I'm doing it. You know, it's contagious.
So what we're talking about is birthdays and all of the complicated feelings that birthdays bring up in us each year. We have figured it out. We have figured out exactly why birthdays are so complicated and difficult for a lot of us. And I believe that by the end of this podcast, you will have some ideas about how to make your birthday less sucky.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think we're going to fix birthdays today. What do you all think? Or are you too bored to answer?
No, I mean, I don't think we're going to fix birthdays. We're going to talk about birthdays. That's for sure what we're going to do on this. All right. I'm going to try really hard not to sing.
It's your birthday. No, you're not going to sing 50 Cent on our podcast. Is that 50 Cent? Yeah. Get busy. Okay. No, that's not even in the song. Get busy.
It's your birthday. What's the next line?
We're going to party like it's your birthday. We're going to drink Bacardi like it's your birthday. We don't give a fuck because it's your birthday. Like that. All right. I think it's interesting that one of the reasons why I started my friendship journey in the last season where I'm trying to gather and invest in and work on my friendship life is because it was kind of catalyzed by a birthday.
Catalyzed is a word.
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Chapter 4: What secret tests do we impose on ourselves during birthdays?
Like you, Glennon, think that because of all of your hope and faith in the world that Abby will stop sneezing loud. We think in spite of ourselves and in spite of all evidence to the contrary, like a birthday is going to have all these magical things that it hasn't had before. And then when it doesn't, it feels sad. It does feel like this referendum that is quantifiable.
Like you're like, I got four texts. Okay. That is basically a performance evaluation of where I stand in the world, you know, my popularity or my lovability or my worthiness that if we have these criteria that we've met, like a lot of people celebrating us, a lot of people reaching out to us, that that means something. And if it doesn't, then we feel like we've failed.
That's like at a surface level. But then I think at a deeper level, there's this whole idea of birthdays where We rarely take any moments to look at the state of things. And birthdays are kind of a forced moment to do that. And on the deeper level, it's like you're asking, like, do I matter? Yeah. Does my being born matter? Am I seen by anyone? Am I known by anyone? Am I celebrated for who I am?
Am I loved? It's kind of like, this is the moment that I get those answers, even though I haven't asked those questions, maybe. Yes. There's this kind of underlying expectation that those answers will be delivered to you on that day. And if they're not, then the answer is nope. Nope, nope, nope.
And it's like a forced stillness. It's like for the rest of the days, we can busy up and like conjure up our own worthiness. We can make it so we can call the people. We can show up. We can do the email. We can like busy ourselves up and reach outward to- prove to ourselves that we are important and loved and whatever.
But on our birthday, it's like this different posture where we just have to sit there and wait. If other people reach out to us, like we can't put ourselves in their lives. We have to see if they care enough about us to like leave their own lives and reach out to us sitting in our house.
I am Michelle.
And I am Craig.
Craig here is my big brother. We are so excited for you to listen to our brand new podcast. It's called IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. Together, Craig and I are going to take your questions about the challenges you're grappling with in life. So get in touch, send us your questions and join us on IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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Chapter 5: How can we celebrate each other throughout the year?
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I have a complicated relationship with birthdays because being the youngest of a huge family, when I was really young, you know, they do the big celebrations. And then as you get older, because I was the youngest, we would just celebrate a birthday during dinner. Like that's what we did. Did you get to pick your meal? I did. I always chose marinated steak for some reason.
That was my favorite growing up. But like, I feel like we're setting our adult selves up for real failure. Yes. Because these huge parties are thrown for us when we're children. And then as we get older, they stop, they go away. At least that was the case for me. And I feel like it's kind of sad because we're getting older by one year every year.
And there's an existential dread that's happening like, oh, I'm getting older. And then we get celebrated in many ways like less and less as we get older. And so it's kind of this like sad hope for younghood.
Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. It's like all nostalgic. Yeah. Nostalgic can make us sick. Okay. So if you really think about how we've set up birthdays for ourselves in our culture. We have made a pile of things that drive us nuts, that actually make human beings miserable. So birthdays are based on number one, expectations.
We have this idea that's just hidden from everyone else of what we hope will happen or we think should happen or we expect should happen based on this or that or that.
Oh, our secret expectations.
Our secret expectations. Expectations are just, you know, as we all know, they're just resentments just waiting to happen, right? So expectations are a nightmare. That's what birthdays are based on. Number two, they're based on comparisons. The more I think about it, everything is comparison. Today, Is my birthday.
I am today comparing myself to everybody else who had a birthday this year, who posted on Instagram, who has 20 friends where I have two, who has this cake where I have this one. I'm comparing myself not only to other people, but myself last year. Like, did all the things happen this year that I thought would? I'm comparing myself to where I thought I would be at this age.
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Chapter 6: What are the common expectations we have for our birthdays?
That's just existential dread. That is one thing that I actually don't have. Every time there's an anxiety or a worry or misery that I don't have, I just want to say it because it makes me so happy.
Yeah, you're not weird about getting older.
No. This is my theory. I had a really rough go of it as a young person because of addiction and all the things. So- My life keeps getting better the older I get. I just keep being happier because the beginning was rough for me. So I would never want to be younger. I wouldn't go back for all the money in the world.
But you, sister, I think you do have, you told me that you have some worry each year about aging or
We've talked about this on other episodes about like horizon living where I love to live in the future. I love projects and planning and building. I think I've mentioned the time before where I had like a complete breakdown when the man told me that we had just purchased the last boiler we'd ever need for the house. And
That was my existential moment because I was like, what do you mean the last of anything? Like there's not going to be more boilers. There's not going to be endless plans. There's not going to be endless building. That for me was just more about coming from a place of what makes me giddy is like the possibilities are endless. Let's plan our way to heaven.
We're just going to make projects and plans and do them. And really the making of the plan and the project is what gets me excited. So I think as I look just at numbers, I think, oh, actually the projects are in fact not endless. And the possibilities are not endless. The possibilities are best case scenario, you know, four more decades. That is a finite time. number of projects.
And if you're always living into the projects, like what happens when there's nothing left to plan for at the end, like when there's no ramp to the next thing you're building, then that really freaks me out because it makes me think, oh, I don't want to get to the place where there's no more on ramp to a project and figure out that I've done it all wrong.
That like it, in fact, was never about the project. It was about the being there. So I think I've had a different relationship with just time because of that. I'm trying to orient my time more now. And I think also... My life has been changed by I'm walking my dear friend through the end of her life right now. And she is 47, which is why when you said, you know, 47 is almost dead.
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Chapter 7: Why is gratitude important in reshaping our birthday experiences?
And I like what you said about the blessing versus luck thing. I just so reject every time someone says I'm so blessed because of this or that. I know everyone's saying it with good intentions, but it's confusing because it's like, oh, so then the other person's unblessed. Like if you're blessed to have your health, then what is my neighbor doing? like God was less excited to bless them.
I like, I'm grateful.
Yeah, I'm grateful. Because then it doesn't matter the source. It's like, if you're grateful, and by the way, Wendy is more grateful for her life than anyone I know, currently right now in this moment. So it doesn't mean, just because you're blessed, lucky, doesn't mean you're grateful. You can be blessed out of your mind and be deeply ungrateful for your life. That's right.
Just being grateful is probably what we should be.
Well, let's look at the list that we were talking about of the things that make us miserable on our birthdays. Expectations, the opposite of that is gratitude for whatever's here. Comparison, the opposite of that is gratitude. Existential dread, fear of what will be. Opposite of that is gratitude for what is now.
So it looks like everything that makes us miserable on our birthday could be fixed, undone, if we focused completely on gratitude for whatever is.
And that's also very hard. Of course. It's not the way of things, except in moments, you know? So it's hard to sustain that. But I think it's interesting because the reverse of that, right, is if you have people in your life that you're grateful for, why aren't we able to make them feel our gratitude and make them feel like they matter to us? And, you know, if everyone's out there
having very confused feelings on their birthday, why aren't we able to transmit our gratitude for the people in our lives to make them feel a little differently?
Mm-hmm. Is it just because everyone's birthday is everyone else's just normal hard day of life?
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Chapter 8: How can we make birthdays more meaningful and less stressful?
And maybe we don't get it. All year. Maybe most people feel unseen and unloved all year. And then on their birthday, they're like, at least this day, please.
Yeah. And then it's also kind of like this resentment, like just one fucking day. Are you kidding me?
And then you feel like people don't even get that right. I always think of that scene from The Bear where Jamie Lee Curtis is in the kitchen freaking out and she's like, I make things beautiful for everyone and no one makes things beautiful for me. And it was a wild scene. But I think about that all the time that that is a caregiver's internal mantra.
Do you guys have any good memories or stories about birthdays?
When I was in second grade, I was at this school and And I remember my mom showing up at our school on my birthday with Friendly's little ice cream cups. You know, the ones that had the spoons. Oh, yeah. It was like high quality treats. And I remember we were all going out to the playground and she walked up and she had, you know, 20 of these Friendly cups in this brown bag.
And I just like I remember like looking at my mom and being so proud that that was my mom and so proud to be able to hand each one of my classmates one of these friendly cups. And we sat on the side of the playground and we ate our ice cream and then we played on the playground for a little while.
Oh, that's so good.
I don't have many memories of my childhood, but that was a really good day.
I just love the little things about birthdays. So in our family, we always start everyone's birthday with breakfast in bed. Even now, like if the kids are at our house... Craig comes over at like 6 a.m., all like bleary-eyed with his coffee. And we all hang out outside the hallway of whoever's birthday it is. And then we start singing and walk into the bedroom.
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