6 Ways to Make Your Birthday More Meaningful

Do you feel a boost of energy leading up to your birthday? Or a certain kind of thoughtfulness that comes upon you? How about a worry about whether you’re living the way you really want to be living?

These inner impulses can be considered the innate yearning for authentic and soulful living. I believe we all have this yearning. We are spiritual beings after all. We want more because there will always be “more” that’s slightly beyond our reach, until one day we meet the “life beyond” this one on Earth. This yearning is a good thing if you let it inform you rather than torture or tease you. Birthdays are perfect timing for exploring this yearning.

Unfortunately, many of us were groomed to think of a birthday as a time to do less meaningful things like have a big party, overindulge in food or drink, or purchase something extravagant. Many of the things we’ve been taught in mainstream society, that are ways to celebrate another year passing, leave us feeling empty afterwards - still yearning for more authentic and soulful living. 

To make better use of this beautiful, rising, pulsing, creative energy that emerges pre-birthday, these simple but potent lessons will help you better access and employ this vital life force so that you can live the life of your deepest dreams. 

1. Acknowledge this energy consciously. Open to it fully. Ask to receive and experience it to the max as you put your attention on how you’re feeling leading up to your birthday. Use the three questions in the beginning of this post to help you tune in to it. Take some time to journal about what you might be yearning for.
2. Right your wrongs from the past year in order to free yourself mentally and emotionally and clear the proverbial slate. Each year I take inventory of the year that I’m closing out. I look at my accomplishments not only professionally, but more importantly, personally. Who have I wronged in some way? Have I had relationships that changed and need closure or to make amends for a fallout of some kind? What have I done in my life this year that I feel good about? Badly about? How can I use this to better understand how to course correct my life?
3. Align more fully with your highest values to garner more authenticity and inner power. Use the inventorying from the second lesson to clearly identify what values with which you need to live in closer alignment. If you’ve been less than truthful and that’s making you feel “less than”, how can you step up and learn to be more honest and self-disclosing? Be brutally honest with yourself. If you feel like this is a painful prospect, you have much to gain from this exercise.
4. Slow your pace, listen inwardly, and heed the calls. We’re often moving more rapidly through life than our consciousness and inner stability can handle. This contributes to overall anxiety, a sense of missing out, and feeling out of control of our lives in general. All of these feelings lead us into more control oriented habits, which ultimately keeps us in the loop and intensifies it. You will not hear what your heart and soul are saying to you if you don’t slow down and take the time to learn your own inner language. How do your heart and soul speak to you, and how can you honor and incorporate this into your daily life?
5. Celebrate the hard stuff as well as the good stuff. Celebrating life - the ups and the downs - because we have lived through them, affirms our existence and the meaning we give it. The hard stuff is usually packed with good lessons that we actually came here to learn! The more we open and welcome the challenges this way, the more rapidly we learn our lessons and free ourselves to be fully aligned with our heartfelt desires. Little celebrations, packed with meaning and beauty, soothe and nourish us. For example, a flower placed with love and joy on our desk or nightstand to honor a hard conversation that went well brings meaning and joy to the importance of relationships and communication, some of our truest sources of possible fulfillment in this life as a human being. 
6. Take time to get clear about what you want in the year ahead and what you’re willing to change to make that happen. We often make birthday wishes, but then don’t necessarily make the effort to bring those wishes into fruition. I mean no one ever asked me to create a plan to make my birthday wishes come true. Did anyone ever ask you to? Well, I am right now. When you blow out those candles on your cake this year, make your wish! Be ready to make that wish come true by taking the time leading up to your birthday to plan some steps you’ll actually take to walk towards what your heart and soul truly wants this year.

We actually make our own meaning in and of life. No one can give us “meaning”. If you’re looking for a more meaningful life, I hope these birthday lessons help you discover the fulfillment you seek.