Some people, myself included, say that having a birthday is meaningless.

“It’s just a number, it’s just an arbitrary date that humans made up.”

But a coaching client of mine had a good insight about this. He thinks that people who are resistant to their birthday, even if it’s in a ‘rational’ way, are actually resistant to having their life celebrated!

Why? Because they are haunted by shame.

When we think about upcoming birthdays, this often leads many of us to start comparing ourselves to others.

How others my age doing? Am I doing better or worse than them? Am I where I should be by now?

And, of course, the not good enough story causes us to cherry-pick the data where other people are doing ‘better’. Despite the fact that if you’re reading this then you’re probably doing better than most people in the world statistically speaking, you focus in on a few select people – and just a few of their outward signs of “success” – and bum yourself out on that information.

You ignore the high likelihood that they’re suffering in silence, and that what most people consider ‘success’ is actually something entirely meaningless and ultimately unsatisfactory, like wealth, popularity or power.

So if you’re resistant to birthdays, it could actually be a sign that you have significant confidence problems, or at least have a problem with inaccurately comparing yourself to others (i.e. shame).

• If you’d like to feel proud of yourself when it’s your next birthday, then email me dan@brojo.org with “Shameless” to get a big discount on my Shamelessness course
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