I used to hate birthdays. Now everything is different

I celebrated my birthday this week. I mean that literally – I really celebrated it. This is significant for me because in past years I’ve greeted my birthday like a smelly, irritating relative that comes to stay every year, whose presence I endure with practised stoicism. The only celebration would happen the day after, when I’d wake up awash with relief that it was all over for another year.

My reasons for resenting my birthday were partly due to the fact that it drew attention to me – and as an introvert, this is excruciating. Seriously, I will vote for the next politician who promises to ban the singing of Happy Birthday in workplaces. *shudder*

But at the heart of my day-of-birth anxiety was the fact that they were a reminder that another year had passed and I was not living the life I wanted to live. 

There was a sense that I was running out of time to be happy, or to achieve a life that looked anywhere near as glossy as those of my peers. Every year my misery increased exponentially as I was faced with the realisation that my life had not changed significantly from how it looked at the last birthday.

This year, however, felt different.

I’ve made some major internal changes during the year that have affected the way I see myself and my future. I have a clearer sense of my life purpose and, most significantly, the value that I hold. I can look back on my regrets without feeling burdened by them. Right now I’m in the process of changing careers, so I don’t feel stuck or inadequate professionally any more. I no longer fret about being single, nor interpret this as evidence that I am flawed. It feels like I have enough time, and enough support from the Universe, to grow to a point that I can emotionally handle, and flourish in, a relationship.

I have wonderful friendships in which I have a sense of belonging and feel valued. Actually, this is probably the most significant change of all when it comes to birthdays. I can still remember the despair and humiliation of my 32nd birthday when only two people showed up for drinks. As I write this post, I’m preparing to meet 18 friends for my birthday celebrations. This blows my mind – 18 people like me enough to come and celebrate with me!

What all this amounts to is me having dropped my ideas of how my life should look – which is what was causing my birthday angst in the past. Instead I’ve arrived at something very close to acceptance of what is. I can recognise and celebrate the many blessings in my life and I don’t feel myself disappearing into the blistering chasm between the hand I imagined I would play, and the hand I’ve been dealt. In addition, I know how much power I have to bring about change, so I’ve dropped my self-pity I used to hold. 

Most crucially, I’ve stopped comparing myself to other people on the regular. On this point my resolve gets tested often (particularly on social media) but I’m better able to detach from comparisons, and jealousy. This is not easy when you’ve grown up in New Zealand, a country where your relationship status is prized above any personal attributes or achievements. But it’s in my choices, not my circumstances, that I measure my worth now.

This is the first year that I truly understand exactly how much I have to celebrate, and I have good reason to believe that will expand and deepen as I age. In a culture obsessed with time and deadlines, my anchoring principles are these: I am exactly where I am supposed to be, and the best is yet to come. 

I still hate that fucking office birthday singalong though.

Just listen. It's all anyone needs you to do

Technology might make it easier for us to forge new connections as well as maintain relationships with those who are far away, but it’s also eroding relationships with those who are close to us. In his book Focus, leading US psychologist Daniel Goleman (whose work is fascinating, BTW) has written about how technology is killing our attention spans. We are so used to the barrage of information presented to us that we lose interest when forced to focus on just one thing, or one person. What that means for relationships is this: “Being able to focus on the other person rather than the text you just received has become the new fundamental requirement for having a relationship with that person,” Daniel says.

The reason I bring this up is not to lament our increasingly scattered and superficial social interactions – although that is concerning – but to reflect on a really important facet of relationships that I feel I am in danger of forgetting how to do: listening.


It does feel, at least to me, that it’s harder than ever to be fully engaged in a conversation with someone else, and the influence of so much competing stimuli is surely part of the problem. (Although to be fair, I’ve always had a short attention span.) To be fully engaged in a conversation means listening – really listening – to the other person, which is as important in our interactions people we know as it is with those we don’t.

A few weeks ago I was on a bus trip home, writing in my notebook, when an old man sitting next to me suddenly asked me what I was focusing on so intently. This started a conversation that lasted the entire journey home and covered: handwriting styles, the best and worst places in the world we’d each visited and the history of the suburbs we were travelling through. I realised how bewildering it must be to someone of his generation to see everyone staring at their phones or listening to music – anything but engaging with the people and places around them. Everyone is trying to be somewhere other than where they are. As I got off the bus he thanked me for listening and said how much he’d enjoyed our chat (I had too).

This was an important reminder that giving someone our complete attention, and really taking in what they’re saying, is such a beautiful and underrated thing to do. Dave Isay, winner of the 2015 TED Prize, describes listening as an act of generosity and love. StoryCorps is a project Dave founded where two people who know each other sit in a mobile recording booth with a facilitator for 40 minutes of conversation. Essentially, they interview each other – many treating this as a ‘what I would say if this was our last conversation together’ scenario – and what comes out of that is a new understanding about the other person and a deeper connection to them. A recording of their conversation is available for a fee to cover costs. Dave is now developing an app to allow people to have these meaningful conversations at home.

“So much of how we communicate is fleeting and inconsequential,” says Dave in his TED talk. “I’ve learned about the poetry and wisdom and grace that can be found in the words of people all around us when we simply take the time to listen.”

What I’ve been reminded of lately how powerful the simple act of listening is. All anyone wants is to be heard. To be understood, yes, but most importantly to be heard. Our ears are as important in meaningful interactions as our hearts are. By listening to someone – whether it’s a random man on the bus or your significant other – you are bringing integrity to that exchange, affirming that that person matters and validating their human experience. That is the best gift you could give anyone. I hope, that in an age with so much competing for our attention, I never forget how to do that.  

Why (and how) rejection hurts. And learning not to fear that pain

Hands up everyone who isn't afraid of rejection! 

Oh, nobody? I thought so.

The first thing that pops into my mind when I think of rejection is a memory of being the last one picked for sports teams at school, Freaks and Geeks style. Bring out the violins.

But rejection happens in adulthood too, and it's not only destructive on an emotional level, it has an impact on your physical health.


In his book Emotional First Aid, psychologist Guy Winch writes that rejection is such a strong emotion that the body experiences it like physical pain. Remember, for example, what it feels like to be dumped: "You might have felt pressure suffocating you, had trouble breathing or had jabbing pain like a sharp knife," Guy writes. (BTW, Guy's TED talk on emotional first aid is moving and insightful, if you're interested.)

This shows how intensely rejection can affect us. But it isn't a connection with physical pain that makes me as afraid of being rejected now as I was in my childhood. The reason fear of rejection stalks me today is all about self-protection.

My worst experience of rejection in adulthood was in 2013 when my then-best friend squeezed me out of the close-knit circle of friends I'd had since my university days. I had no choice but to walk away, but the cost was high. No more sun-loving barbecue invitations. No more giggly brunches. No more daily email banter. Suddenly lonely evenings and weekends stretched out before me like a vast wasteland. My phone never rang. I'm sure my friends had their reasons - there are always two sides to the story - and it would be remiss of me not to admit that I was not a great friend to them either. Knowing that we were moving in different directions, and would have drifted apart anyway, didn't ease my despair - it was the slap of being rejected that hurt. Essentially, my worthiness as a friend and as a human being had been assessed by people who knew me incredibly well, and judged to be inadequate. The message: I am not good enough. The effects on my already-low self-esteem were catastrophic.

I wrapped my wings around my fractured heart and retreated into isolation. I stopped talking to people. I was cold to people who tried to connect with me. I stopped attending the few social events from other connections that came up. These were not conscious actions; they were the response to an unconscious belief playing in the background. This belief told me not to get close to anyone because I could not face the chances - which I believed to be high - of being rejected again. 

I'd love to tell you that this fear disappeared but it is more accurate to say it has only lessened slightly. After moving to a new city I have found myself in a great social circle of warm and wonderful people - yay! - but it has been difficult to learn to let people in. I have several confidantes, but I am careful not to lean on anyone too much. I don't have a best friend and I don't want one - that's way too risky.

Obviously there are a bunch of other self-esteem issues going on here too, which I've had for decades and have chronicled in other posts (like this one), as well as my natural (and entirely healthy) tendency towards introversion. But fear of rejection is almost certainly a factor in my reluctance to build deep relationships, both platonic and otherwise. 

Is this really a problem, though? I mean, it's keeping me safe, so that's useful. Is a fear of rejection even a thing that needs fixing? I've thought about this a lot, and my answer is yes and no. The thing is, fear never goes away. You can mute it but it will still be there, shapeshifting into another form (such as fear of failure). 

So I can't fix it. But I can change the way I respond to it. I can find new ways to arrest these thoughts when they appear before me, masquerading as my reality. I can go badass detective on the messages I send myself, and subject them to interrogation to determine their validity, instead of simply following their well-intended but ultimately self-limiting directives. I can push back on the thoughts that tell me the risk of letting down some of my barriers and simply being myself in my interactions with others is too great, and would lead to rejection. 

Of course, I don't *have* to do any of these things. 

But. 

If I don't, I'm essentially telling myself that I'm not good enough - which is the very message this fear is trying to protect me from receiving from others. By allowing myself to risk being rejected, I'm backing myself and saying I am worthy of being accepted, and that I'm resilient enough to deal with the consequences of possible rejection. In doing so, I'm accepting myself, which may not diminish my fear of rejection any but it seems like a pretty good start.