When you choose happiness, your choice overflows to affect everyone around you

Today is my birthday. The thing about it is, ever since I became a mom (and moms everywhere surely will agree with me on this), my own birthday isn’t as important as it used to be. This is especially true for me since my daughter’s birthday is 9 days prior to my own. When she was a baby, we celebrated both birthdays at the same time, but I was conscious of the fact that it was really her birthday that mattered, and mine was just tacked on out of convenience; at least that’s how it felt to me. And I was ok with that.

For the last couple of years, now that she’s getting older, I’ve shied away from combining both birthdays to allow her to really be in the spotlight on her big day. It makes her feel special – as it should. And so this year, the weeks leading up to my birthday crept up and I just got so busy with other things happening in my life that I literally forgot about it. To me, this year, it’s just another Friday. I’ve come to a point in my life where I’ve done so much personal development, so much growing, that I don’t feel the NEED to have people shower me with love, in order to feel good about myself. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

I had forgotten that birthdays aren’t about that.

Even for someone as independent and confident as I am, it just feels good when people shower you with love on your birthday; especially when you don’t feel you need it.

… or was it that I didn’t feel worthy of it?

So here’s what happened: I woke up to a normal day with my daughter Emma, doing the regular morning routine, getting her ready to go to her last day of summer camp before she heads back to her father’s for the weekend and starts school next week. At some point, I ask her if she’s aware that it’s my birthday today and she says “Yes of course I know it’s your birthday today!”, at which point she runs into the living room to grab a drawing she already made, and gives it to me, announcing she had drawn it especially for me, for my birthday. I know it’s an outright lie, but I appreciate the half-assed effort anyway. She’s only 6 after all. She gets a break. We’ll revisit that when she’s 10. So I hug her, say thank you, and we go back to rushing out the door.

By the time I get to work, my Facebook feed is already full of “Happy Birthday” wishes from people I know, and still, in my head I dismiss it and think “Well, that’s because Facebook tells people it’s my birthday today”. My phone rings and two of my aunts call me to sing me Happy Birthday and we spend a few minutes chatting. And still, I tell myself “They’re old, they’re from a generation of people who remembers everyone’s birthday. Of course they’d call me today”. And so I go about my morning, checking e-mails and putting myself into the mind frame I need to be in to work on the files that I’m assigned, as more text messages, e-mails and messages of all kinds keep trickling in.

So then here I am, in a serious meeting, debriefing with my colleagues on a SUPER serious meeting that happened yesterday, discussing how we’re going to move forward and how we’re going to manage the risks, when I notice that I’m late for another meeting with my former colleagues to transition the budget over to the person who replaced me. I quickly grab my papers and laptop, excuse myself and rush up the couple of floors to my next meeting. I apologize for being late and the Manager says it’s no problem but that we’re just going to meet in this other space because more people will be joining us. We hurriedly head in that direction. The door is closed but she tells me it was unlocked this morning. I’m the first one to reach the door and…

SURPRISE!!!!

Everyone in our group (those who are not on vacation) was there, waiting in the dark decorated room for me. There were balloons, a giant cupcake and pastries, and a bottle of champagne for mimosas. I was in complete shock and I couldn’t stop the tears that instantly began flowing.

You see, in my old group, our Director along with a few super cool keeners, believe in celebrating every employee’s birthday. We had our own mini social committee. Every person’s cubicle gets decorated, sometimes in over-the-top themes, even if they took the day off. We did monthly lunch-related activities and generally had a really great constant team-building thing going on. I hadn’t realized how much it felt like a family until I changed positions and left the group. I missed them like crazy but suffered in silence because humble (i.e. self-deprecating) me, I saw myself as a quieter member of that family.

I had never considered myself as important enough because I was “just an admin” and so I assumed that since I had left the group, they would just say “well she’s not here anymore so we don’t have to do anything”.

That’s why I cried.

Because to them, it was obvious that I WAS important. I WAS a part of that family, and they weren’t going to let a technicality like leaving the group 2 weeks prior to my birthday prevent them from showing their love and appreciation.

What inspired me to write this post, was when I returned to my desk, still in shock, I thought “Why was this such a big surprise? Why do I dismiss the Facebook posts on my wall, and barely even let my family take me out to dinner, but bawl at a surprise 20-minute celebration from my old team?” And I realized that my perception of Facebook and my family was an assumption that these people HAD to do/say something because that’s birthday etiquette, which is ridiculous because I know many (if not all) of these people were genuine in their well wishes.

The next realization was the understanding that choosing a positive attitude for the last year, choosing happiness on a consistent basis, not only means that I generally feel good all the time (internal goal), and not only helped me get my new job (external goal), it also means that I’ve had a positive impact on the people that I interacted with on a daily basis.

We don’t generally do things for people out of the goodness of our hearts for no reason. It’s not an instinctive behavior. We do things for people who are nice to us, people that we like, people that are pleasant to be around. And so I realized that if my former teammates went out of their way to make me feel special on my birthday, it meant that I had touched them in a positive way during the time that I worked with them.

Sometimes we get so much into our own little bubble of whatever it is we’re working on (personal development, projects, etc.) that we forget that in every interaction we have with one person or another, we have the potential to impact them in a certain way. And when we choose to adopt a generally positive attitude, that hugely positive impact doesn’t just benefit us personally, it inevitably ends up benefiting the people around us.

And that, to me, feels better than just (what I thought was) the superficial joy of having people throw me a giant birthday party.

Oh, and if you were one of the many well-wishers today either on Facebook, by private message, by e-mail or by text, thank you. I mean that in the sincerest and most heartfelt way. I return that love back to each and every one of you.