Create a birthday retreat to build a life you love
Each year I celebrate my birthday by going on “retreat”. I let Adam know I’ll be unavailable for a day or two, and then I sequester myself away in my office to spend time evaluating the year past and setting goals for the upcoming year. I’m a big fan of the birthday retreat for a few reasons.
The timing
I know many people like to do this type of work at the end of the calendar year but I would encourage you to create a birthday retreat instead for a few reasons.
First, during the holidays, we’re busy with celebrating, spending time with friends and family, and enjoying time off from work. Trying to do the work of diving into evaluation and goal setting is often something we don’t have the bandwidth for during the hustle and bustle of the holidays.
The holidays are also celebrated by everyone in your family, while your birthday is just for you! If you have a partner and/or kids, it’s much easier to ask your family for a day or two of alone time when you’re celebrating just you rather than celebrating as a family unit.
I encourage you to take two or three days for your birthday retreat. This is an opportunity to really take the time to celebrate, reflect, and nourish yourself. You don’t want to be rushed while working through the process.
And while a birthday is a great time to celebrate and reflect on the year past and plan for the upcoming year, you can hold this retreat anytime you want! Don’t put off building a life you love just because you found this post a month after your birthday!
Celebration
We don’t always notice and celebrate the little things in our daily lives. But research has shown time and again how important this is to our happiness.
Because I believe so strongly it’s important to recognize and honor all the hard work you put in as you work toward building a life you love I’ve created a journal to help you make a celebration practice part of your daily routine.
By incorporating celebration into your birthday retreat, you not only get to reflect back on all of the successes you had over the past year, you also build your confidence in your ability to tackle even more changes in the upcoming year.
Goal Setting
Taking time to dream and set goals is so important. I’m always learning and growing, seeking new ways to build a life I love. Life is a journey, not a destination. Our goals and dreams are pit stops along the way, not a final resting place.
Knowing what those pit stops are gives you direction as well as the opportunity to measure your progress and have moments of celebration along the journey. This approach also allows you to break your goals down into little steps – attainable progress toward a bigger vision.
And finally, setting goals and dreaming big allows us to recognize that something we’re struggling with doesn’t always have to be part of our lives. If you can dream it, you can do it. You have the ability to build a life you love, even if it feels impossible given your current life.
The Birthday Retreat: Setting the Tone
Consider purchasing a new journal or a colorful pen set for your birthday retreat. Maybe get fresh flowers, a candle or essential oil to diffuse, or a special tea blend. Look for ways to make this feel special and something you look forward to.
Although it isn’t necessary, I like to start with some energetic housekeeping; smudging and cleansing your home to move out anything stale and stagnant and create room for the fresh new energy to flow in.
Incorporate Self-Care
Make sure you have plenty of self-care built into your retreat. This is a critical component as the birthday retreat involves a lot of self-work – which is how you learn and grow – but it can also be incredibly draining. Keep your mental, emotional, and physical energy reserves high by building in lots of opportunities for self-care throughout your retreat.
To learn more about the difference between self-work and self-care as well as to create a self-care routine that resonates with you, download my FREE Self-Care Toolkit.
Carve out some privacy
Finally, this is something you’re going to want to have privacy and quiet time for. Identify a space in your home where you can be alone and let everyone you live with know when you will be on retreat and that you should be uninterrupted while in that space.
If you have young children who don’t understand privacy, consider asking a friend or family member to take them for the weekend as your birthday gift. Or see if your partner will take them on day trips to give you time to be in retreat while they are out of the house.
The Birthday Retreat: Reflection & Celebration
Until we learn from the past, we’re doomed to repeat it. So start by getting all the lessons you can out of the past year so you’re ready to launch into the new year with your best foot forward!
Grab a journal or a piece of paper and something to write with. Start writing down your successes – big and small – all the things you’ve accomplished over the last year.
If you’ve previously done the Wheel of Life exercise or you keep a journal, they are great tools in helping you remember your successes! If you’re new to self-work, this might feel challenging. Do your best to build out your list and consider asking your friends and family members for any successes they remember you achieving over the past year.
Once you have your list, take some time to actually celebrate. Maybe you write them on colorful pieces of paper and create a banner with them. Or perhaps you share them with friends and family who were part of your cheerleading team over the past year. Go with something that feels celebratory and festive for you!
If you notice a thread running through your successes you want to keep in mind for the future, make sure you note that down somewhere where you can be reminded of it regularly.
The Birthday Retreat: Wiping the Slate Clean
As you review the past year, you’ll likely encounter not only things to celebrate, but also things you’d rather not take with you into the next year. These can be habits, thought patterns, relationships, or even physical items.
It’s important to recognize and honor these things as much as you recognize and honor your successes. These things all served an important role in your life at one point. Recognizing how they may have helped you also allows you to see how they may now be holding you back.
Here’s a great way to wipe the slate clean before heading into your new year.
Release what no longer serves you
Write down each thing you’re ready to leave behind on individual pieces of paper. Once they’re all written down, symbolically destroy them.
I like to burn my paper, but if you have easy access to a moving body of water, you can also cast your paper into the water, allowing it to flow away from you. If you’re burning your paper, make sure you take all fire safety precautions, and consider purchasing paper designed expressly for this purpose (google “flying wish paper”).
While symbolically destroying words written on a piece of paper will not magically remove these things from your life, it helps you set the tone and expectation moving forward. Both bringing your conscious awareness to something which is often unconscious, and setting new habits and patterns for the future.
The Birthday Retreat – Goal Setting
Only once you’ve celebrated all of your successes and wiped the slate clean should you move onto the goal setting part of the retreat. You want to head into this feeling free of whatever was holding you back and knowing you are capable of achieving so much when you set your mind to it!
The next step of your birthday retreat is to reflect on where you have room for improvement and set goals for growth in the coming year. The items you identified when you wiped the slate clean are a great jumping off point for building this list.
Another great place to start is listening to Episode #3 of my podcast Solicited Advice to Live Your Best Life where I talk about what goes into creating resolutions you can keep!
A few pointers on setting your goals:
- Consider creating both SMART Goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) and Being Goals (which are all about how you want to feel – the exact opposite of a SMART Goal).
- Recognize your goals are a living document – if as you learn and grow your goals no longer feel aligned with your path, be willing to change them.
- Remember that these are goals you’re intending to take action steps toward making happen – this isn’t a wish on a genie lamp – if you’re not interested enough in taking the steps to make it reality, it probably shouldn’t be one of your goals.
The Birthday Retreat – Create Action Steps
Once you have your goals, start breaking them down into manageable steps. The most important thing to remember is that it will take time to reach your goals. Avoid the expectation that everything will magically change the day the calendar changes. That expectation will only set you up for failure and lead to frustration and disappointment.
Check out Episode #2 of my podcast – Solicited Advice to Live Your Best Life – to learn how to start breaking your goals down into smaller steps that set you up for success.
No matter how many goals you set in the previous step – pick one or two at a time to work on! Another great way to quickly become overwhelmed and give up is to try and change everything in your life at once. Consider mapping out your goals to have one or two each quarter that you work toward. Once one becomes a habit, you can begin to work on a new one.
Another great tool for building your roadmap for the coming year is the Wheel of Life exercise. If you’re new to self-work, this might feel overwhelming. Try picking the area of your life you most want to change, and work through just that spoke of the wheel. Once you gain confidence, you can complete your full wheel.
The Birthday Retreat – Making Room for Change
Just because the date on the calendar is changing doesn’t mean everything in your life will magically change. You need to make room for the goals you’ve set.
Check out these posts on productive procrastination and conducting a personal energy audit to find ways to carve out time for the habits and ways of being you want to introduce into your life. These are also great exercises to include during your birthday retreat as part of the goal setting process.
And if you don’t already keep a journal, now would be a great time to start. It will provide you with a resource to not only process your life on a daily basis, but will be a record for you to reflect on during your next birthday retreat!
[…] people like to do this type of work at the end/start of the year. I like to use my birthday as an opportunity to take stock of where I am and where I want to be. It’s a great way to celebrate everything I’ve accomplished and set goals for the […]
[…] Grab your copy using the box above and print out your Wheel of Life Exercise. I suggest printing on cardstock or heavy paper since this will be a document you’ll want to refer to often over a period of several months to a year. (I refresh my Wheel of Life annually as part of my birthday retreat.) […]
[…] this work resonates with you and you’d like to create your own process for self-discovery, check out my birthday retreat. You don’t need to wait for your birthday to dive into this work (although it’s a great […]