5 Meaningful Ways To Celebrate Your Birthday

When you were a kid, you loved counting down the days to your birthdays. You feel ecstatic every time you plan your cake design and cupcake flavors with your mom, and you feel excited every time you decorate your home with balloons, flowers, and anything colorful for your birthday party. Most importantly, you look forward to the gifts your parents, friends, and relatives will bring for you every year.  

Over time, as your age increases year after year, your enthusiasm towards celebrating your birthday decreases. You’ll start to outgrow those fancy colorful parties, cake planning, and party decorations. You find it exhausting to plan out your birthday celebration. There may be some years in your life where you don’t feel like celebrating at all. 

Many people claim that the older they get, the less they enjoy celebrating their birthdays. While it may be authentic and typical for some, you need to remember that birthdays are worth celebrating. Reaching another year in your life means you’ll have a new year to improve yourself and do better as you live longer. Thus, birthdays are meant to be celebrated and not something to be ignored. Moreover, if anyone in your family doesn’t feel like celebrating then still you can try to make their birthdays special. In case your grandpa is turning 70 soon then you can definitely make him feel special by planning something special for him. Also you can find some amazing happy 70th birthday wishes here.

 

However, birthday celebrations don’t always mean having massive parties or expensive dinner nights with your loved ones. It can be as simple as taking yourself out to dinner or buying yourself something nice as a gift. But aside from doing something for yourself, why not celebrate your birthday in a more meaningful way? To give you more ideas, here are five meaningful ways you can celebrate your birthday.  

1. Start a Birthday Fundraiser

For some, birthdays are about getting new things, getting drunk, and getting older. Instead, why not break out from tradition and focus on doing something to make the world better to live in? You don’t need to be a billionaire for you to contribute a significant change in the world. It can be as simple as starting a birthday fundraiser for your chosen charity or institution. The money you collect from this fundraising can be used to financially support your chosen cause. 

For instance, you’ve always loved dogs, and you’re looking for a way to help as many dogs as you can instead of just adopting and helping one. You can start a fundraiser to support Dog institutions or dog adoption centers that need more finances to adopt and feed more dogs on your birthday. You can click for more info here about starting a birthday fundraiser and how you can help your chosen charity with their cause. You may not get new stuff for yourself, but you can certainly give a lot for others which is much better, and it can give you inner happiness and self-fulfillment.

2. Do Something Good

Aside from helping others financially, you can also do something good by exerting efforts. Start by decluttering your room and entire home and gather all the things you owned that you won’t be needing anymore. Instead of throwing these things away or pricing them for a garage sale, you can freely donate these to street children, women and children charity institutions, or public schools. Use your birthday as a chance to help others who are in need.  

Besides donations, you can also prepare and cook food on your birthday, not for your birthday party, but to give away to people in the streets who have nothing to eat. After all, your friends and loved ones don’t need as much food as those people starving on the streets.  

If you want to go the extra mile, you can be a blood donor on your birthday. You can look up hospitals that need the blood type you have and donate some. Not only are you simply helping someone get well, but you’re giving them a chance to have another year to celebrate their next birthday.

3. Spend Your Birthday for Volunteer Work

Perhaps you’ve already had your fair share of birthday parties in the past, explaining why you’ve outgrown the whole concept. Instead of the usual parties you and your friends arrange, why not use your birthday as an opportunity to do volunteer work? You can ask your friends to sign up with you, and together you can choose a service project such as a local school, a local homeless shelter, a women’s shelter, or a food pantry.  

Be in contact with the project organizer and ask which part or task you can help them with. This will serve as your opportunity to connect more with people in need and give back to the community. Your friends will surely love this alternative way of celebrating your birthday, too. All of you will surely go home feeling good about yourself and the fact that you could help others in need.  

4. Request For Donations Instead of Gifts

Every year you may be used to getting lots of birthday gifts from everyone, and now, you’re thinking of a way to switch things up. After all, you may already be feeling like you have all the clothes and shoes you need. So instead of gifts, you can ask your friends, family, and relatives to give donations. Choose a project or charity that resonates more with you. From there, you can start collecting donations either in the form of financial support or material support such as old clothes, furniture, toys, or food. You can do this online or plan a small birthday gathering in your home where your friends and loved ones can visit to drop their donations. This will also be your opportunity to bond with friends and talk about issues that matter to you the most.  

5. Write & Reflect

Aside from going out there and helping other people, you can take your time on your birthday to sit down, write, and reflect on all the events you’ve been through during the past year. Ask yourself about your accomplishments, the things you’re proud of, the people you met, and what you could do to handle it better. Making reflections and writing them down will help you feel more grateful and appreciative about every year that you gain.  

You can also use this time to reflect and think about your future. Think about how you’re going to improve yourself physically, financially, emotionally, and mentally for this year. Write down all ideas you have to note all these goals and check them on your list one by one.

Celebrate Your Birthday!

Regardless of how you wish to celebrate your birthday, make sure you do it with gratitude. Always remember that being able to celebrate your birthday means you’re blessed to be here and reach another milestone in your life. So, instead of sulking on your birthday, pick any of these ways above and show your gratefulness by making the community a better place for everyone.