In this motivational monologue, the speaker argues that a sense of aliveness—energy, curiosity, and fulfillment—must be cultivated deliberately in order to live a vibrant life. He begins by stating that true personal growth comes from internal, self‑directed change rather than waiting for external challenges. The first pillar of aliveness is physical health: proper sleep, nutrition, exercise, meditation, and regular “reset” moments boost energy, protect against discouragement, and create the mental bandwidth needed for critical thinking and gratitude. The second pillar is adventure and exploration; novelty, curiosity, and pushing beyond comfort zones stimulate mental aliveness, especially after the pandemic‑induced lockdowns that dulled connection and exploration. The speaker links this to relationships, noting that without intentional novelty and shared adventure, even good relationships can become stale and dissolve. He stresses that personal growth requires conscious shaking‑up of routines—trying new activities, meeting new people, and cultivating self‑awareness—so that one can recognize and appreciate what one already has. Throughout, he weaves anecdotes from his two‑decade nonprofit career and uses vivid metaphors (e.g., the hero’s journey) to illustrate how varied experiences broaden perspective, increase gratitude, and sustain meaning over the long term.
Chapters
You personally have to shake things up in your life. You. I always tell people, if every new thing coming into your life or every new challenge you're dealing with is coming from the external, you haven't yet started your personal growth journey. People on a personal growth journey, they know they have to conscientiously shift and shape and learn and build new things, try new things, push beyond comfort zones. Just like keep. Not. Not because they're on this ever increasing, you know, demand to succeed. No, because they recognize in the middle of all of it is growth. Let's jump into something I think that people miss a lot here, and that's aliveness and notice. You got to have aliveness in the things you're pursuing. You got to have aliveness in the relationships. You have aliveness and your sense of growth. So again, these things all talk to each other, but I think this is an important one. Our sense of aliveness in our being. Often when we think of liveness, we think of health, for one, right? Energy, energy like you want to feel more, you want to feel life better. Get your health better. Take care of yourself. You know, do your meditation, your exercise, get a good diet. So start sleeping better, start learning to sleep better, start taking care of yourself better physically. And I promise mentally and spiritually, you'll flower that. When you feel good physically, I'm telling you, way more likely, way more likely to feel grateful for life, way more likely to sense meaning and flow and fulfillment of the day. So get your energy up, because you know what? When you're wiped out, it's really easy to be pulled into discouragement. When you're wiped out and someone says something negative to you, it's so easy to believe them because you don't even have the mental power for critical thinking to talk yourself out of that negative stuff they just threw at you. And you just, you accept what they say. The emotions hit, you just don't even have the energy to mentally fight back anymore. You got to take care of your health first and foremost. When I talk about aliveness, it always comes from a place of physical vibrancy and health. You've got to take care of yourself. And that usually is for mental and physical meditation, exercise, good diet, great sleep. You start with those things, everything starts to shift. Everything starts to shift. And I say this all the time because if you are fatigued all the time, you will be less likely to feel fulfilled because you're empty. When you're physically empty all the time, how are you going to feel fulfilled? Got it? You got to Fill your gas tank once in a while, take a break, do more resets throughout the day. Breathe again. You know, you want to feel fulfilled. Sit and breathe and feel grateful for 10 minutes. Simple. You know, we just got to breathe again. All this is our physical part of aliveness. Our physical part of aliveness. All right, so what else? Well, I think a big part of this aliveness. Pardon me. Big part of our aliveness comes down to back up here. Big part of our aliveness comes down to a sense of. Of adventure and exploration. People use different words here, but adventure and exploration. You know, a lot of people are doing meaningful pursuits, but there's never anything new. There's no novelty, there's no exploring the bounds of possibility. There's no learning by pushing beyond comfort zones. And so even though they're doing something meaningful, they don't feel it because the human desire for exploration, learning new things, trying new things, seeing new things, right? This can be a sense of variety in our life, adventure in our life. Psychologists tend to use the word exploration instead of. Because it's like, oh, we're a curious cat over here. We're curious. We'd love to learn new things, try new things, see new things. This is why mental health just had its worst year and a half in probably 50 years of human recorded psychology studies. Like, it just tanked because people were locked down. And when they were locked down physically, mentally, they tended to follow it. And if you didn't find some way to engage yourself in a mental way, then you really struggled. It's so important that we learn that, too. And also, if you're locked down, guess what? Connection goes away. So aliveness and connection went down for a lot of people. Their sense of growth went down because they didn't have social connection to lift them into another level. We're going to be dealing with that and the challenges of that in mental health for decades, decades. And I'm not here to say one, I don't take a political stance on this. I don't take a scientific stance on this. I'm here to tell you as a personal development person, I really believe the last two years will have caused so much harm for people that if they don't take control right now of what they're saying to themselves about the last two years, then it's going to be a long next 10 years for them mentally. Like, we have to define the meaning. We have to find the positivity. We have to keep going. We have to find our own sense of aliveness and connection and meaning. When the world doesn't go the way that we want it to. But think about how important this is. Do you know how many. When we think about connection, you know, many relationships that are good, good relationships die because no one's trying to cultivate a sense of aliveness in that relationship. No adventure, no new things, no curiosities, no novelties, no variety. And so a life that is good, two good people coming together even, who do good things in the world, that relationship falls apart because no one's cultivating aliveness. A lot of fulfillment can feel, quote, unquote boring. You're doing meaningful things, but it can feel boring if you don't once in a while, have a. A pop, a celebration, something new. That's why you got to shift it up, shake it up, change it up once in a while. Otherwise it gets stale, even good things. And again, I tell you this from a person who spent two decades working with a lot of nonprofit people. So often they're doing such good work in the world, but if they don't give themselves a campaign or a fundraiser or a new initiative once in a while, they'll quit, they'll leave, they'll get bored, they won't make their difference anymore. You personally have to shake things up in your life. You. I always tell people, if every new thing coming into your life or every new challenge you're dealing with is coming from the external, you haven't yet started your personal growth journey. People on a personal growth journey, they know they have to conscientiously shift and shape and learn and build new things, try new things, push beyond comfort zones. Just like keep. Not. Not because they're on this ever increasing demand to succeed. No, because they recognize in the middle of all of it is growth. They've got to put themselves in positions to explore the world, to learn more, to grow. And that exploration and adventure and variety and novelty comes from learning new things, trying new things, doing new things, being with new people. All of that is what's necessary. All of that is what's necessary. I think if you think about aliveness from a perspective of health, what I call taking your meds, meditation, exercise, diet and sleep your meds, then you think about okay, elevenths also comes from adventure and exploration. It's like those two also go together really well, right? Go to a new place, take a new adventure, go to that town, try mountain biking, try swimming, try scuba diving, try go up in a hot air balloon, try running on a new trail, try, you know, something, try swimming, try something new in new places. That physically engage you. And all of a sudden life becomes a little bit more adventurous. And when it becomes a little more adventurous, we can feel the sense of meaning a little bit more because it shakes us out of the normal stuff and we can look back to it and go, oh, right, yeah. You know, the power of exploration has been written for, written about, you know, for over 10,000 years. And, you know, it's that old story of the person who has to go on a big adventure outside of his or her lands, only to come back and dig in the backyard and find an acre of diamonds. You ever heard that they go seeking for wealth all around the world and it's not until they come back home that they recognize it from a new viewpoint. Always notice that most people don't recognize what they have until they've left it or it's been taken away. Then they come back or they want it back and they go, oh my gosh, I love this thing. This thing is so valuable. This is so important. This is so meaningful in my life. And I always tell people, don't be that guy. Be the person who sees it now. And one of the ways to see it now is to make sure you're doing new enough things and then practicing self awareness so that you can have that little compare and contrast and you recognize the value of what you have around you. Most people have so much more to be grateful for than they actually are because they don't even see it. It's right in front of them. But until they leave that context and they come back, then they go, oh, right. You know, it's kind of like when you were growing up, you thought you like, you thought your, your parents, your family, everything was just crazy and not awful. And then you went to another person's house that was more crazy and awful and you came back home, you thought, oh, I'm so happy I'm home. You know, that happens in metaphorically in a lot of parts of our lives, right? You thought your job was terrible and then you took a new job and it was way worse than you thought. Oh my God, what have I done? Right? The grass is always greener. But the good news is when we go through that open gate and we walk back and forth because we're trying new things throughout our lives, we can see that the grass is green over here too, and over there, and we can start sensing more meaning and fulfillment in every area of our lives. I hope you like that one, Sam.
