Register for the LIVE Masterclass: https://ble.life/bzpq5c 

This is the last vlog of 2024. January 1 is coming, and that’s a time of year when many people think about losing weight, getting their act together, and turning over a new leaf.

I want to tell you about a fun, community-building event that starts soon. We gave it a wonderfully cheesy name: “Come Alive! Lose the Weight and Thrive in 2025!” It’s going to be a live Masterclass that we’ll repeat four times, so hopefully, you’ll be able to join us at some point. There’s a link below this vlog if you want to register for it.

That title has three components. In this vlog, I want to talk about the first one: coming alive.

I deeply value aliveness. I’ve done things that wouldn’t make sense to other people, just because it made me feel alive.

I’ve noticed that I don’t feel alive often. I mostly feel like I’m sleepwalking through life, in a fog. Things that make me come alive are rare, valuable, and interesting.

It strikes me that aliveness happens at either end of a continuum. At one end are scary, unusual, or dangerous events. If I’m jumping out of an airplane or riding on a motorcycle at 120 mph, I feel alive. I feel alive when I’m traveling in an unfamiliar country or if someone I care about has just died. I feel alive when my heart is broken or I’ve just fallen in love. A beautiful sunset can also make me feel alive.

On the other end of the continuum are moments of stillness and emptiness. Maybe I’m meditating. Maybe it’s a regular Tuesday and I’m going to get groceries. If I’m peaceful and centered, an aliveness can be born in that moment that is soft and rounded, both empty and full at the same time.

Aliveness can exist in these two extremes, one of wild chaos and the other of utter stillness.

I have a story to share, about a man named Marshall Goldsmith. He’s famous as an executive leadership coach and author. He coaches CEOs of Fortune 10, 50, and 500 companies.

When I wrote my first book, Bright Line Eating, we were looking for people to write jacket endorsements, and his name came up because someone on my publishing team knew him well. They sent him my book, and he loved it. He said it was exactly right for people who needed sustained behavior change—so he wrote an endorsement.

Later, I talked to him on the phone. He wanted to talk about human growth and potential, behavior change, and habits. He told me his personal system: He tracked a handful of personal variables that mattered to him, and that could change his life for the better.

He gave himself a score each day for each variable and even paid someone to call him the next morning, every day, to get his score and hold him accountable. He said the most important variable for him was how much time during each day he felt really alive, truly present for what was happening.

He measured this variable as a percentage, and then he confessed something I will never forget. He said, “I usually get three percent, maybe five. Once I got ten percent.”

My mind was blown. It was the humility he had to admit that, and to still be excited about pursuing a variable that he only managed to get 10% right a fraction of the time. But it also confirmed what I already knew: that we’re mostly sleepwalking through life.

So when I say, come alive, I’m acknowledging that aliveness is a precious commodity. We don’t get much of it. And anything we can do to develop it is worth pursuing.

Here’s what I know for sure: as a recovering food addict, I don’t have a prayer of being truly alive if I’m in the sugar and flour. Then, I’m obsessed with getting more, numb from what I’ve eaten, in a foggy bog and plagued by gremlins.

So if you want to come alive, and lose weight and thrive in 2025, click the link below. I invite you to think about what it would take to optimize your experience of being alive.