Five ways to feel more alive

This is what works for me.

Just planning out how to be happy, like a normal person. (Getty Images)

A few days into 2023, I published an unplanned newsletter post and shared a vulnerable goal for the year: to feel more alive.

My go-with-the-flow partner, Billy — and, perhaps, most people — would have approached this goal with intuition. It’s all about how you feel, right? He’d try a few new things, check in with himself what felt good and what didn’t, and hopefully, discover a more dynamic way of being along the way.

Because I am me, I did not use that method. I decided to plan it instead. I approached my goal of feeling more alive with a checklist. Yes, a checklist.

This checklist — a way to orchestrate my path to aliveness each month — was a very private thing. I didn’t tell a soul about it. Not Billy, Becca, or anyone else. In fact, I can’t believe I’m considering talking about it at all! 

But here we are.

I kept this list at the top of my trusty Google Doc where I keep all my daily and weekly to-dos. It’s the document that I visit most often; one where I plan literally everything. At the top of that document, I wrote my overarching theme: “2023 blueprint: To do things that make me feel more alive.” Below that, I set five specific monthly goals to help me get there. 

Here is the very earnest, very particular way that I tried to feel more alive in 2023: