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Aliveness is energy, vitality and passion 

• Aliveness is energy. It’s the juice, the vitality, and the passion that wakes up our cells every morning. It’s what makes us want to dance. It’s the energy that moves a relationship from the status quo to something grander and much more expansive, something that makes our hearts beat faster, our minds, and our eyes open wider than ever before. Everything is of interest to a person who is truly alive, whether it’s a challenge, a loving moment, a bucket of grief, or a glimpse of beauty. Daphne Rose Kingma
• Energy management,  Vitality,  Passion,  Enthusiasm

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The experience of being fully and intensely alive is what life is all about 

• At the end of life, our questions are very simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?  Jack Kornfield
• The questions asked at the end of lie are very simple ones: Did I live fully? Did I offer myself to life?  Jack Kornfield 
• I believe in life after birth!  Mazie Dunham
• I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. Joseph Campbell
• People say that what we are all seeking is meaning for life. I think that what we’re really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innnermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive.  Joseph Campbell 
• The glory of God is a human being fully alive … Saint Irenaeus
• The living self has one purpose only; to come into its own fullness of being. H. Lawrence
• The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. Eleanor Roosevelt
• There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself. Erich Fromm
• We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it’s all about. Joseph Campbell
• Man is a piece of the universe made alive. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. Jack London

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The purpose of life is to thrive, not merely to exist or survive 

• If we truly want to create a life that is grounded in basic well-being, we must decide to commit ourselves to learning what it takes to thrive instead of merely survive. Susan Velasquez
• Life is not merely to be alive, but to be well. Marcus Valerius Martial
• Life takes on shape and meaning when a person is able to transcend the barriers of personal survival and become a conduit for its vital energy. Roz & Ben Zander
• My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour, and some style. Maya Angelou
• To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. Oscar Wilde
• Unbeing dead isn’t being alive. E. Cummings
• We live but a fraction of our life. Henry David Thoreau
• Purpose

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It’s not the length of your life that matters but its aliveness and depth 

• I’d rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special. From the movie Steel Magnolias
• The important thing is not how many years in your life but how much life in your years. Dr. Edward Stieglitz
• And in the end, it is not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln
• Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by its breath-taking moments. Michael Vance
• Life is not measured by the breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away. Hilary Cooper
• In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln

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Ask yourself what makes you come fully alive 

• Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. Howard Thurman
• Each one of us has a fire in our heart for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and keep it lit. Mary Lou Retton
• If you stay true to the spark of enthusiasm that makes you feel happiest and most alive, life will reward you in miraculous ways. Alan Cohen
• Ignoring your passion is like dying a slow death…Passion whispers to you through your feelings, beckoning you toward your highest good. Pay attention to what makes you feel energized, connected, stimulated – what gives you your juice. Do what you love, give it back in the form of service, and you will do more than succeed. You will triumph. Oprah Winfrey
• One way we can know that we are aligned with the life force that is God is that we feel more and more alive. Notice what gives you aliveness and what diminishes you, deadens and numbs you so that you only skim the surface of life. Begin to say yes to what quickens and energizes, to that which brings joy and gratitude. Mary Manin Morrissey
• Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it. William James  
• The best way to define a man’s character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt most deeply and intensely active and alive. William James
• Wherever we may come alive, that is the area in which we are spiritual. David Steindl-Rast
• Your true passion should feel like breathing, it’s that natural. Oprah Winfrey

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Love and accept yourself as you are 

• The essence of being alive is loving acceptance of yourself, for once we accept ourselves we unleash the beauty that lies within our soul. Micheal Teal
• I have been running so sweaty my whole life, urgent for a finish line, and I have been missing the rapture this whole time of being forever incomplete. Alanis Morissette
• Love,  Acceptance

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Be truly yourself 

• A man is alive when he is wholehearted, true to himself, true to his own inner forces, and able to act freely according to the nature of the situations he is in. To be happy, and to be alive in this sense, are almost the same. Of course, a man who is alive is not always happy in the sense of feeling pleasant; experiences of joy are balanced by experiences of sorrow. But the experiences are all deeply felt; and above all, the man is whole and conscious of being real…  Christopher Alexander
• Being fully alive entails two distinct but inseparable missions: first, being free to be oneself, and second, being dedicated to the betterment of others’ lives. Mary-Elaine Jacobsen
• I am not eccentric. It’s just that I am more alive than most people.  I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish. Dame Edith Sitwell
• It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we’re alive – to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
• Be who you are

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Allow yourself to be pulled to a fuller expression of yourself 

• Just as a blade of grass will push through a crack in the cement, growing toward the light, we too are being pulled toward a fuller expression of ourselves. That pull, or call, comes in many forms: in a dream, through a yearning, or from a desire to be released from an experience that has hemmed us in. How are you being called to greater aliveness? Mary Manin Morrissey

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Discover yourself 

• The joy of your own discovery is what confirms your own aliveness, your own value. Emmet Gowin
• Discovery

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Embrace the fool in yourself 

• I must learn to love the fool in me — the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self- controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of my human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my Fool. Theodore Isaac Rubin
• Foolishness

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Engage your passions 

• Activities we love fill us with energy even when we are physically exhausted. Activities we don’t like drain us in minutes, even if we approach them at our physical peak of fitness. This is one of the keys to the Element, and one of the primary reasons why finding the Element is vital for every person. When people place themselves in situations that lead to their being in the zone, they tap into a primal source of energy. They are literally more alive because of it. Sir Ken Robinson
• If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen for you, to you and because of you. Alan Armstrong
• Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Do what you love,  Passion

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Immerse yourself in flow activities 

• Intelligent people tend to require vitally absorbing activity to stay most alive and happy. They rarely are enthusiastic for any length of time unless they have some rather complex, absorbing, and challenging occupations or interests. Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper
• There is one aspect of happiness that’s been well studied, and it’s the notion of flow. Ask yourselves, when for you does time stop? When are you truly at home, wanting to be no place else? Martin Seligman

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Follow your own path even if it leads off the beaten track 

• Take the path that runs along the cliff–that one, the one without any guardrails. Take that path, and know the exhilaration of the ride and the pride you feel when you reach the end will inspire you to take that path again and again. And that experience … every day, will make you more fulfilled, more complete, and more alive. Harry Beckwith
• To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying “Amen” to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive. Robert Louis Stevenson
• You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need. Jerry Gillies
• Follow your own path

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Surrender yourself to a great purpose 

• Aliveness and purpose are practically the same thing. The purpose is greater aliveness, so every time we create greater aliveness, the purpose is being served. Werner Erhard
• The most fortunate people on earth are those who have found a calling that’s bigger than they are—that moves them and fills their lives with constant passion, aliveness, and growth. Richard Leider
• When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person than you ever dreamed yourself to be. Patanjali
• A Creator is vision-focused and passion-motivated. To really live into your Creator self, you are called to do the inner work necessary to find your own sense of purpose—whatever touches your heart and holds meaning for you. David Emerald
• If you’re alive, there’s a purpose for your life. Rick Warren
• Purpose

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Surrender yourself to dreams and goals that inspire you 

• When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life. Greg Anderson
• Goals are not only absolutely necessary to motivate us. They are essential to really keep us alive. Robert H. Schuller
• Dreams,  Goal setting

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Embrace your deepest desires and longings 

• It seems to me that we can never give up longing and wishing, while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. George Eliot
• Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again. “Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing,” he agrees. Karen Marie Moning
• I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life. Virginia Woolf
• Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death. Kahlil Gibran
• Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility or relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known. Mark Epstein
• I am dead because I lack desire… In desiring to become, you begin to live.  Rene Daumal
• Desire is a teacher: When we immerse ourselves in it without guilt, shame, or clinging, it can show us something special about our own minds that allows us to embrace life fully. Mark Epstein
• May we serve with much fire, much heart, much desire, and much prayer. Ronna Detrick
• Desire, both the whispers and the shouts, is the map we have been given to find the only life worth living. John Eldredge
• It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened? George Eliot
• One must desire something to be alive. Margaret Deland
• Desire

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Don’t put life on hold 

• Don’t ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is the special occasion.
• Get busy living or get busy dying. Stephen King
• How strange it is, our little procession of life! The child says, “When I grow up.” And then, grown up, he says, “When I get married.” But to be married, what is that after all? The thought changes to “When I am able to retire.” And then, when retirement comes, he looks back over the landscape traversed; a cold wind seems to sweep over it; somehow, he has missed it all, and it is gone. Life, we learn, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour. Dale Carnegie
• It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living. Eckhart Tolle
• Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized.
• One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. Dale Carnegie
• Start living now. Stop saving the good china for that special occasion. Stop withholding your love until that special person materializes. Every day you are alive is a special occasion. Every minute, every breath, is a gift from God. Mary Manin Morrissey
• The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live. Epicurus
• The most life-destroying word of all is the word tomorrow. Robert Kiyosaki
• We are given one life, and the decision is our whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live. Omar Bradley
• You are either living fully, giving your gift in the midst of those challenges, even today, or you are waiting for an imaginary future which will never come. David Deida
• Embrace life

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Stop preparing to live and start living fully now 

• I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung. Tagore
• Man is born to live, not to prepare for life. Boris Pasternak
• Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out. Oliver Wendell Holmes
• No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. Alan Watts
• The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live. Elbert Hubbard
• We are always getting ready to live but never living. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive. Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment. Thich Nhat Hanh
• Preparation

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Don’t be afraid of death, be afraid of never being fully alive 

• Don’t be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live. Natalie Babbitt
• Don’t be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin. Grace Hansen
• Every man dies. Not every man really lives. Braveheart
• Fear not that life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning. John Henry Cardinal Newman
• It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. Marcus Aurelius
• It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live. Victor Hugo
• Many people die at twenty-five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five. Benjamin Franklin
• Some people live ninety years but most people live one year ninety times. Mary Manin Morrissey
• Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive – the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Miguel Angel Ruiz
• The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive. Ernest Becker
• We live but a fraction of our life. Henry David Thoreau
• What could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn’t lived it. Edward Albee
• You are afraid to die, and you’re afraid to live. What a way to exist. Neale Donald Walsch
• Death

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Know you have what you need right now to be fully alive 

• It’s also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now…with its aches and its pleasures…is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive. Pema Chodron

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Have the courage to dare to live 

• A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live. Lao Tzu
• Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive – the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Miguel Angel Ruiz
• Ofttimes the test of courage becomes rather to live than to die. Mohamed Abdel Moneim Fayed
• Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live. Dorothy Thompson
• You can always die. It’s living that takes real courage. Himura Kenshin
• To be alive at all involves some risk. Harold McMillan
• Courage

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Seize life today 

• Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today. James Dean
• Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes and dance. Oprah Winfrey
• Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. The Dalai Lama
• Live each day as if it be your last. Marcus Aurelius
• Live every day as if it were your last and then some day you’ll be right. H.H. Morant
• Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart.  Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so.  Mary Jean Irion
• Today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can. Leo Babauta
• Embrace the gift of today

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Embrace life in this very moment 

• Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys. Andre Gide
• We may not all live holy lives, but we live in a world alive with holy moments. Kent Nerburn
• You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope. Thomas Merton
• You have to do your best to face every moment, because this moment will never come again. The moment that you are living right now is a very important opportunity to make your life vividly alive. If you want to live with spiritual security in the midst of constant change, you have to burn the flame of your life force in everything you do. Dainin Katagiri
• If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments. Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• Live in the moment

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Embrace the experience of being fully and intensely alive 

• Live fully while you are alive. Robin Sharma
• Live fully in its total meaning of loving, caring, creating and adventuring. Herbert Otto
• Live to the point of tears. Albert Camus
• Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation. H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
• May you live all the days of your life. Jonathan Swift
• Begin at once to live and count each separate day as a separate life. Seneca
• Live more, learn more, laugh more, love more. J.D. Meier
• A vital person vitalizes everything they touch. Live as if you are enough and watch what happens. Live as if, walk as if, eat as if, talk as if … and see what happens when you start from the inside out, from what’s here inside right now. Geneen Roth

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Embrace adventure 

• Adventure begins with you, personally. It is in the way you look at things.  It is the mental stance you take as you face your day.  It is finding magic in things.  It is talking with people and discovering their inner goodness.  It is the thrill of feeling a part of the life around you.  The attitude of adventure will open things up for you.  The world will become alive with new zest and meaning.  You’ll become more aware of the beauty everywhere.  Nothing will seem unimportant.  Everything will be revealed as having pattern and purpose. Wilferd A. Peterson
• Adventure

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To be fully alive, you need to wake up 

• To be awake is to be alive. Henry David Thoreau
• Only that day dawns to which we are awake. Henry David Thoreau
• Those who are Awake live in a state of constant amazement … Jack Kornfield
• I don’t know quite how to say this. I want to wake up.  I don’t want to live half-assed anymore. Kaya McLaren
• Awakening

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To be fully alive, you must not allow things in you to die 

• Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. Norman Cousins
• Ignoring your passion is like dying a slow death… Oprah Winfrey
• Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. Stephen Vincent Benet
• The gift of wonder God gave us as children was meant to be kept alive. Instead, we have let wonder go to sleep. Edward Hays
• This alone is to be feared – the closed mind, the sleeping imagination, the death of the spirit. The death of the body is to that, I think, a little thing. Winifred Holtby 
• While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die – whether it is our spirit, our creativity, or our glorious uniqueness. Gilda Radner

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Create meaning in your life 

• I did not know I was on a search for passionate aliveness. I only knew I was lonely and lost and that something was drawing me deeper beneath the surface of my life in search of meaning. There is a hunger in people to go to those deep depths; to know that our lives are sacred; that our hearts are truly capable of love. It is a yearning to be all the we can be.  A longing for what is real. Anne Hillman
• Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it. . . . What frustrates us and robs our lives of joy is this absence of meaning. . . . Does our being alive matter? Harold S. Kushner
• Meaning

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Appreciate the gift of life 

• Today is a gift I honour by fully living it. Mary Anne Radmacher  
• Appreciation of life itself, becoming suddenly aware of the miracle of being alive, on this planet, can turn what we call ordinary life into a miracle. We come awake to such a realization when we recognize our connection to a spiritual dimension. Dan Wakefield
• By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.  Albert Schweitzer
• Every day you are alive is a special occasion. Every minute, every breath, is a gift from God. Mary Manin Morrissey
• I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know that just to be alive is a grand thing. Agatha Christie
• Our time on this earth is sacred, and we should celebrate every moment. Paulo Coelho
• When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. Marcus Aurelius
• Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can. The Dalai Lama
• By respect for life we become religious in a way that is elementary, profound and alive. Albert Schweitzer
• I acknowledge the privilege of being alive in a human body at this moment, endowed with senses, memories, emotions, thoughts, and the space of mind in its wisdom aspect. Alex Grey
• Life is a gift

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Accept your life as it is 

• Spiritual security means you are fully alive and comfortable in your life as it is, without expecting anything. Dainin Katagiri
• What’s important is living the life I have – being utterly here and present – rather than wanting a different life or thinking there’s something more or better to have. Geneen Roth
• Acceptance

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Allow yourself to enjoy and savour life, especially the little things 

• He who allows his day to pass by without practicing generosity and enjoying life’s pleasures is like a blacksmith’s bellows: he breathes but does not live. Proverb
• It is in his pleasure that a man really lives. Agnes Repplier
• Enjoyment,  Savouring

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Make gratitude into a daily habit 

• Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness, and gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness. David Steindl-Rast
• We are most alive when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. Thornton Wilder
• We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. Thornton Wilder
• Gratitude,  Habit

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Open your eyes to the miracle of life and the wonders around you 

• Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive–that you can touch the miracle of being alive– then that is a kind of enlightenment. Thich Nhat Hanh
• Everything is extraordinarily clear. I see the whole landscape before me, I see my hands, my feet, my toes, and I smell the rich river mud.  I feel a sense of tremendous strangeness and wonder at being alive.  Wonder of wonders.  Gautama Buddha
• Like a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going home, or that it will soon be night. William Hazlitt
• Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then. Albert Camus
• The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive. Thich Nhat Hanh
• To be alive, to able to see, to walk…it’s all a miracle. I have adapted the technique of living life from miracle to miracle. Arthur Rubinstein
• The time when you are most alive and most aware is in childhood and one is trying to recapture that heightened awareness. Edna O’Brien
• He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. Albert Einstein
• Life is a miracle and marvel,  Wonder

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Live from your heart 

• We were not sent into this world to do anything into which we cannot put our hearts. John Ruskin
• All the windows of my heart I open to the day. John Greenleaf Whittier
• Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow. Norman Vincent Peale
• The heart

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Experience each moment as new and fresh 

• To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no- man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. Pema Chodron
• Explore the familiar with new eyes

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Take care of your mind, body, heart and soul 

• If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit. Thomas Merton
• Mind, body and soul

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Nurture and enrich your soul 

• If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive. Eleonora Duse
• Though the soul is not a thing, it is our beingness, that which gives us being. So its presence and absence are visible.  Its presence manifests in being awake, attentive, energetic, alive.  It is the spark of life.  It is absent or dampened when we lack vitality, elan, energy.  It is the true self we are seeking in all our explorations, and yet it is not somewhere “out there” but right here now, underneath the false roles we’re always casting ourselves in. Gabrielle Roth
• To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying “Amen” to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive. Robert Louis Stevenson
• Your soul is infinitely creative. It is alive and expansive in nature. It is curious and playful, changing with the tides of time. Debbie Ford
• The soul

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Make time for exercise 

• Exercise is amazing, from the inside out. I feel so alive and have more energy. Vanessa Hudgens
• I do it as a therapy. I do it as something to keep me alive. We all need a little discipline. Exercise is my discipline. Jack LaLanne
• Exercise

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Engage your creativity 

• If you’re alive, you’re creative. All we need to do to be creative is to do whatever makes us feel alive. Elizabeth Gilbert
• Creativity has everything to do with making the most of time – not in the sense of frantic pacing, but in the sense of a kind of private peace in which one is quietly making time come alive. John B. McLeish
• Creativity is the mother of all energies, nurturer of your most alive self. It charges up every part of you. When you’re plugged in, a spontaneous combustion occurs that ‘artists’ don’t have a monopoly on. Judith Orloff
• Our everyday creativity is not only good for us, it’s also one of the most powerful capacities we have, bringing us alive in each moment, affecting our health and well-being, offering richness and alternatives in what we do, and helping move us further in our creative and personal development. Ruth Richards
• Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives…most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity…when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 
• To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive. Matthew Arnold
• Creativity

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Actualize your potential and be all you can be 

• Live fully in its total meaning of loving, caring, creating and adventuring. The actualizing of our potential can become the most exciting adventure of our lifetime. Herbert Otto
• Most people live … in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using only his little finger. William James
• We are all functioning at a small fraction of our capacity to live fully in its total meaning of loving, caring, creating and adventuring. Consequently, the actualizing of our potential can become the most exciting adventure of our lifetime. Herbert Otto
• The fun of being alive is realizing that you have a talent and you can use it every day, so it grows stronger. Lou Centlivre
• The whole point of being alive is to evolve into the complete person you were intended to be. Oprah Winfrey
• Potential

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Surrender to the power of love 

• Find a woman who makes you feel more alive. She won’t make life perfect but she’ll make it infinitely more interesting. And then love her with all that’s in you. Gayle G. Roper
• In a deep moment of love, thinking stops. The moment is so intriguing, the moment is so tremendously powerful, the moment is so intensely alive, that thinking stops. You are simply in awe, a great wonder surrounds you. Rajneesh
• We are most alive when we’re in love. John Updike
• To see reality—not as we expect it to be but as it is—is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love. Frederick Buechner
• When we love anyone with our whole hearts, life begins when we are with that person; it is only in their company that we are really and truly alive. William Barclay
• Love

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Embrace compassion 

• Compassion is a foundation for sharing our aliveness and building a more human world. Martin Lowenthal
• Compassion

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Allow yourself to care 

• People who take the risk make a tremendous discovery: The more things you care about, and the more intensely you care, the more alive you are.  This capacity for caring can illuminate any relationship: marriage, family, friendships– even the ties of affection that often join humans and animals.  Each of us is born with some of it, but whether we let it expand or diminish is largely up to us.  To care, you have to surrender the armor of indifference. You have to be willing to act, to make the first move.  Arthur Gordon
• Caring

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Help others 

• Being fully alive entails two distinct but inseparable missions: first, being free to be oneself, and second, being dedicated to the betterment of others’ lives. Mary-Elaine Jacobsen
• Helping

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Be generous to others and give from your heart 

• Giving is more joyous than receiving not because it is a deprivation but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness. Erich Fromm
• The human contribution is the essential ingredient. It is only in the giving of oneself to others that we truly live. Ethel Percy Andrus
• He who allows his day to pass by without practicing generosity and enjoying life’s pleasures is like a blacksmith’s bellows: he breathes but does not live. Proverb
• Generosity

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Spend time with people who are fully alive 

• It’s your life. Live it with people who are alive. It tends to be contagious. Peter McWilliams
• Surround yourself with positive people

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Get out of your mind and thoughts 

• Is there aliveness in you or have your eyes glazed over in thought? Eckhart Tolle
• Listen – life is really going on, right now, around us. Do you see it? Sometimes I lose it but if I sit still and listen, it comes back, and then I think, How funny, this is what being alive is. Robin Morgan
• Some people say, the world can be so alive! It always is, you just do not know it because you’re lost in your thinking. You notice it as you become more awake. Eckhart Tolle
• Spiritual awakening is being free from conceptualisation. It is awakening from identification with thoughts. It is awakening to the aliveness and depth of this moment.  Eckhart Tolle
• There is an aliveness in people who are living life and not merely observing or intellectualizing it… William Brugh Joy
• You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose. Indira Gandhi
• You stay distracted in your mind rather than become present in your heart.
• The more you perceive life through a mental screen of abstraction and conceptualization, the more lifeless and flat the world around you becomes. Eckhart Tolle
• Through meditation, you can learn to focus on the present and not worry about the future or regret the past. In letting go of day- to- day preoccupations, you are left with an appreciation of the big picture, the joy of being alive right now, and the recognition of breath, mind, body, and inner spirit.  Alison Conte

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Become intensely aware … 

• Mindfulness is the cure for everything; the essence of being alive. Ellen Langer
• Awareness or spirit simply means a beingness, a sense of aliveness which transcends all of our form. This awareness is totally inclusive. It is a state of being where everything is okay simply the way it is. Adyashanti
• Always, every instant every moment in every circumstance, silent awareness is alive in you. Gangaji
• The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. Henry Miller
• Awareness,  Live consciously (with conscious awareness)

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… especially of your inner body 

• As much as possible in everyday life, use awareness of the inner body to create space. When waiting, when listening to someone, when pausing to look at the sky, a tree, a flower, your partner, or child, feel the aliveness within at the same time. Eckhart Tolle
• There is a joy in the actual taste of vanilla ice cream that does not come from knowing the chemical formula of vanilla. There is a joy, an inherent aliveness in the body that you can experience if you pay attention to your body. But if you live up in your head, in your words all the time, you don’t notice it. Charles Tart

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Become intensely present in the moment 

• Aliveness is about the freedom to use whatever works in the moment. Right action at right time. Which is another name for true compassion. A freedom that is only fully felt when one is completely immersed in the present moment of now, and free of the burden of beliefs, which manifest as thoughts. A clear mind fully aware of reality as it is now, and operating with absolute synchronicity within time and space, that is the real beginning of Aliveness. Matt Thornton
• When you are present, when your attention is fully in the Now, Presence will flow into and transform what you do. There will be a quality and power in it. You are present when what you are doing is not primarily a means to an end (money, prestige, winning) but fulfilling in itself, when there is joy and aliveness in what you do. Eckhart Tolle
• Aliveness comes down to one thing—consenting to rise, to be dented, impressed, pressed in upon, to rejoin, to open, to ponder, to be where we are in this moment and see what happens, allowing the breath of not knowing to be taken. Ann Ulanov
• Be present to the magnificence, freshness, aliveness and depth of this moment. Eckhart Tolle
• As you embrace the present and become one with it, and merge with it, you will experience a fire, a glow, a sparkle of ecstasy throbbing in every sentient being. As you begin to experience this exultation of spirit in everything that is alive, as you become intimate with it, joy will be born within you, and you will drop the terrible burdens of defensiveness, resentment, and hurtfulness… then you will become light-hearted, carefree, joyous, and free. Deepak Chopra
• In the moment, life is fresh and alive. The past and future lose their heaviness. Eckhart Tolle
• Spiritual awakening is being free from conceptualisation. It is awakening from identification with thoughts. It is awakening to the aliveness and depth of this moment.  Eckhart Tolle
• The best way to say, “Thank you, God,” is by letting go of the past and living in the present moment, right here and now. Whatever life takes away from you, let it go. When you surrender and let go of the past, you allow yourself to be fully alive in the moment. Letting go of the past means you can enjoy the dream that is happening right now. Miguel Ruiz
• To be alive is to totally and openly participate in the simplicity and elegance of here and now. Donald Altman
• With repeated practice, we give up our restless search for happiness in the next moment and learn that by inhabiting each moment with full awareness, we experience a deepening sensory aliveness and richness. Ronald S. Miller
• You have to do your best to face every moment, because this moment will never come again. The moment that you are living right now is a very important opportunity to make your life vividly alive. If you want to live with spiritual security in the midst of constant change, you have to burn the flame of your life force in everything you do. Dainin Katagiri
• As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life. Buddha
• We may not all live holy lives, but we live in a world alive with holy moments. Kent Nerburn
• If we keep this question in mind while planning our days, we will see that we actually have countless opportunities to add to our life force. Being around people and places we love and doing things that give us deep satisfaction, taking time to digest the events in our lives, being less busy, telling the truth, laughing a lot, eating right, exercising regularly, having long talks with those we love–these are among the best ways to nourish our vitality.  Our life force thrives when we are completely engaged in the present moment. Debbie Ford
• Live in the moment

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Embrace joy 

• True joy is that which gives us more energy and makes us feel more alive. Robert Puryear
• We laugh to survive. Then, with joy we thrive. Mary Anne Radmacher
• Joy

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Make room for laughter 

• I realize that humour isn’t for everyone. It’s only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive. Anne Wilson Schaef
• We laugh to survive. Then, with joy we thrive. Mary Anne Radmacher
• Laughter

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Embrace play 

• Play keeps us vital and alive. It gives us an enthusiasm for life that is irreplaceable. Without it, life just doesn’t taste good. Lucia Capacchione
• We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing. Charles Schaefer
• Play

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Embrace pain as a part of living and allow yourself to fully feel it 

• Failure to shed tears is a failure to live life fully. And the one thing that life requires of us all is to live it. Never be embarrassed by your ability to be alive. Amy Neftzger
• My heart hurts, that means I’m alive. Kazuya Minekura
• Pain (any pain–emotional, physical, mental) has a message. The information it has about our life can be remarkably specific, but it usually falls into one of two categories: “We would be more alive if we did more of this,” and, “Life would be more lovely if we did less of that.” Once we get the pain’s message, and follow its advice, the pain goes away. Peter McWilliams
• Sometimes, pain is all that lets you know you’re alive. Robert Jordan
• If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive. Elbert Hubbard
• To be fully alive means opening yourself up to all dimensions of life—sadness as well as joy, and pain as well as pleasure. It also involves committing yourself to a search for personal meaning and transcendent goals—of which happiness is a by- product. Robert W. Firestone
• We are motivated more by aversion to the unpleasant than by a will toward truth, freedom, or healing. We are constantly attempting to escape our life, to avoid rather than enter our pain and we wonder why it is so difficult to be fully alive. Stephen Levine
• Whatever your Comfort Zone consists of, you pay a huge price for it. Life provides endless possibilities, but along with them comes pain. If you can’t tolerate pain, you can’t be fully alive. Phil Stutz and Barry Michels
• Pain

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Embrace uncertainty 

• If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity. Eckhart Tolle
• Once we meet our children, even for moments, in a place of “I don’t know,” of relinquished authority, we return to the realms of mystery and magic, where real connection becomes alive again. Arjuna Ardagh
• Let go of the need for certainty

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Allow yourself the freedom to fail 

• Without risk, without the potential to fail, your life will be a shadow of what it could be. You may survive, but you will never thrive. Rebecca Rapple
• Failure,  Freedom

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Let go of your fear and worries 

• Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live. Dorothy Thompson
• Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.’ We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. Marianne Williamson
• You are afraid to die, and you’re afraid to live. What a way to exist. Neale Donald Walsch
• Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive – the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Miguel Angel Ruiz
• Fear,  Worry,  Letting go

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Let go of the fear of disapproval 

• It is impossible to go through life without incurring a good deal of disapproval. It is the way of humanity, the dues you pay for your aliveness. Wayne Dyer
• Approval seeking,  Criticism,  Rejection

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Let go of tension 

• Not being tense but ready. Not thinking but not dreaming.  Not being set but flexible. Liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement. It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.  Bruce Lee
• Relaxation

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Let go of the need for security  

• Aliveness commands a spiritual response, a summoning. In aliveness the task shifts from: how can we be safe and secure, protect ourselves from reality to how much lightening can we stand? How much reality can we receive? Ann Ullanov
• It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment or the courage to pay the price. One has to abandon altogether the search for security and reach out to the risk of living with both arms open. One has to embrace the world like a lover. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying. Morris West
• Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than partyline line or public opinion; when the mood of Beethoven or Bach will be the mood of your total existence… Wilhelm Reich
• Security

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Travel and explore the world around you 

• Personally, I like going places where I don’t speak the language, don’t know anybody, don’t know my way around and don’t have any delusions that I’m in control. Disoriented, even frightened, I feel alive, awake in ways I never am at home. Michael Mewshaw
• Exploration,  Travel

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Read books that make you come alive 

• Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand. Ezra Pound
• To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry. John Holmes
• The end of reading is not more books, but more life. Holbrook Jackson
• Reading,  Books

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Make room for stories 

• Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving. Madeleine L’Engle
• Stories

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Let go of old patterns 

• The only two things in our lives are aliveness and patterns that block our aliveness. As patterns are experienced out, our lives become clearer. Things begin to make more sense. What we do makes more sense. It’s funny, but when the alive you emerges from behind the smokescreen of all those patterns and begins to participate in life directly, life really does have purpose. It all somehow makes sense, in a fantastic way.  Werner Erhard

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Become aware of what blocks you from being fully alive 

• Whatever you’re avoiding is robbing you of your aliveness. Michael Nitti
• About the process of growing up … What follows is tragic. We stop risking for fear of making mistakes, fear of not fitting in, fear of being embarrassed or humiliated by saying the ‘wrong’ thing. Our instinctive joy and boundless enthusiasm are replaced by playing it safe and looking good. Our spontaneity deserts us, and with it much of our natural creativity. Predictability replaces passion. We learn to reveal very little of who we really are and what we really feel. We sell the richness of our passionate birthright for the security of this burdensome thing called our ‘image’. It weighs us down like a suit of medieval armor, restricting our every move, sapping our vitality and aliveness. We wander through life on automatic pilot, controlled by the need to live up to the false image that we invented.  Robert White

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The Aliveness Questionnaire (HwaiTah Lee)

• Do I feel a sense of fulfilment in my life?
• Do I feel a sense of balance in my life?
• Am I going after my dreams?
• Am I enjoying the energy of optimum health daily?
• Do I have moments of hearty laughter regularly?
• Do I have my own quiet moment of solitude regularly?
• Do I enjoy regular recreation times that re-create me?
• Do I have at least two nurturing people in my life?
• Do I feel that my life matters?
• Do I have spiritual practice in my life?
• Do I feel deep engagement in my daily activities?
• Do I go to bed most nights feeling that the day was a well-lived day?
• Source

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More questions 

• Does it enliven or deaden me? Is what I’m doing now allowing me to trust myself or tilting me towards being frightened of myself?  Do I feel closer to what really matters to me or further away?  Does it open my heart or close it?  When I get to the end of this hour or day or week or year or life, will this be something I’ll be glad I spent my time on?  This is about finding out what makes you come alive.  Geneen Roth
• At what time in your recent past have you felt most passionate and alive?
• What makes you come alive?
• How can you add more life to your years?

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