“Her vitals are weak. We’re not sure she’s going to make it, and if she does, she may not be able to keep her leg.”
These were the first words I remember hearing as I lay intubated, my consciousness slowly returning after a near-fatal bicycle accident. For months after leaving the hospital, thankfully with both legs, I lived in an altered state, overwhelmed with gratitude at the miracle of being alive. Not just surviving a fall off a cliff but stunned that anything exists at all. Every expression of life from a blade of grass to the intricate genius of a bird building a nest, could bring me to tears with wonder.
This state of awe stood in sharp contrast to my pre-accident life, where I was motivated by accomplishment, not aliveness.
Life Before the Fall: Metrics That Dimmed Vitality
Before, what moved me to tears were not feelings of gratitude but worry-thoughts of not being enough. Worries that I was:
Not successful enough. (I was.)
Not thin enough. (I was.)
Not loved enough. (I was.)
Not financially secure enough and facing some imagined future under a bridge. (Not even close.)
I measured myself by external metrics of success, shaped by family, culture, and an inner standard that demanded I excel at everything. I traded sustainable vitality for the cheap high of affirmation, achievement, and approval.
The Collision with Impermanence
Coming face-to-face with impermanence knocked me back into my senses.
During the long recovery, I couldn’t walk, work or get into the wilderness which I loved. My sources of identity were stripped away. And yet:
- I appreciated my body’s ability to heal and savored the nature that came through my senses… the movement of leaves in the breeze and the sweet scent of ripening cherries. Stone fruit season still brings me joy!
- I found meaning in vulnerable interactions with friends and family.
- I had no income, yet I never felt poor.
- There were moments of despair and hopelessness. But beneath it all, I felt unmistakably alive.
This led to a deep realization:
What if the metrics I’d been tracking all my life were not the ones that mattered most?
Two Ancient Invitations:
Memento Mori — Remember you will die.
Memento Vivere — Remember to live.
The awareness of death, when we actually let it in, reminds us to live more fully. Perfectionism loosens. Time sharpens. Petty worries right-size themselves. A subtle invitation arises to savor, engage, and participate in the immediacy of life.
And yet, we often turn away from this gift.
What Metrics truly Motivate?
In attempts to outrun mortality, we chase longevity markers: VO2 max scores, visceral fat percentages, sleep metrics, supplement stacks, and the never-ending list of “optimal” numbers. These can be helpful, but they rarely address the question: How do you feel?
A 61-year-old woman at my gym, vibrant, fit, and full of energy, became despondent after a body scan showed lower-than-expected muscle mass. The comparative metric told her she was “less-than.” Her lived experience told her she was thriving.
Fortunately, she shifted her attention back to what mattered most to her at the gym – the joy in movement, connection, and strength… not in data. It was the felt sense of aliveness that most motivated her, not the self-judgment arising from comparison and striving toward some ideal.
Even our doctors, tracking the vital signs of blood pressure and heart rate, are not tracking the felt sense of vitality.
That part is up to us.
Vitality as a Felt Sense
It’s our job to know what brings us alive, to recognize what dims us, and to intentionally create the conditions where vitality can arise.
Vitality is not a mood. And it’s not just about feeling a positive spark. It is a felt sense of being engaged with life, internally and externally. An intimacy with the life that is being experienced through the mind, heart and body. While circumstances do affect us, the deeper determinant is how we relate to those circumstances.
Recently, a wave of grief for my father, who died five years ago, softened me. I felt my energy drop and my heart grow heavy, yet there was still a clear thread of vitality. The aliveness came from feeling the grief rather than numbing it with my phone or potato chips, which is an all-too-common choice I make when I am in autopilot.
The vital signs we track are personal. I recently asked a group: “What brings you fully alive?” Some of their responses:
- emotional openness
- attuning to beauty through the senses
- deep, authentic connection
- being in the flow state
- feeling part of something bigger than oneself
- expressing appreciation for others
- creativity and curiosity
- growing through problem solving
But unless we pay attention to how life moves us, we miss countless opportunities for aliveness and vitality… a rainstorm outside the window, the unexpected tenderness of a friend’s check-in, the softness of evening light.
Life continually offers us invitations into meaning, engagement, and vitality… as well as invitations into dullness and distraction.
Which ones we accept is up to us.
What Are You Tracking?
Vitality isn’t something a device can measure or a doctor can diagnose.
It emerges from how fully we participate in the fragile, radiant experience of being alive.
So ask yourself:
What makes you feel fully alive?
What vital signs are you paying attention to?
What might open for you if you began tracking the metrics that actually matter?
How are you going to live this one wild and precious life?
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Ready to explore your own vital signs?
Join Lori this January or April in Santa Fe for Vital Signs: Cultivating a Flourishing Life, a workshop designed to help you identify what truly brings you alive and create the conditions for vitality to flourish in your daily life. Together, we’ll move beyond the metrics that don’t serve us and discover what actually matters in living a rich, engaged life.
Vital Signs: Cultivating a Flourishing Life
January 4–8, 2026 | Santa Fe
April 16–19, 2026 | Santa Fe