When Do You Feel The Most Alive?

Welcome to April and a new month of essays!

One of my favorite features of Mindsoak is the moment in the podcast when the guest and I take our conversation and descend deeper in to their lives and their philosophy on life.

It happens during every interview.

I’m getting good at sensing when it’s about to occur so for me, the excitement just builds and builds as we continue our discussion.

I love it.

It leaves me feeling satisfied, humbled and appreciative to my guests for being open to the conversation.

So as we approached this new month on the essay side of Mindsoak we discussed wanting to take the essays in a slightly different direction.

We want to push a little deeper. To experience the diversity of thought from a variety of authors.

To achieve this goal we’re going to start aligning the essays more closely with the questions in the podcast.

Starting this month all the authors will start by answering the same question.

Think of it as a writer’s prompt.

And even though we will all be answering the same question, it will be interesting to see how different the answers will be. We all have unique perspectives and we see the world through our own lenses. We like to write about completely different things. We write about politics, traveling, writing, parenting, mental health, experiences, philosophy and more.

It will be an interesting thought experiment to have 8-10 authors answer the same question and then to sit back and reflect on the different answers. So without further ado, this month’s question is:

When do you feel the most alive?

This was the fundamental question I was asking myself right before I started Mindsoak. I was coming off a project which at one time gave me feelings of fulfillment but over the years, for a variety of reasons, began sucking the life out of me.

So I walked away.

I walked away from something I started. Because I wasn’t feeling it anymore. I wasn’t feeling alive. And if I wasn’t feeling alive in the project anymore, than what the hell was I doing?

It’s was one of the easiest decisions I’ve made in my life.

But leaving created a vacuum.

I was a man without a project, which is not how I like to live.

I need side projects. Always. It’s just the way I’m wired. I truly believe, now that I am old enough (wise enough?) to understand it, that side projects fulfill me. For me they’re a form of self care.

I came to the conclusion that what I really love doing is learning about people. I love hearing stories. I love asking questions which can take crazy turns and tangental paths to interesting and deep conversations.

I live for those conversations.

I realized that needed to be my next project.

To get in the minds of people I admire and learn how they got from Point A to Point B.

To hear how they learned from their mistakes. From their failures. How they find inspiration and motivation to create.

I realized hearing stories about other people feeling alive made me feel more alive. I wanted to explore interesting people’s minds. I wanted to soak up their stories. I wanted to hear about failures, successes and inspirations.

I wanted to hear what it’s like to travel the world, to record an album, to start a magazine, to create a clothing line, to create an app,  to create a multimillion dollar brand, to publish a book or hell, to hear what it’s like to film a sex scene.

And now I get to do just that with Mindsoak.

I get to talk to interesting people doing interesting things.

And I get to talk to them or work with them or record the podcast with them on a daily basis.

And that is when I feel most alive.

More about Jon Filitti: First I became a counselor. Then a dad. I created some comic books and started a mental health private practice. Now I talk to interesting people on Mindsoak and Twitter.