I was sleeping six hours a night but thought that maybe I could cut that back to five hours and get more done. So I did. And I was making it work. I was pulling it all together, but something was still troubling me.

I wasn’t living at my peak.

I wasn’t living at my best. I was tired and discounting the importance of sleep. As I tried to balance family, friends, work, faith and a million other commitments, I had tried to shortcut sleep.

So in 2008, I decided things were going to be different. That I was going to create a really simple mantra and do my best to follow it. I was going to sleep eight hours a night in 2008. I came up with: “8 in ‘08.”

But sleep is only one part of what we can all do to live longer, healthier, happier lives. What about diet? What about eating smaller portions more often during the day? (That idea led me to create “Dine in ‘09!”) What about treating our hearts like the muscles they are and getting them in shape?

What if the way we nurtured our outer selves significantly increased our ability to live our inner passions?

That’s the goal of the Live section, to find ways we can all live life to the fullest.