In the movie Rush(2013), Chris Hemsworth playing the race car driver James Hunt says:

I have a theory why women like racing drivers. It’s not because they respect what we do, driving round and round in circles. Mostly they think that’s pathetic, and they’re probably right. It’s our closeness to death. You see, the closer you are to death, the more alive you feel, the more alive you are. And they can see that in you, they feel that in you.

We have seen here how 'state' can affect the game(approaching,during conversation), similarly I think this he is talking about energy transference we take from life itself from people around(men mostly doing since statistically the odds are more from them doing such feeling-alive activities).

So, we are all safe and sound given the advancement in society which makes us dull and boring. And we know 'dull and boring' brings deathknell towards living an interesting life.

How can we bring back that aliveness?

Robert Greene in his book 50th Law, dedicates the last chapter on confronting our mortality which in turn, he believes, can make us feel more alive by taking the mortality head-on.

He says that we can get it back through 4 ways :

  1. Sense of Rebirth
  2. Sense of Urgency
  3. Sese of Awe
  4. The Sense of Oceanic, The Connection to all Life

Specific quotes from the book and some how-to-do-it follows in the text below.

*"There is a third and fearless way, however, to deal with mortality. From the moment we are born, we carry inside ourselves our death. It is not some outside event that ends our days but something within us. We have only so many days to live. This amount of time is something unique to us; it is ours alone, our only true possession. * ...

The fearless approach requires that you accept the fact that you have only so much time to live, and that life itself inevitably involves levels of pain and separation. By embracing this, you embrace life itself and accept everything about it."

He advises to practice Stoicism( See the wonderful book 'A Guide to the Good Life' by William Irvine or browse blog posts or /r/Stoicism)

In the past, our relationship to death was much more physical and direct. We would routinely see animals killed before our eyes—for food or sacrifices. During times of plague or natural disasters we would witness countless deaths. Graveyards were not hidden away but would occupy the center of cities or adjoin churches. People would die in their homes, surrounded by friends and families. This nearness of death increased the fear of it but also made it seem more natural, much more a part of life.

...

That we are not aware of this phenomenon is a sign of the deep repression that has taken place.

THE SENSE OF REBIRTH

This feeling of having your soul pulled out of your body like a handkerchief is the essence of a sublime sensation. For Hemingway it could be conjured only by something extreme, by a brush with death itself.(COMMENT : Pushing out of comfort zone at an extreme level doing high risk activities like high altitude mountaineering, BASE Jump or doing thing that makes us feel we have cheated death superficially or in reality)

We, however, can feel the sensation and its reviving benefits in smaller doses. Whenever life feels particularly dull or confining, we can force ourselves to leave familiar ground.

This could mean traveling to some particularly exotic location, attempting something physically challenging (a sea voyage or scaling a mountain), or simply embarking on a new venture in which we are not certain we can succeed.

In each case we are experiencing a moment of powerlessness in the face of something large and overwhelming. This feeling of control slipping out of our hands, however short and slight, is a brush with death. We may not make it; we have to raise our level of effort. In the process, our minds are exposed to new sensations. When we finish the voyage or task and come to safe ground, we feel as if we are reborn. We felt that slight pull of the handkerchief; we now have a heightened appreciation for life and a desire to live it more fully.

THE SENSE OF EVANESCENCE AND URGENCY

None in particular

THE SENSE OF AWE

This sense of awe can be elicited by something vast or strange—endless landscapes (the sea or the desert), monuments from the distant past (the pyramids of Egypt), the unfamiliar customs of people in a foreign land.

It can also be sparked by things in everyday life—for instance, focusing on the dizzying variety of animal and plant life around us that took millions of years to evolve into its present form. (The philosopher Immanuel Kant, who wrote about the Sublime, felt it in holding a swallow in his hands andgazing into its eye, feeling a strange connection between the two of them.) It can be created by particular exercises in thinking.

Imagine, for example, that you had always been blind and were suddenly granted sight. Everything you saw around you would seem strange and new—the freakish form of trees, the garishness of the color green. Or try imagining the earth in its actual smallness, a speck in vast space.

The Sublime on this level is merely a way of looking at things in their actual strangeness. This frees you from the prison of language and routine, this artificial world we live in. Experiencing this awe on any scale is like a sudden blast of reality—therapeutic and inspiring.

THE SENSE OF OCEANIC

By gaining very large perspective about the vastness of human life and universe through reading etc.