How To Stop Living In Autopilot mode — Living an Intentional Life
- The Ultimate Guide to Intentional Living
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung
If we reflect on our daily lives, we become aware that we mostly live like we are in autopilot mode.
We almost repeat what we do today and again tomorrow. We dont think about it a lot; we just unconsciously repeat what we do daily.
A study conducted by Action for Happiness’s director, Dr. Mark Williamson, and Professor Renata Salecl, a sociologist and philosopher, found that 96 percent of respondents accepted the notion that they live on autopilot.
Almost the same actions, behavior, and thoughts each day.
These days repeat into weeks, these weeks become months, and these months become years; time will pass faster before we become aware of this.
In the worst case, maybe one day, it will strike us when we look in the mirror. We may not be happy with the reflection we see.
Perhaps we are out of shape.
We may have a well-paying job, but we are not satisfied with it; it’s something we hate to do daily.
Maybe we got into a relationship. But, still, deep inside, we know that person is not suitable for us, and we come to know that we are not living the life we dreamed of.
This may be the reality of many of you reading this now,
Or you may be moving in a similar direction without being aware of it.
When most of us go through this in our life, we may blame God, our fate, and other people, and we complain because this happened to us.
But when we look into our lives and think clearly about why this happened, we may understand that there is no one to blame.
We are the ones who chose this life. We are the ones who created this life for us, even though we never desired this life.
We created this life with our daily habits, actions, choices, decisions, etc. all these factors shaped our lives into something we are not happy about, but we were unaware of all these.
We were not aware of the future consequence of those habits, actions, choices, and decisions.
We were unaware of where life was taking us each day, and we took many things for granted.
We avoided many warning signs and red flags.
We avoided our inner voice when it said what we were doing was wrong. We were busy doing many meaningless activities, distracted, wasting a lot of time unnecessarily, and doing many things even though they did not align with our values.
We did what we repeatedly did because it felt convenient and easy for us at that moment.
We did because it felt good at that moment, we went behind our silly impulses and temptations, or we may be addicted to many things we didn’t control ourselves. We were in autopilot mode and lived in almost the same pattern daily on repeat.
We did many things because our friends were doing the same, or we saw someone doing that on social media.
We chose a career unsuitable for us because we saw someone making a lot of money from it.
We got into a relationship because all our friends had a boyfriend/ girlfriend.
I will tell you a story that portrays this way of life.
One day a man was going somewhere fast riding a horse,
Seeing this, a pedestrian asked the man on the horse,
Hey, where are you going?
The man on the horse replied,
I dont know. Ask the horse!
When we live in an autopilot mode without any awareness or control over our habits, actions, decisions, and choices, when we drift through life without any direction, we are not much different from the man on the horse.
We may have become aware of all our mistakes someday, but we stay stuck in our daily patterns without changing.
When it strikes us, we regret the days, months, and years we wasted.
The biggest mistake we can make with our life is to waste our time because it is limited in a lifetime, yet most of us live like we are immortals. We live life as we got forever, and when each day passes, we are getting one day close to our death; it’s inevitable.
But that’s what makes life valuable; the fact we have only a limited amount of time in this world makes it precious, so the right thing to do is to make the best out of our limited precious time.
But you dont have to blame yourself for everything because most of the time, we are not aware of all of this. Autopilot mode of living is our default human nature. Moreover, in this world filled with distractions and where it is easy to fall into many addictions, it is not surprising when we end up with a messy life.
Still, we must understand that this is not the only way to live.
We can live in a better way.
Instead of allowing the horse to control us and take where it wants, we can take control of the horse and go wherever we want to go.
That means taking control of our lives and creating a life we want to live.
What differentiates humans from other creatures is our ability to think, choose and direct ourselves for what we want, perceive the possible future consequence of what we do, our ability to control our actions and behaviors.
We live up to our potential when we use all of these qualities.
To do that, living the way we used to is not enough. We must get out of that autopilot mode.
If we want to create a life that we truly desire, we need to start living in a completely new way.
I call this Intentional living.
Intentional living is about becoming aware of our actions each day. It’s about being conscious of our unconscious behaviors, choices, and decisions because, as we said earlier, these all play a crucial role in shaping our life. So from that awareness, we choose to take actions, choices, and decisions that shape our lives the way we want.
We develop new good habits and break the bad ones.
We say No to things that keep us from getting the life we want.
We allocate more time and priority in our lives to the essentials and plan how we want to spend each day, and start living based on that.
Intentional living is about creating and living a meaningful and happy life according to our uniqueness.
“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives — choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” — Aristotle
How can we start living more intentionally?
Pause and reflect.
Awareness is the first step to change.
Just take time to pause and reflect,
Ask yourself some questions that bring awareness into your life.
- What am I doing?
- How am I spending my days?
- What are my daily habits and routines /
- Are any bad habits and behaviors not good for me long-term?
- Currently, what are the problems I am facing? What is the root cause of it? What can I do about it?
- Am I happy with how I am living each day?
- Am I okay with where I am heading in life?
- Am I using my time in a good way, or am I just wasting it unnecessarily?
- What are the things I avoid doing in my life that are important to me?
- How is everyone around me influencing me? Is it in a good way or a wrong way?
- Am I living the way I want to, or am I just passing the time?
- Am I living the way my heart desires, or am I just trying to fulfill others’ expectations of me?
Take a break from everything, ask yourself these deep questions honestly, and become aware of your current life.
Try to understand more about yourself, your personality and character, your likes, interests and talents, your preferences, etc.
In most cases, less understanding about ourselves creates most problems in our lives, and it causes us to make decisions that are unaligned with who we are.
Ask these questions and try to answer that by writing in your journal.
Do it by taking your time to get more clarity.
Make this reflecting process a habit.
You can also reflect on your life daily,
When you wrap up your day, pull out your journal, reflect on that day, and make plans for the next day. It will help you to stay on track to living an intentional life.
I have to say — dont judge yourself by reflecting on yourself and your life. When we observe ourselves, we may get to know how messed up our life is and how much time we are wasting each day. It’s a common reaction to feel guilty about it. But we dont have to see ourselves in the shadow of guilt. Be happy because you are aware of yourselves.
See yourself as your best friend. Self-love is essential here.
Forgive yourself. We cannot change our past, but we can create a better future from this moment with our conscious intentions.
That’s where we are going to focus from now on.
Have a vision for your life and live by it.
It’s easy to live an intentional life when we have a life vision to aim for and a direction to move forward.
Again, ask yourself some questions.
- What is my ideal life? What is my dream life?
- How do I intend to live?
- How am I want my life to be after one year or after 3–5 years?
- How do I want different areas of my life to be? My physical body, health, and fitness? Career, Love relationship, Friendship, Family life?
- What do I want to achieve?
- What do I want to experience?
Here you dont have to limit yourself just by where you are right now in life. Instead, use your imagination and create a better life vision for yourself that inspires you.
Believe in yourself first.
It doesn’t need to make sense to others. It only needs to make sense to you.
This vision must give you meaning and purpose. It doesn’t need to be a perfect one. Hold on to the vision you can imagine is best for you now.
Maybe someday you may realize that you want to live in a completely different way, and that’s completely okay.
At least we will not be the same person at that time.
We may have evolved and grown as a person.
When we have a vision, it gives us direction, and it will create focus in our life. Because it is important to us, we minimize doing unimportant things.
Consciously and intentionally, structure each day according to where you want to go in life by taking small steps.
Just start by replacing a bad habit with a good one.
For example, maybe stop staying up all night and start sleeping and waking up early.
I will not say this will be easy. It may seem easy for some people, but it will be challenging for most people.
We may need to get out of our comfort zone and exercise willpower and self-discipline initially.
But that’s the way, we may fall back to those old patterns, but just because it is hard, you dont have to quit trying.
See this as a journey. A journey to your best self. A journey to your best life. Even though the journey may be challenging to you, it is undoubtedly worth the ride!
In this journey, you will learn many things and surely grow as a person.
As the saying goes, “Journey is the reward.”
I wish you all the best.
P.S. This is my first ever medium article. I hope it was helpful.
I will be rolling out many insightful essays soon, so keep in touch and follow me for future updates.
