What if the scariest thing isn’t failure, but sleepwalking through life with your eyes wide open, because you’re living on autopilot?
Do you often feel like your life is just passing by, and instead of being in control, you feel like you’re a spectator in the affairs of your life?
Or do you find yourself staying busy all day but never able to hold onto something you accomplished at the end of the day? Have you lost your passion and always need to struggle through the everything you do?
Here are signs that your life is on autopilot and practical ways to break free and start living life intentionally.
What Does It Mean to Live on Autopilot?
Now, let’s be sure we’re on the same page about what living on autopilot means.
Apparently, the word autopilot or automatic pilot refers to a device that automatically steers ships, planes, and spacecraft without the active input of the person in control.
When it comes to daily life, living on autopilot means something (or someone) else is in control of your life. It means that instead of actively being in charge of your decisions and experiences, something else is doing them, and you are just tagging along.
When your life is on autopilot, you simply go with the motions and allow each day and activity to take you where it wills. You hardly initiate significant processes in your life – you only react to outcomes.
Why does this happen?
We humans are naturally wired with ‘internal drivers.’ These drivers help us make decisions by weighing the happenings in our external world against our preferences, desires, and natural wiring.
For us to be in charge of our lives, these internal drivers need to be actively functional. Consequently, we switch to autopilot when they are no longer active or have been numbed.
This numbing can happen as a result of prolonged periods of emotional, physical, and mental stress, trauma, pain, and a sedentary lifestyle.
When these drivers are inactive, your subconscious starts to run your life with anything it picks up from your external environment. This is often the point where people begin to live according to the demands, beliefs, and societal norms around them, whether or not they align with who they are on the inside.
But there is another shocking fact. While external factors can sometimes be responsible for the numbing of these internal drivers, your brain may actually the main culprit here.
The thing is, we have quite a lot of things to do in life. And if the brain has to actively process each of them, it can lead to what is called cognitive overwhelm. So, the brain tries to get as many activities as possible to become things we do unconsciously without any active cognitive input.
Think about how you brush your teeth, drive to the store, or even complete a task you’ve done a million times. During these times, your brain simply activates its default mode networks to help you perform these routine tasks without thinking about them.
If you leave the brain by itself, it is happy to make every single thing you do in life become what you do unconsciously, without any active cognitive input.
Sounds like a good thing, right? Not when you know how dangerous living on autopilot can be.
Why Autopilot is Dangerous
One thing you should know is that when you live your life on autopilot, your brain’s default mode network is predominantly active. When this network is active, it automatically means that other networks responsible for active and focused work will stay deactivated. Now, here are the consequences:
- You’ll dwell more in the past than you’d actively make any effort for the present.
- Living on autopilot robs you of the joy you should derive from living a present, purposeful life.
- It can shut you off from God and your core life’s convictions since your decision-making capacity will be paralyzed.
- It can limit or stunt your growth in different areas of life.
- Overall, it limits how far you can go in life because of the inability to do focused work.
Signs That You’re Living On Autopilot
You’re Always Busy but Rarely Fulfilled
Picture this. It’s the end of a busy day, and you’re signing out. You missed a dozen calls from loved ones because there was no time to take them. And all you’ve had were 3 cups of plain coffee and the cold fries you ordered online. Of course, you turned in your report for the day and cleared the paperwork on your desk. Productive day uhh?
But deep down, you cannot connect with everything you did today. You feel as though you were separated from your body, and you have no joy or fulfillment whatsoever about your productive day.
You feel like each day is just blowing past you, and you can’t lay hold of any significant impact those activities seem to be making, apart from settling the bills.
If this scenario sounds anything like your life, it is a subtle sign that you are not fully in control and may be living on autopilot.
How to Break Free
Go back to your identity. Who are you? Who has God called you to be? What are the values on which you’re building your life? What’s your life’s purpose?
When you figure out the answers to these questions, you can then intentionally align your daily actions and activities to conform to who you truly are. Only then can you begin to find true fulfillment even after a ‘not-so-busy’ day.
Walking in your identity and purpose is the surest way to switch off the autopilot life and start living intentionally. This is because purpose and identity are your internal drivers, and when your actions and activities align with them, you’ll find fulfilment.
But how can you stay true to your purpose and identity?
- Make room for reflection, questions, and meditations as often as possible.
- Stay in constant touch with the Source of your identity. If that Source is God for you, you’d want to keep your fellowship with God consistent and immersed.
- Make your environment a friendly reminder of who you are. This looks like joining communities that align with your identity or being a committed member of a local assembly.
- Use to-do lists and planners. And when you plan your days, weeks, and months, ensure that your topmost priorities are reasonably aligned with your identity, purpose, and life’s goals.
You Can’t Remember the Last Time You Felt Fully Present and Focused
Do you find yourself constantly doing things without even realizing it? Your life feels like a blur, and you always find it challenging to focus on the things you do.
Or do you find it hard to do deep work, i.e., stay focused on one particular thing without distractions? Do you find your mind always wandering when you pray or try to engage in meaningful conversations?
Or are you always unconsciously picking up your phone every 5 or 10 minutes and then getting lost consuming content that adds no value to your life?
Then you might just be living your life on autopilot. And you can’t keep going this way. If you want to make significant progress in your life, business, marriage, and spirituality, you must be able to do focused, distraction-free work regularly.
How to Break Free
To break free from living life as a spectator, you need to start by understanding why you find it easier to disengage from the happenings in your life.
Why are you finding it difficult to focus? Could it be that you entertain distractions as a means to medicate over a dysfunction deep down in your soul? Do you have unhealed trauma and wounds that find distractions and absentmindedness soothing? Are you dealing with fear of any kind?
When you’ve figured out the reason behind your distracted living, then you can go on to find ways to curb distractions and amp up your focus.
Regularly block out time for deep thinking and focused work. It will be hard at first, so start with short durations and gradually increase them.
Something else you can do is pay attention to your sensory experiences. Take time to look at your spouse, soak in their presence, and look into their eyes. Smell that flower, enjoy the aroma of your food. Hug your loved ones passionately, and don’t be afraid to shake people with confidence.
Savor every bite of your food instead of eating and scrolling the internet simultaneously. Be conscious of how that fabric feels on your skin. Feel the rain and snow, and enjoy the sun’s light. Listen to the birds chirping away in the morning, and spend time just enjoying nature, very often.
When you engage your sensory parts more often, you activate your brain’s central executive network, which is responsible for focus and attention. Once this part is activated, the default mode network is shut off, and you’re free from autopilot.
You’re Reactive, Not Intentional
Another sign that you’re living on autopilot is that you’re constantly responding to life instead of directing it. You are continually trying to fix things after they’ve gone bad, instead of setting them straight from the get-go.
If you always wait until your relationships have gone sour (or you’re completely drained), before you put up boundaries, or you neglect what you feel until you have an outburst, then you’re likely on autopilot.
If you are a parent and you find that you are always having to discipline your children to correct bad habits instead of building good ones, it could be a sign that you have left your parenting on autopilot for too long.
How to Break Free
Do you know what sets prominent and impactful people apart from the rest of the world? Intentional living. When you start to live your life with intentions rather than flowing with the motions, you set yourself up for immense success.
What does intentional living look like?
Intentional living looks like doing things because you need to do them. It looks like being present in your day-to-day affairs. It looks like making room for learning. Yes, it sure looks like deliberately learning specific life skills, instead of waiting till you get into trouble for not having them.
Intentional living looks like pursuing information and knowledge to become a better version of yourself. It looks like planning your day, setting the right boundaries, and deliberately making time for the things and people that truly matter to you.
Your Important Relationships Are Suffering Terribly
This is the outcome of not being intentional. When you’re living on autopilot and not intentionally putting efforts into the different areas of your life, it is bound to bleed into your relationships.
Autopilot living is one of the reasons most marriages go stale, become unhealthy, and even end in divorce. Both parties get too busy flowing with the waves of life, never attempting to take the reins and intentionally nurturing the marriage. Living on autopilot makes couples miss opportunities to connect deeply. Eventually, they lose empathy and interest in understanding each other.
Meaningful human connections are never an accident; nobody has great relationships by simply wishing for one. You need to deliberately put in effort to get the most out of our relationships – all relationships.
So, when you find that all or most of your relationships are going sour, or not as impactful as they are supposed to be, you may just be the common denominator here. You’ve left things to roll on their own. And this never yields the best result.
How to Break Free
Be intentional with your relationships. Reach out as often as possible, or better still, schedule time for calling or hanging out with the people that matter to you. Have an untouchable schedule for spending time with your spouse and children.
Let your significant other in on everything happening in your life, have vulnerable conversations, and never hold back verbal appreciation and affirmation from them.
Pray for the people in your life, and quit playing the assumption game. Also, do not wait till one person is hurt or bent out of shape to have difficult conversations.
You can also be intentional about your relationships by supporting those you care about and letting them know how important they are to you.
You’ve Lost Passion and Are Stuck in Procrastination
And we’re not just talking about procrastinating small, unimportant tasks. We’re talking about always putting off things that matter to you.
When you find that you’ve made a habit of delaying activities that matter to your wellbeing, important relationships, and worship of God, you might just be living on auto-pilot. It also means you’ve lost significant motivation and your why for life.
Do you find that life no longer interests and excites you, and your days seem like a series of bland occurrences? Or are you no longer curious and pursuing growth as you used to?
Have you lost your zest for living, even when dealing with the things and people you love? Are you always caught simply trying to survive?
Then you’re likely living on autopilot.
How to Break Free
To fix this, you need to regain your zest for living. Start with reconnecting with your Source (God) and the things that once made you feel alive. Go there more often.
The next thing you want to do is to constantly remind yourself of your why. Why are you doing what you are doing? What’s the bigger goal? Put yourself in an environment that constantly reminds you of your why. Then set up a routine, or something you’d do daily to keep those flames burning.
When you’ve fixed your zest, set up systems to prevent procrastination on the things that matter to you.
One of such systems is to adopt an identity that does not leave room for procrastination. So, if you’ve relaxed into calling yourself a procrastinator, you might want to change that name now. You need to associate with an identity that allows you to be intentional about the crucial things in your life.
Another way to beat procrastination is to set up an accountability system. Tell people about what you hope to do, leverage technology to help you remember to get things done, and reward yourself whenever you complete tasks.
Also, think about starting small. Focus on one small action first. By the time you complete that, the excitement and fulfillment you’ll feel can serve as motivation to move on to the next (or bigger) task.
Conclusion
We were not created to live on autopilot – no matter how comfortable it feels. Even God Himself has intentionally set systems in place to ensure continuity on the earth. We must replicate the same.
However, if any of these signs resonate with you, I need you to know that you are not alone. Best of all, you now know what to do about it and start to live life more intentionally.
In the comments, let me know which point stood out for you. How you will go about breaking free from living on autopilot.
