Awakening Out of Autopilot Mode

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today we're going to talk about waking up out of autopilot mode. So have you ever gone to get something from a room in your house only to get there and realize you have no idea why you're there? Have you ever started to drive to an event only to take the turn off you always take on that route out of habit. These are examples of when we fall into autopilot mode. So basically what happens in autopilot mode is that we're no longer fully present in the moment because our attention is caught up in our wondering thoughts.

So the problem with autopilot mode is this, when we're in that mode, we tend to act out of habit and automaticity and it's frighteningly easy to forget where we're going, get caught up in old habits and reactivity or completely lose our way when we're stuck on autopilot mode. So a way that I think about autopilot mode, it's a bit more like living your life as a passenger, rather than the pilot. You know, we tend to do things out of habit instead of making active choices. We tend to stay in the comfort zone and in our routines, even if it's not making us happy. And we tend to play out the same kinds of thoughts and emotions and reactive patterns, even if they're painful for us or even harmful.

Now, autopilot can feel really familiar and safe in a way, because you just kind of go through the motions, you go along for the ride. But if you're not deliberately choosing your path, it's easy to end up somewhere you didn't really want to be. You know, perhaps your relationship ends up breaking down or you're in a job that's just not right for you. Or maybe it's your health or lifestyle that just end up way off course. You know, most of us have experienced this at some point.

Another possibility is you end up living with a kind of robot, like existence, just putting one foot in front of the other, but not really living. So mindfulness wakes us up out of autopilot mode and gives us back more control of our lives. It puts us back in the pilot seat again, you could say. Now we may sometimes feel that we have no choice but to be pulled around by our thoughts, emotions, our habits and reactions. We may feel, in other words, that we're stuck as passengers.

But the truth is, is that we do have a choice and it's this ability to choose the direction of our lives and not to be pulled around that we're cultivating through the practice of mindfulness. So in today's practice, we'll focus on developing our ability to wake up out of autopilot and return to a greater awareness of the present one.