Are You On Autopilot?

I believe we live our lives mostly on autopilot, unless we make a conscious effort to be mindful in what we do. More often than not, we over inundate ourselves with things that are urgent to keep ourselves busy from thinking of the things that are important. I lose sight of this too. One of the reasons why I write is because it recalibrates my mind.

It is as though I am pressing the pause button.

This allows me to get into an introspective thought process of the experiences I’ve been through and simulate the ‘what ifs’ to generate possible futures. I start to take a different angle in deconstructing certain myths, beliefs, ideas, stories and see if there is any potential interaction among them. Given that our memories are constantly reforming itself and they are imperfect in such an interesting way, this gives us space to say — What if I did that, what if I do that, what if I said this instead of that, etc.

Instead of being myopically locked onto this frame of mind that we’ve got all the answers, we ought to put on a new pair of glasses, expand our vision and stretch ourselves mentally in directions that we may not have considered before. When we broaden our perspective, we tend to figure out the little details. This opens up new folds in the possibility space where we can come to realise some of the things we thought we knew, there is actually so much more to them.

Every answer leads to so many more questions.

We may have a good sense of what is going on, along with the gravitational pull towards our intuition and instincts, however we are constantly influenced by the influx of information bombarded in our faces. It is scary to know that sometimes we are bending, breaking and blending these information in ways that we may not even be conscious of. As a result, we change and conform into someone we hardly recognise.

We become someone that simply moves with the flow, till one fine day, we are told that we’ve changed.

In order to prevent this from happening, we need to have access to our consciousness to remind ourselves to be mindful in what we do. For me, writing is one of the ways I can go about doing it. How about you? It isn’t important that writing isn’t something that you want to do. All of us vary in terms of how we can reach our contemplative self. What is imperative is that we recognise our own ways in which we can have access to our consciousness.

I believe that when we are able to consistently question why we are doing what we are doing, it solidifies our internal set of values and drives us forward in becoming who we want to be.

However, not all contact with consciousness is great. I’ve stumbled upon heartbreaking cases where people are forced to face themselves in ways that they do not want to due to various traumatic experiences in their lives. Sometimes the truth is a lot less romantic. Hard times befall on us, and all we do is shrink with shame. We take a close look at ourselves, and we feel disgusted. We all have our accidents. They are the same kind, just in a different vertical, a different silo. Unfortunate events can happen to us, and they are dangerously sneaky. There is almost no way we can prevent them from happening. In such moments, it is so hard to shuck that all off. We simply get swallowed by blinding rage of how helpless and hopeless we are. Yes, we may be in tune with our consciousness.

But in most cases, we let that one moment define the rest of our story.

This is where I realised we aren’t meant to live life alone. Sometimes the best way to get in touch with ourselves isn’t through ourselves, but to put ourselves around the people who will support the journey we are on to empower us to become the best version of ourselves. Especially when we are feeling low and dispirited, we are not likely to listen to a stranger. We are validated to shut them down. However, if it is coming from someone in a place of love, we are likely to lower our defences, hear it and perhaps adopt it in gradual incremental ways. How many people do we have that we allow to be in our circle who can say painful things to us that we may not like to hear?

And once we hear it, are we willing to accept it?

It is crucial that we have a board of people that really have our best interests at heart, because it is through their real and unfiltered conversations that we are able to grow far beyond our years. They are our mirrors. They are our glasses. They are our wake-up calls and they give us the ability to see what is possible. But they can only take us so far. We have to want to take ourselves to a different place. If we don’t have that, we are gonna stay stuck, and a lot of people choose to stay stuck simply because they cannot find a conclusion right there and then.

The reason why they cannot find a conclusion, is because their vision is too narrow and they refuse to change their understanding of their circumstances. If we want to address things from the past, we cannot let one past event, one past mistake to go into the next play. If you allow 5 missed shots to dictate your next shot, if you allow the loss of your career to dictate your next career, if you allow your divorce to dictate your next love life, then you will be at the mercy of your thoughts. You will miss the next shot. You will lose your next career. You will not meet the love of your life. You have to be willing to say, that was back then. That happened, but it doesn’t mean it will happen now. This is how you claw your way out of pitch darkness. Along the way, we make adjustments in our actions and wait for their effects to determine whether further changes are required. This is the effect of taping into our consciousness and reaching into our contemplative self. If you recognise that you’re living your life as though you’re on autopilot mode right now, it simply means that at some point in your life, you’ve dug deep into who you are. If you’ve done it before, you can do it again. Being mindful of what you do is like learning how to ride a bike, a skill that once acquired, is never forgotten. It just takes a while to get back into it.