How to Stop Living on Autopilot: 3 Ways
The multiflora rose bushes are exploding with white blossoms when it hits me: I’m living on autopilot again. I claim I want greater joy in my life, but my decisions don’t cultivate the joy I crave. If you want to learn how to stop living on autopilot, you are in the right place.
Today, we’ll talk about practical ways to slow down, be mindful, and live with purpose.
How to Stop Living on Autopilot
Most of us know all about autopilot.
We push through our days with no margin time to notice the beauty and thousands of stressors streaming through our minds.
How do we stop living on autopilot and find greater peace and meaning in life?
Let’s look at several ways to be more intentional.
1. We slow our rhythms.
As I walk along our country road and notice the rose bushes, I decide to do something unexpected: I stop to admire the fragrant, ivory blossoms.
After years of walking along this road, I’ve never noticed these invasive, injury-causing plants in blossom.
I’ve grimaced as their needle-like thorns penetrated my clothing and pierced my flesh. I’ve clipped them away from trails and dug them out of the hedgerow. But I’ve never noticed them in bloom.
I’m astonished that something so beautiful could emerge from something so menacing.
What if there is beauty awaiting me in countless unseen corridors of my life, and I’m too busy solving problems and worrying about thornbushes to notice?
On this day, I decide to smell the white roses.
I put my face into the bushes I’ve cursed, and I breathe in something beautiful.
I wonder how much joy autopilot has stolen from my life.
Perhaps you need this reminder, too. Slow down, friend. Create space in your days for stopping to admire sunsets, talk to strangers, and call loved ones on the phone. These are some of life’s most blessed moments.
2. We aim to be fully present wherever we are.
I wonder how many conversations I missed because I was too worried about raking leaves or logging miles or hanging curtain rods.
Is this the secret to learning how to stop living on autopilot? Take my life off autopilot and refuse to slip back into this thoughtless way of living.
Is this the secret to learning how to stop living on autopilot? Take my life off autopilot and refuse to slip back into this thoughtless way of living. #livingpresent #joyinlife #fulfillment #encounteringGod Click To TweetJesus said it like this: “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). We have peace in Jesus. Trouble will come, but he has overcome it. He wants us to walk in peace.
He also said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
If autopilot is destroying my days, it is certainly not from the Lord. He wants me to have an abundant kind of life.
How do we stop living on autopilot and embrace the abundant life?
We take the time to enjoy God’s gifts: hot cups of coffee, sunny days, kickball in the backyard, and freshly baked cookies. We slow down to savor these gifts, and we experience God’s presence in the process.
3. We pay attention to what God is doing around us.
The opposite of autopilot is living present in my moments.
When I live present in my moments, I slow down to notice the people in front of me. I slow to observe the beauty in the architecture of my community, the wispy breaths of high cirrus clouds, and the jade buds sprouting from the spruce tree in the yard.
Embracing these gifts feels like actually living. (For more insight on present living, join me here.)
Tasting the food I eat, drawing on the sidewalk with chalk beside the kids, and lying in the grass while geese pass overhead are each gateways to joy. And somehow, opening my eyes to what’s around me feels like opening my eyes to God.
When I see the good in it all, I am drawn closer to his beating heart.
Joe Rigney speaks of this kind of observation in his book, The Things of Earth. He calls it indirect godwardness: “a subconscious focus on God while engaging with the world that God made” (121).
He goes on to explain that indirect godwardness increases our direct focus on God “by creating new mental, emotional, and spiritual categories for our enjoyment of God. It keeps us from being vague and indistinct in our minds” (126).
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I meander slowly away from the white roses and gather a bouquet of daisies along the roadside. A barred owl calls from the valley behind, and I’m thankful for having noticed.
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