Why do you need to be mindful and stay out of autopilot mode?

Do you ever feel like you are doing something automatically without conscious thought? Take a shower, brush your teeth, walk the same path every day, chew on snacks while watching a movie, and drive home from work. At the end of the day, you don’t remember any of those automatic decision-making that your brain performs. It seems like we all live in autopilot mode in which our brain takes care of our simple routine and makes a quick decision for us. It makes our life easier as our brain repeats what we have done multiple times in daily life perfectly fine.

My father and I used to talk about the situations in which we are doing things without conscious attention. He said, when he drives the same route back home, he can just drive and let his mind wander, thinking about something else, not the direction and suddenly we arrive home safe and sound. He doesn’t remember how often he changes lanes or how he steers a wheel each time and how many turns he has to take. This is what he normally does in his everyday life. That is when his mind shifts to default mode which turns on the autopilot brain.

In my everyday life, I often forget what I just did and how I did it because my brain just automatically continues doing my old habit. E.g. Every time I go outside I lock the door, but often my autopilot brain does it for me without my focusing. Everything seems to happen so fast that I cannot even notice. Some day I’m not so sure if I already locked the door. However, I did go back and checked it again. Surprisingly it was locked!

This autopilot mode also helps you to do multitasking. An example from my experience; when I am eating and reading an online article at the same time. Autopilot mode drives me to eat without knowing how the food tastes like because my brain is not focusing on it. At the same time, this autopilot mode makes me able to eat effortlessly while reading the article.

A friend of mine often lives in autopilot mode. She forgets where she put down the phone and this situation happens frequently. It has been two times in a week that I called her and then someone else picked up telling me that the owner of this phone left the phone there! So many times that she cannot remember where her phone is, two minutes later, she found it in her bag.

It seems convenient while we are living on autopilot so that we don’t have to make the same decision over the same routine. The point is this fast decision making is not in your control which is not good for you. The cost of living in autopilot mode makes you miss some detail of what is important. When you are not being mindful and not be able to focus on each task at the time, your brain controls you. Have you ever found yourself listening to your friends talking while nodding your head as you understand but actually your mind just wanders and doesn’t even know what they are talking about? Imagine if this situation happens when you are sitting in the class, spending three hours listening to the lecturer, knowing nothing, and back home. At the end of the day, you don’t know what you have done; times flies.

So now, think about the last time that you were mindful. Have you ever observed things differently? How does it feel when you truly live your life? How do you feel about the way you are spending your time, Is it faster or longer? Once you can stay out of autopilot mode, you start to take control over your life again.

How being mindful better than living in autopilot mode

1. Mindfulness helps you control your thoughts in order to make better decisions. We make decisions many times a day, so it would be better if we can make the best daily decisions each time or even make a big decision more effectively. E.g., Most of the time, you have breakfast in front of your television, your autopilot brain telling you to keep eating and choosing the easiest way to do it. Without mindfulness, you may choose something easy and unhealthy to eat while watching TV, without considering the right portion of food you are eating.
2. It gets you out of the autopilot brain that distracts you from your ability to focus on tasks. When your mind wanders, you can easily get distracted from those ideas that come to your mind and cannot concentrate on what you are doing. You will be able to perform your task better when you are mindful.
3. You can observe yourself for what is going on better. You can reflect on how you feel, what is your emotion and thought right now and see things more clearly.
4. Get you into a state of flow where your perception of time changes. When you are in autopilot mode, everything can make you feel overwhelmed and feel like you don’t have enough time to do it all because when your mind wanders, you feel like time goes by so fast. In contrast, when you are being mindful, you will feel like you have more time to do each task longer and time goes slowly.
5. Having present awareness. Everything you do can be more interesting because you are able to get in touch with your senses and live in the moment.

Here is a suggestion for you: if you often found yourself living in the autopilot mode, one thing that can help you is practice mindfulness. Apply the practice of mindfulness e.g. doing yoga and meditate into your daily life. It doesn’t need to take a long time to do so, you can begin with 3-minute meditation each day and you will see the difference!