Stop living your life on autopilot! E54

August 9, 2022

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I am so happy that you have found your way to this episode. Take it as a sign that what I am sharing with you today is meant for you. Your soul wants to learn about this topic for you to apply the learnings and AHA moments you will receive in the next 20 minutes. So let’s look at why it might feel like we are living our life on autopilot and what we can do to take some of that steering power back. So stay tuned!

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It is pretty much a fact that we live our life on autopilot, especially the older we get. By the time we are 35 years old, 95% of who we are is made out of automated programs based on the memories we made, the habits we created, the experiences we collected together with the emotions that they produced. By that time we have collected and embodied so many beliefs, perceptions and opinions that 95% of our life runs on autopilot. If that is what we want.

Personally I do not want that. I actually do NOT want my life to stay the same until the end of my time. I still have bigger dreams and goals for my life. And if that applies to you, too, then keep listening to find out how this all works and what you can do about it.

So let’s talk about all of those programs that are stored in our subconscious minds first.

Programs stored in our subconscious mind

Most of them are actually vital and essential for us to live. And these are the programs that are stored in our cells, in our DNA and they already exist when we are born. And these programs are for example:

Your heart beating automatically and pumping the blood around your body – that is something you don’t have to worry about. The body does that for you.
Another example is our digestion. We don’t have to consciously focus on digesting our food. It just happens – like an automated program that is uploaded into our DNA.
Another good example is the automatic nervous system that regulates all of these processes inside of us like the heartbeat and the digestion and it makes sure that if we are in danger that our flight and fight nervous system gets activated.

So you see that a lot of the programs stored in our subconscious are vital and helpful to us.

Useful programs we collect in our lifetime

The second category of programs are programs that we installed in our body in our lifetime and again most of them are very helpful. Examples are:

Driving a car. After a few years of driving, you don’t have to spend a lot of thinking power on driving your car. You have done it so many times that your body knows better than your conscious mind how to drive the car. That is a sign of an automated program.
When you sit down for dinner and you eat your meal with cutlery. You don’t have to think twice about how to use the spoon, fork or knife. Again you will have learned it as a child and have done it so many times that it comes automatically to you.
The same is for brushing your hair or your teeth in the morning. All routine and everyday activities that we have repeated so many times that our body has turned into a program which gets activated very easily and quickly.

Just imagine you would need to spend all your day-to-day brain power on these activities. You would have hardly any time to focus on anything else like your work, your hobbies or your family. You would spend all of your energy and brain power on figuring out how to eat with a fork and knife at every meal. That would be exhausting. So we can be very happy and grateful for our subconscious to store these programs

Less helpful programs we collected

So let’s move on to some other programs that we will have developed and created in our lifetime and that we might not find so helpful. I give you a few examples, some of them my own and some not:

The need to eat something sweet after dinner. That is something that you might have done so many times that your body now expects it. As soon as dinner is over your body runs this program of expecting to taste something sweet and get a sugar hit. It has become automatic.
Another example would be a glass of wine in the evening after work. Just to relax and treat yourself after a hard day of work. This can become quite quickly a program that you might not even want – but the body is now running the show and will keep the program running. It will do everything for you to go and get the wine out of the fridge.
Another example of an automated program is the picking up and checking of our mobile phones. I catch myself so many times doing that automatically. I don’t even consciously think about picking up the phone. My hand automatically moves to the phone and picks it up for me to look at it. This is an automated program – you have done it so many times that the body now does it automatically. Especially if you have not done it for a certain amount of time, it will do it without you even thinking about doing it. It’s crazy, right? Sometimes I leave the phone in my office in the evening so I stop checking it every 20 or 30 minutes for no particular reason.

These are programs that are more obvious and visible to us as it happens in our environment, in our outer world. So the tips I am going to give you soon will help you to change any of these kinds of habits and automated programs. But let’s talk about the last category of programs that are not as obvious and visible but can be very hindering for your development, growth and for you to change.

Programs that are more linked to our internal state of being

They might represent the values we live our life by, for example, justice, kindness, learning, loyalty, service or respect. Or they might be a strong belief that is a guiding compass in our lives, for example, “I’m not good enough.” or “It’s selfish of me to want more.” or “I am afraid of trying and failing.”

Such an internal program could even be based on a feeling. Your body may be so accustomed to a certain feeling that it keeps looking for reasons, thoughts and triggers to activate this feeling. For example, this could be fear, worry, self-doubt, not feeling enough or unworthy.

You see that all of these programs are happening in your inner world and they are not as visible as you pick up your phone or eat a chocolate bar. So you might not yet be aware of them and most certainly not aware that a lot of those programs let you run your life on autopilot.

Programs are puzzle pieces of your identity

These programs make up our identity, and our personality. They are the puzzle pieces to who we are in our life. And again most of them are good or at a minimum neutral. But what if there are some that you consciously dislike? So you are aware that something keeps popping up and you are not happy with your reaction or your behaviour or the emotions that this program brings up in you. And you would like it to stop. And in the past, you might have told yourself: “Well, that’s just who I am.” The good news is you don’t have to keep it. You can actually change it (Episode 47).

But then there are as well programs that are much more hidden. So how do we become aware of them? I use my environment to help me discover those programs. I live my life now much more observant (Episode 45) and look for things that mirror something back to me.

And what do I mean by that? If there is something in my environment that I dislike or something frustrates me like a person or a situation, then I now see this as a sign and I go within and try to see where this is coming from. Why does this situation keep happening in my life? I ask myself and most of the time I get to the bottom of it if I ask enough. Sometimes it takes a few hours, sometimes days and sometimes months. But if it’s time for me to let it go or I am ready to deal with this belief, feeling or traumatic event in my past, then it reveals itself to me. And then it’s up to me to deal with it or not, right?

Do you want to stop living your life on autopilot?

Just because you are suddenly aware of something does not mean it always goes away. Sometimes the awareness of it already is all you needed to do. But when it comes to the deeper-seated, more emotional and far more triggering programs the awareness in itself is not going to be enough for you to finally let go off.

But let me give you a very recent example of a program I discovered which I would like to change. And it’s a program around the value of fairness. My whole life I always tried to live my life with a focus on fairness. I try to be fair to people and I like to be treated fairly. And I have been aware of this value for most of my adult life. But recently, because I am so much more observant of my thoughts and my feelings and what happens inside of me, I realised that this value is too strong inside of me.

My example of a program I want to stop

I kind of overuse it. The program of fairness switches on in situations where it really does not need to switch on. So my husband told me something that was happening in the UK due to Brexit. Some people tried to give the blame over to another country. At that moment – even though I do not care about the given situation – my value of fairness program kicks in and I start observing my thoughts first.

They were: “How unfair is that? It’s not fair to blame another country. How dare them.” And then the emotions come up. I can literally feel them rushing through my body and switching on my stress hormones. I start to feel anger, frustration, and outrage, and at this moment I can feel my body moving from balance into imbalance. Because these emotions are emotions of stress and they move me from a natural and balanced state into the state of survival (Episode 33) and that’s not good for me or my body.

That’s when I realized that my value of the fairness program kicks in far too many times in my life and that I want to work on that. I don’t want to move from balance into imbalance and stress because of situations that don’t have anything to do with me and that I don’t even care about. Does this make sense to you?

I somehow created in the past this sense of fairness. It’s a good value to have but it seems that it is a bit too strong and dominant in my inner world. And now that I was able to become aware of it I would like to change it. Turn the volume down on that so it just kicks in when it’s important to me.

How can you stop living your life on autopilot?

So let’s talk about what you can do when you are or you become aware of such an internal program that moves you into a survival state instead of a balanced creation state. The first points we already discussed: It’s awareness and observation. To change anything you need to know what actually happens. So becoming aware of something and then observing it. That’s how you really get to know it and then you can reprogram it.

When you find such a program, observe yourself: Look at the thoughts that you have in that situation. Check-in with your body about what you are feeling. What are those emotions that are triggered in that situation? And how do you behave? Are you still behaving calmly and reasonably? Or are you suddenly moving to react in a way that you don’t really like?

It’s kind of giving yourself a health check. You can reason with the situation and assess if you want to keep it or if you rather want to let go of it. Both are fine. But most of the time when we already do this work we do it because we had enough of something, right?

Rewrite the program

Now that you are fully aware and know what is happening. You can start to rewrite the program. Next time this situation happens you want to have some new thoughts ready that you rather want to think. In my example, the thoughts that I had were: “How unfair of them. They don’t take responsibility for their actions. How dare them.” So next time I observe my fairness program switching on, I will tell it to stop and then decide to replace it with some new thoughts. And the new thoughts that I created for this situation are: “Everything happens for a reason. Thankfully this is not my business. And I hope it works out for the best of all parties.”

These are just my kind of thoughts that I would like to have to help me to stop the old thoughts from triggering the old emotions of stress. So when I catch myself next time and I can stop those thoughts and I replace them with these new positive thoughts, the old emotions will quickly disappear again. Any emotion that comes up in our body, if we don’t feed it with more thoughts, actually disappears after 90 seconds to 2 minutes. That’s as long as an emotion can go for without being fueled anymore. So if you move away from the old thoughts and you stop acting in the old way – for example just move into quietness and inaction for a couple of minutes, the stress emotions will disappear very quickly out of your body and you are in balance again.

Prepare new thoughts that you want to think

So you need to have some new thoughts prepared. In these situations trying to come up with some new thoughts is much more difficult, so prepare them beforehand. And every time you catch yourself in the situation you will be able to stop yourself faster. And move from imbalance to balance until one day this does not trigger you anymore and you have rewritten the program successfully. How amazing does this sound?

So who is going to try this out? Let me know in the comments if you are actually going to apply this. And move from being on autopilot in your life to being more in control of your programs. I would love to hear your stories and examples.

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A Belief is Just a Thought You Keep Thinking Episode 85
5 Step Method to Solve Your Problems Episode 83
Breaking the Habit of Procrastination Episode 78

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