Have you ever been going along, only to just stop and look around, asking yourself, “How did I get here?”
Maybe you meant it in the literal, 3-D sense where you had zoned out, thinking about some other thing, only to realize that your feet, or your driving, stepped in and found their way, even without you really noticing or paying attention.
Or maybe you meant it in a “what the heck happened to the life I imagined?” kind of way. This is a different sort of looking around, where what upsets you is the realization that you haven’t arrived where you expected to for your life.
In both cases, you’ve stopped paying attention, moment to moment.
This is something the mind does. The mind likes patterns, and likes to run on autopilot, because it’s more efficient and consumes less energy. So, when we stop noticing, our mind flicks the autopilot on and takes us where we usually go. Or it follows the crowd.
Now, this may seem just ducky in our current society, where efficiency is so highly rewarded. Following the crowd is efficient. Fitting in is efficient. Going the same places and following the same patterns is efficient.
And…
Running on autopilot won’t take you where you’ve dreamed of going, to the life you’ve imagined—because you’ve never been there before. You certainly haven’t been there enough to create a grooved pattern that autopilot can just retrace.
Also, there’s likely not a crowd heading where you most want to go. Where you’ve now wound up is where the crowd you’ve been in was heading all along.
Maybe that doesn’t seem accurate. After all, you know plenty of other folks with their own dreams, also different from where you all find yourselves now. How can that be?
We currently operate in a system where most of us make a living by creating for some and serving others. We are rewarded for speed and efficiency; or for doing things others don’t want to do; or for doing things better than others, when we have a natural talent or ability.
In this system, we are rarely encouraged or rewarded for exploring our passions or pursuing our purpose.
Why is that, you might wonder. Because the only way to explore your passion and pursue your purpose is to switch off the autopilot and begin noticing again, begin paying attention. And that slows you down and makes you inefficient. But even worse for the system and those for whom you are creating, is that when you begin to pay attention, you start to notice that doing something just for the money, or just because you’re good at it, may not feel very satisfying. When what we do lacks purpose, or more accurately, if it’s not helping you fulfill your purpose, you won’t feel motivated or committed to it, and it won’t fill up your spiritual bucket. And when your spirit is empty, all aspects of your life are affected negatively.
I’ve had clients who begin working with me, who couldn’t tell they were on autopilot until I helped them see it. And it’s one of those things that, once you learn to see it, you start to see it everywhere.
So, spotting it is the first step toward change. But the second step is where courage is required.
Now that you see it, what are you willing to do about it?
Because, as I said earlier, a lot of our society is operating on autopilot and celebrating mindless efficiency. So, switching your autopilot off can ruffle some feathers and create some uncomfortable situations.
Which gets us back to where we began, a few hundred words but an entirely different mindset ago. If you want that life you imagined, you have to keep imagining it. You have to keep dreaming it, and keep seeing all the different places where glimpses of that life show up and edge closer.
When you explore your passions and pursue your purpose, you ignite your spirit. You bring vitality to your life and all your relationships. You, on purpose, become a fuller version of yourself, and this version will expand and grow, and lift others in the process.
Are you ready?
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