Are You Living on Autopilot?

How often do you find yourself moving through the day on autopilot?

Autopilot isn't always a bad thing. It can reduce mental load, help us build healthy habits, and make everyday tasks feel effortless. But when autopilot begins to disconnect us from our relationships, our health, our purpose, or ourselves, it may be time to pause and take back the driver's seat.

In this solo episode of Wellness in Every Season, Autumn explores how to recognize when you're living on autopilot and offers reflective coaching questions to help you reconnect with what matters most.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The benefits—and hidden costs—of living on autopilot
• How stress, overwhelm, and burnout can leave us feeling disconnected from ourselves
• Why noticing friction in your life is often the first step toward meaningful change
• Simple ways to become more present throughout your day
• How mindfulness, body awareness, breathing, and nature can help regulate your nervous system
• Why optimization is about small, intentional improvements rather than perfection
• Questions to help you identify what needs your attention right now
• How delegation, boundaries, and daily self-care can create more space for what truly matters

Autumn also invites you to reflect on where you may be operating on autopilot—not with judgment, but with curiosity.

What feels out of alignment?

What is creating unnecessary friction?

What is one small change that could help you feel more present, connected, and intentional?

Sometimes the biggest transformation doesn't come from doing more. It comes from slowing down long enough to notice what your life has been trying to tell you.

If you've been feeling disconnected, overwhelmed, or like you're simply going through the motions, this episode offers a gentle invitation to pause, reflect, and begin creating a life that feels more like your own.

For more wellness tips and exclusive content, join my newsletter! Sign up now at https://wellness-in-every-season.kit.com/5-days-to-mastering-mornings-and-evenings receive a free 5-day guide called "Awaken and Unwind: 5 Days to Mastering Life's Mornings and Evenings." 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Today we are talking about how to get off autopilot. Welcome to Wellness in Every Season. We talk all things wellness to help you align yourself, align with your goals, find balance in your life, and just recalibrate yourself. If you are listening for the first time, welcome, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. And let's get started in the rest of the podcast. There are so many good reasons why we want to be on autopilot. It takes a lot of the mental load off of us. It makes it so that we can focus on other things. It can sometimes save time. There's so many pros to this. Let's also talk about some of the cons because there is a time and a place for autopilot. So the con is you're wasting more time than you realize. You are not checked in to your life enough to realize where friction is, or to maybe you realize there's friction, but to do something about it to make the changes necessary. You're not connecting with the people around you in the way that is valuable. So maybe in a romantic relationship with children, the significant people in your life. You are checked out of your own health. You're not taking the time to care for yourself. And the list can go on and on for the cons. So let's talk about what you can do. And let's start with some questions to help you really gauge is this the time and the place for me to do it? Because with any coaching relationship when you end a consultation, usually it ends on a note of is it worth the time, energy, whatever to make this change? Because there's stress from not making whatever change is bringing into coaching, and then there's stress with making the changes for what your goal is that you want to achieve within a coaching relationship. And that's with any change that you're making in life as well, right? Is it worth the frustration of where your trajectory is right now, or the frustration of getting off autopilot and switching gears and putting a lot more focus into where you actually want to go? So think about that for yourself. Think about an area in your life that has some friction and ask yourself that. Or maybe you want to think of a few different areas of your life and rate them. And you can rate them in different ways. It's kind of like reducing debt. You can think of it as how easy would each area be if you want to quickly be able to have that, yay! I did something, I'm winning at something. You choose an easy one, or how much frustration is this area causing in my life? And you could choose that one. It could be kind of a mountain, and you're gonna decide to chip away at it. Okay, so we have these ideas, we have pros and cons of getting off autopilot. I gave you generalized ones. Think about that for yourself. What are the pros and cons of getting through this thing?

SPEAKER_00 4:18

There's a lot there. What else is there?

SPEAKER_01 4:27

And then think about what are some positive and negative impacts that will happen from making the change to get off autopilot, get back on track, really deep into whatever this thing is.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

What do you need to set yourself up for success?

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Do you need to have a mentor? Do you need to find somebody else who wants to make a similar change so you guys can co-coach each other, cheer each other on? Do you need to find a coach who works in that particular area? Do you need to take some things off your plate that maybe don't matter, but you're so used to doing them that you're doing them anyway? That wasted energy space, we all have it. What needs to shift so that you have the time and you have the mental space for whatever this is. So we have some basic ideas just off of that. We're only five minutes in. So let's think a little bit deeper. It can be when we're driving, it can be when we're cooking dinner, it can be when we're sitting down, scrolling our phone, there's time that you're wasting that you can use towards whatever you want to accomplish in life.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

It can be when we're stressed out.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Have you ever had that where you're so stressed out that you force yourself to disassociate? And by disassociating, it's you're disconnecting from yourself and from other people around you. Uh phone and social media, the perfect way to disassociate, but there are other ways that we do it. We just zone out. What are ways that you can get yourself back into your life? Maybe it's spending time meditating so you don't feel so overwhelmed that your body decides for you that it's time to disassociate when you're not ready to. You want to be there in that moment with whoever you're with or whatever you're doing. Maybe you need to do some work on your nervous system. And what would that look like? I mentioned meditation, there's breathing techniques, there's spending time in nature, there's so many different things. What comes to mind for you? I'm just giving a couple examples. I'm not trying to give you a list on purpose because you know yourself best. And if you're really struggling with this because you feel like you are so disconnected from yourself that you don't feel like you know yourself best, let's have a conversation. I will help you through that. I've totally been there.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

I've done the work because of how stressful that is. So autopilot. Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Think about that with the smart cars that we have on the road today. Where we can just press a button, move a little stick down twice, and we're on autopilot. We do that so many times. I love a good automation in my life, right? And it causes friction when the automation doesn't work right quite right. How many times do we have that with our own health, whether it's our social health, our physical health, our emotional, our professional, whatever? We can use all the eight dimensions of wellness here. And it throws us off. And we need that time that we didn't think we had to fix whatever it is. This is why it's good to do those checkups and see where is there friction? What can I do to make things better? Maybe schedule some optimization days where you're going to optimize different areas of your life. This is something that I love working on is what can we optimize? What can we make it just a little bit better? I love tweaking with things. So if you feel like you need something like that, how often do you need to have those optimization days? What would that look like for you? But what areas of self-care are you missing? Maybe that's a better way to ask this question that may resonate with people who it didn't resonate with before. What are you missing from your self-care routine? And I'm thinking more in a daily or a weekly scope. So this isn't going and getting a facial or getting your nails done. This is so much deeper. Do you need to have stretch breaks where you're no longer in your chair? You're standing and you're stretching and you're moving your body a little bit. Do you need to schedule in lunchtime walks? Do you need to schedule in some breathing breaks? So think about those smokers where they, depending on their addiction, they're outside every hour, every couple hours to smoke. What if you treat yourself as a smoker? Bear with me, and you're using those breaks to focus on your breath, to look out the window. And notice, is it windy right now? What is the weather like? Or if even better, you can go outside for a couple minutes, an hour, however long you can, and you spend time in nature. Or if you can't be anywhere near a window, depending on what your office looks like, you're looking at a picture of nature, or you're in whatever environment you're at, if you're with kids, you're thinking about what am I feeling within my body right now? Taking those breaks for yourself, those mental breaks. And if you're feeling very disassociated, you can't get back within yourself. You can focus on breathing, you can focus on what your seven senses are experiencing. That's one of my favorites that I've done with clients who are struggling.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

You can focus on what are you seeing in your environment? What is the temperature like?

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Maybe pick out things that you enjoy about your environment. Make yourself feel a little safer in it. So you want to come back to yourself. Maybe you're doing scanning breaks. How's my body feeling right now? And in this moment, how's my posture? You're noticing on video, I instantly started adjusting my posture. So lots of different ideas that I'm throwing at you, but I want this to be a moment where several moments actually, where you are pausing and checking in. And what do I need in my life in general? What do I need this week? What do I need this hour? What do I need in this very moment that will help me feel like I'm taking care of myself? And I am back in the driver's seat of my life because you are absolutely in charge of your life. We have different moments in our lives, different seasons where it feels like we are not in charge of our lives. And I know how frustrating that is. I have been through several of them. I don't look forward to the next one. I like feeling in control of my life. I like knowing that I have created the life that I want to live that brings me joy, that I don't want a vacation from. Maybe moments that I want to escape for a little bit. There are moments that we want to escape. It's still amazing to take vacations, but it's not a life I want to run away from, especially not long term. That is my desire for all of you that you have this life that is fulfilling, that feels very home-y and like you built it for yourself with purpose, not that you fell into it or that it was generational trauma given to you or any of those other things. So I want you to spend the rest of this time that would be normally the rest of this podcast, to either pause whatever podcast is coming next and really spend some time reflecting and let your mind wander a little bit and then go back to reflecting, or put on some kind of spa music that has more meditative qualities without anyone speaking to you, and just let yourself reflect on what areas am I feeling friction? What areas do I feel like I'm checked out of my life that I really need to check back into? What areas do I need to automate so that I have more space to breathe?

SPEAKER_00 14:21

And what areas do I need help with?

SPEAKER_01 14:27

And maybe lastly, that goes along with that is what areas can I delegate to other people? I don't need to do everything myself. You know that saying it takes a village to raise a child? It takes a village to support a person, period. Especially to support someone to become the healthy individual they deserve to be. And we all deserve it. So maybe that'll be our new saying that we'll all coin together. You matter, you deserve this time. So take this time without feeling guilt. Because when you take care of yourself, it creates this beautiful ripple effect in all of your relationships and all the areas of your life. So take this time for you.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

And I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

I hope that you found the answers that you needed and you had some amazing aha moments. Please share this episode with others because it helps us align ourselves and then better align the world so that we can take the healing that we really are looking for. As part of the legal language, I am a certified life coach with a bachelor's in applied health. That is what I am leaning on for this. This is general advice taken aside in the next episode.