When times get tough, I have a habit of going into autopilot mode. I learned to do this long ago — it was a way of making sure I got things done, even if all hell was breaking loose around me. So I guess you could say it works for me. Except when it doesn’t.
The trouble with autopilot mode is that it has no heart. You do everything by rote, without putting any of yourself into it. This is because you care more about getting things done than about how you do them. Or why you’re doing them. And when you do things without heart, your heart shuts off… a bit, at first, and a lot if your autopilot state persists.
Once you start to shut off your heart to get tasks done, you also start to shut it off for everything else. You see, you can’t selectively shut your heart off — hearts don’t work like that. They’re either open, or they’re not. So while you may be efficient on autopilot, you’re not effective. Effectiveness has a level of complexity that requires heart. Chances are, when you’re on autopilot, you’re not being as compassionate, either. Compassion comes from the heart.
When your heart shuts off, your groove is another casualty. I describe my ‘groove’ as a combination of my particular rhythm — my essence and how it manifests — and my routine.
It took me years to find my groove. I was subjected to such a dominant nurture environment as a child that my groove was silenced. What I thought was my groove wasn’t mine at all — it belonged to my nurturers. Being groove-less for all those years had a huge impact on me. I became very task-orientated — it was my way of feeling more in control of my life. I had little resilience. I wasn’t very happy. I tended to overreact to challenging situations. I was a stress-head. I got sick with an autoimmune disease. I hid behind my autopilot efficiency. Yet, my innate personality often came to my rescue, enabling me to build an amazing network of friends, and a successful career.
Once I found my groove, life got much easier. And happier. I became more productive and my creativity started to come to the fore. I became much more resilient to whatever life threw at me. I got the autoimmune disease I’d developed into remission, without medication. All was good.
Except when my groove disappeared. It did this when I became overwhelmed by or disinterested in what I was doing. Then I’d default to my old autopilot behaviour pattern. And stay there for a while, because I wouldn’t notice that I was in autopilot mode. Autopilot is, after all, a subconscious behaviour. Some time later, I’d notice that my joie de vivre was missing. The minute that happened, I could switch out of it — action follows awareness.
Nowadays, my autopilot moments are few and far between, and not as long-lasting. I am, for the most part, in my groove — and here’s what that looks like:
- I have a clear life vision.
- I have a comprehensive list of all the components that will bring me to this vision. Knowing your life’s purpose is the starting place.
- I set 90-day/monthly/weekly goals for all these components and take action on them, every day.
- I act consciously on a daily basis, doing only those things that bring me towards my vision.
- I create healthy habits out of as many of my desired behaviours as possible. That way, they move into my subconscious mind and free up space in my conscious mind for things that arise. Many of my healthy habits are daily ones — these have become as automatic to me as brushing my teeth.
My younger self would laugh at my planning, process and routines. “How stifling this all must be!”, she’d say.
But she’d be wrong.
Being in my groove keeps me anchored. Instead of limiting my life with goals and plans, being in my groove has liberated me. It has allowed me to live with limitless wholeness.
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Sarah Blick is Well-Being Wizard and Life Coach at Aging Disgracefully Well. Sarah has the rare combination of unparalleled life experience and serious business expertise. She spent 28 years as a game-changer in senior marketing roles internationally, including a couple working directly with Richard Branson at Virgin, and four as a life transformer in coaching and mentoring roles. Alongside her successful career, Sarah relentlessly pursued another passion: understanding why, despite having everything, she felt as though something was missing from her life. This pursuit led her to experience more life changes than most people experience in three lifetimes, many of them very challenging. By the time she found what was missing, Sarah had completely transformed her life and lifestyle. Today, she is fit, healthy, happy and fulfilled — and aging disgracefully well. Her successful career and personal transformation have helped her develop what she considers to be three of her superpowers: exceptional courage, uncommon resilience, fearless action-taking. These now sit alongside her instinctive qualities of compassion, leadership, and tenacity, to enable her to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others.
She works with exceptional people who have everything in life… except for the meaning they crave. They know they’ve been settling, not living fully, but don’t know how to change that. She helps them access what they need to make this change, and prepares them to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others.
In her personalized signature programme, Your Lifestyle Rehab™, Sarah gives her clients what they need to overhaul their lifestyle. To enable them to start living fully — as their best self, and making a meaningful difference in the lives of others. Your Lifestyle Rehab™ is designed with her best self — the expertise she developed in her high-level business career and the life lessons she learned in her 30-year quest for a life with meaning — PLUS the latest thinking from the fields of neuroscience, aging and psychology. This powerful combination is capable of delivering transformative results, leaving her clients ready for the life they’ve only dreamed of until now. And that’s what aging disgracefully well is all about. To schedule an exploratory chat, contact Sarah today.
Originally published at medium.com