Get Out of Auto-Pilot

[tconnor]

Personal Success Tips #216
Get Out of Auto-Pilot

Many people go through their lives, relationships and careers in auto-pilot. Auto-pilot is when we make decisions, take actions, and respond to outside stimuli unconsciously. We perform out of learned, conditioned or expected paradigms. When people go through life in this way, they miss most of the color, beauty, excitement, joy and happiness of being alive and their present moments.

Life is lived one moment at a time in the present. When we react unconsciously, we turn the control and power of the quality of our life to past experiences, other people's expectations, remarks or deeds, or whatever we feel or believe is beyond our control.

People who live one moment at a time have more fun, accomplish more, learn more, and generally enjoy the experience of life to the fullest. People who spend most of their time in auto-pilot are always wishing, hoping and dreaming that life and people would be different, better, more exciting, more fulfilling - whatever.

So, how do you get out of living life unconsciously?

1. Accept the reality of life. It isn't perfect. It isn't all good or bad. It just is.
2. Spend time observing nature.
3. Relax. You can't have it all, do it all, see it all, experience it all, or learn it all in one lifetime.
4. Be where you are when you are there, not somewhere else.
5. Be with whom you are with when you are with them, not with someone else.
6. Learn to see life through the eyes of an explorer, not a victim.
7. Recognize that nothing in-and-of-itself is positive or negative. It just is. And it often becomes what we choose to see.
8. No one can make you feel, act or think how he wants you to feel, act or think. You have total control over your own emotions, feelings, thoughts and attitudes. All you have to do is exercise it.
9. Manage your expectations.
10. Manage your disappointments.
11. See life as a joyous and creative experience.
12. Spend time in self-evaluation, prayer and contemplation.
13. Accept the fact that there is more to life than you can see, hear, smell or possible even accept.
14. Accept the fact that life is a perceptual experience and no two people see anything quite the same.
15. Do something fun every day.

How are you doing? Are you living most of your life's moments in auto-pilot, or are you basking in the sunshine of every sunset, problem, experience, failure, success, achievement, risk, emotion and feeling as it crosses your path - breathing it in - whether it seems negative or positive?