Are You Living on Autopilot? Signs You’ve Lost Touch With Yourself

Most of us don’t consciously decide to lose touch with ourselves.

It happens gradually.

Life gets busy. There are people who need us, things that need doing, work to keep on top of, messages to answer, appointments to remember and all the ordinary practicalities of being human.

We get very good at keeping everything moving.

And somewhere along the way, we can stop noticing how we actually feel.

We are functioning. We may even be functioning very well.

But we’re no longer quite sure when we last stopped long enough to ask:

What do I need? What do I want? What feels right for me now?

That’s what I think of as living on autopilot.

Autopilot isn’t always obvious

We tend to imagine that if we were deeply disconnected from ourselves, we would know.

Surely something dramatic would happen.

Perhaps we would feel completely lost, desperately unhappy or unable to cope.

Sometimes that does happen, but often autopilot looks much more ordinary.

You get up. You do what needs to be done.

You make decisions. You look after other people.

You keep commitments. You deal with whatever arrives in front of you.

And then you do it all again tomorrow.

Nothing is necessarily wrong.

But there can be a niggling sense that something is missing.

Perhaps life feels flatter than it used to?

Perhaps you realise you haven’t done something simply because you enjoy it for a very long time.

Perhaps you have become so used to asking what everyone else needs that you genuinely don’t know what you need anymore.

You keep telling yourself you’ll make time later

This is one of the easiest traps to fall into.

When things calm down, I’ll make more time for myself.

Once I’ve finished this project…

After this busy month…

When everyone else is sorted…

But life has an extraordinary talent for finding something new to put in the space we thought was about to appear. 😂

Weeks become months. Sometimes months become years.

And the things that help us feel most like ourselves - creativity, spiritual practice, time in nature, movement, rest, reading, music, meditation, just sitting quietly - gradually move further down the list.

Not because they don’t matter.

But because they rarely shout as loudly as everything else.

You know a lot - but you’re not actually doing much of it

This is particularly common for people who have spent years exploring personal or spiritual development.

You may have shelves full of books.

You’ve done courses.

You know how to meditate.

You understand the importance of boundaries.

You have practices that you know help you.

Perhaps you journal, journey, drum, work with cards, spend time in nature or have other ways of reconnecting with yourself.

At least, you used to.

The problem isn’t that you need another technique.

Often, you already have more than enough.

The difficulty is creating enough space in everyday life to actually use what you know.

And then, because we’re human, we can even turn that into another thing to feel guilty about.

The unread books.

The unfinished course.

The meditation practice we “should” be doing.

Persona/spiruitual development becomes yet another item on the to-do list.

Which rather defeats the point.

You’re making decisions from habit rather than connection

Autopilot can also show up in our choices.

We say yes because we usually say yes.

We continue doing something because we have always done it.

We put up with situations that no longer feel right because changing them would require thought, energy or perhaps an uncomfortable conversation.

Sometimes we are so busy responding to life that we don’t notice we have changed.

The person who originally made a particular decision may not be quite the same person who is living with it now.

That doesn’t mean every part of our life needs to be dramatically reinvented.

Sometimes it simply means becoming curious again.

Does this still work for me?

Do I still want this?

What would I choose if I were choosing today?

Those can be surprisingly powerful questions.

You struggle to hear your own inner voice

Our intuition rarely disappears, but it can become difficult to hear.

There is so much noise around us - other people’s opinions, social media, responsibilities, expectations, advice, news, emails, podcasts, endless information.

And underneath all of that is our own internal noise: the analysing, worrying, planning and second-guessing.

Sometimes the answer we’re looking for is already there. We simply haven’t created enough quiet to notice it.

That is one of the reasons practices involving rhythm, meditation, nature or simply slowing down can be so powerful.

They aren’t necessarily giving us something new.

They are helping us hear what was already there.

You’ve forgotten what brings you joy

This can be one of the clearest signs that life has become overly functional.

Ask someone what they need to do this week and they can probably produce a substantial list.

Ask what brings them joy and sometimes there is a rather longer pause.

Joy doesn’t have to mean enormous adventures or life-changing experiences.

Often it is surprisingly small.

Walking somewhere beautiful. Making something.

Dancing badly in the kitchen. Reading for an hour.

Swimming. Gardening.

Sitting in the sun with a cup of tea.

Doing absolutely nothing useful whatsoever.

Joy is not frivolous, it's information.

It tells us something about what makes us feel alive.

Coming back to yourself doesn’t require changing your whole life

When we realise we’ve been living on autopilot, there can be a temptation to think we need to make dramatic changes.

Quit the job.

Move house.

End the relationship.

Book a retreat in Peru. 😂

Sometimes big changes genuinely are needed.

But often the first step is much smaller.

Stop.

Notice.

Listen.

Create ten minutes in which nobody needs anything from you.

Ask yourself what you are feeling before asking what you should do about it.

Notice where your energy expands and where it contracts.

Remember something you used to enjoy.

Say no to one thing you don’t actually want to do.

Say yes to something that makes absolutely no practical sense but brings you delight.

The more often we create these small moments of connection, the easier it becomes to recognise ourselves again.

You haven’t lost yourself

Perhaps that is the most important thing.

You don’t need to become a new and improved version of yourself.

You don’t need another enormous self-development project.

And you certainly don’t need another list of things you should be doing perfectly.

Sometimes you simply need enough space to hear yourself again.

To notice what has changed.

To remember what matters.

To reconnect with the quieter parts of you that have been drowned out by the sheer volume of everyday life.

Coming back to yourself is rarely one dramatic moment.

It happens in small choices.

A pause.

A breath.

A boundary.

A moment of stillness.

A decision made because it feels right rather than because it is expected.

And each time you do that, you step out of autopilot - and a little more fully back into your own life.

If you’ve recognised yourself in any of this, you don’t need to overhaul your whole life.

Sometimes the first step is simply creating a little space to pause and listen.

My free Come Back to Yourself drumming meditation is designed to help you do exactly that - to step out of the noise for a while, reconnect with yourself and notice what you need.

[Listen to Come Back to Yourself]

I'd love to hear what you notice :) 

 Dawn x