Turn off your autopilot

It often happens to me – I often catch myself suddenly finding myself back in reality. All of a sudden, it hits me, and I am in the perspective of my eyes, controlling my body and listening to my voice as I speak. I am currently strolling through the streets of Vienna and suddenly realize that I have everything in my own hands. In such moments, my inner autopilot turns off, triggered by some external factor.

This autopilot often guides me around for several days and maybe even weeks, steering me past all my problems and keeping everything on its radar. However, this autopilot only has a view of the radar and not out the window. Poor thing. In this case, to look out the window would be the ability to breathe in and live the current moment.

This autopilot, including its radar, it comes in quite handy. It allows one to drift through life like a piece of driftwood. It constantly processes current issues in my life – appointments, tasks, thinking about the future, relationships with other people, situations that have occurred to me, homework due tomorrow, mistakes I’ve made that still linger in my mind, health, financial situation, and everything else currently happening to me. As you may notice, these are some things that accumulate. Probably that’s exactly why there are no windows installed on the autopilot – because the computing power hardly even suffices for monitoring the radar.

It’s actually sad; the radar is just a shabby display, and through the window, one would look out into the beautiful wide world. This can’t go on like this forever! Now I can speak from my own experience and make a recommendation that I personally find very important and valuable.

Turn off the autopilot:

Turning off the autopilot – how is that supposed to work? Some may not have understood until this point what I’m actually writing about, because we are all a bit different. I admit, it’s a bit quirky, but I often get lost in the world of my thoughts, which leads to such excursions.

So – the autopilot is this carousel of thoughts that actually always keeps turning, preventing us from really finding peace and letting the moment pass by a little. To stop the autopilot, there are a few options. For me, it sometimes turns off on its own. The more you engage with the practice of feeling into your body and adopting the perspective of the control center in your head, the more familiar you become with this feeling, and the more often it can happen on its own. Just yesterday, I was walking with a friend and explained this theory to him. While I was telling him about it, the autopilot suddenly turned off, and I took control (also, I realize, that I sound a little bit like an insane person does).

I also told him that I especially have this feeling after meditating. I must note that I’m not really well-versed in the world of meditation and usually only make time for 5-10 minute sessions. However, the feeling I experience afterward is remarkable. No autopilot whatsoever! I lie there in my bed, look at the wall, look around my room, and everything feels connected to me. I always realize that I have two hands and look at them very closely. The radar is completely unplugged in these moments, and the window is freshly cleaned, and the sun is shining in. To anyone who still has no clue what I’ve been rambling on about all this time: Nice that you’re still with me, remarkable. You seem curious. I really recommend trying a short meditation. This feeling is truly amazing, and the 5-10 minutes you pay as a price are really worth it.

Clear out the radar:

Like any other computer, the autopilot needs processing power to handle all the tasks it has to deal with. And in the hustle and bustle of our modern world, it can happen that the autopilot gets to a critical point where it just becomes too much and has a hard time coping with the clutter – even a window wouldn’t help in this case – you just can’t see outside because it’s so cloudy! What can be done about it? Exactly – focus on a few things that the radar is showing, take aim, and shoot them down. Whether it’s homework, that one important conversation you’ve been putting off for so long, or the room that’s not tidy and has been bothering you all week. The more things the radar has to process, the less likely a look out the window and turning off the autopilot becomes. My mother’s statements and opinions motivate me the most here: „I prefer to do things right away; then I know they’re done, and I can tick off the topic.“

So, the autopilot. It does all that. Hmm. Well, it’s probably good for something. Sometimes, as a pilot, we might be overwhelmed if we had to take control manually all the time. However, the true beauty of life, in my opinion, begins when you really ignore the radar and lean far out the window. And just when you think it can’t go on, you grab onto the window frame. (This metaphor should probably be taken with caution; please don’t actually lean too far out the window.) In English, my text would probably fall into the category of Mindfulness. I’ve come to realize that I’m not the first one to ponder such thoughts.