Today, I am going to show you how to escape living and working on autopilot and claim back what you deserve for a life with more meaning, purpose, and enjoyment.

I am going to guide you through a transformative awareness, intention, and action philosophy to restore deliberative consciousness.

By giving due attention and taking the time to think things through thoughtfully, you ensure that your choices and decisions are not random, automatic, hasty, inauthentic, or unintentional.

Most people operate on default habits, routines, and pre-programmed behaviours, driven by a wrong mindset and external pressures. They constantly complain about their work and life (again on autopilot, like most others do) and feel disappointed, frustrated and scared.

This pattern perpetuates negativity and reinforces all those harmful defaults.

There’s another way. It’s much healthier, conscious and growth-oriented, and can help you redesign your lifestyle and transform your life as a whole. It’s another kind of life philosophy, nothing less.

It has three main stages:

1. Become aware of what pushes you to live and work on autopilot

2. Reflect and reverse your mindset with more intention

3. Make conscious and deliberate choices and decisions every step of the way

It’s based on how your brain forms habits and establishes subconscious action patterns in the background, and how you can hack and leverage that process to your benefit while leaving external pressure out of your life equation.

Imagine your life as an airplane. When on autopilot, the aircraft will do what is programmed to do to reach the destination smoothly. When pilots take control, they get in charge and take ownership of both the flight and the destination.

How our brain forms new habits and behavioural patterns is impressive.

There’s so much going on without us noticing that it’s worth building your new life philosophy on awareness of what happens in your brain at any time and how you can influence those processes to your benefit.

Stage #1: Awareness - The foundation

Learning how your brain develops your every habit is fundamental to escaping autopilot. Only then can you truly understand why you do what you do 99% of the time.

Have you ever felt frustrated because you failed to do what you promised yourself to do? This is how this mechanism works - I am confident it will resonate with you a lot.

Let’s say you want to lose weight and promise yourself not to indulge in unhealthy snacks during your day. You think that through a lot, your willingness to change your unhealthy habits (that deter you from losing weight) is high, you feel confident next time you will show self-discipline.

Yet, one hour later, you go to the kitchen, open the fridge and devour that cake you said you wouldn’t eat. You shove it down, and the very next minute, you feel like you wake up. “Why did I do it again? Why? I said I wouldn’t just minutes ago!”.

That happens again and again; not only with mindless eating but with everything. No matter your “decisions” and “self-talk”, you just:

• Sit on the couch watching Netflix and eating junk food

• Unlock your smartphone to check the notifications and start scrolling social media

• Turn on the TV and watch polarising news

• Sit on your desk to “simply check your emails” but find yourself replying to them and doing easy work hours later

• Say yes to anything others ask you for

The list is long. And every time, it feels the same $hit.

The reason is your basal ganglia. They are an area in your brain with a specific job: doing things without even thinking about them much.

Your brain is the big boss telling you what to do, and the basal ganglia take over to execute without much deliberate thought. They are the behind-the-scenes team making sure everything runs smoothly (based on the same old patterns they are used to).

The basal ganglia is your brain’s autopilot, responsible for acting and behaving in ways you don’t understand, or even wish.

Here’s the interesting part: your habits and routines are formed in the prefrontal cortex. That’s another part of your brain that consumes a lot of energy when trying to learn new things. When you learn something and the brain says, “You are now good!”, the activity moves to the basal ganglia, which consumes much less energy and takes over execution. If your brain says it needs to change how a specific thing is executed, the prefrontal cortex can step in again. It’s a constant back and forth.

The thing is that our bodies are made to use the least energy required. So, there’s a natural tendency to let more and more things run on autopilot (by your basal ganglia) and fewer things left for the more energy-consuming prefrontal cortex. With time, your brain learns to rely more and more on automatic execution unless you deliberately keep your prefrontal cortex busy.

This is not a science lesson, but I want you to know that part of the autopilot process is natural and concerns human biology, how our brains work.

As humans, though, we have developed the ability to interfere with those natural mechanisms. Some call it hacking; I call it positive fine-tuning.

If you wish to stop behaving and acting on autopilot (including your work and entire life), you must instil intention and deliberation into your system to ensure that more positive things remain in the prefrontal cortex for longer. This is how you learn new things and establish new, healthier habits and routines.

That requires more energy and discomfort, though. This is why there’s a natural resistance to it. Plus, our modern-day hustle and comfort cultures make people unwilling to engage in anything that entails discomfort.

Living and working on autopilot is not just a biological matter. It’s not entirely driven by your basal ganglia but is a complex interplay between biological, psychological, social, and environmental influences.

To help you build holistic awareness of how autopilot works and why, I am sharing a list of the most critical influences pushing people to work and live on a default survival mode:

• The human brain is wired for efficiency, so it quickly turns repeated actions into habits, freeing cognitive resources for other tasks and challenges.

• It also has limited cognitive capacity so operating on autopilot is a natural way of managing cognitive overload.

• Sticking to routines and familiar patterns often creates a sense of certainty and safety, especially in situations involving fear, anxiety, or other negative emotions. It’s a defence mechanism.

• A lack of mindfulness creates the perfect environment for autopilot to take over. When not present and in the moment, you rarely notice your thoughts, feelings, and actions in real time.

• When people feel they have no agency or control over a situation, they naturally become more passive and operate on autopilot.

• Social learning also plays a significant role as people learn autopilot behaviour from observing others.

• The Conformity Theory highlights the strong urge to conform to what the people around us do. People need the pressure to fit in and adhere to group behaviour (without analysing or challenging it).

• Social conditioning (starting at school early on) also explains how quickly and profoundly people internalise norms and values reinforced by established patterns and expectations.

• Modern-day information overload and high speed intimidate people who default to simplified (thus more effortless and less uncomfortable) choices, actions and behaviours.

• Some philosophical theories suggest autopilot is a way to confront fundamental existential questions about meaning, purpose, or freedom. When people can’t find the answers (or don’t try enough), they immerse themselves in automatic responses, choices, and routines to stay distracted and avoid the discomfort of the bigger life questions.

• Consumerism also conditions people to pursue external goals and achievements to find happiness in external validation and rewards (not internal fulfilment).

This is a long list. There are dozens of reasons and ways people resort to autopilot mode. You may think it’s helpless. It’s not.

Let me simplify it:

You only have two choices.

A) fast, automatic, intuitive thinking and decision making

Or 

B) slower, deliberate, analytical thinking and conscious decision making

This is what it’s all about.

In some life situations, autopilot mode is okay. For example, driving is made easy after a dozen hours of practicing, so you actually drive your car without consciously paying attention to or thinking about every move.

The problem is when autopilot becomes the dominant mode of working and living. That’s where intention comes into play.

Stage #2: Intention - The facilitator

Intention is not wishful thinking or just about goal setting. It has a profound dual role:

• Direct your energy, thoughts and actions towards desired outcomes

• Align them with your core values and aspirations

By adding intention into the life equation, things become a lot clearer. Autopilot mode is unintentional. 

You direct your energy, thoughts and actions to outcomes you don’t genuinely desire (instead, others, like parents, teachers, and society, have subscribed you to).

There’s also no alignment between your external behaviour and actions and your internal values.

A lack of intention reinforces your attachment to living and working shallowly on autopilot mode.

There are two crucial aspects of intention to consider:

• It’s both about our hearts and minds. Intention does not mean putting aside emotions and focusing solely on rational thinking. It combines emotional regulation and critical thinking, what is right and what feels right.

• It’s not only about immediate goals or short-term tasks; it’s also about sustainability and the long-term effects of our choices, decisions, actions, and behaviours on our life and work.

Integrating intention into your life can help you boost:

• Meaningful relationships

• Clarity of purpose and focus

• Decision-making effectiveness

• Personal growth and well-being

• Fulfilment and satisfaction in life

• A sense of agency and empowerment

Intention does not come easy, though. It causes discomfort because:

• Not all your emotions or thoughts are easy to understand and manage (let alone change)

• What you aspire to will clash with societal norms and expectations

• Aligning with your values will lead to tough decisions and choices

This is why most people trying to escape autopilot and regain control of their life eventually quit (many of them quickly). They realise they want to change and integrate intentional living and work to avoid the profound discomfort caused by life on autopilot. But they soon realise doing so brings more (but temporary) discomfort.

The primary goal of intention is to restore consciousness. 

Here are 7 signs that indicate you lack intention:

1. You go about your life without conscious awareness and purpose

2. You can’t articulate your future plans clearly

3. Your actions don’t match your words (what you say you want is different from what you actually wish to)

4. You don’t invest time in self-reflection (like an intention check-up)

5. You constantly respond to circumstances, letting them build your life instead of creating the life you want yourself

6. You start projects and commit to things you rarely complete

7. There’s no clear direction in your decisions and actions

The two recurring keywords here are: clarity and direction. 

Without intention, you don’t know where your life goes. Put plainly, your life goes on autopilot, without a set destination or route. Your trajectory is random based on circumstances. In my country of origin, they have a saying: “Wherever the wind blows.” I believe that encapsulates the essence of not having intention.

To fully understand the notion of intention and how to cultivate it in your life, let me highlight its three key components:

• Conscious and unconscious

• Immediate and long-term

• Responsibility for actions

I can almost hear you wondering: Intention should be conscious so we can directly influence or boost it. Is there intention that occurs without conscious awareness? To make things complicated, yes, there’s also unconscious intention.

That involves actions without conscious deliberation. So, you rightfully wonder if all this about intention is in vain.

No, it’s certainly not. This is because you can indirectly influence your unconscious intention as well. That kind of intention is based on two things:

• Past experiences and emotions (positive or mainly negative, like trauma or failure)

• Learned behaviours

The more you reflect on and dissect your past experiences and emotions, the better you understand them and see them as they actually are (not as your mind and heart want you to).

Also, the more you analyse your learned behaviours (especially your bad habits), the more you can regulate their impact and power over you.

To make things even more complicated, research suggests that intention is built on two layers—the unconscious and the conscious (in that order).

If you want to cultivate intention, you must start with self-reflection (past trauma, failure, bad habits) so you build your intention on a solid positive foundation (and not repeat the same negative autopilot decisions and actions).

The other key component of intention is the temporal aspect. Intention is not only about your immediate actions or tasks (for example, I am going to invest 5 minutes in self-reflection today). It’s also about long-term plans, and that aspect is often neglected.

If your intention does not span the time towards the future but is limited to the here and now, you will struggle with clarity and direction.

The best way to avoid this is by starting at the top-level (future) and going downwards (to the present moment). Set your long-term intention (for example, I am going to become a successful 6-figure solopreneur as a content creator) and break it down to smaller and closer (temporally) intentions to use in your everyday life (for example, I am going to publish two posts every day, all year round).

This way you can ensure you meet your short-term and long-term goals and aspirations. Remember that your future self and life are based on your intentions, decisions and actions TODAY (=every day).

The last crucial thing to remember about intention is its close link with responsibility. Intention serves as the basis for it. When you set your intention on something, you accept responsibility for doing it and its consequences.

This has two sides - a positive one and a negative one. Your intention to do something means commitment on your side (that you will actually do it). That’s the positive side. The negative one is when you intend to avoid or refrain from doing something (for example, a bad habit or a work task that is not aligned with your purpose, values or way of doing business), so you accept the responsibility for its consequences.

Let me highlight this: impact is always slightly over intention. Your actions (or failures to act) speak volumes and have an actual impact (which you must take responsibility for). However, we assume that intention translates to action. So, your intentions also have impact, consequences, and responsibility.

A good example is this: you commit to publishing two social media posts every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. That’s an intention that, when aligned with the relevant action (=doing it), means you have to allocate resources (time, energy and focus) on that task instead of other tasks. Publishing two posts daily means you accept the responsibility and consequences of not doing other marketing-related or business tasks and activities.

You may wonder: Do I need intention(s) or goals?

Goals and intentions are not the same thing. If you had to choose one of them, that should be intentions because they are

• Present-focused (vs future-focused goals)

• Achievements and mindset-shifts (vs just specific outcomes that goals aim for)

• External outputs aligned with your internal world (vs external only outputs goals are)

• Expansive (vs fixed goals)

That does not mean you need to discard the concept of goal-setting altogether. My experience tells me that goals are often misinterpreted as something far-fetched and fail to motivate for action in the present. Intentions are more about the here-and-now (What you can start doing today) without losing the future reward.

Goals and intentions work together. Goals provide direction (neecessary but not sufficient for success), while intentions ensure proper action and alignment with one’s values and priorities.

By now, you should understand that intention is crucial for escaping the autopilot mode. However, it’s more than an affirmation or wishful thinking. It’s about:

• Commitment to do (or stop doing) something

• Aligning your actions with your intentions (do what you say you will do)

• Responsibility and accountability for the impact of both your intentions and actions (regardless of the outcome or what you intended).

Stage #3: Conscious and deliberate choices - The game-changers

Once you build awareness and intention(s), you can expand to a significantly more effective and successful version of decision-making.

Your future self is shaped by your choices and decisions today. That has almost became a cliche already. However, most people fail to comprehend its implications.

If you continue doing the same things (that got you stuck), you won’t be able to reach a breakthrough and will stay on autopilot zone.

If you want to escape and build a life and work with meaning, purpose, and enjoyment, you need to level up the way you make choices and decisions.

To do that, you need values, mindfulness, prospective psychology, environmental changes, and more nuanced thinking.

Here is how to use them effectively to shift from automatic to conscious and deliberate choices and decisions.

1. Value-Based Decision Making.

Having strong values and aligning your life and work with them is a recurring pattern in strategies that aim for escaping autopilot mode. Values are far more important than you may think. Most people believe they are theoretical or that it’s about morality. The true power of values lies in their ability to guide and shape our decisions, actions and relationships. They are not abstract concepts; they serve as a compass and foster authenticity - a prerequisite for breaking free from survival mode.

When you make choices and decisions, you need to consciously and intentionally align them with your core values. This approach is based on the concept of the Self-Determination Theory. The STD framework focuses on the three inherent psychological needs that drive personal growth and well-being: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

In order to thrive, you need to feel in control of your life’s choices and decisions. That includes having the freedom to choose and act according to your own values and interests. That helps you avoid external pressures that force you to conform and comply with their expectations (not your own needs and values). As a resulte, what you choose and decide is meaningful and intentional.

For example, before deciding on a major purchase (for personal or professional reasons), reflect on whether that aligns with your values or not. Is it impulse buying? Do you really need that? Does it align with your core values as a person or solopreneur?

Another example is this. You consider a new business partnership, clients, or collaboration. Before saying yes just because that opportunity looks fancy and many people would go to great lengths to seize it, reflect for a moment. Does it align with my business values as a solopreneur? 

In my case, one of my values is respect. I happened to interact with a lead a few years ago, who was utterly disrespectful, not only to me but also to other people or his competitors. I couldn’t sync. That work would pay well, but I would regret it every single time we interacted. I said no. I never looked back.

2. Mindful Awareness of Unconscious Influences.

Scientific research has found that up to 90% of our choices are made unconsciously. The data is staggering. It means what we choose and decide is 90% autopilot-based. We let your gut feeling and automatic responses take control.

Is all hope lost? Not at all. First things first, your gut feeling is precious. If something inside you tells you that something is off, listen to it. If it screams “Hell yeah!”, consider it seriously.

When it comes to automatic responses, though, you need mindfulness to increase their power over you. By acknowledging those hidden influences, you become more aware. Mindfulness boosts awareness. Awareness boosts conscious decision making.

Your brain plays a crucial role because it has this thing called “neuroplasticity”. So, regardless of the automatic responses that naturally pop up, you can use mindfulness to override your habitual behaviours.

When you get to decide about something, reflect and ask yourself this. Am I leaning towards a particular decision? What is it based on? Past experiences (or trauma) or currently strong biases? Is my decision emotional or rational?

I regularly do this mindful awareness check-up when making choices and decisions. I’ve cancelled impulse purchases many times in my life. I’ve taken on opportunities that resonated with me a lot but stress or other negative emotions blocked.

No matter the triviality or importance of your decisions, you must practice mindfulness to understand how you behave (what drives your behaviours) and why, and then, correct your thinking and decision-making process to choose wisely - not influenced by external opinions, internal negativity, societal norms and expectations.

3. Futureproofing.

I love this technique and use it a lot. It’s a sort of visualisation but with a twist. Instead of simply visualising yourself in the future (in a desired state, obviously), project your current actions and decisions into the future and assess their impact on your future self.

This approach is inspired by Prospective Psychology, which highlights the role of future thinking in decision making. Let me repeat it: your future self is shaped by your choices and decisions today. 

Apart from the greater degree of deliberation, this approach also offers the opportunity to aling your present choices and actions with your longer term intentions.

For example, if you want to become a content creator, choosing to focus on social media aiming for likes and follows is not compatible with your long-term goal of creating value and media to build a passionate and loyal following that you can monetise later. Before you decide to invest in any business activity (like marketing or business development) or project, think twice. Is it aligned with my desired future self? If it’s a definite NO (or even a doubtful one), scrap it. If it’s a “Hell yes”, go for it.

There’s a catch here. Futureproofing does not exclude experimentation. For example, if you feel you need to take on a project to experiment with a new niche or field, go for it. Just make sure it is somehow aligned with your top-level priorities and intentions. Hint: don’t do anything just for the money. I would go as far as to say “Don’t do anything for the money”. 

4. Environmental Changes.

The environment we work and live in plays a crucial role in our decision-making. Our home, office, and social surroundings significantly influence the quality of our choices and decisions.

If they are healthy and supportive, we make better and more deliberate and sustainable choices and decisions that align with your life and work values and expectations.

If they are toxic, we are forced to make even more toxic automatic decisions in the heat of the moment.

The sooner you realise that your environment shapes your mindset and actions, the faster you will be able to shift from autopilot mode to conscious and deliberate decision making.

In the same way, environmental changes can impact your mental state (thus, your clarity and consciousness when it comes to making choices and decisions).

A very effective way to do it is to use sensory influences on your cognition. They can reduce distractions and increase your mindfulness and focus. For example, dim the lights in your office or home. Put on slow productivity music in low volume (to act as a calming background sound). You can even take that outdoors. Go for a long walk in nature. Do some physical exercise (not intense, but mild, so you can become more relaxed and focused).

You can even change your settings entirely. Travel. Move to a new house or office, if you have associated it with negativity and bad habits, choices and distractions. You need to keep your routine fresh and engaging, not stuck in toxicity and autopilot randomness.

If you have to brainstorm for your work or make an important decision, go to quiet relaxing room, office, or other setting (for example, your summerhouse, a nice hotel room, a comfortable bench in the part, you name it) and start the process from scratch.

5. Binary-Choice Aversion.

This is absolutely game-changing. When we function on autopilot mode, we rush to make quick choices and decisions. Stress and anxiety, or external pressure amplify that urge.

When we need to decide quickly, we tend to oversimplify things and create “this or that” dilemmas. This is what I call Binary Choices. It’s either 1 (this) or 0 (that). We see only black and white (simply because this is easier for the brain to compare and make a verdict which way to go).

Instead, we must slow down and assesse the situations as they are. Life is complex, so every situation where you need to make a choice or decision is complex. This is why it’s crucial to consider multiple scenarios and options. It’s never black and white, there are a million shades of gray in between. Adding nuance can only improve the quality of your decisions and kep you away from automatic autopilot-led choices.

This approach is grounded in the Cognitive Complexity Theory, according to which people process information, interpret situations, and make decisions based on their cognitive structures.

When you analyse an idea, resolve a conflict (that’s also a decision), or try to understand a concept or situation, you need to use higher cognitive complexity.

This way you can consider multiple viewpoints, adapt to changing circumstances or contexts, and make more sophisticated judgements.

If you rely on automatic, lower cognitive complexity, you get trapped in black-and-white reasoning that leaves little space for deliberation and conscious decisions and choices.

For example, when deciding for your professional future, explore multiple options. Most people stuck on autopilot (and in soul-sucking 9-5 jobs) limit their options to this: either I stay in the job or I quit and start my own business. In reality, there are dozens of alternatives in between. You can still work to make ends meet while investing in your skills (so you can pivot in 3 or 6 months). You can also start a side project while working and see how it goes (if you manage to earn money, go for it; if not, keep working on it). The list of options is long. Keep shy from limiting binary choices.

Here’s a recap of the main points.

What’s next?

It’s all about mindset. As ancient Greek and Roman philosophers taught, we can only control our minds, thoughts, and actions. Focusing on this can help you avoid unnecessary struggle, get unstuck, and move forward faster.

If you need guidance getting unstuck and making those crucial mindset shifts, I can help, especially if

• you are a currently struggling introverted solopreneur (stuck in a wrong mindset)

• you want to quit your 9-5 job and create your one-person business but are too afraid (or don’t know how) to redesign your lifestyle and transform your life

DM me on LinkedIn, and let’s explore how Mindset Coaching can help you move forward and claim what you desire and deserve for a life with purpose, meaning and enjoyment.