Going on autopilot is a way our brain takes shortcuts to move through the repetitive, mundane and usually necessary tasks of the day. The downside is our tendency to get stuck in a way of doing things. We often don’t even realize that it could be better because our feelings tend to dull and go on automatic as well.
The way to know its time to break out of your box is to ask, what am I tolerating? I invite you to make a concrete list. One you can review and assess. Kicking yourself out of the box takes a little time, so it might be fruitful to start the list; put is aside and look at it again in a few days.
The next step is ask, can this be changed or fixed? For instance, let’s say you have been trying to take off some weight. Most afternoons, you hit a low energy slump and find yourself popping into the company kitchen to grab a candy bar out of the vending machine, only to hate yourself ten minutes later. This routine has become pretty typical, even ingrained. But it’s sabotaging your aspiration. A simple solution would be to bring a healthy and appealing snack with you to work that morning. So how is that going to happen? It may involve initially disrupting the usual choices at the grocery store and then again in your preparation to get to work. But what’s the pay off? Imagine a week where you had a nourishing snack to look forward to and you got to experience yourself as capable of making a positive change.
Now look at what has to happen right now, while you are inspired to get yourself to break that rut. Maybe its as simple as starting a grocery list right then and there and writing down a couple healthy snack items. The bigger question is what is going to get you to stay alert to not falling back into the same loop that is clearly not serving you? I’m a big fan of the sticky note—something with an inspirational word or just a reminder of a small step I am taking that keeps on reminding me.
This process also works well for teams and groups. Asking people to name what is working about a process or procedure and then even more importantly, asking what’s not, goes a long way in engaging our brains to make improvements. The key here is to take the ideas generated, implement and go back to assess the new way of doing things. Looking at things critically, in a good sense, keeps us alert to possibilities about how things can always be better.