When you think of someone who is stressed, you might picture a person caught up in fretful worry.
I use several websites for pictures to place in my blog posts. When you type in a search for “stress” or “worry,” you will get pictures of people with hands on their heads, or their faces buried in their hands. You will see pictures of people with frantic looks on their faces. This may be how you see yourself when you are stressed.
But there is another form of stress that may not show up on your face or with your gestures. It is the stress from living on autopilot. In a previous post, I talked about autopilot and depression. You could describe autopilot as going through the motions of life without little awareness or intentionality. When your life is filled with lots of tasks and activities and you do them because, well, they are things to be done, it is easy for this autopilot living to create stress.
Look at your work life, for example.
If I invited you to go through the rhythm of a workday or a work week in your mind, you might do it very quickly because it is so regular and familiar. Even in you slowed down your mind, you would picture things that you do every day in the same way. You have a way that you get out of bed and go through your morning routine. You have a way that have breakfast and get dressed. You have a way that you drive to work and enter your workplace. You have a way that you interact with coworkers. You have a way that you leave the office and drive home.
If you have a regular exercise routine, think about how that happens. You go to the same gym. Perhaps you choose the same locker. You do the same exercises or have a few workout routines that you do. When you are done you go to the same shower and go home or back to work the same way.
You can do this exercise with any area of your life: friends, personal relationships, family, spiritual life. You don’t have a frantic look on your face as you do them. You don’t feel tense or fretful. But doing these activities that make up your life on autopilot can create a subtle stress.
What are some ways to overcome the stress of living on autopilot?
Notice the description of autopilot I offered earlier: Going through the motions of life without little awareness or intentionality. So, the way, it seems, to alleviate the stress of autopilot is to find some ways to bring these to your daily activities.
Let’s begin with awareness.
Another word for this is mindfulness. Some people picture mindfulness as a formal practice of meditation, but you can take any activity that is part of the day…and do it mindfully. Think about the work routine you went through earlier in your mind. You can wake up mindfully: Feeling the temperature of the air in the room. Enjoying the tastes of your food and coffee. You can do other parts of your work routine mindfully: Listening intently to the words and music of the song on the radio. Being present to an interaction with your coworker.
Think about the exercise routine you went through earlier in your mind. You can be mindful of the feelings in your body—the stretch, the pull, the sweat—as you ride the elliptical or go through your weight training. You can feel the warmth of the shower or the smell of the soap or shampoo.
Along with awareness, there is also intentionality.
One simple way to bring intentionality to the routine of your daily life is to give it some variety. Take work for example. When you wake up in the morning, change the order of your morning routine. When you drive to work, take a different route and notice what you see along the way. If you can, park in a different spot. Instead of just the normal greeting with a coworker, stop and have a brief conversation with them. Instead of listening to music on the way home, drive home in silence and be aware of what you are thinking.
Or your exercise routine. You could do something as simple as choose a different locker. Add an exercise or a practice that you have never done before…and notice what it feels like to do something different.
Yes, these changes that add awareness and intentionality to your routine are subtle, but remember, so is the presence of the stress of living your life on autopilot.
If you are struggling with stress, I invite you to my stress reduction specialty page, where you can learn about Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), an empirically proven method for dealing with the stress in your life.