Differences Between Mindful and Automatic Living

All of us shift into automatic pilot occasionally. I know I do. But I didn’t know how much I did until I decided it would be fun to take an inventory of my own mindful vs. automatic living quotient. During one particular day, I curiously jotted down the times I noticed either mindful or mechanical actions or conversations. I was definitely wrong about the exercise being fun! Noticing how often I did or said things by rote—while knowing that I probably missed about a million mindless examples—brought me up short and helped cement my commitment to living more mindfully one little step at a time. As a result of my experiment, I realized that automatic living is essentially the opposite of mindfulness.

Because of the demands on our time and attention, many of us shift into overdrive in the morning and speed through the hours simply trying to get everything done that is expected of us or we expect of ourselves. At the end of such a day, it’s easy to wonder where the hours went, what we accomplished during them, and more importantly, whether we feel it was a day wasted or well spent.

Excerpted from The Woman's Book of Mindfulness by Sue Patton Thoele. Available on Amazon.