From Autopilot to Awareness: Intentions Help You Take Back Your Life
Does life feel like it’s been happening around you? Are you unmotivated? Does every day feel the same? It happens to all of us. Before we know it, we’re living on autopilot, just going through the motions.
Here’s how to start making conscious, deliberate choices aligned with your values and purpose, rather than running on ingrained habits and subconscious decisions. Intentions help you take your life back.
When Autopilot Stops Helping
Autopilot is helpful when it handles routines like brushing our teeth, driving familiar routes, and managing basic tasks. It helps us get through busy days, constant demands, and long seasons of responsibility.
But when autopilot runs too much of our lives, something gets lost: choice. Trouble begins when everything slips onto autopilot.
The days blur together.
Decisions feel reactive.
You’re exhausted but can’t quite explain why.
Research suggests a large portion of our day runs on automatic patterns. The brain does this to conserve energy. The problem? Habits—helpful or harmful—get equal priority. And when expectations, obligations, and constant stimulation pile on, autopilot quietly takes over more than it should.
You’re busy, but not present.
Capable, but not connected.
Moving, but not moving toward something meaningful.
Everything on autopilot a signal.
Awareness Is Where Choice Returns
Intentions don’t force change—they invite attention. They bring you back into the moment long enough to notice:
- how you’re responding
- what you’re prioritizing
- where your energy is actually going
When you set an intention, you interrupt the automatic loop. You pause. You choose. You respond instead of react.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose.” Viktor Frankl
Intentions widen that space.
Why Living Intentionally Reduces Stress
Stress often isn’t about what is happening—it’s about feeling out of control while it happens.
Intentions help you realign your actions with your values.
They don’t remove challenges, but they change how you meet them.
Instead of firefighting every moment, you gain steadiness. Decisions feel less frantic. Boundaries become clearer.
Life still moves—but you’re participating again.
Awareness Is a Practice, Not a Personality Trait
Living intentionally doesn’t mean you’re mindful all the time. It means you notice when you’re not—and gently return.
Intentions support that return.
They help you:
- slow reactions
- reconnect with what matters
- respond with clarity instead of urgency
As Thich Nhat Hanh taught, presence isn’t about perfection—it’s about coming back, again and again.
Why Intentions Feel Different Than Goals
Goals aim forward. Intentions anchor now.
When you attach emotion and meaning to your actions—not just outcomes—you create commitment that feels personal.
An intention isn’t a demand. It’s a quiet agreement with yourself about how you want to live.
That agreement is powerful because it’s internal. It doesn’t depend on timelines or applause.
Taking Your Life Back Doesn’t Mean Starting Over
It means waking up inside the life you already have. Intentions don’t ask you to quit everything or reinvent yourself. They simply ask:
- What matters right now?
- How do I want to show up today?
Those questions pull you out of autopilot and back into authorship.
So if you’ve felt disconnected or on repeat, this is a signal that you’re ready to wake up.
Practical Application:
If you’re reading this article, chances are that you feel like you’ve been on autopilot and now you’re ready to wake up and live intentionally again.
Try this:
- When you’ve accomplished a task, pause to ask yourself if it was done on autopilot. If yes, should it have been (some tasks are fine done on autopilot). What did you lose by doing it on autopilot?
- Set an alarm to remind you to pause for a moment and do a check. Awareness of being on autopilot and how it affects your life is the first step toward change.
- Once you see areas that are on autopilot, set intentions that fit in the “gap” between stimulus and response. Create a one sentence reminder of how you want to show up in that area. “When I …, I will…”
