Breaking Free from the Autopilot: Two Crucial Factors for Creating Lasting Change in Your Life

This article provides tips on how to make changes in life by expanding awareness and releasing the body's learned response to a subconscious pattern.

People often wonder why they cannot change. Many feel that they are stuck in their habits or a victim of their circumstances. Oftentimes they feel as though they are making an effort to change, but still find themselves in the same perpetual states or situations.

I regularly work with people who feel blocked in their life. Usually they feel blocked with their health, their relationships, their job or self-confidence. They feel like there is an invisible force that they cannot get past, even when they have tried very hard to overcome it.

What if the problem is simply that they have not been able to override their "autopilot"?

Over the past few years of working with my clients very closely to shift their subconscious patterns, I have found this to be true.

This autopilot offers a unique way of understanding our subconscious. Many are surprised to hear that we are only aware of 5-10% of our brain activity. Therefore 90-95% of our brain activity is subconscious including all of the autonomic processes of our body. It is like our body is on autopilot. This autopilot influences our behaviors, patterns, and body responses as we move through life. For example, does your mind consciously think of how to tie your shoes, or has your body autopilot remembered it? Our bodies store a ton of information and when that information has been used repeatedly millions of times, it can be hard to change. Have you ever tried to tie your shoes in a different way than you usually do? (It's hard to change old habits!)

Even most of our thoughts and emotions are all based on this subconscious information. When we have common reactions to situations, people or environments we are often not even aware why we have those reactions, its just our autopilot reacting.

While many of the patterns that run on autopilot are for our benefit, this autopilot can also be the reason why it is so hard to create change in our behaviors and our day to day lives.

How do we change or break free of our autopilot?

Here are two crucial factors to changing these subconscious patterns:

Factor 1: There must be an expansion in our conscious awareness.

If a behavior or pattern stays invisible to us, it will not change. It is important to note that expanding our conscious awareness is more than just learning or gaining information. In addition to gaining information, we also have to understand it in our own way. Even when people tell us about about a negative behavior we have, we will only change if we can see this for ourselves.

Change requires some type of experience that creates a new way of seeing.

We need a mirror to allow us a new way of seeing. This mirror can be a situation, environment, experience or person. All of these external situations offer a mirror that can reflect ourselves back at us which allows us to adjust (or auto correct our auto pilot). This could be something big and dramatic that is like a slap in the face that causes us to wake up immediately. This can also be something extremely subtle like the energy work that I do that uses frequency to hold up a mirror to the body, and the body gets auto correct itself based on this frequency mirror.

Factor 2: We must release the body's learned response of the pattern.

Our subconscious is intricately tied to our bodies. Our bodies actually remember much more than our minds do, including all of the autonomic processes of our body. Many who are on the road to self-improvement spend tons of time building their self-awareness, however if they do not allow an opportunity for this new awareness to shift something in the body, they will watch themselves continue to have the same patterns (often more painfully because they are more aware of what they are doing!).

With a shift in the bodies patterns there will often be a physical release. What does a physical release look like?

We can think of this like needing to shake something out of our bodies thus we may feel the need to move our body in all kinds of ways. Physical release can also be a detoxification and include the spontaneous release of fluids (out the top, the bottom or through the skin). If releasing old traumas the body may need to complete the fight or flight response by physically running or beating a pillow to get that energy out. We may have emotional outbursts as we release these patterns from our bodies.

The key is to find a healthy way to let things out as they come up.

For me, this is one of the reasons I am passionate about my Ignite Body Freedom events that I facilitate. Allowing free movement of the body is a great way to release stress and old patterns without even needing to think about it. In addition, the intentional and therapeutic use of stillness and movement have been essential for me on my personal journey.

Recognizing these two essential factors has been an essential part of the change I have been able to create in myself and my own life. These factors have also been a huge part of the reason that I have chosen to help people with the tools that I have chosen. My goal is to create a mirror to reflect subconscious stress patterns to the body and also support individuals on their pathway of release.

I would absolutely love to hear how these concepts have landed for you and if you have any questions, please send them my way!