3489: Living on Autopilot: Making Better Decisions, Every Time by Rachel Trotta

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[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_01] This is Optimal Living Daily. Living on autopilot. Making better decisions every time. by Rachel Trotta of racheltrotta.com. And I'm Justin Malek, your personal narrator, except on the extra Sunday bonus episodes. That's where I share an episode from a different podcast in the Optimal Living Daily network. Today's coming from my brother's show, Optimal Health Daily. You can find and follow or subscribe to Optimal Health Daily wherever you're listening to this. And I'll

[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_01] get right to the bonus episode as we optimize your life. Living on autopilot. Making better decisions

[00:01:56] [SPEAKER_02] every time by Rachel Trotta of racheltrotta.com. The buzzword autopilot carries negative connotations, implying that if you are on autopilot, you are disconnected from your life and decisions, mindlessly going through the motions. But as we continue the making the changes that matter project, I can make a case that shifting your habits into autopilot mode could be the best decision you ever

[00:02:22] [SPEAKER_02] make for your health. Don't sweat the small stuff. The concept of autopilot is an important one for our brain because having some behaviors that are automatic save us the conscious effort of decision-making minutiae. Our physical bodies do this marvelously, keeping our lungs pumping and our heart beating without conscious effort. We don't have to think about breathing, for example. In other words, having some

[00:02:46] [SPEAKER_02] behaviors on autopilot allows us not to sweat the small stuff and frees up mental bandwidth for the bigger picture of life like relationships, ideas, and personal growth for starters. This kind of swift subconscious decision-making has the potential to make life better. However, the word autopilot can suggest that somehow we are going through life like robots. But I think this unwarranted ire makes the

[00:03:13] [SPEAKER_02] assumption that we are already living mindful, conscious lives, examining each decision thoughtfully as it comes our way, weighing our options, and soberly making rational choices every time. You and I both know that this is simply not true. Instead, it's important that we're honest with ourselves that most of our choices are made on autopilot already. It's simply that the setting does not give us the outcomes that we want from life.

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_02] We think we're being conscious and intentional, but the reality is that our lives, our decisions, our thoughts, and our behaviors follow familiar, predictable grooves that we have essentially programmed into our brains through repetition and socialization. We don't always like the results of our lifestyle, but it's difficult to reprogram this swift type of thinking and decision-making. This is especially true of food and exercise decisions. Most of our choices are automatic,

[00:04:04] [SPEAKER_02] fast, and almost predetermined. And change is hard. If you remember a previous theme, keeping things simple, and you're recalling the extremely basic strategies we covered, you may be asking, but shouldn't changing my behavior be easy? If these strategies were drawn from the simplicity of Occam's razor, then the next reply would be, what's simple isn't always easy.

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_02] Yes, many of the strategies I've suggested before are simple. The hard part is getting your mind and body to cooperate, to reprogram those habitual grooves so that they run in a direction that you want, rather than simply following ingrained routines and beliefs that leave you tired, frustrated, and unhealthy. In other words, we want your knee-jerk responses to transform from

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_02] liabilities to assets. Repetition and Context. Changing your automatic behaviors is a lot like trying to address your implicit racial biases. Whoa, hard left turn, right? Nope. It's essentially the same set of beliefs and behaviors because the brain operates very similarly with biases as it does with habits. I promise I'll get back to weight loss. Just follow me. Biases, which are typically

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_02] unconscious, operate in the autopilot range of our thoughts and behaviors, swift and unthinking. We may think we're woke, but still make automatic snap judgments based on race without realizing it. We can improve our unconscious thought patterns and behavioral grooves, but it takes consistent and deliberate effort over a long period of time to create meaningful mental change. But time and effort aren't all that's

[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_02] needed. According to a study by MCBI, participants in a race bias reduction study also needed self-awareness. Participants needed to recognize that they had implicit race bias. They also needed concern. Participants need to feel ethically worried about the consequences of their way of thinking. And they needed a plan for confronting triggers. In addition to other exercises and strategies, participants needed to

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_02] identify which situations and contexts elicited more racially biased thinking and to have a plan for how they would use different behaviors. In the words of one of the researchers on the study, quote, such change is likely only after the application of considerable goal-directed effort over time, end quote. In other words, changing your outer thinking, the you that you perceive as you,

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_02] is easy. But changing your inner thinking, the you that you don't even realize you have, that's difficult. It not only takes time and effort, but it also requires that you know you want to change something. Although this kind of self-awareness is hard work to cultivate, we all know that there are areas of life that are well worth the effort. As we start a month in which I will be focusing on autopilot thought systems and behaviors, we need to start with the three-step process of change

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_02] that was summarized earlier. Your strategy for this week will focus on identifying the three aspects of this process for yourself. One, which behaviors consistently create health regret for you, but you feel that these behaviors are difficult to change? Two, why do these behaviors concern you? What are the long-term consequences

[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_02] of these behaviors? And three, what situations and contexts trigger these behaviors for you? Please note that this does not have to be a negative situation. It may be a benign context that provides a trigger for behaviors that you don't like. The goal is that you can answer these three questions for yourself this week and then revisit them next week as we move on to formulating new thoughts and behaviors for your

[00:07:54] [SPEAKER_02] new autopilot setting. You just listened to the post titled, Living on Autopilot, Making Better Decisions Every Time by Rachel Trotta of racheltrotta.com. Dr. Neil here for my commentary. Like Rachel said, unfortunately, change takes energy. Imagine there's a huge boulder in front of you blocking your path.

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_02] That boulder has been there for decades. It's sitting there, all smug and sitting there very comfortably. You want to move it so you can be on your way, but it's going to take some real effort to move it. Maybe it's going to take some ingenuity and creative thinking to get it to move. Maybe you have to break the boulder up into smaller chunks so that you can move it. Either way, it's going to take some effort to get this thing out of your way. I'm sure you've figured this out

[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_02] already, but this boulder represents change. In order to change, it may take some creativity, but it will definitely require some dedication and energy. Energy and dedication may not be readily available after a long day or long week, but think about all the barriers you've removed in your life before. Now, it may have been a while since you've consciously removed a barrier in your life where

[00:09:13] [SPEAKER_02] you've gone from not doing something to it becoming a habit on autopilot. In case it has been a while since that's happened, use the techniques that Rachel described. Ask yourself the three questions that were posed at the end of this post. Then revisit your answers to those three questions regularly and check in with yourself. All right, that wraps up today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being a subscriber. I hope you have a great rest of your day,

[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_02] and I'll see you back here tomorrow for another Friday Q&A episode and where your optimal life awaits.