Taking Life off of Autopilot: Mindfulness in Everyday Tasks

By Sarah Healy, ILS Coordinator CLE Rockville

Have you ever driven somewhere and thought to yourself, “How did I get here?” Or read an entire chapter of a book with no memory of what it was actually about? Or even sat through an hour-long lecture but left the room without a clue as to what the speaker said? We have all done it, we have all tuned out or gone on “autopilot.” Yet we miss so much when we mindlessly go about our day completing tasks on autopilot.

Our lives are fast paced, we are constantly rushing to the next thing with a lack of awareness to the present moment. The idea of mindfulness is bringing awareness to the present rather than rushing through it.

The dictionary defines mindfulness as, “the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis.”

Essentially, to be mindful is to be aware and accepting of what is going on around you, internally and externally. So, how can we bring mindfulness into our lives here at CLE?

The great thing about mindfulness is you don’t even have to set aside extra time to do it. With support and guidance from our staff, students can practice mindfulness each day while completing activities of daily living, during tutoring sessions, while out on social activities, and during individual sessions at the center.

During Independent Living Skills sessions, I often observe students jumping from task to task with the mindset of “I just want to get it done quickly.” I have also seen the opposite, sometimes students are so overwhelmed by the tasks at hand that they don’t know where to start and might think, “This is too hard, I’ll do something else instead.”

In both of these situations our students are not in the present moment, they are somewhere else. When I see this happening, I encourage my students to slow things down. To take a breath. To keep themselves in this current moment. To focus on one thing at a time. We work together to break down tasks into manageable chunks. When you are mindful you can work purposefully rather than rushing through on autopilot.

Recently I was working with one of my students on his finances. He walked into my office asking for the session to be over as soon as possible. The first thing I asked him was to log in to his online banking. At first, he was flustered and rushed through it, making many errors. Out of frustration he asked me to do it for him. Instead, I asked that he step back and take a break. I told him I knew he was capable of logging in, but was having trouble because he was upset and had a lot on his mind.

It can be difficult to complete a task when your emotions are high and your mind is full of thoughts. After taking a step back he was able to log in and together we completed our session. He left in a better mood and even thanked me for helping him get through it.

Practicing mindfulness during times like these can help to teach compassion and kindness towards yourself. It’s human nature to get distracted. Mindfulness is also about being accepting of your thoughts, including that you may get distracted and frustrated, and that’s okay.