Life by Default vs. Life by Design
Waking Up From Autopilot
I’ve had seasons in my life where I felt fully awake. Where I was in tune to my own choices, moving through the world with agency and clarity. And I’ve had other seasons that felt like Groundhog Day. Wake up, go through the motions, check the boxes, keep moving. At some point, I stopped asking myself the simplest but most important question: What do I want?
That’s what I mean when I talk about living on autopilot. It’s like driving to work along the same route you’ve taken a hundred times, only to pull into the parking lot and realize you don’t even remember anything about the drive. You were moving, but you weren’t present. Life can feel like that too. You look up and realize years have gone by, and you’re not even sure how you got here.
For me, it took a tragedy to see that it was happening. A wake-up call that held up the mirror and forced me to ask questions I hadn’t been asking: Am I happy? Am I living the way I want to live? Or am I just doing what I think I should be doing?
That’s the real danger of autopilot. You can go years, even decades, living a life by default instead of a life by design.
Life by Default vs. Life by Design
Living on autopilot doesn’t happen because we’re careless, it happens because of conditioning.
So many of us get caught in this ‘life by default’ trap. We’re capable, high-achieving women. We know how to get things done. But we’re also conditioned to put everyone else first, to meet obligations and to live by the “shoulds” placed upon us by others. Without realizing it, we find ourselves living a life that doesn’t actually feel like the one we want.
A life by default looks like this:
Staying in a career you’ve outgrown because everyone else thinks it’s a great job or it makes great money.
Signing your child up for the same school as everyone else because “that’s what people do.”
Cramming your calendar so full you can’t take a breath because slowing down or saying no feels selfish.
A life by design looks different. It’s intentional. It begins with pausing to ask: What do I want? What do I need? How do I want to feel? And a life by design allows for change. One of the biggest traps I see is believing that changing your mind means you failed. It absolutely does not mean that. It means you’ve grown.
I’ve lived on both sides and have many examples to share. I think about my college decision. I didn’t really take it seriously. A friend said, “I’m going here,” and I said, “Okay, me too.” And I felt obligated to honor that decision even when it started not to feel quite right for me. That one choice set me on a path I hadn’t really thought through. Looking back, I see how many opportunities I missed simply because I didn’t stop to ask, “What do I want?”
Later, when I made the decision not to have children, I felt grounded in that choice because it came from a place of self-trust. And when my circumstances and desires shifted, I gave myself permission to reconsider. Both decisions were right in their moment, because I made them with the best awareness I had at the time. That’s what living by design is about: staying awake enough to re-evaluate when life changes.
The Role of Space and Reflection
If you want to shift from default to design, space is essential. Without space, we stay in motion but never really move forward.
I like to use the example of strength training. You don’t actually build muscle during the workout itself, you build it on your rest days, when you’re giving your body time to recover. Sleep is another really good example of this concept. Children grow while they’re sleeping and we know that so we prioritize it for them. But as adults, we forget that we still need rest to consolidate learning, store memory, and reset.
Life works the same way. Without space, we can’t digest what’s happening or integrate what we’re learning. That’s why practices like journaling, meditation, walking without a podcast in your ears, or even intentional conversations matter so much. They create breathing room. They give you a chance to ask: What just happened? Why did I react that way? What do I actually want here?
Sometimes space also shows us the patterns we’ve been blind to. Look around at your neighborhood. You may notice that a lot of your neighbors are driving the same cars, decorating their homes the same way, shopping at the same stores. At school pickup, you may see a lot of the same clothes, the same giant cups 🙂 and the same routines. It’s not that these choices are wrong, it’s just that often, they aren’t conscious. We mimic what we see and when we do that we actually outsource our decision-making. And then one day, we realize we’ve built a life that looks like everyone else’s but doesn’t necessarily feel like ours.
This is where reflection comes in. Reflection helps us notice the default and reclaim design. Design doesn’t have to mean burning it all down. Sometimes it’s small shifts like saying no when you usually say yes, carving out an hour just for yourself, or pausing long enough to realize you even have a choice.
The Autopilot Check-In
One of my biggest missions is to bring awareness to a life on autopilot so that you don’t need to experience a tragedy or a life-altering event to wake up. You don’t have to wait until the marriage falls apart, the career feels unbearable, or life throws you a curveball. You can start now.
Here’s a simple framework you can use right now (and revisit anytime). It’s a way to notice when you’re slipping into default and shift back into design.
A.W.A.K.E. – Step out of autopilot
Awareness - notice the pattern
What do I want? - ask the question
Action - make a conscious choice
Keep choosing - small shifts, again and again
Exploration - where else could I make a decision?
This exercise helps you remember where you have choices to make and leading yourself with intention.
So here’s my invitation:
Where in your life are you living by default?
What’s one small shift you could make today to step into design?
What would it look like to give yourself permission to change your mind?
You have the agency to create a life that feels like yours. A life measured not just by external metrics, but by fulfillment. A life filled with aliveness, creativity, spaciousness, and joy.
You don’t need to wait. You don’t need permission. You don’t need a perfect plan.
You just need to decide: Am I going to keep living by default, or am I ready to start living by design?
Join us. Our next cohort of Awaken begins soon. Discover how to stop living by default and start living by design.