Yesterday I was getting ready to go to work and realized that I had forgotten my glasses in the room. Entering the room, my gaze fell on the notebooks and I thought that I needed to grab them, then I also remembered that the weather was changeable and I needed to put an umbrella in the car. As I was leaving the house, I suddenly had the epiphany “GLASSES!” I didn’t take them! Exactly why I came back! Or when I drove past the metro station, where I wanted to leave my car in the parking lot, because I automatically imagined that I was going to the center where I used to have a work office. Does this happen to you? Our conditioned reflexes and habits, on the one hand, save us from spending a lot of thought and effort, on the other hand, sometimes it seems that they control life more than we do! Psychologist Daniel Simons has conducted studies that specifically affect our automatisms. In one of them, the actor stopped ordinary people on the streets to ask for directions. While they were explaining to him how to get through, two people, as if carrying the door, blocked him from the person with whom he was talking and during this time the actor changed to another. Both actors were specially selected with great differences in their clothes, voice, haircut and other characteristics. But in the experiment, 50% of those tested did not notice the substitution! The experiment makes it so clear that we seemed to have lost consciousness and relied on autopilot. We are now so overloaded with information, there are many streams and sources of thoughts that intercept our attention, that the brain puts everything it can into automatic mode. In the short term, autopilot allows us to expand our working memory by developing habits, but in the long term there is a danger that life itself “here and now” will begin to fade somewhere into the background and we lose control and the feeling of living the moments of life. Don't we forget to make stops?! Mindfulness allows you to stop for a second and ask yourself, “Is this really what I meant to do?” When you are fully focused on the present, you are in better control of your own autopilot and engage habits as needed. For example, when my working day comes to an end, I sometimes start autopilot: looking through email, messages on the website and in WhatsApp, I write to clients who have appointments for the next day, confirming the agreements. But now my workday is over and I turn off the autopilot! I’m walking, listening to music on headphones along Novoslobodskaya, gawking at the illumination of old buildings, stopping and watching how maple leaves stand out among the trees with fallen leaves, bright yellow rays and inhaling the smell of Moscow rhythm! How do you control your autopilot? We live life without drafts , no repetitions are provided...Happiness and joy every day! The sun came out outside the window, but according to the weather forecast, it will still be winter! Please rate, thank you, to those who liked the article!))) Psychologist, psychotherapist, Svetlana Korotina, El. email: [email protected] ;Website: https://psiholog.clubMob. tel.: +7(916)16-55-604 (WhatsApp and Viber)