Turn Off Your Cruise Control – NOW!

If your focus is not on what you are doing now, you are missing something

There are advantages to using the cruise control feature in your car – avoid speeding tickets, relax your legs, getting better miles per gallon by maintaining a consistent speed and enjoying the scenery as you travel through nature, but there are disadvantages as well such as not paying moment by moment attention and embracing and enjoying your environment, creating the potential for an accident because you are distracted, being lulled into a stupor where you can even fall asleep and surrendering your driving to technology rather than active consciousness.

You would be amazed at how many people go through every day of their life with the cruise control set at a certain speed or with a specific destination in mind. Let me share some of the disadvantages and why it’s important to live with your cruise control off.  Let me just share three reasons.

You can’t live tomorrow. You can’t change yesterday. The problem with most people is that they spend most of their now moments with thoughts stressing over what might happen in the future or with pain, regret or suffering about what happened in the past.

When we focus on what we can’t change or control, we will miss all that we have - which is what is happening now or what we are experiencing in the present moment.
When in cruise control it often keeps us from enjoying or dealing with our present challenges or embracing all that is good in a proactive way or getting all we can from the moments we are given.

No one knows when their current day or moment will be their last so why waste one of them?  Why lose the adventure or experiences whatever they are that life is giving you moment by moment?

Life gives us no guarantees. People die at every age and while doing everything – whether on vacation, working, driving or just watching your favorite movie on the TV.

As you are reading this, are your thoughts somewhere else? Tomorrow? Last year? Or twenty minutes ago? It doesn’t matter, if your focus is not on what you are doing now, you are missing something – I guarantee it.

Over the years having spoken to over a million people in 23 countries, I can tell you that most of them, while sitting in the audience pretending to pay attention, were somewhere else. Many of these people were in the room because they were told to be there and guess what? Do you think they spent much conscious time in the room or were they thinking about their To Do list, future challenges, or some other distracting thoughts?

Now is all you will ever have – today, tomorrow and yesterday are illusions. I’m in no way suggesting that memories or planning are not important, but these are also happening in the mind.

You think literally thousands of thoughts every day and want to guess what those thoughts are?  Think about it for a moment. Over 95% of what you will focus on today are thoughts from yesterday or dreams or worries about tomorrow. Think I’m wrong? Just take the next hour and pay attention to your thoughts.

Cruise control is where the mind wants you and why? It doesn’t want to have to deal with now, now but some other time. It takes conscious effort and awareness to stay present in the present, but believe me it is well worth this effort if you want a rewarding life.

When you turn off your mental cruise control you create positive memories and few regrets.  And why?  Well, for starters you will make more mature and right choices in the present when you are focused on what is happening now and not letting your mind with its trillions of memories, emotions, experiences, and fears dictate your actions.

Memories are just that - they are a storyboard of your life up until now. You will have both positive and negative memories stored in your brain.  The more positive memories you have the better chance you will create a more positive present, therefore, creating a more positive future and again therefore a more positive past. I know this might sound a bit redundant so please read this sentence again.

Let me ask you – when you think about yesterday do you want to smile or feel pain? Either way, all of this is happening now in your mind.

You create your future one moment at a time. When in cruise control, you turn your future over to your past, and yes, as I have stated, some of the past is good while other parts of it could be bad, but in the end, you are letting the past contribute greatly to tomorrow.  

If you want a more positive future, you have to take conscious control of what you can control and learn to let go of what you can’t control. And you do this while paying attention to now, not what might happen or you hope will happen tomorrow.

Your future is in your hands – not all of the circumstances, but how you choose to handle, react or respond to these circumstances and you do this in your now moments. Turning off your cruise control lets you live a more abundant, joyful, and stress-free life.

Now is all that matters!!!