Stop! Have you reflected about what you are doing and thinking right now? Most of the time we act on automatic pilot. We have established set routines about what we do from the time we wake up to the time we go to bed.

My morning routine is to hear the alarm and then turn it off, get up, pet the cat that is waiting for me outside the bedroom door, turn up the thermostat, then head for the shower. I continue with my routines for the rest of the day. Routines are good because they free us up from having to think about all the things that we do repeatedly.

Days, months, and even years can pass with nary a break from our routines. Most of the time we are self-absorbed in our own activities and lives. Only rarely do we stop to ask ourselves: “What am I doing, and should I be doing something differently?” In running on autopilot we often neglect to see major patterns that are taking us in wrong directions. Let’s pause and examine this all-too-human tendency.

I saw this pattern with a set of parents of one of my graduating high schools students. My student was already 18, preparing to graduate and, all of a sudden, her parents began to put restrictions on her actions and behavior. They wanted to know who she was with and how she was spending her time.

It was obvious to both my student and me that her parents had been on autopilot for years. Now that their daughter was going to graduate and move out of the house, they realized that they hadn’t spent much time guiding her. By putting restrictions in her senior year, it was as if they could turn back the clock 10 years and control her actions.

Of course, by then, it was too late.

A second example is on the other end of the life cycle. As the “baby boomer” generation begins to retire in great numbers, many are finding they didn’t plan well enough for retirement and don’t have enough money set aside. I know with myself, I came to appreciate the defined benefit plan that had been set up by the state years before I retired from teaching high school. Had the state not been more farsighted then I was, I would not have been prepared to retire when I did.

Because of sleep-walking through my career, I frequently tell my children who are now in or nearing their 30s to prepare for their own retirement because they probably won’t have the advantage of a defined benefit plan like I do.

We mortals struggle to live in the tension between using our habits as tools to help us navigate our days, and pausing our routines occasionally to think about the bigger picture of where we are going with our lives.

Recently someone I have known for more than 20 years died. It caught me by surprise because he had always been healthy and active. His death was a reminder to me how short our lives are.

It’s time to put a pause in our daily routines so we have time to look up and think about deeper purposes and opportunities for living. All of us can benefit from a little more thoughtfulness and reflection.