You’ve Been Warned: Life Is a Highway

You’ve Been Warned: Life Is a Highway

What an old song taught me about living life on autopilot

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Lately, I’ve been intentionally listening to more music.

This is an intentional thing I am doing – partly because I love it and partly because I’m trying to cut out some of the constant noise we seem to fill our lives with.

When I go for a walk now (with my Doberman and King Charles Cavalier – the ultimate Odd Couple), I’ll often leave my headphones at home and just walk.

Or I’ll put them on and listen to music only – not another podcast or another person teaching me something I apparently need to know.

Just music and seriously IT’S THE BEST.

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Anyway – lately I’ve been going back to a lot of the songs I loved in the ’80s and ’90s.

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I absolutely love how you can hear an old song and instantly feel as if you are transported you back to another time in your life.

Which is how I found myself walking along the other day listening to Life Is a Highway by Tom Cochrane.

Gosh this is such a great song.

It came out in 1991. THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.

I’m sorry, but seriously how has it been that long?

Of course, I’ve heard this song approximately a million times over those 35 years and yet, for some reason, this time I found myself thinking:

Why a highway?

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We use road metaphors for life all the time.

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• Life is a journey.
• There will be bumps in the road.
• Sometimes the road gets rocky.
• There will be twists and turns.
• You might take a wrong turn.

All of that makes sense.

But a highway?

I’ve never really heard life described in this way before.

Because a highway is different – it’s long, mostly straight and you’re travelling fast.

On a highway, there aren’t traffic lights every few hundred metres forcing you to stop and think about where you are.

You just get on it. You drive and you keep driving, often for very long periods of time (whenever we went camping in the past, we could be on a highway for hours).

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In fact, highways are probably one of the easiest places to switch onto cruise control.

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You set your speed and just keep going straight ahead.

Which is when I suddenly realised:

OF COURSE. Oh my gosh. Maybe life really IS a highway.

Because isn’t this how so many of us live?

Maybe not you but there are plenty of people who get onto a metaphorical highway in life and then we just keep driving.

They truly are in cruise control (aka autopilot mode). They wake up, do their things, work, cook, clean, get through another week and they do this on repeat. Not just for months but literally YEARS.

This isn’t to say they are necessarily unhappy.

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But they just aren’t consciously thinking about where they want to go in life.

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I’m sure they aren’t choosing to live life on autopilot. I seriously doubt they are waking up each morning thinking, Oh yes, today I shall mindlessly repeat everything I did yesterday.

They call it just living life, even though this “life living” is happening permanently inside their comfort zone.

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So many of us just “plod along” in life.

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We keep doing what we are most familiar with. We rarely stretch ourselves or take a chance on something different. We busy ourselves with unimportant tasks.

And soon enough this “plodding along” becomes zombie-like speeding through the same old things, because it’s incredibly easy to keep driving down a road you’re already on.

If you’ve ever wondered, “Where did this month – or even this year – go?” and struggled to pinpoint anything new or different that happened, it might be a sign that you’ve been on the highway, moving through life in cruise-control mode.

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The scary thing is that when you’re on a highway, you can cover an enormous distance without really noticing.

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And the same thing is true with your life – when you’re not consciously thinking about what you’re doing, whole years can pass in a flash.

Case in point – 1991 was somehow 35 years ago.

Thirty-five years! Where did those years go?

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Here in Australia, we have road safety signs that say:

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STOP. REVIVE. SURVIVE.

The idea is that when you’re driving long distances, you need to stop every couple of hours.

• Get out of the car.
• Stretch your legs.
• Wake yourself up.

That’s what we’re encouraged to do. (This is actually a super long-running road safety campaign here in Australia designed to combat driver fatigue.)

Because guess what happens if you don’t stop for a break?

Driving endlessly down a highway without stopping makes you tired. And according to the stats, driver fatigue is a contributing factor in approximately 20% – or 1 in 5 – fatal road crashes.

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And now I can’t help wondering: what’s the impact of living our lives on autopilot?

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• Do we metaphorically crash and burn more often?
• Do we become restless or discontent without really knowing why?
• Do we wake up one day with regrets about the things we never did?
• Do we unintentionally spend years playing small simply because we never stopped long enough to question the road we were on?

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We could potentially apply that same STOP. REVIVE. SURVIVE. principle to our own lives.

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Stop. Look around. Wake ourselves up.

Ask:

• Where am I actually going?
• Do I still want to be going there?
• How long have I been on this road without questioning it?

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Because here’s the thing about a highway.

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There are exits and turn-offs.

There are places you could stop.

There are detours you could take simply because you’re curious about what’s down there.

But you have to actually notice them.

That’s what worries me most about living on autopilot.

It’s not that the road you’re on is necessarily bad. You might actually really like your road.

The problem is never looking up long enough to decide.

And the truth is, our current choices give us clues about where we’re heading.

So answer this question now:

Can you make an educated guess?

And here are a few more questions to ponder:

• If you keep putting off the thing you desperately want to do, what will happen?
• If you keep saying “one day,” when exactly does one day arrive?
• If you keep living according to the same habits, routines and assumptions without ever questioning them, how different can you reasonably expect your life to become?
  

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Of course, none of us knows exactly where our road will lead.

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We aren’t fortune tellers. We don’t have a crystal ball we can peer into.

Life can change in a second and there are things around the corner we could never possibly predict.

But that doesn’t mean we have no say in where we’re going.

I want this article to remind you that you can turn off the cruise control.

You can take an exit. You can pull over for a while or choose the scenic route.

Of course, you can also decide that you’re perfectly happy with the road you’re on and consciously keep going.

Alternatively, you can even change the destination. Yep, you can get off that highway and decide to go somewhere completely different.

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The important thing is that we’re awake enough to realise we have a choice.

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Because there is one final problem with this whole life-is-a-highway metaphor.

Every highway eventually ends.

And unlike an actual highway, none of us gets a sign telling us exactly how many kilometres we have left.

Which is why I recommend that every now and then, you do your own little STOP. REVIVE. SURVIVE. check-in.

• Stop long enough to notice your life. (AKA wake up.)
• Revive the parts of you that have fallen asleep. (AKA do more of what matters.)
• Survive by consciously choosing where you want to go next. (AKA stop living on cruise control.)

Because those kilometres are ticking over whether you’re paying attention or not.

And I’d hate for you to reach the end of the highway and realise you spent the whole journey on cruise control.

And if you’re ready to switch off cruise control…

That’s exactly what we’re doing inside Your Richer Life.

It’s a space designed to help you wake up to your life, get out of your own way, pursue the goals that matter to you and make more of this one precious life – without sacrificing your soul or sanity.

→ Come join me here

Much love,

Frances xxx