How to Stop Living On Autopilot & Take Back Control of Your Life

We explore how to shift from autopilot to self-leadership using small, repeatable choices that rebuild self-trust. Marisa shares practical tools—journaling prompts, boundaries, rest, dance breaks, and presence—to help you listen to your intuition and act with intention.

• signs you are on autopilot and what they cost
• redefining leadership as presence and response
• how guilt and fear shape choices, especially for women
• journaling prompts to access needs and clarity
• building self-trust with small daily promises
• rest and boundaries as non-negotiable supports
• simple presence practices that fit busy days
• dance parties, yoga, and stretching to reset the nervous system
• stacking joy and learning into tasks you already do
• choosing one aligned action each week to reinforce self-leadership

Share about it, DM me. I want to know about it, I want to cheer you on.
If you’re not already following me, you can find me on Instagram at @iammarisa.xo

If this episode resonates, spread the love like you would Nutella by sharing this podcast and tagging me so that I can personally thank you. If you are feeling extra loving, leaving a review it helps light up another beautiful soul and supports the growth of this space. 

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xoxo, M

Transcript

Welcome And Intention

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Inner Beacon. I am your host, Larissa. I'm a Canadian girl mama of two business owner, flight attendant, and a certified self-love coach. You are in the right place if you are ready to lead your life from within to reconnect with your intuition, trust yourself deeply, and reclaim your power. My goal and intention here is to inspire and empower you. And for fun, I might even add some flight attendant content and travel tips. And I'm so glad you're here. So let's dive into today's episode. Okay, so today I want to speak about becoming self-led. My hopes from that is that it helps you shift from living in a reaction type of place to living in a more self-leadership learning to prioritize yourself, um, trust your guidance, and take aligned action in everyday life. So I guess let's first ask what does it mean to be self-led? So leadership isn't about control or hustle, it's about how you choose to show up and how you respond to things. It's about being rooted in yourself first. Being self-led doesn't mean changing your whole life. Uh, it's built in small moments. It starts with a pause. If we don't learn to pause, we choose out of habit instead of alignment. Us humans, we tend to always be looking at the past or the future. Have you noticed that? Not ever do we just live in the present. In my one-on-one container, I always start with helping people get back into their awareness. Uh, when we go inwards, we give space to find what awareness is again. And that helps us live in from a more authentic place. And when you're self-led, that's where you're living your daily. Now, before I get into self-led, I'm and I will be sharing today as well, um, just small things that you can do to become more self-led. Um, practical ways said that. But first, I want to talk about the signs that you're living in autopilot. Um, so signs that you're living in autopilot are things like saying yes when you mean you actually mean no, constantly reacting to others' needs, feeling behind or scattered, letting guilt drive decisions, um, or like losing touch with what you actually want. And then why prioritize why does that uh feel hard is because then you it starts you start living from a guilt conditioning or fear of disappointing others, fear of being judged, fear of changing. And that's where we get that belief that everyone else comes first. And the sad part about that is that for many women, choosing themselves feels very unsafe. Meanwhile, on the contrary of that, what a self-led uh leadership actually looks like is listening to your inner pain, your intuition, making choices from alignment with your energy, responding instead of reacting, holding yourself with compassion, taking responsibility without self-punishment. Good ways to start shifting things is journaling. There's there's magic to putting a pen on paper, and you know, some people who especially if you haven't been a big journal journaler, just that a word, journaler, um, before, you often start being like, Well, but why what do I even write? Like, what do you mean journal? Just like put pen on paper. What does that mean? I mean like asking questions, asking important questions, but also asking or just literally sit there, meditate, and just write whatever comes out. Journaling for me has been a huge part of my exploration um and how I've connected with myself even as a young child. It it's a good way to start shifting things because things to move have to be shifted internally before it becomes visible physically. So asking the right questions. And if you've ever worked with me or been on any of my workshops, or let alone just listened to my episode my last episode, um, and any other episodes, I will most likely be giving you prompts to work with, so listen in on them. Um one that's really good and really simple is to just ask, what do I need right now? Not what everyone else needs, not what needs to be done or should be done, just right now asking what what do you need right now? Self-led means starting to listen to you and what do you need. So let's get into the practical ways to become self-led. So the question I just asked, the what do I need? You can do that as your first prompt if you wanted to journal in the morning. Just what do I need today? Uh you can practice pausing before answering requests. So if somebody asks you something, pause and think about it. Uh, notice where guilt shows up and don't obey it immediately. Keep small promises to yourself. Now, this is big because this is how you create self-trust again. Uh, and that's a part of on the self-love roadmap. Self-love is huge, right? Um, and you can start this with small practices like drinking water. Like, today I'm gonna drink this many cups of water, and then committing to that, and then because that's such a small thing, the more you commit to it, the more you drive and the more you build that self-trust. Water was just an example, but like what about rest, joy, creating boundaries, small little decisions that you can be proud of and that you can commit to. Follow through with rest. If rest is important to you, we don't get rest very much as parents, like as moms. We are constantly like for me, anyways. After I had my second kid, I I thought I knew what overstimulated meant, but nope. Now that I have two girls always fighting for my attention, right? So learning to rest is very important. Your brain needs it. Uh, creating boundaries on where you're spending your time when you're not being a mom or doing this or that. I mean, meditating is huge, but if you don't know how to or you have you don't have a meditation practice, something that's meditative and a great place to start is just sit outside for two minutes and just think about the beauty around you. You can do that from literally anywhere. It doesn't have to even be outside. I mean, I live in Canada and it's freezing. I don't want to be outside, but I can stare out a window, right? Practice bringing your awareness down to the present and seeing the magic around you when you find, when you find the magic around you, when you start thinking about the things that you're grateful for, and and that starts to shift things. Now, one of my personal favorites, and I do this with my girls all the time, especially if I'm feeling really overstimulated and just like it's too much or frustrated with the day, or I just, you know, I'm tired and whatever else, or I'm getting in the wrong mindset, I'm getting in my head, whatever the case, and I teach this with my girls, and I do this, we have dance parties all the time. We do dance parties. Uh, there's something that actually happens physically and mentally and spiritually here. So when you turn on a song, it it like and have a dance party, just move your body, whatever that looks like to you, and get your kids involved, because there's benefits to that too. It's a full system reset, it interrupts stress patterns. When you're overwhelmed, your nervous system tends to get stuck in this like loop tension. Uh so like shallow breathing, mental clutter happens there. And then dancing breaks that loop instantly. Movement signals safety to the brain and helps release stored tension. It boosts the feel-good chemistry by releasing endorphins, right? Adopamine and serotonin, and it shakes off stagnant energy. Emotions live in your body. So when you move and you give a chance to release the frustration, the heaviness, the resentment, the mental fog, even for 60 seconds can feel like a spiritual cleanse. And it models joy for your kids, it creates fun move fun memories, fun movement, fun memories, and it tires them out too. So it's a bonus for it's a win-win for everybody. And it's super doable even on hard days. One song, one movement, joy. What I've also been doing with my oldest daughter now, um, because you know, like, you know, when you you want to get movement back in your body, you want to go to the gym, you want to go do this or whatever, but then it's like it doesn't work out with your schedule. So I found a way because I love yoga, and I'm trying to find ways to move my body that I enjoy, and yoga is one of them. Uh, it's also meditative, right? So I found yoga stuff on YouTube. You can find whatever, uh, for kids or adults and kids, mom and daughter kind of thing. And I've been doing it with my six-year-old, and she really enjoys it. She's learning. I mean, her attention's not gonna be very still at this point, which is normal, but whatever. At least you're getting the movement in, and she's creating those memories, and she feels special because you're having that one-on-one time together as well. And you're again, you're teaching them something. And if not, yoga too, it's just like stretching. If you have a moment or the kids are playing and whatever, and you have a moment to just like stretch and just move your body and feel like feel it out because sometimes you're holding things tension, um, and just stretching might help, right? And these are small things you can do. You can have a dance party while you cook, you can have a dance party while you clean, you can have a dance party while you cook. Those are things that you're already doing, just add music and joy into those moments. Or if you're someone who drives a lot, there was a uh point worth my first because we had our business going on where I had to go look at job sites or whatever, or whatever the case. Um, I was driving a lot, and I used that time to listen to podcasts, to listen to a good audio. If you can't sit down and actually read a book because your life is like just on the go, go, go. What I've um seen work for me, anyways, is put your ear pods on, listen to a good book. Then you're still getting to read a book, quote unquote, but you're actually just listening to it. I mean, we have all these different ways and technology and ways to do things that you can incorporate into what you are already doing, and those are simple and easy. Like self-leadership is a is a practice. Um, like you heard in my first episode before this one that I did that uh how I took matters into my own hands when I had to pull myself out of a dark place postpartum because it's no one else's responsibility but yours to find joy and happiness. Um and so that's a good example of self-led. I'm I'm showing up more for me, but in turn, when you become the best version of yourself, it's also good for your loved ones, your kids, your husband, your coworkers, right? And and you're showing up for me, for example. Like I feel like when I'm putting myself first and when I'm making decisions for my health, like right now, I'm going through a big um I'm like I'm I'm basically on a diet, a very strict diet, um, but it's all for my health. I'm taking matters into my own hands once again. I'm making decisions, I'm creating boundaries and discernment and to those around me um to respect them and support me. And that is an example of how I'm being self-led in my own life right now. So reinforce that, like reinforcing here that leadership is built in small moments. It's a practice and it's not one that you can get wrong or right as long as you stay consistent, as long as you listen to yourself. So really ask yourself again when where in your life are you being invited to lead yourself more? What do you need? What's one small way that you can choose yourself this week? Share about it, DM me. I want to know about it, I want to cheer you on. And remember that every time you choose yourself, you're strengthening your self-trust. You are the one that you've been waiting for. So this is just one small way to keep doing that. Thank you for spending this time with me here on the Inner Beacon. If you're not already following me, you can find me on Instagram at immarisa.xo. And if this episode resonates, spread the love like you would Nikella by sharing this podcast and tagging me so that I can personally thank you. And if you are feeling extra loving, leaving a review helps light up another beautiful soul and supports the growth of this space. I am so glad you're here. I'll meet you on the next episode.