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How to Get Yourself From "Meh" to "Hell Yeah!"
The deadly effects of autopilot and the strategy to get more from life
Howie Chan
July 06, 2025
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“Eh”
“Meh”
“Blah”
Dear Legend,
Have you ever felt this way? When life is just…fine?
“Life is pretty good.”
“I’ll figure it out next year.”
“It’s ok for right now.”
It’s this feeling where you don’t have energy and you don’t want to do anything about it, because you feel like you are perfectly perched on this razor edge and if you change anything, it’s probably going to go sideways. It’s a feeling we all have.
But it’s not that we are in balance, we are actually in autopilot.
And autopilot feels comfortable, familiar, even if it’s “meh.”
Autopilot doesn’t just kills your dreams, it kills your energy, your confidence, your imagination, your sense of time. And it convinces you to wait, to say to yourself that “someday” is the perfect strategy for right now.
But what if life can be different? What if your days are energizing instead of passively floating by? What if life makes you feel…alive?!
I spoke with Simon Alexander Ong and he said something that is now permanently pegged in my brain.
❤️ “We tragically go through life living as if we are never going to die, and then die having never really lived.”
This sentence hit me right in the gut because it’s what I’m afraid of, “wasting” my life and I know you are too.
(Simon Alexander Ong is an internationally recognized life coach, bestselling author of Energize, and keynote speaker who has been featured on Sky News, BBC, Forbes, and the Harvard Business Review. He’s spoken at Google, Barclays, Salesforce, and Unilever, and has helped thousands of leaders from startup founders to Fortune 500 executives unlock their potential through the power of energy management and intentional living. Here is his most popular video about his 40 life lessons on YouTube, with 3.7M views.)
Simon also explained that autopilot is deeply seductive, especially for high-achievers. Good money, the title, the recognition, the corner office. Even if it’s not energizing, it’s fine…
But here is what’s actually happening, you are trading your one wild, beautiful, irreplaceable life, for a paycheck and a job title.
For him to burst out of autopilot, he had to hit rock bottom. “I found himself in a bathtub at 3 a.m., fully clothed in a suit. And I realized… I didn’t know what success meant to me anymore.” And after Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, he was forced to ask the question “What do I really want?”
Most people don’t ask the question not because they don’t care, it’s because they’re too comfortable to be uncomfortable. Answering this question means the facing the unease of cognitive dissonance, a mismatch between who we want to be and what we are actually doing: a pain no one wants to feel.
🧠 Know this: you’ll never drift into a legendary life. You have to design for it.
But do we have to hit rock bottom to get out of autopilot?
No we don’t.
🧰 Here are 5 strategies to escape from your autopilot.
1. Feed Your Environment with Inspiration
Simon says that by surrounding yourself with sources of inspiration: books, seminars, role models, and new environments, you will expand your awareness of what's possible.
“What inspiration does is it helps you to be aware of where you are and where you could be.”
He calls this process “exposure”. This pulls you out of the bubble you're currently in before crisis forces you out. A key step to awaken you to your autopilot mode.
✅ Action: Pick one thing to do this week that inspires you.
2. Recognize the Comfort Trap
Your job, income, house, all of which can be golden handcuffs if they keep you stuck.
“If it’s no longer lighting you up, it’s a signal. Not a failure.”
✅ Action: Audit your calendar from the past 2 weeks. Highlight every task or meeting that drained you in red. Highlight energizing ones in green. Then ask: Am I building a life I want or just maintaining one I tolerate?
3. Design a Vision That Pulls You
“A magnetic vision will get you out of bed before the alarm.”
✅ Action: Write your ‘Future Profile’ (the Forbes article test.)
Imagine a magazine is profiling your life 10 years from now. What does it say? Who did you help? What did you build? Write 1 page. Then read it out loud to yourself each week.
4. Map Your Energy Patterns
Forget productivity hacks. Track your energy.
What work drains you fast?
What conversations light you up?
What spaces feel heavy vs. expansive?
Energy doesn’t lie. It will show you what to do more of (and what to drop cold).
Simon sees energy in four dimensions:
Physical (sleep, food, movement)
Mental (thoughts + beliefs)
Emotional (your relationships)
Spiritual (meaning + purpose)
“Most people aren’t tired because they do too much. They’re tired because they do too little of what brings them joy.”
✅ Action: Track your energy hourly for 5 days. Use a 1–10 scale. Add notes: What were you doing? Who were you with? What gave or drained energy? Then adjust your schedule to double down on the energizers.
5. Redesign Your Environment
“Success is inevitable when your environment is designed to support it.”
You don’t need more willpower.
You need better surroundings.
Want to write more? Work from a beautiful library or café.
Want to start your business? Get around others doing it.
Want to feel inspired? Book an Airbnb in the life you want.
Simon calls this a “real life vision board”. Not Pinterest. Not Canva. Real-world immersion in the life you’re building. (Read Marie Diamond’s letter on designing our environment.)
✅ Action: Do one immersive experience this month. Go work from a luxury hotel lobby. Take a tour of your dream home. Go stand on a stage and see what it’s like. Surround your senses with your future and let that environment shift your beliefs.
Does that sound like too much? I’m sure it does.
Is it easier to stay in autopilot? Of course it is!
But what if you were able to get off autopilot and get energized? Sart your life of legendary? All it takes is YOUR action.
Want more?
Go listen to Simon and I dive into this topic and feel absolutely pumped!!! (Website, Apple and Spotify) Here is a LinkedIn post I wrote where I share the most hard hitting wisdom bombs from Simon. Feel free to like, comment, and share!
Make your mark, live your legend 🤘🏽
I’ll see you on Wednesday (Influence Science will now come on Wednesdays! 👏🏽)
Howie Chan
Creator of Legend Letters
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