It's easy to run our lives on autopilot. But we always are making choices whether we are aware of them or not.

The keys to happiness are taking responsibility for what we choose, being assertive, following our passions.

To avoid feeling like a victim of our lives, we need to act without expectations and control what we can.

Perhaps you feel like your days are a bit of a blur, a forced march through to-do lists, filled with routines and obligations that leave little time for your partner, family, or yourself. Actually, you’re running on autopilot most of the time, and your life, to put it mildly, is a bit out of balance.

If it’s any comfort, you’re not alone. Philosophers and psychologists have been grappling with these issues for millennia. Here are four key concepts from their wisdom:

1. Take full responsibility for your choices

This simple statement contains two important ideas: choice and responsibility. Choice: Sartre and the existentialists remind us that we cannot not choose; even not choosing is a choice. Buddhists say that this power of choice is what separates us from other living animals and plants; it’s what makes us human.

But in everyday life, this sense of choice is easily swept away—by the running on autopilot, or the........

© Psychology Today