If you want to live a fulfilling, on-purpose life
then you must also be willing to bring these automatic assumptions into your awareness, so you can assess them, and see if you want to continue to live from them. Consider the meaning behind the words; “an unexamined life is not worth living” credited to Socrates.
If one does not consider and consciously choose her values, priorities, what she wants to believe, and how she wants to truly live her life … then she is, in fact, living according to another’s assumptions and conclusions rather than her own. So in this sense, an unexamined life means that you are not living your life. Instead, you are living from someone else’s standards, priorities, and assumptions. This is how both empowering and disempowering patterns are passed from generation to generation. Sometimes, these automatic, unexamined choices come from cultural influences, parental beliefs, peer influences, and past turning-point events that are assessed from a wounded, fear-based perspective.