Feeling Stuck on Autopilot? Mimi Bouchard Breaks Down What Comes Next on ‘Girls Gotta Eat’

If your days blur together somewhere between notifications, errands, and half-finished goals, this Girls Gotta Eat episode is for you. Hosts Ashley Hesseltine and Rayna Greenberg bring back an old, but great, interview with Activations founder Mimi Bouchard. Her entire philosophy is built around one core idea—how you feel determines what you create.

Bouchard talks about momentum, self-image, and the tiny choices that quietly shape the life you wake up to. “I have this theory that if you do the things that numb you, you are directly less alive,” she says, drawing a sharp line between habits that dull your energy and ones that make you sparkle.

You’re either feeling numb or alive

Bouchard’s point here is blunt in the best way. Your life doesn’t just happen—it gets shaped by whatever you keep using to take the edge off. She frames it as a daily trade. The more time you spend numbing, the less present you feel inside your own life. And because numbing is usually convenient, it sneaks in dressed as “just a break.”

Then she starts naming the usual suspects: “overeating, overdrinking, doing drugs, being on technology too much, mindless scrolling, distracting yourself.” None of those are shocking on their own. The gut-punch is that “numbness quickens time.”

That line is the thesis. When you’re checked out, hours evaporate. Days blur. You’re technically doing things, but you don’t feel them. “You’re wasting your life,” she states. It sounds intense, but she’s not trying to shame anyone—she’s trying to make the pattern obvious so you can interrupt it.

Then she flips to the other side of the equation: alive-ness. She describes it as anything that slows time down and brings you back into your body—“that feeling after a workout,” “having a beautiful deep conversation with someone,” and “being present, being in the moment.” Try filling your life with more moments that pull you into real sensation and less time reaching for autopilot.

Becoming your future self in everyday moments

Bouchard says you can skip the vision boards and goes straight to behavior. “Once you know that version of you that you want to be,” she says, “all you need to do is become them in everyday moments.” Not during a big reset. In the small stuff that usually runs on autopilot.

She points to posture, energy, and decision-making in places that feel insignificant—how you carry yourself in line at the store, how you talk to someone you don’t know, how quickly you recover when you slip into old habits. Those moments are where identity actually forms.

That’s where her idea of “bounce back rate” matters. “Perfection is completely not attainable,” she says. What matters is how fast you return to the version of yourself you’re trying to embody.

And that happens when you stop treating your future self like a prize you earn later and start acting like she’s already here. Over time, those choices stop feeling forced and start feeling normal. That’s when change becomes automatic, not exhausting.

Why she stopped meditating and started recording herself instead

Bouchard admits that meditation never fully worked for her. She tried because every personal development book told her to. She stuck with it longer than she wanted to. And it still left her feeling flat. “I wanted something to get me ramped up and to go achieve,” she says. Meditation felt designed to quiet her down when what she needed was momentum. “Meditation is all about calming you…I wanted something to energize me.”

So she trusted that instinct and tried something else. Instead of clearing her mind, she started using it. Bouchard began recording voice memos where she described the life she wanted in detail—how she wanted to feel, what her days looked like, the version of herself she was becoming. Just language, emotion, and intention layered over music that made her feel alive.

Those recordings became the foundation for her Activations app. And the impact was immediate. “When I started doing these activations, my transformation went from like 0 to 100.”

How Activations are built to change your state, not your schedule

Bouchard says that Activations is built for real life—the in-between moments where most habits quietly fall apart. “Activations are a new type of audio that I developed…it’s not meditation, it’s activation.” Instead of asking you to sit still or carve out a sacred block of time, they’re meant to layer onto what you’re already doing. Walking. Getting ready. Cleaning. Driving. 

The focus is on changing how you feel, fast. Each activation blends visualization, guided language, and cinematic music that cues your nervous system into a different state. Bouchard explains that music does a lot of the heavy lifting. It tells your body how to respond before your brain has time to argue.

And over time, that repetition creates conditioning. You start associating everyday actions with confidence and clarity. Eventually, you don’t need the audio as much because the feeling becomes familiar. That’s the point.

Transformation sticks when it fits into your life instead of competing with it. If growth requires more effort than your day can hold, it won’t last. Change works best when it meets you where you already are.

To hear Mimi Bouchard’s full conversation, listen to Girls Gotta Eat wherever you get your podcasts.

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