[quote=@Zeal]
<Snipped quote by Meta>

It's been happening more recently.
[/quote]

One of the phrases I repeat to myself at times to snap out of that "trance of life" if you will, is "Look with your eyes." I've noticed that when caught up in life, we tend to look around more with our heads, treating the scope of our vision more like a video camera than eyesight. We forget, it seems, to look with just our eyes. So I've adopted the phrase to mean something along the lines of "Be self aware. This is reality, not some sort of story. You have to take control." At times, I'll take off my glasses just to make things seem more material, or I'll just flex my hand to remind myself of the reality of my own body and the control over it I have. I think that people as a whole lack quite a bit of self-awareness and we need to remind ourselves to take an active role and actually think about life rather than a passive one.