What I really outsourced to AI.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about AI.

More specifically, how I've outsourced my power to it.

Pete bought me a book of crosswords and I noticed that my ability to recall a word was much slower than it used to be.

My grandfather was a great lover of puzzles, and every day at 11am my grandma would make a pot of tea and they'd sit together in their sun room and complete a cryptic crossword. I occasionally visited at that time because I loved their little ritual, but was always out-brained by the pair of them. He lived to over 100 years old, and even though his memory faded in many ways, he could still complete a tricky puzzle and make it look easy.

And here I was at less than half that age, looking at a crossword and feeling my brain twitch towards my phone to ask chatgpt for an answer.

Over a few weeks I've practiced and my recall has improved, but it's quite scary how weak that muscle had become.

I was looking at an old sales page on my website, and could immediately see it'd been done when I'd first got chatgpt and was thrilled by how quickly it could output text. But reading it back? It's dead. It's lifeless.

People say 'oh you just need to train it to sound like you'. But I'm not convinced I do want to train a robot to replicate me. And I also don't believe that a robot can replicate our energy, our life force; the very thing that makes us who we are.

You've probably noticed if you're ever on social media how much stuff sounds the same. And it's not just the sound; it feels the same. It's energetically beige. The same words and phrasing, yes. And also the same tone. It has an air that's slightly patronising or like it's been written by an Instagram meme. It's flat.

So now I'm on a mission to go back through anything I've done with AI and put my energy (and heart) back into it.

In setting up a new Resource Vault, I thought it would be quicker to use AI (Claude this time) for the multi-tasking element of it. So I pasted in the writing I'd already done about each resource, then asked it to turn it into a facebook post, and write the email and text for the vault space. I did this for about six hours before I realised that I was rewriting and rewriting and re-instructing and rejigging so much to get it back to being my own writing… when everything I needed was already there!

I just needed to trust myself.

Somewhere along the way, I've outsourced my power to AI, and begun to believe that it's better than me, faster than me… that it can do a greater job of being me than I can. How can that possibly be true?

What's also happened is that I stopped writing so much. My 'regular' newsletters haven't been regular. I gave up my power to the outside noise that tells us 'AI is more prolific, use it or fall behind'. But I didn't want to ever send a newsletter written by AI. So I often ended up not saying anything.

These limbo states often catch me out. (I realise I'm using 'I' and 'me' a lot but I don't want to drag anyone else into my failings!) The outside pressure to do something that doesn't feel in alignment: use AI, make videos, perform for the algorithm. And I don't want to do any of those things. But instead of just saying NO, and accepting my own no, there's self-doubt, a sense that perhaps I'm wrong.

And that doubt breeds a wobbly space that eats creativity. As the creativity drains away, suddenly there's nothing. No energy to do stuff I don't want to do. But also no energy to do things I love… like writing.

After the Show Your Light Collective book came out, I've received some really kind praise for my chapter. It's given me a joy that I don't think I've felt professionally since the feedback I received for Core Wound Resolution last year. Writing is the only thing I've wanted to do since I was about five years old. (There was a brief period where I hosted imaginary cooking shows at the kitchen table, but that was more because I liked all the little bowls of ingredients in neat rows.)

And writing is so often devalued. "Video is what sells." "No-one makes money from writing." "AI will replace copywriters." But most truths are subjective. Don't we get to decide?

I don't yet know what this inner shift will mean for outer me. But I'm looking forward to finding out.

To self-trust, alignment, and the freedom to choose…

With love and kindness,

Michelle xxx