From AI Anxiety to AI Advantage
Six transformative clips from my appearance on The Uncharted Way Podcast.
I had the pleasure of joining Sari Cowsert on The Uncharted Way Podcast in a fun conversation exploring how AI can transform our personal and professional lives.
We discussed how AI can become a powerful ally for personal growth, creativity, and meaningful work when we think of it as “amplified intelligence”.
By developing effective prompting skills, creating custom GPTs, and leveraging AI as a specialized coach you get a partner in personal evolution as well as a catalyst for elevating your work.
For those who don't have the inclination to listen to the full podcast, I've distilled six key insights, each accompanied by a short video clip.
These highlights capture the essence of how to approach AI with an abundance mindset and apply practical strategies to harness its greatest current potential.
Reframing Your Mindset
One of the first things I emphasized was how badly AI has been presented to us.
"Artificial intelligence" is a truly awful name for something that should be viewed as "amplified intelligence" or "abundant intelligence."
This isn't just semantic wordplay – it's a crucial shift in understanding how AI can enhance rather than replace human capabilities.
Despite ChatGPT being the fastest-adopted technology in history, only a fraction of people use it daily.
This means those who embrace AI now are positioning themselves at the forefront of a transformative wave.
AI isn't meant to replace human intelligence but to amplify it – giving us 24/7 access to expertise and assistance that was previously unimaginable.
Daily Prompting Builds Your AI Muscles
By polling people in a recent webinar, I discovered how most feel about AI: overwhelmed and behind.
This is natural—AI’s capabilities are progressing exponentially, which our brains struggle to keep up with.
Here's the good news: you're not behind.
By doing daily prompting—the core AI skill—you can quickly join the top 1% of users.
The easiest way to develop this skill? Use AI instead of Google search.
While Google offers generic information requiring you to sift through results, AI delivers responses tailored to your specific needs.
Think of AI prompting as a muscle that strengthens with use.
When you're not getting what you want, the problem is usually your prompt, not the AI. Just ask it to rewrite your prompt for better results—let AI do the work while you improve your orchestration skills.
This Magical Feature Was My “Aha” Moment
In this clip I shared how the true power of AI revealed itself to me when I discovered how to create custom GPTs – personalized AI assistants tailored to specific needs.
Back in November 2023, ChatGPT came out with the most incredible feature and still almost nobody knows about it, and there are only 10 million people in the world that have access to it.
For $20 a month with a ChatGPT Plus subscription, you can build your own custom GPT that can do literally anything.
In my view, it's the most magical software feature that has ever been developed.
This discovery led to my "AI aha moment" – that profound realization when you first grasp AI's transformative potential.
These custom GPTs can be designed for any purpose – from expert coaching and custom creative work, to specialized business applications.
Customizing AI is the Next Core Skill
After mastering basic prompting, the second essential skill I recommend developing is creating your own custom GPTs, or custom "act like" prompts.
This takes AI from a general tool to a personalized assistant.
I like to describe the large language model (LLM) as an army of eager-beaver PhDs who want to work for you 24/7.
The key difference between mediocre and amazing results from these PHD’s lies in how specific your instructions are.
When you ask questions of a generalist, you get generic responses.
But when you provide specific instructions that clearly define what a successful answer looks like, you'll receive highly tailored content relevant to your exact context.
Where AI truly excels is when you go beyond delegating specific tasks to sharing your highest-level goals.
Instead of giving it small tasks, tell it what purpose or results you’re looking to achieve in the end.
This approach transforms ChatGPT from a generic tool into your personal AI – your own fleet of PhDs limited only by the valuable questions and opportunities you feed it.
And if you find yourself doing any work that the AI could do, you're not using it as well as you can.
How to Create Your Own AIs
During the podcast, I explained how creating a custom GPT is surprisingly straightforward:
Subscribe to ChatGPT Plus ($20/month)
“Create a GPT” in the "My GPTs" menu
Provide instructions that tell the GPT how to act, what expertise to draw upon, and what tasks to perform
Use the same conversation thread over time so the GPT remembers context
You can also create custom GPTs in a way that truly leverages AI's power.
Rather than manually writing all the instructions myself for different custom GPTs, I created a MetaGPT – an AI specifically designed to help create other AIs.
This MetaGPT interviews users about their needs, gathers information about their goals and preferences, and then generates the perfect instructions for the new custom GPT.
Instead of struggling to figure out how to write complex GPT instructions, I simply created an AI that does that it for me.
This exemplifies the guiding philosophy: always make the AI do the work.
It’s really not hard to make custom GPTs, but if you’d like some help, check out my 1:1 coaching session, The Personal AI Lab (PAL).
Turning Work into Play
During a divergent meditation guided by Anna-Victoria Osborne, I received a download that my purpose statement of 13 years needed to shift because of AI.
The new purpose statement that came through was "to guide and encourage people to transform work into meaningful play."
(here’s a clip of me sharing this right after the meditation)
AI can now handle the tedious tasks that drain our energy, freeing us to focus on what lights us up – work that feels energizing and fulfilling rather than drudgery.
Often, the lowest hanging fruit for AI is building a custom GPT to help you do your job better, faster, and easier.
For companies, this grassroots, individual-led approach is much more powerful than any top-down AI implementation strategies.
Embrace AI's Transformative Potential
I believe AI is here to usher humanity into the age of abundance. It is a force of love that extends our ability to lead our best lives.
Now is the time to develop your AI skills.
Start with simple daily habits like replacing Google searches with AI interactions, and then experiment with creating custom GPTs tailored to your needs.
Most importantly it’s key to approach AI with curiosity and openness rather than fear or skepticism.
AI is not just a technology trend – it's a paradigm shift in human capability.
By embracing AI as "amplified intelligence", we open ourselves to unprecedented possibilities for growth, creativity, and meaningful work.
The future belongs to those who recognize AI not as a threat, but as humanity's greatest gift – one that's just waiting to be unwrapped.