Part 1: What Makes Me Different From a Robot?

I’m going to throw my computer across the room if I see one more headline bemoaning: “AI is coming for your job.”

I’ve had moments where I’ve been worried. Will AI replace me? It’s a fair question and, with the number of people sharing their ChatGPT coaching conversations with me, a very real one. That’s why I want to devote the next several newsletters to exploring just what it is that makes us different–and I’d wager, better–than ground-breaking AI technology.

The mission I’m on is to help myself and others trust the bodies we’re in, and leverage the intelligence and wisdom contained in these imperfect, fallible, empathetic human vessels.

AI lacks the embodied wisdom of being human in all its mortal, messy aliveness.

AI is disembodied.

We have a biological basis for our intelligence that AI will never be able to mimic. If you’re wondering what distinguishes you from AI, here’s one example: 

We can read the room without language. We have mirror neurons that enable us to be empathetic and perceive emotional and energetic states. I’ll talk about other distinguishing and uniquely human capabilities in the coming weeks, but for now, I want to highlight the importance of mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons are a large part of what makes emotions – and emotional behavior – contagious. It’s why when you talk to a friend who feels afraid, you might begin to feel afraid, nervous, or unsettled after your conversation.

If you’re particularly empathic – that is, influenced and affected by the emotional state of others – you are particularly susceptible to this experience. It also means you are exceptionally good at intuiting what’s going on underneath the surface of a social interaction. Very likely, you needed to do this early in your life to navigate your family system, and this makes you a wizard at picking up the vibe in a room.

As a leader, when you sense what’s going on around you, you can ask questions to raise what’s unspoken, and bring a group together that might remain fractured absent that awareness.

Machines can’t replicate this kind of integrated, whole-system thinking. 

And that’s what I help clients learn to use and trust: Embodied Intelligence. 

Because in an era fascinated with artificial intelligence, your real advantage isn’t sharper output or faster processing. It’s the kind of embodied wisdom that lets you sense nuance, navigate complexity, and lead in a way no machine ever could.

If you’re ready to deepen that capacity, to stop second-guessing yourself and start trusting the intelligence already alive in you, I’d love to explore this work together. You can learn more about 1:1 coaching here!