How the developments of artificial intelligence makes clarifying your purpose a priority
You’ve surely heard of ChatGPT in the past months. If you haven’t played with it, let me introduce you to your new best friend or your replacement… depending on how you take it!
Indeed, if you work in any “knowledge industry”, ChatGPT can likely do many of the tasks you do on a daily basis better than you can: copy writing, accounting, programming, creating social media posts, designing marketing campaigns, re-writing texts in ways that a four-year-old can understand, or as a poem, proof-reading, grammar checking, developing succinct summaries of complex issues… Therefore, either your job is about to get much easier, supported by a powerful tool like ChatGPT, or your clients or employers will no longer see the value of paying you to do these tasks, instead using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools.
This assessment might seem a little over the top, so as an illustration, we asked ChatGPT a pretty complex question which we are curious about. Have a look at the answer.
Question: “Is it important that the rethinking of life’s purpose be holistic and connected to the emotional and even spiritual levels of life?”
Answer: “As advancements in Artificial Intelligence continue to transpire, it is increasingly important for individuals to reevaluate their purpose in life. With the potential of automation to disrupt traditional job markets and industries, it may be necessary for individuals to reassess their career paths and identify new opportunities to utilize their skills and passions in a rapidly evolving world.
However, the ramifications of AI are not limited to economic considerations alone. The integration of AI into our daily lives may also necessitate a reexamination of our relationship with technology and our understanding of what it means to be human. Thus, rethinking one’s purpose in life in the context of these developments should not be limited to solely pragmatic considerations, but should also encompass emotional and spiritual dimensions.
A holistic approach that takes into account the various aspects of an individual’s well-being, can aid in discovering a sense of balance and fulfillment. By considering the emotional and spiritual aspects of their purpose in life, individuals can make decisions that are congruent with their values and beliefs, such as choosing a career or volunteer opportunity that allows them to make a meaningful impact on the world or dedicating time to cultivate deeper connections with loved ones and engaging in activities that promote inner peace and serenity.
It is crucial to note that the significance of emotional and spiritual considerations in rethinking one’s purpose in life may vary from person to person, and what is most important is that individuals find what works best for them and brings them a sense of satisfaction and contentment.”
Apart from clearly laying out why the work Purpose+Motion (P+M) does is so crucial J ; this answer really shook us as a team. It is so perfectly written, so coherent, so thoughtfully connecting to every intention of the question, and in many ways very profound, that it alone makes a number of conclusions emerge (see below). Of course, we couldn’t stop there, and asked for this to be written as a poem, as Rap lyrics, and for a four year old… all the answers were to this level of quality. And this is only the beginning of this GPT tool, a mere seven years after the first version of GPT was released, at the time only able to write basic sentences from prompts.
Without being overly sensational, the developments of Artificial Generative Intelligence (AGI), automation and other such technologies is unlikely to leave many people’s jobs unchanged in the next decade. And what’s interesting is the jobs most at risk are those held be well educated, creative, socially mobile (and let’s face it, mainly white, western, middle-upper class) people. The copywriters, accountants, proof-readers, speechwriters, researchers, creatives, legal assistant, medical professional or marketing experts are more likely to find their jobs change radically (though not necessarily disappear) than the waitress, delivery lady, shopkeeper, builder, teacher or policeman.
And this is only one tool, but it may be most powerfully demonstrating the transformations and disruptions coming our way. So, as ChatGPT itself says, it will therefore be ever more crucial to be able to regularly and profoundly re-assess our purposes, both at the individual and collective level (organizations, countries, societies, etc.) — defining what value we bring to the world, how we contribute to creating a world which is fairer, kinder and more meaningful, how we contribute to “changing the game” (as Hanzi Freinacht puts it).
We believe the possibilities offered by these new technologies (AGI, automation, etc.) are an incredible opportunity for us as individuals and as societies to deeply transform the way we work and live. It will however require us to radically transform the way we think about value, work, money, and life — in particular our purpose in life.
However, we won’t be successful at this if we simply think about it, write some post-its or draft a few nice sentences. It requires deeper work than this. It requires activating not only our mental intelligence, but all our intelligences — including our emotional and body intelligences. It requires challenging our past beliefs, integrating parts of ourselves we are not comfortable with, redefining what is possible and what is not, and taking risks we didn’t think we could. It requires dealing with the fears we have about the future, building the emotional capacity to hold such fear and anxiety whilst stepping into our power as individuals and groups. It requires us to regularly, radically question ourselves and our paths in life. Or as ChatGPT puts it, it will require a “reexamination of our relationship with technology and our understanding of what it means to be human”. This might be one of the biggest evolutionary quantum leaps humanity has taken and it will require a sense of maturity and commitment to upgrade the understanding of life, which will put most of us to the test.
The good news is that methodologies to support the deeper work needed for this already exists and have existed for ages. They have been popularized in the west more recently as “the Hero’s Journey”, but these types of deep transition and re-assessment rituals have been used for millennia in many indigenous or ancient traditions. These rituals were seen as central to many cultures because our ancestor knew that life is dynamic and in constant change, and that life requires us to be just as dynamic and adaptable, and that rituals enable a community and society to build such skills and competencies. In today’s western societies, we seem to have forgotten the importance of these types of rituals of passage, and when such rituals do happen (birthdays, weddings, funerals, etc) they rarely have the transformative and transcendental connection with the journey of life.
That’s why based on the archetypal Hero’s Journey model we, at P+M have created an accessible, meaningful, and embodied “Gamechanger’s Journey”.
This journey accompanies you in deeply reflecting and feeling into where you are at in your life today; it supports you in letting go of many of the things holding you back from readjusting your life to fully align with your values and purpose; connecting on an emotional, embodied, and mental level with all that is possible in your future; and building deep commitment to prototyping new pathways and ways of being. It gives you the space to reimagine a new way of living and your role in it, adapting to disruptions such as AGI, automation, redundancies, etc.
For several years, we ran this process over a 2-month period with live sessions and a cohort of between 15 and 25 people. The impact of this journey on those participating was impressive and at times life changing. Past participants have gone from managing products and sales to focusing on sustainability; from running a “traditional” profit focused business to transforming it to a purpose-driven one; from working long hours in jobs they didn’t love, to working for themselves, or creating new enterprises with people they love working with. Of course, the course and methodologies are not a golden bullet and work better for some than others, but overall, we were happily surprised with and proud of the impact it has had.
We however felt that, though this format for the course was impactful, it would only ever reach 50–60 people a year, due to our limited capacity to meaningfully host more people than this in a live course. We wanted to reach more people, to support and enable more Gamechangers out there. So, we worked for over a year to put together a self-paced online course, where anyone, anywhere can run the course at their own pace, whenever they want (and as often as they want). This is the Gamechanger’s Journey Self-Paced Course, which we launched in January 2023.
To be concrete, there are 5 key aspects we’ve integrated into the Journey which we feel are essential, and which you can already explore with the following steps and questions:
- Assess the context you are in and the world you want to create: How do you understand the transformations which are required at a global and local level for us to live within the environmental and social boundaries on this planet? What are the elements (AI, automation, climate change, polarization, etc) which could most radically impact your work and life in the coming years? What is your community today? What resources are at your disposal? What is the world you want to contribute to?
- Identify beliefs and behaviors limiting you in living out your full potential: What are the parts of yourself which keep appearing and sabotaging your plans, relationships, or ambitions? What patterns are recurring in your life? What are the things that really trigger you in others? (Hint: All these are parts of you which are not “integrated”, i.e. which you don’t consciously use, but instead unconsciously “use you”, taking over against your will and sabotaging you in living your full potential).
- Integrate these parts and embody your full potential: What would be possible if you fully owned those parts of yourself which sabotage you? What would change if you could consciously access these parts and use them when you wanted, and keep them in check when you DON’T want them?
- Identify or clarify your purpose (at this time in your life): How can you best contribute to the global and local transformation needed? What is it you want to direct your full potential towards doing or achieving at this time in your life? (i.e. your Purpose in Doing) How do you want to BE as you do these things? (i.e. your Purpose in Being)
- Make a plan: What are the immediate next steps you need to take to begin bringing these purposes into your life today? Who are your supporters along this transformation?
We are confident that the future of work and life on this planet will be regenerative (or in time simply generative), and yet we are far from this today and it won’t happen without us making some very conscious and profound changes to the way we live. Let’s start that journey today!
