For the past few months, many of the conversations Carlos and I have had (whether between ourselves, through our work at The School of We, or with the organizations we work with) have ended up, one way or another, coming back to Artificial Intelligence. We talk about what is already changing, what might change, the possibilities opening up, the risks, the future of work, organizations, and relationships. And amid all of this, one question has been taking up more and more space: what is all of this doing to us as we try to keep up with a transformation that is moving so quickly?
Because it does affect us. It certainly affects me. Some days, I feel tremendous excitement about what we can already do with these tools. There are moments when I am genuinely fascinated. At other times, I feel uneasy, and sometimes afraid. And quite often, there is simply a feeling that is difficult to name, somewhere between the urgency to understand more, the worry of being left behind, and an almost opposite desire to switch everything off for a while.
Perhaps that is why, over the past few months, I have found myself returning so often to a phrase by Thich Nhat Hanh that Carlos and I also know well from our time at Plum Village: “The way out is in.” Not as an invitation to withdraw from the world, much less to escape technology, but almost as a necessary movement that allows us to engage with the world more clearly. If what happens out there awakens fear, urgency, or excitement within us, perhaps it is worth paying attention to those feelings before automatically turning them into decisions. Science has long shown that emotions influence how we pay attention, interpret information, and make decisions. So recognizing what is happening within us is not an optional exercise or some pleasant pause before getting back to the “serious” matters. It is part of the very process of making good decisions.
The world is accelerating. Our human system has not changed at the same pace.
We talk a great deal about the skills needed to work with AI: asking good questions, using new tools, redesigning processes, collaborating with agents, learning faster. I know all of this will be important. At the same time, I am convinced that some of the skills we will need most are quite old and deeply human: being able to sit with not knowing for a while, tolerating uncertainty without immediately rushing towards an answer, distinguishing facts from the stories we build around them, listening to perspectives different from our own, recognizing an emotion without feeling compelled to react straight away, and perhaps one of the most difficult of all, continuing to think when we have a machine available to think with us, or even for us. The challenge is not simply to learn how to do more with AI. It is also to understand what we want to continue doing ourselves, what we do not want to delegate, and where we are coming from when we make those choices.
That is why, when I think about this transformation, I feel it is essential to look at what is changing, understand what it awakens within us, and return to the world with a little more clarity to choose how we want to respond. Perhaps that is what this familiar phrase from Plum Village can teach us in such an unexpectedly contemporary context.
A small practice for times of great transformation
We can start with something much simpler.
When a piece of news, a change, or a new tool triggers a strong reaction in us, we can try pausing for a moment and asking ourselves four questions:
- What is happening? Not what I imagine might happen five years from now. What do I actually know at this moment?
- What is happening within me? What emotion can I recognize? Where do I feel it in my body? What impulse arises — to rush, avoid, control, attack, or jump on board?
- What story am I adding to the facts? What is actual information, and what are the stories I am imagining?
- From here, what do I want to choose? Not what urgency is pushing me towards, or necessarily what everyone else is doing. What is the next step that makes sense for me, my team, or my organization?
Choosing where we respond from
The way out is in. Not because all the answers lie within us, or because looking inward allows us to control what happens out there. But because, at a time when so much is changing without asking our permission, we can at least create some space to understand what those changes awaken within us before reacting on impulse. Because it is difficult to choose our path out there with clarity if we do not first understand where we are starting from in here.
