Core Concept

Many professionals carry limiting stories about their capabilities, their role boundaries, or their potential impact.

Stories like “I’m not technical enough,” “I’m not creative,” or “I’m not strategic” can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

AI collaboration often reveals that these stories are outdated.

You can accomplish technical tasks with AI assistance, be creative in new ways, or contribute strategically in areas you never imagined.

The practice is recognizing when AI makes your old professional story obsolete.

Metaphor: The Updated Biography

Imagine your professional story is a biography that was written years ago. It accurately described your capabilities at the time, but you’ve grown and the tools available to you have evolved dramatically.

AI is like having access to new chapters, new plot developments, and new character abilities that weren’t available when the original biography was written.

The question isn’t whether the old story was true. It’s whether it still accurately describes what you’re capable of accomplishing today.

Professional Story

For years, Susan told herself “I’m not a data person.”

As a sales director, she’d always relied on gut feeling and relationship insights while leaving data analysis to others.

This story limited her contributions to strategic discussions and made her feel insecure when colleagues presented data-driven insights.

Working with AI changed her biography.

She discovered she could ask AI to analyze sales patterns, customer behavior trends, and performance metrics in ways that made sense to her.

She wasn’t becoming a data scientist, but she was becoming someone who could work with data to support her relationship-based insights. Her sales recommendations began incorporating both human insights and data patterns.

At the next quarterly review, she presented analysis showing how relationship quality indicators correlated with revenue retention patterns.

Her colleagues were impressed by the depth of her data-supported insights.

She realized her old story – “I’m not a data person” – had been replaced by a new chapter: “I’m someone who combines relationship wisdom with data insights to drive sales strategy.”

AI had made a fundamental rewrite of her professional narrative possible.

Try This Today

1. Identify a Limiting Professional Story: What story do you tell about what you’re “not good at” or “not qualified for” professionally? Choose one specific limitation you’ve accepted about yourself.

2. Test the Story with AI: Use AI to attempt something that your old story says you can’t do well. Don’t aim for mastery—just see if AI assistance makes it more accessible than you believed.

3. Draft a New Chapter: Based on what you discover, write one sentence that updates your professional story. Instead of “I’m not X,” try “I’m learning to be X with AI assistance” or “I’m someone who can accomplish X when I have the right tools.”

Daily Integration Phrase:

“My professional story evolves with my expanding capabilities.”