December 2, 2025 @ 12:03pm – Burnley, Victoria, Australia
Will AI take my job?
This is a question that has been hanging over many of us this year. Will AI replace me? Will I no longer be needed? What will I do?
Many of us have been thinking about these questions. They make us anxious about the future because now the future looks different.
For some of us, it’s easier not to think about it. We quickly change the topic or fill our heads with distractions. Others might shout and complain and point fingers, hoping that it helps.
Crying, screaming, hiding, shrieking, and cursing are all options available to us. But they don’t really change anything about the situation. In fact, they usually make it worse.
AI, like any other technology like concrete or wireless networks, exists.
Popular self-help authors encourage us to do what’s in our control to make the situation better. “If you’re scared about it, lean into it.”1 Use your agency and “slurp up all those problems and knowledge, and leave nothing for anyone else to do”2 and “push through (your) own excuses… even when (you) didn’t feel like it.”3 Even if there are layoffs or other acts of fate, you will be in a better position.
This is a helpful way to look at problems, but the reality is, of course our jobs could no longer exist.
Here are some more hard “could be truths”:
You didn’t do a good enough job (for this company at this time). True.
What you were getting paid for can now be done by someone with less training, or for less money.
Someone can do what you do but better, faster. TRUE.
It’s hard to look at these directly.
But of course it could be true.
I think it’s hard to look because there is such a slippery slope from “I’m not actually needed” to “I’m not good.” It’s scattered with guilt and shame and beliefs and all sorts of things. They feel connected.
But I didn’t say, “You are a loser,” “You are a failure,” “You should have done something,” “You won’t be happy again” or “It’s all downhill from here.” No judgements.
If you look closely, you’ll see that there is space between. Of course there’s space. It’s possible to separate these things.
Admitting that ‘I’m no longer needed here’ doesn’t take away your agency or say anything “bad” about you.
It’s difficult and painful but we must be able to recognize that it could be, and might be, one day, true.
January 11, 2025 @ 11:08am – Bolinda, Macedon, Australia
It’s a shame we take our thoughts so seriously.
They distract and pull us away from what’s actually going on. They sneakily absorb our attention without us noticing. Spiritual teacher Osho goes further, calling them “parasites”.
If we could just take a step back and find a little distance, our thoughts might have less influence over us. We might be able to live without instantly reacting or getting caught up in their stories.
This is possible with a little mindfulness, and shows us there’s nothing there to worry about.
With “humility and the patience”, Richard Rohr says, “you will say 98% of your thought patterns are repetitive and useless.”
So what do we do with them?
Even if they are mostly negative or trivial, it’s not possible to stop the tap of thoughts. Instead, the usual advice is that we should treat them kindly.
It’s good advice. Letting your thoughts float by without clutching onto them or harsh judgement helps to de-potentiate their energy and prevents one from acting them out. Altering your nervous system with a long walk or a cold plunge can also help.
But it’s not easy to be kind and understanding, especially when we are dealing with persistent, ‘sticky’ or uncomfortable thoughts.
So here’s another approach.
Your thoughts are racing, they’re really distracting you, and pretty soon you’ll be completely carried off by them. When that happens, try saying this:
“Yes? What else.”
Let’s say you’re upset about the dinner you’ve cooked for yourself. Thoughts might show up like:
“I should have planned this better.”
“I should have eaten that yesterday, now it’s going to go bad.”
“I wish this looked more appetising.”
Step 1: Say “Yes?”
Firstly, affirm the thought by saying, internally or out loud, “Yes?”
When you say this, try to take on the attitude of someone who is patient, a little bemused, and on the verge of exasperation, like someone dealing with a person who doesn’t quite know what they’re doing.
“Yes?” is a statement of recognition. You’ve grabbed hold of something that usually lives in the dark and you’ve brought it out into the light. And you want to do so without being judgmental. We’re not wishing it away or demanding it be different.
The thought may not feel very nice to touch. The thought might have a feeling tone of desperation, or sadness or some other emotion. If it’s something annoying, problematic or scary, you’ll probably want to drop it and do something else. Eat some food, watch YouTube, whatever. Or you might fall back into the old pattern and get carried away thinking about it.
Step 2: Say “What else?”
If you can stomach one thought without distraction, see if you can handle a second.
After you say “Yes?” then say, “What else?”
Another thought might arrive.
The attitude should be the same. Slightly impatient, but non-judgmental.
When you do this, you’ve made the choice to grab some more stuff from down in the drain.
We keep that attitude going. We’re rolling our eyes at ourselves. We’re nodding. It’s not scary. It’s maybe even a bit boring. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just more thoughts.
When big, heavy thoughts appear
Sometimes really “big” thoughts will come up.
“I’m never going to be able to cook something nice.”
“I’m a loser.”
“It’s never going to change.”
“I’m going to be broke forever.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
They might feel scarily true, like facts rather than opinions. We might call these beliefs. A belief quietly trains you to expect certain things from life. Like a child might expect to see Santa on the roof on Christmas Eve. But they’re just thoughts too, just ones you’ve probably thought a lot of times in your life.
And what do we say to beliefs? Same as we do to any other thought.
Yes? What else.
When we say “What else?” we don’t treat one thought as more special than another. And why should we? I didn’t choose any of the thoughts that arrived in my head, so why should I honour some over others?
By doing this over and over, we’re teaching ourselves that we can handle any thought.
Tips and caveats
This is a slow process, and we shouldn’t need to rush into it.
Start small It will feel stupid at first. You are talking to yourself. Start with small, everyday thoughts, before trying this with bigger beliefs. Practice while washing up.
Don’t go deep There’s no need to spend any time trying to understand or intellectualise the thoughts. This isn’t depth-psychology. All I’m suggesting is three words, plus a basic, non-judgmental attitude.
Watch out for moods If you’re in a really good mood, you probably won’t want to do this at all. If you’re in a really bad mood or feeling very reactive, I wouldn’t recommend it either. We’re adding attention to our thoughts, which might fuel some flames unnecessarily.
Why this works
One big reason this sort of practice is helpful is because it’s the exact opposite of what we usually do. Most of the time we do one of the following with our thoughts:
Buy it totally and get completely identified with it
Resist and rage against it
Run from it, numbing out with food, tv or other distractions.
But to simply look at a thought, raise our eyebrows, keep looking, and calmly ask for more, is a complete 180. And we could all do more 180s.
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” – Joseph Campbell
“We have to acknowledge that we hate those things and only those things in the world that we first hate in ourselves.” – Ken Wilber
If you look up at the night sky in a city, you’ll see a couple of stars. There’s the constellations you’re familiar with, and a few others here and there. You may have seen the sky full of stars, but that’s probably not the sky that you experience most of the time. It’s limited, but it’s your sky. In a similar way, we are habitually identified with a certain type of consciousness, our ego. This is the attitude, thoughts, beliefs, that we have grown up with and grown used to.
It’s been developed for good reasons, because an ego helps us to relate with others and get things done in society. But because of how the ego is developed, unconsciously, and in response to stuff that happens in childhood, it is naturally going to be a little bit narrow. As we’ve grown up, we’ve made all these little choices about what is good, what is bad, and so on. It’s been in our interest to try our best, but we’re always operating off limited information. So our personalities end up a bit limited too.
The ego is missing some stuff. It’s probably over-indexed on certain things, under-cooked in other areas. It’s a house designed with very little oversight. Some of us spent most of the time designing a sleek infinity swimming pool. Others spent a lot of time getting the kitchen right, but forgot to plumb the bathroom. Some rooms are lit up with seductive mood lighting, others have no electricity.
In this imperfect process, as we double down on the things we believe to be important, we’re also doing a lot of shoving away of the things that are deemed dangerous or difficult, or that don’t particularly help us to navigate the world.
This stuff becomes what Jung called the Shadow, the “dumping ground for all those characteristics of our personality that we disown”1. Deborah Stewart, of This Jungian Life podcast, describes it as “the underbelly of the ego…that’s hard to look at… hard to feel really connected to…loaded with feelings of disgust, profound discomfort, and a feeling of wanting to push it away.”2
Although the ego and the shadow have such differing relationships with the conscious mind, they both constrain us. We are constrained by identification with some things and rejection of other things.
The Constraint of the Ego
I was collaging with some friends. I hadn’t made a collage in a long time. I thought it would be easy, but I found it very difficult to create a composition that I liked. I was selecting and cutting out images from magazines. I thought I was being clever. I thought I had a good eye and aesthetic. I’m a designer. I should be good at this.
But I was stuck. I was jiggling around pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. Nothing was fitting together. My friend D saw this and asked what I was doing. I said “I’m trying to move it around so it looks right.” She replied, “What’s right? It’s a collage.” She had a point. What did right mean? And why was that important? Why not just have fun? Why not make something silly, or shocking, or bright turquoise? No, for me, I need to get it right.
A few pieces of ripped paper shone a bright light on what’s habitual for me, what I identify with. The need to be careful, considerate, aesthetic, minimal. I pick pleasing things. I take care and attention and time. That’s my ego.
There’s no right way to do a collage, of course. That’s like saying there’s a right way to make a song. And I got more interesting results when I used colors that I don’t normally use, or if I used my left hand, or closed my eyes, or if I ripped things really quickly, or if I ripped instead of using scissors.
The Constraint of the Shadow
When I buy something at the supermarket, I don’t make small talk. I place my things down on the counter, my phone bristling ready to pay. I move on as quickly as I can. I want to be efficient. I don’t want unnecessary attention on me. I don’t want to slow down people behind me.
Now, sometimes, when I need coins for the laundry in my apartment building, I need to ask for change. It’s not possible to move by quietly like usual. I have to stop and say “Hey…” I have to ask someone to do something for me. In a way, I have to admit that I need help, or that I don’t have my life completely organized and together. Those are things that I would rather not look at directly. Things that my habitual side really can’t stand and pretends don’t exist. That’s my shadow.
And there’s a lot of defense mechanisms when I’m pushed into those shadow areas, even with something simple like asking for change. For some people it’s “hatred, disgust, avoidance, criticism, accusations, attacking.”3 In this case, I’ll get irritated. I’ll try and avoid it. I’ll roll my eyes. I’ll think about finding a machine to do this so I don’t have to think about it again. I’ll feel bad about holding up the line and apologize a lot.
Just like the ego constrained my collaging attempts, my shadow also prevents me from spontaneously asking for things.
There’s no need to blow up the ego, or to live out your shadow all at once. That would be reckless and dangerous. These functions have been carefully created for practical reasons. But we need to watch them closely. Watch how they shape our behaviour and most importantly how they constrain us into tight spaces.
We can try to stop squeezing ourselves between our (self-created) likes and dislikes. It’s not comfortable there and never will be. We need room to move. Like Viktor Frankl famously said, “between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
We can look up at the sky and we can say “hey, I kind of know this isn’t the full sky, right? I kind of know that light pollution is blocking some stuff. I know there might be more out there.”
“Suffering is the rejection of reality” – Yuval Noah Harari
Thy right is to work only, but never to its fruits; let the fruit of action be not thy motive, nor let thy attachment be to inaction.” – Bhagavad Gita
Why are some people more easily frustrated than others?
It could be that they have especially dodgy wi-fi connections or bad traffic on their way to work.
It could be their disposition, conditioning or upbringing.
But maybe it’s because of their internal rules about the world. Beliefs about how things ought to be.
When these assumptions clash with reality, they get frustrated.
To see how these sorts of beliefs can backfire, let’s look at Frank Grimes, a hapless character from The Simpsons, the episode ‘Homer’s Enemy’.
Frank is this really square, serious, buttoned up guy “who’s earned everything the hard way.” He’s a ‘real life, normal person’ who’s just working hard and struggling through life.
The joke of this episode is to have Frank start working at the power plant alongside Homer. Obviously opposite of Frank, Homer is a slacker, constantly failing to do his job properly, yet managing to coast through life. Homer can’t help but irritate Frank, who eventually becomes his sworn enemy.
As Frank settles into his new job, you can tell he’s a model worker who doesn’t have time for messing about. After perfunctory introductions he dismisses Lenny and Karl, saying “I’m sure you all have a lot of work to do.” Homer irritates him immediately, by knocking over his perfectly ordered pencils. Frank believes a good worker has a nice clean desk and doesn’t waste time with chit-chat. This sort of belief might help him feel like he’s had a productive day at the office, but it doesn’t leave much time for personal connections.
Frank is appalled at Homer’s indifference and sloppy shortcuts. When alarms are ringing in Homer’s control room, Frank has to point it out. He starts to gossip, “I saw him asleep in a radiation suit” and “I’ve never seen him do any work”. Homer doesn’t fit into what Frank believes a Safety inspector should look like, and the result is resentment: “That’s the man who’s in charge of our safety?”
When Homer nearly drinks from a beaker of acid, Frank’s beliefs compel him to intervene. Thinking fast and doing the right thing saved Homer’s life. But along with those good morals is a big dose of righteousness. He can’t help but give him a lecture. “Don’t you realise how close you came to killing yourself?” In Frank’s world, people ought to be cautious and careful. He feels that he needs to step up, because no one else seems to care.
Frank’s resentment goes into top gear when he visits Homer’s home. He’s stunned to discover that Homer has been living in a ‘mansion’. Homer has everything that Frank wants, but doesn’t have. Deep down Frank believes that only those who ‘work hard every day’ deserve a ‘dream house, two cars’ and ‘beautiful wife’. The result is the unpleasant taste of bitterness and more resentment.
Frank only lasts an episode. He winds up electrocuting himself, yep, you guessed it, to prove a point. He couldn’t survive that particular clash with reality. Josh Weinstein, Simpsons producer, expressed regret for killing him off so early but admitted that “we took a certain sadistic glee in his downfall. He was such a righteous person, and that somehow made his demise more satisfying.”
Frank also inspired an interesting mix of reactions amongst fans too. Many related to his realistic struggle while others just wanted him gone. Everyone seemed to take away a slightly different lesson from the episode. Here are some comments from a YouTube clip:
“The less you care about life the more you gain.”
“Found it funny as a kid. Now it’s realistically painful. Like I totally understand Frank’s frustration now that I’m adulting”
“Frank no doubt deserved a better life, but he blew his chance to try and make at least one friend.”
“our modern day Job(from the Bible)”
“Dumb lazy people = succeed Hard workers = failures”
“people will always prefer the fun-loving over the miserable man.”
“Life isn’t fair, Frank.”
I feel bad for Frank. He had a point, but his downfall came from clinging too tightly to it. His rigid beliefs about what a good person should look like, and what a good person deserves, only fueled his misery and suffering. He couldn’t find a balance between his particular internal code of perfection and the real dysfunction around him.
But someone like Frank needn’t abandon their integrity or work ethic. They shouldn’t have to switch off their brain like Homer or melt down into caustic cynicism. What would help is patience (the best remedy for anger) and abiding by your inner rules a little more lightly. Neither squeezing life with a death grip, or giving up on it, but simply allowing it to happen.
July 12, 2024 @ 12:22pm – Mission Dolores Basilica, CA
As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. – Robert Anton Wilson
Belief is a toxic and dangerous attitude toward reality. After all, if it’s there it doesn’t require your belief- and if it’s not there why should you believe in it? – Terrence McKenna
I recently finished my second 10-day silent Vipassana retreat.
As I said my goodbyes, I got into conversation with Vishal, the man I’d been sitting next to in the meditation hall every day. Since there’s no talking or eye-contact allowed, the other meditators (about 24 men and 24 women) are more like blurry shapes of energy than actual personalities. You can’t help but think about what they are like in the outside world, but we’re reminded that this is just another distraction.
Yet, with only occasionally glances at him in my peripheral, I’d noticed his quiet determination. Compared to others, he took every sitting as seriously as possible. Sometimes you can just tell.
When I said this to him, he smiled politely. “You take it seriously too.”
Two years prior, I had signed up and sat my first retreat quite spontaneously. I had no meditation practice or even theoretical knowledge to prepare me. But after a short ‘dark night of the soul’ on Day 3, where I was close to packing my bags, I was suddenly all-in. When the gong was struck at 4am, I didn’t flinch. I was often first in and last out of the hall. I started to deeply enjoy the simple, vegetarian meals. 10 days went by in a blur. On the final day, when ‘noble silence’ was lifted, others came up and congratulated me. “You were sitting like a statue.” “How did you do that?” I felt surprised and sheepish. I didn’t have an answer. I shrugged, “I guess I just took it seriously.”
I shared some of this with Vishal, who nodded. He was tall, and pious looking, with carefully groomed hair. It had been ten years since his last retreat, due to a busy family life, part of the reason he’d tried to make the most out of the last ten days.
“We’re serious because we’ve done this before.”
Due to his beliefs, karma and previous lives explained my disciplined almost reverent approach to meditation, something relatively unfamiliar to me and not connected to my parents or society I grew up in.
In 2023, encouraged by a Taiwanese co-worker, I booked ‘Tour de Taiwan’, and rode around the island in 9 days. Having never visited before, I felt strangely at home with the strange people and places we discovered. Why was that? As we made our way along roads that snaked over mountain passes and rice paddies, familiar faces crossed my mind.
There was Emily, a Creative Director at a tech startup. She was high energy, put on art shows in her spare time and was half Taiwanese. In 2014, after a summer of unsuccessful interviews, my US visitor visa had run out and I’d travelled to London. I was calling her from a loud Starbucks with dodgy wi-fi. But she hired me, and I ended up living in America for the next 6 years.
Four years after that call, another Taiwanese woman took a chance on hiring me, and so I moved from New York to San Francisco. She was also a Creative Director, a single mum, loud, un-filtered and Taiwanese.
At that job, the Taiwanese-American Head of Content, who moonlit as a spin class instructor, encouraged me to sign up for a triathlon, which would become an interest for me over the following years.
Finally, my girlfriend in New York. One weekend we took a trip to upstate New York where we stayed at her family’s house. She was born in the States but her parents were from Taiwan and seemed to be Buddhists by the look of some of the paintings and sculptures dotted around the house. On the way back to the city we stopped at a temple. “We’re not really that serious about it” she said as I gawked at a giant statue of Buddha.
Do these coincidences make me believe in reincarnation? The short answer is no. I like to remain open and flexible in my thinking, which is just not compatible with being certain about stuff like that. But I think it is worthwhile to consider and be grateful for our unique strengths, preferences and affinities – whether you know where they came from or not.
Buddha Bike 