THE NEXT CRISIS WON'T BE ECONOMIC. IT'LL BE EXISTENTIAL.
BUT THAT'S EXACTLY WHERE YOUR OPPORTUNITY LIES
I said in my last article that what's coming is a wave of identity loss driven by AI. A kind of pandemic. Today, I'm going to break this down in detail so you can truly understand the gravity of the situation: what the consequences are, how important it is that we get fully prepared for it, and the upside you can start planning for, right now.
So I've said that's what's going to hit a lot of people. Because when AI pushes you out of the career you built your life around (or when it gets changed so drastically it's unrecognizable), you're left in limbo, not even sure who you are anymore. That profession defined you: I'm a marketer, I'm a lawyer, I'm a financial analyst. That became your identity. It became how you see yourself. And suddenly, it vanishes.
That's the problem: for most of us in the West, what we do professionally isn't just what we do. It's who we are. For a lot of us, our identity doesn't come much from hobbies or even family; it comes from work. And when work disappears or transforms beyond recognition, you disappear with it. Who's this going to hit hardest? I think this may hit some people harder, especially those who've tied their whole identity to work.
That's what the rapid acceleration of AI is going to trigger. And honestly, this might be one of the hardest parts because you end up so disoriented it can feel like your whole life just got flipped upside down. It’s painful, almost like losing an arm or your hearing. You have to relearn how to live.
As I mentioned, it's easy to offer 'adaptability' as a simple solution by suggesting we just need to reinvent ourselves. Obviously. But it's not that simple because it requires developing at least 6 skills that are tough to maintain day in and day out for many years without burning out. Today I'm going to better explain the ones worth going deeper on so you have a clear picture of both the threats and the interesting opportunities:
1. RECOGNIZING THAT YOUR JOB TITLE ISN'T PERMANENT ANYMORE. AND NEITHER IS THE IDENTITY THAT COMES WITH IT.
It is highly likely that future generations won't define themselves by saying, 'I'm a doctor' or 'I'm a therapist' or 'an engineer.' They'll probably tie their sense of self to whatever job they're doing at that moment. Throughout their lives, they will likely hold several different roles.
It sounds small, but it changes everything: our identity, how we'll educate ourselves and how we'll keep preparing ourselves. Because it won't make sense to spend your whole life mastering one narrow lane like how to heal people's eyes or teeth, or how to craft the best business strategy, or how to do the best accounting. What for? If suddenly in 3 or 10 years we'll already be doing something else. How we make career decisions is going to change; no way around it.
2. THE ABILITY TO NOT CLING TO ONE IDENTITY; SO YOU KNOW WHEN IT'S TIME TO PIVOT.
And yeah, this is hard. Sit with it for a second.
After recognizing that your identity will probably be disposable, you need to be able to separate who you are from what you do, emotionally. Extremely complicated because:
How do you create emotional distance from the work that pays your bills and gives you pride?
How do you not go all-in to get better returns?
How do you create emotional distance from the profession you have to throw yourself into for it to turn out how you dream it'll turn out?
So we'll have to get better at developing something deeper:
3. GETTING CLEAR ON WHAT YOU'RE ACTUALLY HERE TO DO: YOUR CAUSE. AND STAYING FLEXIBLE ON HOW YOU DO IT.
I think this is where one of the fundamental keys lies for how we need to operate in life from now on. Let's look at this:
Today, identifying, choosing, and working for a Cause is optional. Ideal and very favorable, but optional. Why? Well, because what comes first is the technical profession and the financial incentives a job offers. I said in an article I published a while back that I'm now bringing back because it's perfect for explaining what I want to explain:
What we've been able to discover through our studies is that part of work dissatisfaction happens because of an incongruence between the values, desires, and calling of the person (employee), with their professional career and their current job. This incoherence starts from when we choose our degree because it teaches us HOW to execute a technique, tasks specific to a particular professional (or technical) area (finance, marketing, business, engineering...) but it fails to guide us toward finding a true sense of purpose. And that's where I think the big problem is.
For example, if you studied business, you learned about running companies, but when you graduated and started working, you most likely had no clue what sense of purpose you wanted to fulfill in life. The thing is, purpose doesn't have to do with growing companies and making them profitable, or growing their sales, or knowing how to buy others, or wanting to have a decent life or supporting your family decently. No. That is basing your purpose on something external rather than finding it within yourself, and therefore it's not a legitimate purpose. Purpose, on the other hand, is a higher action that has to do with a contribution you want to give to the world, often through professional work; but it's not the professional work itself.
Then I noted:
And I think that's exactly what happens to a good chunk of employees worldwide: they live with an incongruence (unknown to them) between what they studied, what they do in their jobs, and what they unconsciously feel should be their life's purpose. The problem is that generally, that sense of purpose is, as I just said, unknown to them because it lives in the unconscious and/or because they haven't been able to make it tangible. In large part, because degree programs teach us the technical 'how,' but they rarely clarify the 'what' or the 'why' behind our work.
That's why, even though many companies roll out every employee experience program possible, the most creative, the best coordinated... there'll still be a good chunk of employees who'll say their work doesn't fully fulfill them. The lack of connection with their values and calling is where the answer might be.
Look how important this is!... because two consequences become clear:
A. Soon, we'll see ourselves almost forced to live for a Higher Purpose, which will guide our professions even as they change. This shifts the equation we currently practice in the West.
But it has another decisive implication: the underlying "Why" (meaning, the Cause or Purpose) won't change over time, at least not drastically. What can change and mutate, even many times, is the HOW of getting there. HOW to make it real.
B. Here comes something surprisingly positive that most people aren't seeing yet: I predict this will help us be happier. At least that's what I hope. Why do I see it that way? Because if we start living for a Higher Purpose and not for a technical Profession, we'll inevitably be happier. If you don't remember, I've written before about the benefits of living for a Purpose: greater happiness, satisfaction, better performance, fewer health problems (of various kinds), greater longevity.
This is the antidote to the identity crisis.
But how do we get better at identifying and choosing a Cause to dedicate our life to, or at least a good chunk of it? Well... that's a whole big topic, but one of the biggest unlocks is self-awareness: passions, curiosities, fears, traumas, interests, and ambitions. Which in turn lead to professions useful to society so they offer you financial returns.
This means one clear and undeniable thing: your inner foundation, who you are under the surface, is going to matter more than ever.
4. FINANCIAL RESILIENCE. IF YOU'RE GOING TO EXPERIMENT IN NEW FIELDS, YOU NEED TO BE READY.
I won't go deep here. Bottom line: this is a rough time to be buried in debt.
5. THE ABILITY TO UNLEARN: Keeping your past identity from holding you back.
This one is brutally hard if we're focused on the profession. But if we keep threading this vision with what I mentioned before, we could conclude that by working for a Cause or Higher Purpose instead of a technical profession, we'll have less need to unlearn the "how to do" something.
Of course we'll need to learn to unlearn because, naturally, we'll have to know how to do something new each time we modify the HOW. But right here is where AI can actually be a lifeline here. Because it can very well be that base tool for executing the HOW, replacing us to a large extent. That way, the adverse effect of unlearning would be substantially reduced.
Let me give you an example:
If I am a family lawyer and AI has largely displaced my practice, I can no longer rely on that role for my livelihood. A strategic pivot could be moving into advocacy, perhaps helping displaced children develop life skills, or becoming a protector for survivors of domestic abuse. All of these roles remain aligned with my core mission: 'protecting and strengthening family bonds.'
This way, I keep my Cause unchanged but change professions. And more than unlearning technical tasks to learn new ones, I actually hand off a good chunk of them to AI. So I direct my energy to the tasks that AI can't automate that do contribute to satisfying the Cause, like relationships, partnerships, and the human stuff AI can't replace.
From this you can understand that, logically, constantly learning how to leverage AI's benefits will be a non-negotiable skill going forward.
6. PROBABLY THE MOST CRITICAL OF ALL: LEARNING TO MANAGE YOUR MIND AND EMOTIONS SO YOU CAN KEEP PUSHING, MOVING FORWARD... WHILE FEELING SATISFIED WITH YOUR LIFE.
This needs to be with you every day, long-term, if you want to stay in the game so you don't burn out, spiral, or end up stuck in constant anxiety. Just like today, yeah. But amplified by everything mentioned above.
But hey... this sixth skill I could expand on infinitely with ideas and recommendations because this topic goes in a million directions. And obviously I'm not going to do that because: a) this isn't the space for it, and b) that's what everything I write and teach here is for; to dive deep into this huge topic.
I'll keep publishing and putting out tools to help in this regard.
In the end, nothing I've said is impossible. But it does demand a level of emotional and mental competencies and skills that perhaps never before in human history has such a large proportion of people been forced to develop at the same time.
But as catastrophic as it might sound, thanks to the new perspectives I've introduced, it seems to me it's at the same time a real chance to reinvent yourself, on your terms. The choice is yours.