Picture this: you follow a friend’s invitation to a casual get-together in the neighborhood. You’re looking forward to it. Still a little impatient with yourself, because the flyers and business cards for your food coaching business aren’t quite finished yet, as planned, and the little winter-event giveaways are still just an idea, not actually in your bag. Doesn’t matter, you go anyway. Not every reunion has to double as marketing.
It’s a lovely evening, until someone drops this line: “Hey, if you want, I can give you some really good AI prompts, you can ask it which way of eating it would recommend for problem XY. If you phrase it right, it’ll build you a super detailed plan.”
And honestly? True. It can do that. Fast, detailed, genuinely impressive. I like AI, I use it myself, often. And still, that one sentence just ruined my evening. The fear knocks: what now? If everyone just asks AI instead of trusting me with their questions, their wish for change, for guidance? What if it gets better than I could ever be?
The evening moves on, conversation drifts from one topic to the next, but the thought about AI stays. And the longer it stays, the clearer something else becomes: the plan was never the problem. And even the best prompt from that party was built for the person who shared it. Not for you. AI doesn’t know your history. Doesn’t know what you’ve already tried ten times. Doesn’t know why it didn’t work last time. If simply knowing what’s good for us were enough to actually do it, we wouldn’t need coaching or counseling at all. We’d already know. Most of us already do.
So I keep working with it, not against it. Research, test, try it out. Where does AI genuinely make my work easier? Where is it helpful, but not a replacement? And then, in a feedback session with a client, something becomes clear that no AI could have told me: it’s my humanity he values. That I think along with him. Challenge him. Ask uncomfortable questions. Genuinely root for him and support him, instead of just telling him what he wants to hear.
I have the expertise, and I’m used to getting to the bottom of things. Connecting distant, seemingly unrelated dots. Forming hypotheses, then questioning them again. Wanting to understand has always been my biggest drive, that, and making that knowledge usable for everyday life.
With this one client, I managed to turn that annoying sentence from the party around. To see my why more clearly than ever. To rediscover my passion for food coaching. Because people would rather be asked than handed flat answers. They want to work out their own individual solution with their coach, side by side, instead of feeding a machine and getting answers at the push of a button. It’s exactly that shared, carefully guided thinking process that makes lasting change possible, and that feels like a win of your own.
The next neighborhood get-together can come whenever it wants. My stuff is pretty much ready, website, Instagram, LinkedIn, flyers, business cards, giveaways. But most of all, my mindset is ready. My success story is right there with me, and I’m looking forward to exactly these conversations, controversial or not.
Get-together season, here I come.
Food for Thought. Structure for Change.