Stop Being Afraid of AI and Start Being Afraid of Staying the Same

You're afraid of the wrong thing. While you're busy worrying about AI taking over the world, the real threat is taking over your life: staying exactly where you are.

When I was a kid, I thought artificial intelligence was going to destroy the world.
(80’s…so…)

Growing up on a steady diet of Terminator movies and dystopian sci-fi, I had it all figured out: AI equals Skynet equals the end of humanity as we know it. Case closed.

Then life forced me to confront the terror head-on.

The Church-to-Tech Collision

When I made the leap from church planting to tech consulting, I walked straight into the heart of the AI revolution. And let me tell you, every fiber of my sci-fi-conditioned brain was screaming "THIS COULD GO SO WRONG."

Here’s a statement of fact about limiting beliefs: they don't give a rat’s a$$ about your comfort zone. Not only, will the follow you wherever you go, they’d pack your bags for you!

I was doing some recent soul surgery and discovered this little mindset gem tucked away between my spleen and whatever that is next to my spleen:

"Change is hard, and hard is bad."

Hands up if you’ve heard this one before.

This toxic mindset is the slasher raising the knife behind your teenage dream:

• "This is too complicated"

• "You're too old to learn this"

• "What if you mess everything up?"

• "Maybe stick with what you know"

And for a while, I listened.

If change is hard and hard is bad, then bad is obviously uncomfortable.

Who likes discomfort?

The Hidden Cost of Playing It Safe

Here's what I didn't realize: Every time I fed that limiting belief, I wasn't just avoiding discomfort. I was stealing from my own future.

That belief was keeping me from starting my next chapter. From moving forward. From actually designing the life I wanted instead of settling for the one I was tolerating.

Because it was hard.

Think about it. How many times have you had a vision for what could be next, only to talk yourself out of it because the path forward looked challenging? How many dreams have you shelved because they required you to learn something new, take a risk, or step outside your “expertise” ?

That's not wisdom. That's putting out your fire disguised as practicality.

The Moment Everything Shifted

But then I had a choice to make: I could resist AI and stay stuck with my analog solutions to everything, or I could lean into learning something that was

• unknown

• uncomfortable

• and could lead us all toward extinction Terminator style

Here's something I did that moved me forward: Instead of running from the fear, I got curious about it.

I started asking different questions:

• What if this tool could actually help people?

• What if my sci-fi assumptions were wrong?

• What if "hard" doesn't automatically mean "bad"?

• What if avoiding this keeps me stuck in a story I've outgrown?

The more I learned, the more I realized something profound: AI wasn't the villain in my story. My resistance to change was.

The Story You're Not Writing

Every day you let "change is hard, and hard is bad" run your life, you're not writing your next chapter. You're just retyping the same page over and over.

While you're sitting there convincing yourself that staying where you are is safer, other people are learning, growing and building the future you could have been part of.

They're not smarter than you. They're not more talented. They're just willing to embrace the hard stuff because they know it's the price of admission to a better story.

Rewriting the "Hard is Bad" Script

Think about it, we've all done hard things and come out better for them. Running marathons is hard. Building a business is hard. Learning to be a parent is hard. Doing things that you care about is hard.

But we don't call those things "bad." We call them growth.

When I made the decision to actually change my career path, I was terrified. But I refused to let that old narrative, "change is hard, and hard is bad", dictate what my next chapter would look like.

Instead, I chose a different story: "This chapter is about growth. This chapter is about stepping forward. This chapter is about designing something worth living."

The Plot Twist

AI isn't trying to replace human creativity, it's amplifying it. It's helping doctors catch cancer earlier through advanced medical imaging. It's assisting with technical challenges that used to take hours to solve. It’s taking administrative tasks that used to frustrate you all day, and wrapping them up with a well designed prompt.

Yeah, it can be misused. So can a hammer.

But I wasn't trying to misuse AI, I was trying to learn how to use it as a tool for good. (And OK, I’ve let AI write some content for me…but, it took seeing my ideas written in something else’s voice to fall back in love with the way I write, think, communicate)

One thing that really helped me is remembering that I'm not living in a sci-fi movie. This is real life, happening right now. And I get to choose whether I learn something new and let it empower my life, or stay afraid and watch my possibilities shrink while everyone else moves forward.

Your Move

You're alive today.

AI is a reality today.

The question isn't whether change is coming. It's whether you'll embrace it or let fear keep you from writing the next chapter, a better story that you actually want.

The limiting belief that "change is hard, and hard is bad" isn't protecting you from anything. It's stealing your future. It's keeping you from designing the next part of your story the way you want it to be.

AI isn’t the only change we dodge. You might:

• Ghost on Opportunity
  If every twist feels like a threat, you’ll stay stuck in the same role, the same paycheck, the same safe rut. No risk means no reward.

• Sabotage Their Ambition
  Hard equals bad so you bail at the first sign of friction. That project that could double your rates? You quit halfway. The bar never goes up.

• Trade Growth for Comfort
  Comfort is a cage. When you avoid hard, you shrivel into complacency. Meanwhile the world keeps sprinting past you.

• Erode Your Confidence
  Every time you shrink from challenge you whisper, “I can’t.” Over time that becomes gospel. Self-doubt moves in and refuses to leave.

• Short-Circuit Their Legacy
  Real impact demands grit. If you dodge the struggle you sacrifice the story you’ll tell your kids, the mark you leave on your industry, the freedom you’ll claim.

Pick your poison. I’ve done all of them 👆

The question, to quote Bono, is “How long to sing this song?”

You can say change was hard, but it wasn't bad, because you chose to grow. Because you chose to move forward instead of staying stuck in a chapter that no longer fits.

And you can always choose to grow.

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Ready to stop letting fear write your story? I'm going to be running a practical AI workshop designed specifically for Gen Xers who want to get ahead of the curve instead of being left behind. Because we're smart enough to turn this "threat" into the opportunity it actually is.

Keep an eye out for the link to join this week.

What change have you been avoiding because it feels too hard? What next chapter are you not writing? Drop a comment, let's rewrite that story together.