Take A Walk With Nick

Hey, folks, how you doing? My name's Nick the poet. Thank you so much for joining my live stream today. Take a walk with Nick. You'll notice that I'm not walking today, but thank you so much for joining me. Maybe you can walk in place or maybe you're somewhere where you can go outside and get a walk in or maybe do some push ups or some kind of movement I know always helps me. But going to talk a little bit about some different things today, about career, about creativity and about AI. And so I'm not going to talk about kind of the pros and cons of AI.

It's very widely debated. I'm just going to talk more about some of the AI tools that I use. I use AI because I work for a company that's really AI forward, you know, and I have all kinds of different thoughts about it. But I thought that it would be cool just to share with you some of the tools that I've used and kind of even how I've incorporated them. This very livestream that we're watching right now. Hey, speak wonder. It looks like Luke is joined. Welcome, Luke. So here's my script for my live stream from last week, right?

Or no, this was two weeks ago. I think I last went live on the Cadre platform. And so I made this script with some of my usual stuff, some poetry, some different thoughts, tips, philosophies. And so I decided, Luke, how's it going? Thank you. Thank you. So I decided to use chat GPT and see what I could kind of turn this into. And so the cool thing about chat GPT is you can now with the latest version of it, you can take a picture and then it can, or a PDF file or anything like that, and it can actually interpret what's on there.

And so I took my script from last time, I took a picture of both sides. And then first I just said, hey, you know, can you help me? You know, chat GPT, the digital assistant, can you help me turn, just take what's written on this page and can you just write it out? And so first I asked them do that, and then it's amazing. They're actually able to just write out, take my terrible handwriting and they're able. Thank you. Speak wonder. There is going to be some poetry involved in this one. It's kind of career creativity, poetry mixture, but it's able to actually take what's on the page and write it out and say, okay, that's kind of really amazing because I love to take notes with pen and pencil.

But it's cool that it's so easy to digitally translate it then. And then I got an idea. I said, hey, Chad, GPT, can you take what I've just shared with you, and can you write kind of a short story in this writing style of Ernest Hemingway? And so, sure enough, it starts writing this story based on all of the poetry and stuff that I shared last week. And so I thought, that's really cool. It set it in a coastal town. You know, it kind of made, you know, some different elements up and kind of tied in this cool narrative about it.

And so I said, okay, this is really cool. I said, why don't I try it in the style of another writer, Hunter S. Thompson? And so, sure enough, it did that, and it copied Hunter S. Thompson style. And then I said, okay, what about Tom Robbins, who's kind of a quirky writer who I've read some about? And sure enough, it sent this Tom Robbins vibe out then. And so I was pretty amazed at that. And then at the end, I said, okay, can you summarize everything that I've shared with you with a picture that Dolly creates?

And now Dol e is another AI image based tool where you can basically go text to image. And so it took this text, it summarized it, and then it came up with this cool picture. And so I just wanted to share the writing that AI did based off the poetry script that I did last week. And so it goes like this. The cosmic dance of chaos and calm. The sun, a tangerine dream, was sliding down the celestial slide, casting an orange sherbet glow over the whimsical coastal town. The air hummed with possibility.

Yet inside my head, a cacophony of existential jazz played on a cacophony of existential jazz. I do. I do like that line. I had spent a lot of emotional currency on work tasks and communications last week, and it had left me feeling like a deflated balloon animal. So, yeah, deflated balloon animal, which, hey, can't work, make us all feel like that sometimes. So, you see, I had veered off course, gallivanting far from my goals in a frenzy dance of obligations and should haves. Instead of waltzing with ease, I had been breakdancing on a tightrope.

The realization hit me like a zen cone. I should have just relaxed, floated on the river of life without paddling so furiously. Feel the joy within. I murmured to the universe. Let it bubble to the surface. Let it bubble to the surface and say hello. So that's incorporating the poem that I wrote last week. It's incorporating that into the story. The words, like a mantra from an ancient mystic, echoed the wisdom of stoic philosophers. Epictetus, that old sage, had it right. There was power in doing the opposite of what the frantic world expected.

Yeah, the frenzied dads of obligations. Exactly. And so this, this I had talked about Epictetus, who's a stoic philosopher. If you want to learn more about stoicism, look up the author, Ryan Holiday. He summarizes it in a lot of amazing ways. But Epictetus had basically said, do the opposite of what you're thinking you should do, you know, and that is kind of his philosophy, you know? So if you're thinking about getting angry, then do the opposite of that, that kind of thing. And so it continues.

Then had it right. There was power in doing the opposite of what the frantic world expected. Next time, I'm going to print out some larger words here. This week, I vowed to practice being calm, cool, and collected, like a cucumber meditating in a Zen garden. I might even stop using exclamation points in work messages. So I still haven't done that yet. Still throwing those exclamation points all over the place. But, I mused with a Cheshire cat grin, let go of your perfectionism and become the weak ways of the universe.

And so I thought this one was interesting, because this is a line I had written, let go of your perfectionism and become one with the universe. And this had become with the weak ways. And it's a typo of something, but I thought that was interesting, to become one with the weak ways, because we always think of becoming, you know, one with the strong ways, get stronger, get tougher, make more happen. But I thought that was interesting to work on becoming one with the weak ways, you know, the ways of, maybe call the weak ways the way of surrender, you know, or that kind of thing.

So that's just what struck me as kind of interesting. But anyways, it says, there was a delicious freedom in surrendering to the flow and embracing the cosmic dance. Outside my window, the waves performed a ballet, the rhythmic ebb and flow, a perfect metaphor for my internal struggle. So it then created this AI, created this thing with the waves, which I thought works well. Now. It says, I am a constant creation of who I am. Now, this is one of my favorite, favorite affirmations. I am a constant creation of who I am.

And I read it a long time ago somewhere online, and so I can't properly source the site, but it always reminds me, you know, I'm constant creation of who I am. You know, what am I creating right now? And a lot of times I'm creating fear, I'm creating anxiety, I'm creating all that kind of stuff, but that's not what I want to create. So when I remember that, it lets me tap into kind of a different wavelength. So anyways, I am a constant creation of who I am, I thought, savoring the paradox. What I am thinking, saying and doing at all times is creating my current reality, my future being, and to some extent, my past receding.

Today I stumbled upon a nugget of wisdom from Tom Evans, who's a meditation coach. If you look down, it switches the internal dialogue on the head, and if you look slightly up, it switches it off. Interesting. A simple adjustment, yet it had the power to transform my perception. I had been looking down too long. Lost in the labyrinth of my mind. It was time to look up, to see the broader tapestry of existence. A new way to help the world around me, I scribbled in my notebook, is to provide both more value for them and less effort.

For you. The notion of balance, of symbiotic ease, was a revelation. Could I really serve without sacrificing my sanity? I inhaled deeply, savoring the scent of possibility. Feel the joy within, I repeated. Let it bubble to the surface and say, hello. The joy was there, an effervescent sprite waiting to be acknowledged. Now that that's one that AI came up with. Effervescent sprite. I don't know if that makes sense or not, but I like it. I like it. I could go for a sprite right now. I needed to let it flow, to add a jazzy rhythm to my life.

Quit battling the tide for a moment, I told myself, just breathe and smile. All is well. The words felt great to hear from the universe, a reminder that a peace was within reach. The hardest part was always the beginning, breaking free from the inertia of doubt. But once I started, the words poured forth like honey from a hive, a sweet stream of consciousness. As the sun dipped below the horizon, I felt an unexpected calm settle over me. The struggle was not over, but I was ready to face it with a new perspective, a blend of stoic serenity and cosmic whimsy.

I was ready to let go of perfectionism, to embrace the cosmic dance, and in so doing, find my true strength. So, yeah, I really like that. And then I took it even a step further. And another great tool is capcut. And so Capcut is an editing tool that you can get on your phone allows you to easily edit videos, and it has an AI feature as well. And so I was able to import that script into capcut, and then from there it creates a whole video with subtitles, a voiceover and images and animations and that kind of thing into a video.

And so I really enjoy the creative iteration process and the way I like to work with AI is this kind of going from analogous to digital and back and forth and collaborating with others and that kind of thing. And so, yeah, that's a couple AI tools. Chat, GPT, capcut, there's many, but just wanted to share kind of a first person experience of using some of those tools. A couple little other odds and ends. I've been reading the book Breath by James Nestor. This book is amazing. It's all about breathing, the history of breathing.

There's so much there. You've all probably heard of Wim Hofdeen, but have you heard of the Buteyko method, which is actually about breathing less? Apparently we all breathe way too much, but from Wim Hof to Buteyko to, you know, all kinds of things, it's a great book. And then also want to focus on the here and the new. I've got a friend, Fuzzaro, who's an author who talks about the here and the new instead of the here, the now. So it's kind of back to that, the constant creation of who I am in the in the moment.

And how can you bring that into your I workday? You know, how could you bring a new attitude, a new positivity, a new thought? Right? Because new thought is where this all began. You know, Tony Robbins, you know, the Cadre platform that we're all on is came from this initial new thought movement where kind of self help originated from Google it. It's interesting, but we're looking for that new perspective always. How can you bring that new perspective to your job? And then finally I had this note to quit googling things and ask yourself if I have a question, I'm always googling or, you know, using chat, GPT or whatever to figure out the answer.

But a lot of times we just need to ask ourselves, you know, what is the answer to the question that we're asking? So anyways, this is a little different today, not taking a walk, but thank you so much for joining me. I hope you got some value from this. I'm wishing you a lot of peace, positivity and prosperity while all remembering that we have a lot of work to do do. But we can do it together. Have an awesome day. Bye.