Embarrassed...Not At All

I write to you today from the Gorge in the PNW, where my kids have walked down to visit their many cousins by the river. It is overcast and simply beautiful. Max’s family—multigenerational, spanning many generations—all live in and around Portland. They are the warmest, most interesting people, and I can’t stop taking in the dahlia arrangement on the table in our room that his aunt made from her stunning dahlia and rose garden as I stare out at the river.

Last week’s post may have been my most popular one yet because of the AI editing prompt left in the middle. By 10 a.m., I had at least three friends and our customer service person at TBM send me screenshots of it, asking if there was any way I could edit it out. I laughed and told them all the same thing: I don’t mind it at all. I loved that it stayed in.

A random person restacked the quote with the caption, “Embarrassing day, my lady.” I thought, she must be really unfamiliar with me and my work. If there is anything you should know about me, it’s that there is very little I’m embarrassed about these days.I’ve spent the last decade and a half entirely focused on excavating my innermost authenticity. It’s the crux of everything we believe in at TBM. In addition to the constant peeling away of anything that is not self, I’ve spent the last decade and a half facing every shadow standing in the way of the innermost authentic aspects of myself. That is how I’m able to be so transparent, open, and beat to my own drum.

I have been very transparent about my use of AI for editing my work here. I don’t use it to write my titles, my subtitles, or the article, but I always use it to edit my writing with the prompt: “Edit this for spelling, grammar, punctuation, proper sentence breaks, and proper tensing only.” That is how I’m able to preserve my voice, tone, and exact sentiment. Substack rolled out a new feature where you can click the three dots in the top right to see how much of an article was written by AI—to which you can see that mine is always “100% writing by a human.”

When I first began blogging in 2014, which would ultimately become To Be Magnetic, I couldn’t publish a single post without people commenting at the bottom about the spelling, grammar, and punctuation. “I get what she’s talking about, but it’s hard to read when I see so many mistakes.” I do get what they were saying. When I released workshops at To Be Magnetic, we’d get write-ins about the errors in them, with people even offering to copy edit them for us. We have had one-two copywriters/editors on the TBM team at any given time. However, when I launched this Substack, it was because I wanted my own private little corner of the world that required no team whatsoever. Simply a place to be intimate, with direct access to my community. A place for any channeling or inspiration I have that I can share with my community at any time, requiring no content calendar, launch calendar, or marketing (I hardly ever share or promote it because I’m not very active on social media and the like). A place that is just me and you. So, for me, AI has been revolutionary for editing.

I also love AI. I was a very early adopter of it. Am I scared of what it’s capable of? Totally. But I’m also excited that it will bring many people to deeper authenticity and analog living as well. Am I bummed about its data centers and environmental impact? Deeply. The same way I’m bummed about cars’ impact on the environment (even electric ones), and often, when I’m looking at one, I have an ache in my stomach about how much of it is going to end up in a landfill one day. But I still drive them. The same way I’m bummed about electricity’s impact on the environment, EMFs, and its light pollution that messes with our mitochondria, hormones, and migratory patterns. But I still use it. The same way I’m bummed about unnecessary medical intervention, but I wouldn’t have my two children without it. And the same way I’m realistic that AI is embedded into almost every service we use on the internet, causing every one of us to use it daily (Google, Gmail, Zoom, nearly every app we use…). But I am excited that AI companies like GreenSeek (introduced to me by my dear friend, Nitsa) exist and are finding ways to innovate while reducing environmental impact.

I don’t use AI to edit my work because I’m lazy. I use it because I don’t have the skill set, and I don’t want another person doing it. I know it’s en vogue to have errors in your work these days because of AI, but personally, when I read them, they do interrupt flow of the world someone is creating and the message they are trying to get across when I see a lowercase i starting a sentence. It takes me out. So that isn’t authentic to me. And I authentically don’t jump on bandwagons, I don’t virtue signal, and I don’t partake in performative living. And, at the same time, I support people who do! But I personally RELISH in authenticity!

When people ask me how I founded an eight-figure business, or how I launched a Substack that I don’t promote, funnel, or try to scale, and am nearly inactive on social media, but I’m number two in my Substack category…it’s because I am unapologetically, inexcusably, and unabashedly authentic and value it above anything else. If you have just completed the Being Seen Challenge with us at TBM, you are probably manifesting and seeing similar results in your life, on your scale, and you understand when I say that my signal (the new tool in it) is very, very clear.

I loved that I was busy and left that in my post. I love, ironically, that it shows my humanness. I love fumbling around this space. And I love being myself here. Expect nothing more and nothing less.

“I’ve preserved your tone while smoothing the rhythm, tightening the wording, and correcting grammar and punctuation.”

So today, as I have this tiny slice of aloneness on our trip, I’m sharing a few things that I’ve been sending to all of my friends, as I do with anything that I’ve discovered and love.

Stay at my airbnb here. Learn how to manifest anything you want here. Read my book here. Follow me on IG here.