How ChatGPT Got the US Stock Market - and Me - Unstuck (Part 1)
We happen to both be fueled by inspiration.
It’s been just over a year since ChatGPT entered our lives, and the impact has been profound. Like, over $12 trillion profound. While ChatGPT isn’t solely responsible for that increase in market cap, it is responsible for the timing of it. AI isn’t new - but giving you, me, and your grandma personalized access to it is.
What follows is a mini-series I’ll share over the next few weeks based on my own experience of using the tool to unlock value that got me “unstuck”.
So what does any of this have to do with Emotional Intelligence?
Let’s use our new friend to remind us what we’re focused on here:
Emotional intelligence starts with the relationship to ourselves. It’s about deep knowledge and mastery over our own emotional states.
Despite my long-term pursuit of self-knowledge and self-mastery, I’ll tell you about the time I hit a wall. Using ChatGPT was the equivalent of gently turning me around, and pressing into my palm the key to a door in the wall I hadn’t noticed.
Scale that to the US economy and you’ll see what all the fuss is about.
The real theme of these articles is to outline what it means to unlock a new paradigm.
“Unlocking new paradigms” and “Emotional Intelligence” are hand-in-glove. We are forward-looking, fueled on the ancient drugs of hope and inspiration, and totally preoccupied with complex problems. Solving them in a gratifying way is one of life’s biggest cheat codes. Running out of ideas can produce an existential threat.
See? You, me, and the US stock market are not so different.
We are like CEOs of our own lives. And as I’ll show you, ChatGPT can help you unlock a new paradigm in self-development.
Look out for Part 2 when I share my personal prompt results and how it helped me move forward.
Let’s begin.
While early 2023 probably feels like a distant memory, I was very concerned about the US economy at the start.
To recap:
The US had a 16% Consumer Price Index increase since 2020.
The war in Ukraine was in its tenth month.
The US 10Y Benchmark interest rate had leapt up to nearly 4% from only 1.5% in Jan ’22.
The S&P Index had dropped almost 20% in the year prior.
Nearly 165,000 tech workers had lost their jobs, globally.
Surely, the March 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank would tip us into recession? When it didn’t, I became convinced that markets would slide after the summer break.
Didn’t happen.
And yet, the S&P 500 is touching new all-time highs as I write this:
How can this be possible?
Things are, geopolitically, very much not better. Oh, and 32,000 global tech workers have already been laid off this year.
The reason why I think any of this makes sense is due to nothing more than seven letters: ChatGPT.
October was always my favourite month as a child. I remember still feeling fresh from the beginning of the school year, like a newly-sharpened pencil. I felt excited by what I was already learning and how I could grow in the months to come.
As an adult, October has a whole new meaning. It’s the month when I really have to sit with what I’ve accomplished, or failed to, every year. Afterwards, I feel that November 1st is nothing but a muddy slide towards Christmas.
But for me, October 2023 was a whole different hellscape altogether. Due to an unfortunate confluence of events, I slipped into a personal and professional vortex. I was experiencing extreme anguish.
I managed to get through that period with the right emotional and mental support from my therapist and doctor. But that didn’t change the paradigm I was operating in.
I was marching again, but towards what?
The true onset of winter brought deep relief. The dark cold allowed me to step away from my regular routines and a much-needed excuse to sequester myself and to write.
Now, I was certain, I was going to get to the bottom of things. I parked myself at the kitchen table, pulled my hair back from my face, and scribbled for weeks.
I filled pages and pages and pages. An ink stain formed on the back of my hand and wouldn’t wash off. On the trip home, I wrote for an entire, 9-hour flight.
I asked myself a zillion questions. I kept no secrets and I told no lies.
My shoulder cramped. My hand cramped. My neck cramped. And still, I wrote.
Reader, I got fucking nowhere.
Defeated, I concluded that I had reached a cognitive frontier. I sat there and imagined, hands outstretched, that I stood at the edge of whatever matrix makes up my mind. I felt like a video game character, stupidly running into walls beyond which nothing was programmed.
And then I had a thought. Why not ask ChatGPT?
Prior to my Numb November, I tested a few prompts to check mundane things at work. Once, I wanted headquarter locations for a list of companies; around 20% of the results were wrong or incomplete.
I knew that eventually AI would find its way into my life and suddenly, *poof!* a robot would wave a fairy wand and make my hair appointments and such.
I appreciated that I might gain back the five minutes of my life that would have been wasted with a quick phone call to the local salon. Basically, I was thinking about it as an assistant to help me do stuff I already knew how to do.
So…I understood it…but like, not really.
More specifically, I didn’t understand it as well as global investors did.
I’m going to assume that you are not unlike I was prior to that point. You tested it out, thought it seemed cute. Maybe you got used to using it for a few things where the results were reliable and replicable.
But certainly not using it for deep questions like, What is wrong with my life?
And yet, when I challenged it to tell me the answer to that question, I was shocked by what it uncovered.
Shocked, and totally inspired.
To be continued next week in Part 2. Subscribe and follow to make sure you don’t miss it.
I always find something very interesting and applicable to my life and journey when I read Giselle.