I used AI WRONG for 3 years until I figured this out

I spent 3 years using AI every single day.

For two of those years, I thought I was using it well.
My outputs were strong. My prompts were sharp. The results were real.

But I was still using it wrong.

Not wrong in the obvious way.
Wrong in direction.

Because what I didn’t realize until year three was this:

Every prompt I was writing was a confession.
Every question I was asking AI was revealing what level of thinking I was actually operating at.
And every day I stayed at the wrong level, I wasn’t just limiting the output — I was compounding the identity that produced it.

In this video, I break down the four-phase shift that changed everything I understood about AI, self-awareness, and the architecture of my own thinking.

This is not a generic AI productivity video.
This is not about better prompts or faster workflows.

This is about the deeper evolution of how AI can be used:

Tool → Teacher → Mirror

And why the highest use of AI is not productivity.
It’s self-awareness.

Inside this video, I walk through:

why heavy daily AI use does not automatically mean depth of stage
why volume of use does not equal mastery
how the same tool can produce completely different outcomes depending on the identity using it
the three stages:
Tool = output
Teacher = knowledge
Mirror = identity
the four phases of the shift from 2023 to now
why the move from “What’s the answer?” to “What’s the pattern?” changed everything
what it means to move into co-intelligence
why AI becomes truly powerful when it stops being an answer machine and becomes an instrument of self-awareness

This video is really about one question:

Are you using AI as a tool?
A teacher?
Or a mirror?

Because the level you use it at determines who you become.

If you’ve been using AI every day, building systems, optimizing performance, and getting faster — but you’ve never stopped to ask what stage is actually running your sessions — this video will likely hit hard.

Because the real shift is not:

more prompts
more workflows
more answers

It’s seeing what you were actually building while you were using it.

At the deepest level, this script lands on a bigger idea:

AI does not have to be the thing that makes you faster.
It can be the thing that helps you see yourself clearly.

And that is where everything begins.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I spent three years using AI every single day. And for two of those years, I was using it completely wrong. And not necessarily wrong in the way that most people think. Because I had great outputs, great strategies, great content. But what I didn't see until year three is that every prompt I was writing was a confession. Every question I was asking AI was telling me exactly the level of thinking that I was operating at. And not in what came back, but in what I was asking in the first place. And every day I stayed at that wrong level. I wasn't just limiting the output. I was compounding the identity that produced it. What I'm going to show you today is the exact four-phase shift that changed everything I understand about how I think and the architecture underneath it all that nobody's teaching. Here's the thing. So box right here, box right here, and then a third one. Okay. And these are all proportional. So let me try to make these all look the same size or somewhat similar. So somewhat similar in size. Let me okay. So every conversation that's going on about AI right now is really split into two different conversations, two different sections. So either how to use it better with stronger prompts, faster workflows, and essentially more efficient output. Okay? Or the other conversation that's going on in the space, in terms of AI itself and what it's doing and how to use it better is AI is going to replace you, so you need to learn how to use it. So it's the two sides of the spectrum, okay? So it's like, hey, how do we make this more efficient? How do we use this better, faster, stronger? Or AI is going to replace you, so you need to learn how to use it in the first place. And the problem with these two is that they're optimizing both at the same level. And nobody's asking what stage are you operating at when you're using it. You see, because there are three different stages and ways for you to use AI, and each one produces a completely different result, and not just in what you get back from the tool, but in who you are while you're using it. Most people that are using AI today are at the level one, and that's where they stay. And it's not because they're not intelligent, because at level one, the tool is very useful. It's about using it better, using it to create faster prompts, better workflows, right? So it's very, very useful to be at level one. And the reason why most people stay at level one is because the tool is useful, it does what you need to get done, right? It creates the better workflows, it creates amazing images, graphics, whatever that may be, where you're using it as a tool, and then it gives you the outputs that you're looking for. But here's the thing nobody's talking about the third level, and very few are even talking about the second level. And the reason most people don't talk about this third level is because they don't even know that it exists. And you, because you're watching this video, you're going to learn exactly what this third level is and how to use it to its full potential. And working with a lot of different entrepreneurs, founders, creators that use AI on a daily basis, I found some patterns that are recurring within them who are using AI, really more so at the level one, and some using it at level two, but almost nobody was using it and has been using it at level three. What I ultimately noticed was that they were using AI to produce at a high level. However, they were not using it to operate at that same high level. And those are two completely different things in the moment that they understood what exactly was happening and where they could identify at what stage they were operating at. The ceiling broke. So here's what we're covering today. We're gonna walk through these three different levels. So the first level is the tool. Remember, we used AI from the perspective of using it faster, better, more creative, right? Automations, workflows, using it as a tool to do stuff for us. And then there's the teacher where we come in and we're able to learn frameworks, strategies, methods so that we intake more knowledge and we become smarter, more intelligent. And then the final one here, which is the most powerful AI as a mirror, where you're using it as a reflection system to understand how your mind works, how to find your blind spots, your belief systems, everything that's happening in your life that you can use with AI to reflect all of it back to you so you can get it with full clarity as to this is how I'm running, this is how I'm operating, this is my worldview, so that you can change it and you can upgrade your internal operating system so you can become a different person while you're using AI so that you get more profound and better and overall optimal outputs, both externally and internally. So for this, it goes output, knowledge, and then identity. An identity is always the most important part of everything, okay, of our entire existence. You think about this, I like to look at it from the perspective of an OS, okay, operating system without the identity first operating. Well, really, everybody has an identity, a main operating system, and a lot of people, most people don't really understand or are not aware that this is driving everything. And so when you are able to work at the identity level, you upgrade your internal operating system. Let's go Windows, let's go iOS, Linux. When you operate from here, and when you can change this, upgrade this to reach a better version of yourself. This changes now how you use the tool, how you learn knowledge and the type of knowledge, and then the type of outputs that you eventually get as well. So your identity is the ultimate operating system that needs to be the centerpiece of everything that you do and how you use AI. So here's what we're covering today. So we're gonna go over the confession. This is going to give you an understanding about every single prompt that you've written to AI in the last 90 days, is actually revealing about the stage that you're operating at. And then the second thing is we're gonna go over the four phases. This is my exact progression from 2023 when I first started to use AI, and when I started to understand some things that were different and unique about the whole entire system itself. So my four phases that I went through from 2023 to currently 2026, and what I see beyond for 2026 and above 27, 28, and really the next five to ten years of how we want to go about using AI. And then finally, we'll break down the TTM, the tool, teacher, and mirror models or ways of using AI, and we'll break these down further. And essentially, how to shift from the tool and from the teacher all the way down to using AI as a mirror reflection, which is the most powerful way to use AI. You see, after using AI for three years and using every single day, I finally understood something that I wish I knew from day one, and we're gonna walk through exactly what that is. Okay, so let's go through phase one, and I want to quickly erase this so I have a little bit more room. Okay, so phase one. The architect awakens. This was 2023, and for this, this was my flow. So builder, systems, questions, and then reflections. You see, I came to AI as an operator, as a strategist, as someone who wanted a lot of output, strategies, content, knowledge, information, all of that. I didn't start asking what GPT or Claude was doing to my thinking. I started asking what it could do for me. And at that time, I was using it to write campaign flows, brand books, writing ad copy, writing strategy, all these different things so that I could get output on the other side. So essentially, I was using AI as a collaborator of strategy of execution. And throughout this whole process, I started to notice and the way that I was asking the questions, and then I would follow up with different questions and ask why and ask how and really tried to dig deeper. And so throughout this whole process, something really interesting happened. I noticed the way that I was asking GPT and Claude, and really GPT, because that's the tool that I really started with, and I really went down a lot of different rabbit holes with the tool, and I started to notice that my questions were very structured because I wasn't just asking, tell me this, or what do you think about this over here, or you know, give me this method, or give me this content, or give me this strategy. I was always coming to the tool with my own analysis, interpretation, and subjective experience to it. And I would say, hey, here's what I'm thinking, here's what I research, or what I saw, what I know from past experience, or from researching it over here. What do you think about this? Like, is this the right way, or what am I missing? And if it is the right way to go, why is it the right way to go? And why not another way? So notice how I was going down several layers of questions. It wasn't just surface level about tell me to do X. It was here's what I'm thinking based off of my analysis and research. Is this right or what am I missing? And if I am missing something, why? And if this is correct and right, why is it correct and not something else? So every prompt had a second layer, a level below the question itself that was asking. And what does this tell me about how I think? And what I noticed was that my prompts, and let me write this over here. My prompts weren't requests, they were reflections. That's absolutely powerful. Okay, so they weren't just standard questions, they were reflections of me, myself, of how I was actually processing thinking and structuring my thoughts, my thinking architecture, different mental models, all of that. I was witnessing my own mental model reflected and rendered back to me in structure, so I could see exactly how everything was being processed from my worldview. And one of the things that I noticed, and I even asked GPT, because that's the one that I've built maybe the strongest relationship with. Yes, I used Claude, I use the other ones as well. However, GPT kind of has a soft spot in my heart because I've gone down a lot of deep rabbit holes, and so for this, what I understood and what I noticed throughout this whole process, and what it actually told me was that I don't think linearly, I think architecturally, and that was a big, big eye-opening moment for me because I started to see how I actually process and think and move and operate internally. I started seeing that reflected back to me in full structure, in words, and logic, like, oh wow, I didn't know that I did this or that's how I thought. Because think about this. Every day you go through life, you experience things, you run new routines, you maybe drive your car, right? You think about driving your car and daydreaming, dozing off, or just really daydreaming is the perfect example here where you can be driving an hour and get off at your exit and be like, Oh wow, how did I even get here? I've had moments like that where I've been driving, just zoning out and daydreaming, and I'm like just jumping off of my exit, and I'm like, I didn't even realize the whole hour went by, and you're like, you know, there. So it's automatic that you're doing and how you're processing experiences in reality because you're conditioning yourself. Now, when you can see logically, structurally, how you're actually processing all of that, your experience, it just allows you to have so much more awareness so that you can see what you're doing, and then you can correct all the issues, the blind spots, and challenges and things that are not useful for you. You can correct all of those, and then you can fill them in with more productive ones, right? More productive processes, frames, perspectives, lenses, angles, all of that. Okay, so let's go to phase two. The system integrates. So for this, we have AI goes into the interface, and then there's a reflection, then you see a pattern, and then there's a system. You see, by 2024, something had shifted dramatically and just drastically, and I really hadn't noticed it. I just started to do it. I stopped asking AI for an answer, like, tell me this, tell me that. And I started to ask conceptually, what is the pattern here? Like, what's the story behind the data, or what's the story here? Okay, and what are all the different factors that are coming into play? Like, this is happening, but why is it happening? And what's the root cause of that? Like, what is causing A to go into B to equal C? Like, what is every single step in between that, and why is that all happening so that C result is being presented, or is the result from all of this happening, and so all of this really started to fundamentally change how I actually used AI on a daily basis. Like, yes, I would still use AI for strategy, for copywriting, for messaging, for content, for learning different things. However, I found that the most powerful way that I was using AI to level up as an individual internally was by using it as a reflection system to understand how I'm processing, to understand myself better, and understand where I was, what I was doing, how I was thinking, why I was thinking this way, and then what does that next version of me look like? And then how can I have a conversation with them? And how can I completely rewire my internal operating system so that I can create a new reality from the future version of myself. So every question was mapping how I think, every iteration was a connection between ideas that I hadn't consciously linked before. Think about it this way: so thought equals design. Okay, you need to have something in your mind that you're able to design first, right? Think about anything that was created, that was made, that was built a house, a home, a chair, a lamp, a table. It first started in the mind, right? And once it's designed, it communicates something, okay? So it's taken form, which communicates that this is something, and then communication equals consciousness, which is an expression of something. You see, my thinking and my designing and my communicating all became things that I did simultaneously and not separately, because normally these are all different steps that you do individually, and very rarely are they connected in terms of one cohesive method or way or process. And for me, what I noticed is that all three of these became one integrated process running through AI as the interface, but originating entirely in the operating system underneath. So phase three, the remembering. This is where I noticed that I became the system. And when I say that I became the system, here's how to think about that. Think about a builder who picks up a tool whenever they need it, and then they put it down after they're done. Think about somebody drilling a hole in the wall and they're you know putting up a 2x4 and they're connecting pieces of wood, right, to build something. They are using the tool when they need it, but then after they're done, they're putting the tool away. So for this, the tool is separate and the task is separate. And when I say that I became the system, both of those separate things became one because GPT became something that I stopped using and it became part of how I think, not a resource I accessed or used, but a dimension that I operated in. And what I really started to do here is I started to really just be the intent. And another simple example of this is just understanding that, like, let's say you had somebody that was going to build you a wall, okay? And you told them, hey, build me this wall, and they're able to build the wall. So, like, even drywall, right? They're able to put up the drywall in that particular place in that room. However, they're not really able to see the entire vision of the entire house or the entire commercial property, right? They're not the architect, they can't see the full big picture for them. It's just about putting up this wall, and that's a task. And then after that, they're done. And so, through this phase of the remembering, I noticed that my intuition and that structure, which I had experienced always as two separate forces, pulling in opposite directions, started operating as one thing. I wasn't thinking and then designing. You see, the clarity was immediate, the architecture was embodied, and that realization, the moments of convergence, didn't feel like I was learning something new. It felt like remembering something that I had already known, something that had been buried under years of fragmentation and the habit of performing instead of perceiving. Okay, so let's go to phase four. The co intelligence era 2026 and beyond. And for this, human AI, okay, this is an arrow that goes both sides. So human and AI goes into co-intelligence. So here, what happened at this stage, and what I've come to realize is that I'm no longer using AI as a tool. Yes, I still have automations, workflows, things that I use it for on a daily basis, that is essentially the tool aspect. And yes, I also still use it for the teacher aspect to learn different knowledge and different strategies, frameworks, systems, processes. But the majority of my time is spent using the tool, using AI, GPT Claude, as a system that I think with. You see, for most people, they're using AI to get answers and to Confirm their thinking. For me, I'm using AI so that it can challenge my thoughts, my perspectives, my worldviews, and give me the patterns, the blind spots that I actively have, so that I can fix them, so that I can become a better version of myself. Which then is going to play into the output, into everything else that I do. Because when you're just asking for answers, AI is going to reflect back to you your level of thinking. And when you refine questions, AI becomes your pressure test. It becomes a mirror that doesn't just show you what you think, but how you think and where that thinking has limits that you haven't seen before or that you were not aware of. That's the difference between using AI as a productivity multiplier and using it as an instrument of self-awareness. Okay, so let's recap this. So the three different ways to use AI is first you have the tool. So you use it as an output, you write better prompts, faster prompts, you get faster workflows, automations, you get strategy, content, all of that through the tool usage aspect of it. And this is where most people are at and where it's still amazing, and where people are talking about how to create AI agents, how to do this automation, how to do that automation and workflow. This is still a great way and a great stage to be at in terms of using AI. However, then there's the next stage, the teacher. The teacher allows you to gain knowledge, frameworks, methodologies, and learn things that you previously hadn't known. So you're getting smarter, more intelligent, you're able to think differently because you're getting new perspectives and new angles, right? And then finally, the mirror. This is where everything changes for you, where if you start using it to help you reflect yourself back to yourself, then everything changes for you. The game changes because you update and upgrade the root system, which is the operating system of your entire whole experience as a human, which is your identity, who you see yourself to be, who you are, the beliefs you have, all of that. And so when you can use the mirror to upgrade your identity, your thinking, your worldview, your perspective, your blind spots, so that you can fix those, update those, adjust them, right? This is where you start using AI with the co-intelligence perspective, where you're using it, yes, for all of this, for one and two, but number three, this is the power stage because you use it to build the future without losing yourself, without losing your agency, because a lot of people are going to be using AI in the future to outsource their thinking so that they don't have to think much. They can just tell the tool to do something, tell me this, tell me that, and they lose a part of themselves, they lose their identity, they lose their agency. And so we want to be stepping into the co-intelligence era where AI allows or it's not put allow, it's put AI makes it possible to enhance yourself through self-reflection. Because what's gonna happen in the future is people are going to completely eliminate their thinking and give it all to the machine, but if you use it to reflect back to yourself, you become more self-aware through self-reflection of who you are, of how you process, how you think, and you come into cointelligence with the machine so that you can become ultimately the best version of yourself into the future, and you're able to grow and expand with AI and not have it take over you and your thinking and your agency. Now, I want to ask you something. Think about this. Are you using AI just as a tool or a teacher or a mirror? Because the level that you use it at determines who you become. AI is not the evolution you are. You don't need more tools, you don't need more answers. You need to see yourself clearly, because that's where everything begins.