The AI Era Isn’t Coming—It’s Here. Advice from a Coach on how to ride this wave

Posted on February 18, 2026 by Dr Anna Stratis, One of Thousands of Relationship Coaches on Noomii.

Remember where you were in December 2019?

You were hearing news reports about a virus across the ocean, but in North America, you were still carrying on with life as usual. There was a sense that maybe this would turn out to be a big deal — but maybe it was just media hype. You might have thought, Nah, nothing will change.

And then overnight, everything changed.

But let’s go back to that brief window of time when we heard something was coming, but it hadn’t yet landed. Despite what you said out loud, did you have a gnawing gut instinct that something big was coming?

I remember a conversation I had with a friend in a coffee shop on a cold January day in New York. My friend asked, Do you think this virus will come here and be big? And I dismissed it, saying, Nah, it’s just going to be a bad cold. As a physician, I thought I knew how coronaviruses behaved. In that conversation, I flexed my medical credentials, but didn’t realize I was just reinforcing my denial. Because, somewhere in my gut, I knew I was wrong. I ignored that and slipped into a hopeful, prideful ignorance. In the months before my world changed on March 13, 2020, I had a sinking feeling, a subtle knowing that I was denying something important.

I spent my pre-March 13 days seeking out the reassuring opinions of those who said the virus wouldn’t hop the ocean. And it meant I didn’t put a single plan in place.

I feel the same feeling about the AI revolution as I had about COVID-19 before it hit our shores. It is so easy to immerse oneself in dissenting views that say this is just a bubble. But my gut is giving me the same signal it did in early 2020: This is going to be a REALLY big deal.

Read on. I think you might feel that too.

This morning I read an essay by Matt Shumer called “Something Big Is Happening.” He likens our paralysis around AI to the deer-in-the-headlights moment right before COVID hit.

This article reads like an intimate letter to the people he cares about most — the people who are not in tech or AI. He writes because he thinks it’s important to translate what’s coming to the people who don’t live on the inside of it.

His thought experiment landed in my gut. My mind went to… Imagine writing a letter to your family in December 2019—from your April 2020 self.
What would you tell them to do? How would you tell them to prepare?

Matt’s answer on AI is: The time to prepare is now.

As a career coach (and physician), I’m reading that and thinking: Okay. If that’s true… what do we actually do with this?

The denial trap: fear → inertia → “it’s a bubble”.
If you’re a normal human reading anything about AI acceleration, your brain may do something very predictable: You’ll feel overwhelmed. You’ll feel fear. And then you’ll want to ignore what you just read.

You’ll want to go back to the voices saying AI is a passing phase, or “just another bubble,” or “it won’t touch my work.”

Because fear creates paralysis — and paralysis creates inaction. And denial is that comfortable place we retreat to when we’re not ready to confront big truths.

So if you feel yourself tightening up or tuning out …. I get it.

But I’m going to say something plainly, what I now realize to be true:

2026 is our moment to act.

Not because we can control where this goes (we can’t, most of us, anyways) but because we can control how we build habits of adaptation — and whether we build a cushion for the bumps.

Why it started to feel real to me:
The message being shouted by the very experts who have developed AI is, AI progress isn’t linear — it’s exponential.

See how fast capability has moved, especially in coding and knowledge-work tasks. AI is no longer just a helpful tool – it is an agent that takes on increasingly more complex workflows.

Here’s what made it feel real for me:

I finally paid for AI.

For months, I’ve been a casual AI tourist, flipping across various free models, using them as glorified Google search engines. Containing myself to the free versions kept me in deception and made me think, “Ah, AI isn’t all that great.”

The second I invested in a paid model, my mind was blown at the capability — and I know I’m not even using the most advanced setups that power users are running.

In the span of one day, I went from, Meh, to, OMG.

“Okay… so what does this mean for my career?”

Here’s the uncomfortable part: it’s not only coders who need to care about this.

Legal, customer service, operations, marketing, design, writing, research, financial advising, analysis, etc. etc. — the “keyboard economy” is being reshaped.

I’m a physician. This revolution is coming for me too.

And as a coach? I’m watching closely. Roles that rely on human connection, empathy, trust, and relationship may have a longer runway — but I’m not naive enough to think coaching is immune.

You’ve heard everyone talking about their “AI therapist.” People already turn to AI for emotional support, advice, and companionship. That will grow.

So no — I’m not taking comfort in “AI can’t replace empathy.” I’m taking comfort in building the skills that let me pivot.

Which brings me to the most important part of this post:

Coach advice: how to ACTUALLY be along for the ride:
If you decide (like I have) that this is really important, you need to do a few things.

1) Name the real enemy: Overwhelm

First of all, realize that fear and overwhelm are going to create inertia. They’re going to make you believe in ‘this is a bubble’ themes, and they’re going to stop you from acting.

If you have that sinking feeling in your gut, like I did, then it’s time to do something. But don’t wait for the fear to subside. Fear doesn’t go away when you’re facing something new and uncharted. Heck, I’m a coach, I help people face fear every day, and I’m scared. I’m uncertain. I have no idea how I’ll be making a living in 5 years.

But neither does (or should) anyone else. So at least I’m not alone.

I’m choosing to act, even if I’m scared. And I’m coaching others on doing the same.

2) Build a practical buffer

Matt takes a moment to advise us to take a look at our financial runway and make some adjustments. If there might be a few employment bumps along the way, or some changes in monthly income while you’re pivoting or responding to a change, then you’ll be far more calm to assess, ride things out and catch the next wave if you have a little bit of ‘rainy day’ savings to cushion you.

It might involve taking a more savvy look at a big purchase/debt plan, and possibly delaying that or restructuring your planning to keep a little more liquidity aside.

3) Get radically clear on what you bring that still matters

Dig down to the things that are truly valuable about your skill set and your work.

And if you can’t see that clearly, then hire a coach like me — because I’m super great at helping people see the scope of all their skills, experience, competencies, and unique value-adds they’ve accumulated over decades in the workforce and other life experiences.

Scan the entirety of everything you’ve ever done. Your decades-old after-school job experience, your community involvement and hobbies … these are all treasure-trove repositories of valuable life skills! Don’t overlook:

the weird skills you never thought “counted”
the times you’ve exercised resilience in the crappiest, most stressful experiences
the people skills you naturally use every day
anything you’ve logged ‘10,000 hours’ doing
If you’re really stuck, complete the following exercise, one of my favorite coaching exercises:

It’s 11pm, and you get a phone call from someone who knows you well. They say, “I have a big issue with X, and I need help solving it. You’re the only person I could think to call.”

Now solve for X.

What is that thing you do so well that someone would call you in the middle of the night for?

I’ve got my own list of things that maybe outpace AI by a little bit — and I’m under no illusion that the “things not replaced” list will be huge. It may be very small.

But I do a few cool things really well. And that’s what I’m going to be flexing, moving forward.

4) Bet on the human moats (and strengthen them)

Start focusing on flexing skills like:

curiosity and ability to learn
lateral thinking skills, ability to translate your knowledge and skills to other sectors
relating to people and nurturing trust
your Rolodex — the people who respect you and can endorse you
resilience under pressure you earned from hard seasons and hard jobs
Many people have told me they envy specialists and regret being “a jack of all trades.”

But in my view, this is the time of the generalist.

I say that as a family physician who’s used to knowing a little about a lot — and switching gears fast, multiple times a day. If you’re a fellow generalist, this is your time. Really.

5) Use AI seriously — not as a search engine

Matt says (and I agree): start using AI seriously, not just as a search engine.

And here’s the coaching translation for busy people who “don’t have an hour a day”:

Start with what you already need doing.

Then push deeper every week.

Push yourself to delegate more and more to AI. See what it can manage. Get better at prompting and working with AI to refine the output. Give it more and more strategic tasks. Use it to reflect big concepts back to you. Become a smarter visionary with its help.

When I took the AI plunge, the entire world opened up — and then making time became more doable, because the breadth and volume of productivity that I was able to accomplish, by my own hand, expanded incredibly.

AI has become my multiplier. I have no idea whether this relationship is for good or for evil, but I figure I’m in a more powerful position than merely standing by the sidelines and and watching, unskilled, as this massive revolution gathers pace exponentially.

A quick (fascinating) observation: Gen X / older millennials are leading the adoption pack

I’ll share an amazing personal insight: Over the past year, I’ve observed that the most avid adopters of AI are not my younger clients, but those in their 40s and 50s! They’re the ones spending considerable time on the ‘side of the desk’ of their day job to self-educate on AI tools and applications.

Maybe it’s because they were young in the age of the analog computer, the rotary phone and the cassette recorder. They were there when the logic behind computers was not locked behind slick casing. They’re comfortable with blinking cursors on a black screen and they’re keen to tinker.

It’s the most interesting inversion: I’m seeing more denial among younger people — and more willingness among the “older” crowd to roll up their sleeves and become self-made AI experts.

(Watch this space — I might write a post on this. Gen X has a rare advantage: the agility to learn AI, plus decades of lived expertise in the pre-AI processes. Put those together and you get a potentially very lucrative consulting niche—staying relevant and well-compensated through retirement.)

“Is coaching obsolete?” (And what I’m doing about it):
I’m currently totally revamping my coaching business — how I think about my coaching, how I connect with people who need my services, how I speak to the pain points they’re feeling and the gaps to their goals.

Coaching is incredible. It works. I became a coach because I had a transformational life experience, thanks to my own career transition coach. Coaching is the differentiator that unlocks the ability to roll with adversity, and rise and thrive into the next phase.

One of my own client sources is being handed off to automation. I was far too reliant on that source for far too long, and its decline is a blessing in disguise. It’s forcing me to do the necessary work that I was avoiding – growing my coaching business by truly putting myself in the company of those whose lives would be positively transformed by my unique contribution. I’m learning how to adjust my time management, and I’m sectioning off a good chunk of bandwidth to think about my business in a new way.

And I have taken on AI as my new business, sales and writing expert.

And this blog post? I’m actually a very pained writer. I have great ideas and I come up with some pretty nice thoughts and deep phrases, but I’m terrible at organizing and consolidating my thoughts. As a science kid, English was my weakest mark in college. I ramble and weave. It used to take me weeks to write a blog post. That’s why I stopped posting sometime in 2021.

So this very article was written in part with AI as my buddy. The thoughts were my own, borne out of years of coaching and clinical experience. AI took my dictation and moved the words around – and trimmed my unnecessary fluff. And voilà, now it’s something that you can actually read (I hope!)

For the post you’re reading now, I spent 5 hours editing AI’s output. I wanted this to have my voice. Because that’s one of my superpowers – my individuality, my voice. It’s one of the things that will keep me relevant through this AI revolution.

AI is my writing buddy. Figure out how AI can be your buddy too. Identify the things that make you uniquely great. And employ AI intentionally as a tool to amplify your unique greatness and get it out into the world.

The opportunity:
I put AI completely to bed for this section, and thus you’ll find this messy and jagged, with run-on sentences. To give you some advice from my heart, which is as follows:

Figure out how you can start to make a regular practice of hands-on experience with AI.

If you have difficulty rearranging priorities to make space, or if you struggle with getting started, then treat yourself to a coaching experience.

Don’t just stick to the surface – challenge yourself to go deeper every week to increasingly delegate a lot of the more minutiae aspects of your life to AI.

Free up time for this, because either this revolution is leading us all off a cliff, or it’s going to be a dawn of a new age for us as a civilization, where we free up our time to be able to spend more bandwidth in doing the things that we are passionate about without having the barriers of time and money holding us back.

Figure out what makes you passionate. Figure out what your unique value add is. Reflect on all the times that somebody has said, You know, you’re so great at this, or You know, when I was needing this, I only thought of you to call. Think about the things that make you invaluable to the people around you. Invest energy into growing these assets. Add in a healthy dash of passion and drive. Get to work discovering where AI is right now, and be along for the ride for where it’s going.

Please call me if this article resonates with you, and if you could use some help getting clear, focused and ready for action.