Learning Should Feel Like Eating Candy: Why the AI Age Demands We All Become Students Again

Michael said something during one of our marathon conversations that stuck with me:

We were driving through California, somewhere between discussing teaching methodologies and nearly running out of gas, when this crystallized. He wasn't talking about making learning easy or fun in some superficial way. He was describing that sweet spot where curiosity meets discovery—where your brain lights up because you're connecting dots you didn't even know existed.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially as I pivot JourneyLoop toward helping coaches embrace AI in their practice. The more I work with martial arts instructors, coaches and executives, the more I see the same pattern: the best ones are perpetual students.

The Teacher-Learner Paradox

In martial arts, there's an well-known truth: the moment you think you've mastered something is the moment you stop growing. After ten years of training with Michael, I've watched him demonstrate this repeatedly. He'll teach a technique he's performed thousands of times, then suddenly pause mid-explanation and say, "Actually, I just realized something..."

That's not weakness. That's mastery.

I watched him do this while observing one of his workshops at Google: Instead of reinforcing that the curriculum is perfect and immutable, he'll stop mid-session and tell his students, "This isn't working. Let's try something different." The students learn more from watching him adapt than from any perfectly executed lesson plan.

It takes courage, but this is exactly what the AI age demands from all of us.

Why AI Makes Everyone a Student Again

The most uncomfortable thing about AI isn't that it knows so much—it's that it reveals how little we actually understand about our own expertise. Suddenly, we have to learn how to ask questions about work we've been doing unconsciously for years.

When Michael started using ChatGPT to analyze his coaching session transcripts, he discovered something uncomfortable. The AI pointed out that he was doing too much emotional labor for his clients—reframing their negative experiences instead of teaching them to reframe for themselves. After years of coaching, an AI helped him see his own blind spot.

That takes humility. It takes being willing to be a student of your own practice.

The Three-Part Brain and Why Coaching Works

During another conversation (this one involving an impromptu neuroscience lesson), Michael broke down how clarity of thought actually emerges. In fact, he wrote a whole blog post about it: Clarity of Thought in the Age of AI. There are three parts of the brain:

1. The primal, abstract-thinking part of the brain

2. The organizational, structuring part

3. The language part. 

They work together in this beautiful dance—you take an abstract concept, structure it, express it in language, and suddenly: clarity.

He used the example of colors: You see a jumble of colors. You organize them: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. You say them out loud. And suddenly your brain goes: "Rainbow."

It blew my mind. This is why coaching works! It's not about the coach having answers. It's about creating space for this cognitive process to unfold. The coach asks questions that help you take your jumbled thoughts, structure them, speak them aloud, and discover your own clarity.

In the AI age, we're all learning to do this with machines that mirror this same process.

From Fixed Mindset to Growth Mindset (Even for Coaches)

Here's the uncomfortable truth: many coaches preach growth mindset while operating from a fixed one. They want to be the guru, the one with answers. They want clients to need them indefinitely rather than helping them become autonomous.

But AI is exposing this dynamic. When you can feed your session transcripts into an AI and get insights about your own coaching patterns, there's nowhere to hide. You either embrace the feedback and grow, or you resist and become obsolete.

The coaches who will thrive are those who see AI not as competition but as a mirror—a tool for examining their own practice with the same rigor they apply to their clients' challenges.

Learning in the Age of Accelerated Change

We're living through a period where the half-life of expertise is shrinking rapidly. The metaphors we use to organize our thinking are shifting from digital ("let's double-click on that") to AI-native ("what's the right prompt for this?").

Just as people had to develop an internet mindset in the 90s, we're now developing an AI mindset. But here's the key: it's not about learning to use tools. It's about learning how to learn continuously.

The martial arts dojo has always been about this. You show up, you practice, you fail, you adjust, you try again. There's no end point, no final mastery. Just continuous refinement. The coaching relationship, at its best, creates the same dynamic—a safe space to practice being human, to fail forward, to grow.

Making Learning Feel Like Candy

So how do we make learning feel like candy in an age where everything is changing faster than we can process?

First, we have to give up the illusion that we can know everything. The joy isn't in knowing—it's in discovering.

Second, we need to create safe spaces for exploration. Just as I gave myself six months of runway to leave my job and experiment, we need to give ourselves permission to be beginners again. To ask "stupid" questions. To admit when we don't understand something.

Third, we have to see teachers everywhere. AI can be a teacher if we approach it with curiosity rather than fear. Our clients can be teachers if we listen to what they're really saying. Our own blind spots can be teachers if we're brave enough to examine them.

The Journey Continues

Building JourneyLoop has taught me that the best technology doesn't replace human wisdom—it amplifies it. But that only works if we're willing to keep learning, to stay curious, to admit that what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow.

In martial arts, a black belt isn't an ending—it's a beginning. It means you've learned enough to really start learning.

The same is true in the AI age. The moment we think we've figured it out is the moment we start falling behind. But if we can embrace being perpetual students, if we can make learning feel like candy rather than medicine, then this age of accelerated change becomes an age of unlimited possibility.

Those who understand this—who model continuous learning for their clients—won't just survive the AI revolution. They'll help lead it.