Guided or Lost? Why Your Compass Matters Now More Than Ever

In a world of rapid change and rising AI, how do we stay grounded? I invite you to reflect on your personal compass—what guides your choices, creativity, and integrity in life and work.

Where are you going?

It’s a fascinating question, isn’t it? I do a lot of networking so I’m regularly asking the question, “how are you?” Some reply, “Well, I’m getting there!” My natural next question is, “Where?”

Cue blank stares. Or maybe that’s just me.

It reminds me of Alice in Wonderland and the Cheshire Cat:

When walking along a path, Alice comes to a fork in the road. She looks both ways but can’t decide which way to go. Spying the Cheshire Cat, she decides to ask him:

“Which way should I go?” Alice asks.

“Where are you heading?” he responds.

“I don’t know,” she replies.

“Well, then, it doesn’t matter.”

It’s true, isn’t it? If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t really matter how you get there. Yet we stress so much about life without knowing where we are heading.

So… where are you going? And how do you know it’s the right destination?

Where’s my compass? (Or what’s guiding me?)

Lately, I’ve had a lot of conversations about AI, as I’m sure you have too. Some people are excited; others are anxious—especially about the pace of change and what it means for our jobs.

The thing is, we can’t stop the pace of change. It’s good to admit that. What we can change is our attitude toward it—and that’s where our compass comes in.

By compass, I mean a way to tell right from wrong. Some guiding principles to help us navigate new technologies and their uses.

Mine might be different from yours. My starting point is always my faith and the Bible. I’d love to know what yours are—drop them in the comments.

Even the Ten Commandments, if applied to AI and tech, could lead to huge positive change. Let’s just take the final three: Don’t Steal, Don’t Lie, Don’t Covet.

Don’t steal

If stealing is wrong, then so is inputing someone else’s copyrighted material into ChatGPT, or AI companies using copyrighted material to train their AI models. Yes, even if the law hasn’t caught up yet (spoiler: it hasn’t).

Asking AI to write a novel in the style of J.K. Rowling—or me!—isn’t aligned with that value.

Don’t lie

God’s pretty clear about this: He doesn’t like false witness.

With AI, that can mean:

• Don’t use it to slander or misrepresent people (in prompts or online);

• Don’t pass off someone else’s work as your own.

I always think there are definitely lines to be drawn here. I wouldn’t, for example, bother to mention to anyone that I used AI to proofread this post (I did!). But if the whole post were generated by AI, and people thought I’d written it myself, that’s potentially passing it off as though it were mine, I.e. lying.

If, on the other hand, people expect it to be fully AI-written (hopefully they don’t with me!), then that’s fine—it’s not lying.

• Finally, be mindful: the output from AI might not be true. The fact there is a “Don’t lie” commandment naturally means God expects as well as lying, we may be lied to. We need to be aware.

Don’t covet

This one often flies under the radar, but it’s just as critical.

Coveting—wanting what someone else has—is everywhere, from marketing to business strategies.

I could write a whole post on how we’ve been subtly taught to covet, through education and culture. Not to get too political, I think this is sometimes wrongly attributed to capitalism, where actually it's more socialist thinking which encourages 'the poor' to want (if not, demand) what 'the rich' (others) have. I recognise this is a quick simplistic point that requires a deeper conversation…for another post!

But back to AI/tech: if we filtered our business and marketing choices through “don’t covet,” how much would change in our motivations, our goals, and our creative freedom?

Final Thoughts

Every decision we make is guided by something—whether we realise it or not. Having a compass helps us stay aligned and make decisions with confidence.

So the question is:

What’s your compass? What values guide you and help you know you’re heading in the right direction?

Let me know in the comments.

Happy navigating!

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