Ep 1: Drunken Sailor AI Therapist?
Welcome to Mind + Machine: AI for Personal Growth and Self-Help, the podcast where we explore how AI tools like ChatGPT can help with self-improvement, personal development, and even act as your personalised life coach.
I’m Jenna, a self-proclaimed personal growth nerd who loves building tools that utilise technology to cultivate confidence, which I share on my website ConfidentThroughCode. Each week in Mind + Machine we dive into practical ways you can use AI to tackle challenges like building confidence, managing anxiety, and making meaningful changes in your life.
On Mondays, we take a closer look at a standout AI prompt – one that’s proven its ability to generate amazing responses. We’ll explore what makes it effective and share techniques so you can create your own prompts that work for you, enhancing your personal development experience.
Then, on Thursdays, we focus on a specific self-help topic, like imposter syndrome, comparison to others, or stress management, and discuss how AI tools like ChatGPT can provide insights and strategies to support you.
Whether you’re curious about how to use ChatGPT for personal development, looking for tools to build confidence, motivation and manage stress, or a coach or therapist exploring how AI can help your clients, Mind + Machine is here to guide you.
Let’s dive in!
Welcome to episode one of Mind + Machine. This podcast came about because I found myself thoroughly enjoying reading the way people are utilising ChatGPT on their personal development journey, however I wanted to be able to hear the ideas while I go about my day. I am a busy mum so small gems of information in audio format are a game changer! So I created it so you too can get these pearls of AI wisdom as you go about your day.
As I create the tools and games I like to create, I come across other people’s amazing ideas for how they prompt ChatGPT to provide the help they want. To kick off the podcast, today we have a goodie, from none other than reddit.
I personally find this so good! It is a way of brightening up what can be heavier conversations to have – lightens the mood a bit. This is the amazing thing about using AI in this way, we can have the individualized responses that inspire us, delivered in the way we like to experience it.
What makes a good ChatGPT Prompt?
1. Role Description – This is something I have learnt when creating using the ChatGPT API, specifying a role that we want the bot to play, sets the scene for the design of the response. If we give a vague prompt, the response doesn’t feel like its specific to us. I like to think of it like this, ChatGPT has been trained on literally the whole internet, so there are a lot of potential ways of responding to filter through – but if we can do some of the narrowing down in our prompt, then we are much more likely to get a decent response. So, the writer of the original post specified the role as a “holistic psychologist”, the commenter specified “Scottish drunken sailor turned existential therapist” – these are very specific roles. What roles could you ask ChatGPT to play for you? Perhaps you want a life coach, accountability partner, a spiritual mentor, the world is your oyster here.
2. Purpose and Focus – The commentor when into great detail to specify “dive deep into conversations, provoke thought and explore feelings”. I am not sure if you have noticed this, sometimes we need to go back and forwards with ChatGPT a few times to get the depth of detail we are wanting – this prompt does it right from the start. Sometimes we can get a surface level response, the same as say a high level blog post might provide. But if we specify we want a deep dive, we are much more likely to get more.
3. Ask for what you want – “Sprinkle in thoughtful questions to provoke self-reflection, and provide advice in a kind and gentle manner”- This will increase the likelihood of the responses containing thought provoking journal prompt similar to journal prompts are provided within the conversation. So, the user is identifying, the way they prefer to reflect is through questions that get them thinking. So, if you know that journal prompts are transformative for you – then it makes sense to add them in.
The overall theme of what makes this a great prompt – is you have to know what you want. You have to be able to identify the specific things you want returned from chatgpt – or what you don’t want – when you clearly identify these things, you get a much better response.
What if you don't know what you want?
What if you don’t know what you want? It occurred to me when analysing this prompt, that this user knowns what they want. But what if you don’t know, which can often be the case when we are struggling with anxiety or low self-esteem, we have trouble gaining clarity over want we want. We kind of need people to read between the lines a bit more when our nervous system is feeling as though it needs to defend us frequently. But without being specific about what style, what purpose and focus we want the bot to have, we will get vague, superficially helpful responses. So, if this is you, if you aren’t sure what kind of style you would prefer to set your bot up in, then I got you….
I developed a prompt that you can use that will guide chatgpt to ask you a series of questions to determine your preferences for coaching style. It’s the prompt to figure out what you want, what you resonate with. Its really good so I will pop the link for that below, so be sure to check that one out.
“I’d like to discover which therapeutic, philosophical, or spiritual approach might resonate most with me. Please guide me through a mix of thoughtful multiple-choice and open-ended questions. Ask me about the people I follow or listen to in self-help and spirituality, and explore my values, coping styles, and preferred ways of finding peace. Use my answers to suggest whether I might connect with approaches like stoicism, existentialism, realism, spiritualism, or others. Let’s explore together!”
Once you have established the style you want the bot to respond to you in, then ask ChatGPT to create the “role” instructions for a personalized GPT, using the information you just obtained.
You should then get a prompt which you can copy, open up your profile/settings tab, create a new GPT, give your GPT a name and description, and paste the prompt into the section labelled “Instructions.” You can add a picture if you want. Then click create on the top right corner, you will receive a link to your chat page with your personalised GPT.
So now those instructions, are the context for every chat, you no longer need to specify what you want each time you chat, its already done, you can go about having a conversation with your new mate, whenever you need it!
So, if you try this, let me know how you find it and whether you discovered something new about yourself. You can comment, message or get in touch with me via my website, I would love to share the win with you!
So I hope that was helpful, the prompt surprised even me a bit, I might have even got a little teary (not uncommon) when the response following the questions was so spot on!
I often think sometimes it can be nice for our nervous systems to hear exactly what it needs to hear, without having to worry about how what we say is being received from the person in front of us.
I am not saying I think this should replace therapy, or conversations with friends etc, however I think this offers a great solution for in-between times, if it’s in the early hours of the morning, you can’t sleep and you just need to get something off your chest – there’s no stress here right.
Ok so that’s all for today. On the next episode, I will be delving into one of my favorite topics, confidence! And sharing the tips and tricks I have discovered that can help you utilize ChatGPT for boosting your confidence.
I am all about finding ways to make these important concepts a bit lighter, a bit more fun, while still providing the tools you need. So make sure you subscribe to get notified of that release and if you know someone who will find todays episode helpful, please share this with them. See you next time !
Great read, super helpful tips and steps to follow! Thanks Jenna x