Weaving the Mindful Positive Self for AI-Enhanced Environments

AI is reshaping how people learn, work, and create, but one quiet cost is harder to see: the slow erosion of our sense of authorship, identity, and agency in an AI-saturated environment. With a simple, structured mindfulness protocol can help people step back from the screen, notice what AI is doing to their nervous system and self-concept, and consciously weave a more grounded, resilient identity. I am very grateful to experience a contemporary experimental learning programme thru Singapore Management University back in 2021 as the founders and scholars have the foresight of how AI is coming. I become a certified trainer in 2023 and my students are adult learners and corporation’s leaders.

When AI Starts Co‑Authoring Our Selves 

In classrooms and workplaces, ideas are now routinely restructured by AI tools. Over time, this can leave learners and creatives asking: “Which part of this is really mine?” The boundaries between our role and the machine’s role blur, especially in arts and reflective work where expression is deeply personal. For educators and talent leaders, this raises a strategic question: how do we protect well-being, resilience, and authentic voice while still embracing AI’s benefits?

Introducing the Mindful Positive Self (MPS) 

Mindful Positive Self (MPS) is a protocol from Mindfulness-Based Strategic Awareness Training (MBSAT), a secular, research-backed programme designed to build strategic awareness, resilience, and mindful decision-making in non-clinical populations. MPS functions as a “slow studio” inside AI-rich environments: intentional, tech-free time for people to reconnect with their inner landscape and translate it into something tangible. In practice, MPS invites participants to explore a holistic snapshot of themselves and their emerging identities by focusing on strengths, values, and lived experience—not just performance metrics or outputs.

How the BETA Check‑In Works 

A core element of MPS is rooted in the BETA check-in: Body sensations, Emotions, Thoughts, and Action impulses. In guided sessions, students or professionals step away from devices and briefly scan these four dimensions to notice how AI use is affecting their nervous system, mood, and sense of ownership over their work. This pause disrupts autopilot. Instead of unconsciously outsourcing more of their thinking to AI, participants learn to witness their patterns, regulate themselves, and choose more intentional next steps.

From Inner Data to Self‑Portraits 

After the BETA check-in, learners translate their insights—strengths feedback, daily experiences, and shifting identities—into concrete self-portraits. These can take many forms: visual art, weaving, collage, or other creative artefacts that embody qualities like courage, gratitude, generosity, and sensitivity through colour, texture, and composition. For many, revisiting these artefacts later evokes a sense of grounded calm, reminding them of who they are beyond their latest AI-generated draft or dashboard. My Saori weaving came from 2018 when I lost my husband as a healing mechanism and these days weaving is important part of my living to sustain me for a healthy balance.

What Early Experience Is Showing 

MPS is a protocol within MBSAT, which has recently gained empirical support for enhancing well-being, resilience, and strategic awareness in non-clinical groups. In cohorts where this practice has been integrated, participants describe experiencing deeper self-understanding and a more stable sense of self amid rapid technological change. In my teaching with few cohorts of  small implementations—a series of short MPS sessions with around 15- 20 participants, combined with journaling and BETA check-ins before high-stakes conversations—can shift how people show up to work and learning. They report meeting difficult interactions with more clarity, emotional balance, and responsibility.

Why This Matters for Leaders and Educators 

For organisations and educational institutions, the question is no longer whether AI will be part of the workflow, but how to design environments where humans can still think, feel, and act with integrity. Protocols like MPS turn mindfulness from a “nice-to-have” into a concrete methodology that protects mental bandwidth and ethical authorship in AI-enhanced spaces.

Embedding MPS and BETA moments into curricula, leadership programmes, and team rituals gives people structured, repeatable ways to put their “precious minds away from AI” for a while, and return with more resilience, responsibility, and creativity

If you are designing learning, talent, or leadership programmes and are curious how a Mindful Positive Self protocol could be woven into your AI strategy, this is the conversation to start now.

References:

Peters, E.K., Sim, S., Reb, J., Young, J.H. and Young, M.E., 2025. Minding Well-Being: Validation of the Mindfulness-Based Strategic Awareness Training (MBSAT) for Non-Clinical Populations. Mindfulness, pp.1-19.

Young, J.H., MAPP, M. and Mst, D.M., 2024. Mindfulness-Based Strategic Awareness Training-MBSAT: Mindfulness Training for Today's World of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity), 2024.