Dear Reader,

I wrote this post about my favorite film of 2025, the Oscar-nominated saga It Was Just an Accident, which takes place in Iran and was written and directed by a great Iranian director, Jafar Panahi, before the unfolding of recent heartbreaking and also profoundly courageous and liberating events. Iran is a country that figured largely in my childhood—my father and brother worked at a medical college in Tehran in the late 1970s just prior to the revolution. I remember wishing with everything in me that I could join the adventure, but I was fully ensconced in elementary school and focused on dealing with my love-hate relationship with math! Luckily, my father brought back a little bit of Iran—amazing art, Persian rugs, jewelry, and stories of an ancient culture and people like no other I’d heard of at the time. Later on, an Iranian doctor friend of his and his family stayed with us for a couple of weeks, and I was struck by how much we had in common with them.

I remember my father saying many times throughout this period that it felt like Iran was on the brink of revolution, and it turned out he was right. Now, decades later, the people of Iran are rising up en masse again, and my wish for them is to have the resources and space to thrive with the fullest of freedom and capacity to express themselves, living free from harm. This is my longstanding wish for all people in the US and around the world. All our brief lifetimes are sacred and unique to not only each country we’re born in or live in, but the “inner country” of our psyche and soul. May we all be able to go exactly where we need and yearn to. It Was Just an Accident tells the story of this double inner and outer journey of freedom, powerfully and presciently.

My First Self-Leadership Vitamin

This is not a movie review, but rather a cinematic invitation and, as promised in my first post, the inaugural dose of “Self-Leadership Vitamins!” My intent is to provide you with a little dose of inspiration to surround yourself with what, who, and where you get sparked into your most liberating and creative thinking, feeling, and doing, especially important in the rough seas of our time. I hope that you’ll be intrigued enough by my paean to consider seeing Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, or if you’ve already seen it, to think about it further. I’d love to hear your thoughts below! If it doesn’t speak to you, I encourage you to find another film or some kind of art that ignites your own boldness and imagination, the essence of self-leadership.

It Was Just an Accident is a seminal film. I don’t say that lightly! I’m a bit of a tough critic, a true-blue film lover who sees the life-changing potential of the medium. After all, it can wake us up to whole new perceptions and realities, inside and out, connect us to meaning, challenge our thinking, catalyze our feelings and so much more. In short, cinema can help us to more deeply enter the epic experience of being human.

I used to go to the movies twice a week before our culture got blitzkrieged by Netflixing and a sea of formulaic fodder, not to mention AI’s increasing role in all aspects of film conception and production—all wonderfully convenient and, yes, sometimes of high quality, but often not so much. On the one hand, it’s great to have this easy access and variety, on the other, it’s moving us away from ourselves and each other physically and, in some ways, emotionally. I was lucky enough to see It Was Just an Accident in my local movie theater, and I felt like I participated in a shared community ritual, where we were all given the opportunity to see just how far our humanity can be stretched, a kind of psycho-spiritual sweat lodge and cleansing.

This film doesn’t stand alone, but it does stand with a relatively small group of both movies and television that have achieved a velocity of creativity and truth to make their way into our emotional living room with a purity of storytelling rather than manipulation. It’s a kind of road trip narrative that seriously subverts the genre. Set in Iran and very much in the particulars of its history, culture, and struggle for liberation, it’s also telling a global story of our time. At its core, it unpacks the victim/victimizer dynamic that our world is so often focused on and gets tangled up in. Panahi draws on his own experience of being imprisoned and under house arrest multiple times to animate the story of the film’s primary duo, Eghbal and Vahid. Eghbal is a married father who after an accident takes his car to be repaired at the garage where Vahid works as a mechanic. Vahid suspects that Eghbal committed an atrocity against him and sets out to find proof and seek revenge. Along the way, he collects a motley crew of people who all feel that they’ve been violated by Eghbal.

Panahi isn’t sharing a simple morality tale, instead he takes viewers through the riddle of what it means to be a “good” and “bad” person, our capacity for both at once, sometimes in close succession, and the way we may seem like one when we’re more the other. Moreover, he’s asking viewers to pressure test what justice really means or whether it’s even possible. It Was Just an Accident isn’t an easy film to watch for many reasons—it has some intense violence, parts of it are molasses-slow and it points to some extremely uncomfortable aspects of what the human shadow is capable of. In fact, it can be a bit of an in-your-face confrontation, but the story inside the story is delicately subtle and, at times, even funny.

I don’t want to say much more about the plot or characters, in case the film interests you. And I recommend that you consider not reading reviews in this age of conveyor belt appraisals and computer generated synopses. This isn’t a thumbs-up or thumbs-down film, rather it’s an complex embrace with both arms! My wish is for you to allow the many “sediments” of that embrace to settle and to enter the very specific emotional, intellectual, and ruggedly physical Iranian universe that Panahi, the writer/director, built without knowing where it will take you. To enjoy the anticipation and thrill of real discovery in a world that has a propensity to show its hand at every turn and is losing the mystery and magic of the unknown. For me, this story and its slow-building tsunami of revelation has stayed with me for months. Anything but an accident, its meticulous storytelling, acting, directing, and cinematography explores and exposes great darkness as it illuminates the intricacies and gritty good that can lie underneath.

Humanity has cooked up one heck of an opportunity for self-leadership in the form of AI. Discerning if, when, and how to engage with it has the potential to help us become more or less human and humane on a daily basis. On the one hand, AI’s potential for good seems enormous, from helping to diagnose illness more accurately and quickly to improving the prediction of weather emergencies, no doubt saving lives. It also provides the opportunity for an always available collaborator on anything and everything, potentially leading to more creativity and minimizing loneliness. There are, no doubt, many other ways AI can potentially benefit us, some of which haven’t even emerged yet. On the other hand, AI presents numerous dystopian possibilities, from allowing us to cut important corners in creativity and collaboration, missing out on key learning and growth and atrophying our neurological circuits to making it harder to tell what and who is real and truly good, allowing us to rewrite history and miss out on the precious present, lost in a virtual mind maze. Additionally, its potential to worsen surveillance and control around the world is enormous, among other emerging challenges it presents.

As I sit at the foot of the AI mountain and gaze upward, whatever your feelings about it, I want to strongly encourage you to consciously develop a relationship with AI as soon as possible, not just use it. Or, if you don’t want to engage with it much or at all to do so with intention. These strategies will build your power and connection to yourself, other people, and the world. Not doing so puts you at risk of having your agency hijacked and losing the opportunity to take a stand and claim your humanity in a world where the distinction between humans and machines, reality and virtual reality, and truth and lies is getting less and less clear.

Before diving in further, although it’s already likely obvious, I want to be clear that I’m not typically one for anything artificial, whether in sweeteners or intelligence. If left to my own devices, I might not even have devices! While I know there are a plethora of advantages with technology, many of which benefit me directly, I still yearn for the time before much of it. However, I’m a huge proponent of dealing with reality as fully as possible and seizing the opportunity it presents. That includes looking deeply at AI, whether I love it or not personally and supporting you in building a mindful relationship with it, even if you land in a very different place than I have. Indeed, I’ve felt so called to support others in this way that it’s brought me out of semi-retirement from professional writing. Consider this post an introduction to my thinking on AI—I’ll be sharing more, as it raises so many profound issues and possibilities to unpack.

What is Your AI Declaration of Independence?

I call the process of building a conscious relationship with AI, your AI Declaration of Independence (AIDI). It’s a brief, but potent, AI philosophy and north star that only you can evolve over time, depending upon your specific needs, feelings, goals, and values. Your AIDI is both a tool and a kind of insurance policy that allows you to know you’ve done what you can to bring your thoughtful and empowered self to the AI table. It’s designed to assist you, your family, or your organization in:

• Claiming exactly how you do and don’t want to engage with AI and assembling the support internally and externally to maintain your boundaries with it.

• Growing your inner power, self-leadership, and sovereignty, making sure that AI doesn’t infiltrate your consciousness and daily practices in ways that aren’t aligned to you.

• Further defining your values as a human and a professional in relationship to AI.

• Deepening your commitment to how you do and don’t want to spend your time.

• Honing your definitions of creativity, collaboration, ideation, and whatever activities are important to you, and the role, if any, you want AI to play in them.

With the rush of daily life and how supersonically quickly AI is getting integrated into so much, it can be challenging to pause, step back, and put in the time to think through your AIDI. However, even if you take just a few minutes to get more clarity about your ideal relationship with AI, over time, it will be worth its weight in gold.

Why Do You Need an AI Declaration of Independence ASAP?

The human brain is designed to both fall into tribal groupthink and to be profoundly independent in thought. Both modes are critical for our survival. Without some groupthink, we would exit the social contract too often, and with too much, we risk outsourcing our power, in the case of AI, to technology and the individuals and institutions shaping it. While having a range of thinking and relating is healthy, at this particular time in human history, minimizing the ways that we get lost in groupthink and the pressures of the crowd feels urgent. AI offers a unique mix of invitations for both groupthink and independent thought depending on not only how you use it, but also your inner orientation when doing so. For example: if you’re aware that by using it to brainstorm ideas for writing, you may be both expanding and atrophying your neurological capacity, and you commit to methodically observing and being conscious of what’s happening for you, you can deepen your self-leadership. In contrast, if you automatically use AI for brainstorming writing ideas, you may lose some of your critical thinking skills in the long-term because you’re bypassing certain steps in the creative process and potentially missing out on the benefits of exercising particular neurological circuits, memories, experience, and intuition unique to you.

Don’t Forget You’re Already a Genius!

As humans, we come fully loaded with many organic kinds of intelligence and consciousness, some of which we don’t typically fully access or optimize, such as our exquisite emotional GPS and what I, and my co-author, Lauren Weinstein, term in our book, The Empowered Job Search, “inner wisdom,” which is a combination of cognitive, emotional, intuitive, and other forms of intelligence that we’re wired with on day one. All this to say, we were already geniuses, miracles of mind and body who are barely cracking the surface of our capacity, long before AI entered the scene. There are likely ways that AI can help us to go deeper with our own organic genius and there also are ways it can likely lead us to abandon this journey at times. Reminding yourself that the mystery, and even struggle, of tapping into your power and genius is part of the adventure of life and being human, may help you to decide when and when not to knock on AI’s door. Moreover, slowing down and thoughtfully using your organic genius to discern when AI is creating a useful mirror for creation, investigation, and depth and when it’s acting more like a house of mirrors can pave the road to getting to know yourself more, who you really are at your core, what your values are, and what is and isn’t real—the essence of self-leadership and the beating heart of your power.

Questions to Inspire Your AI Declaration of Independence

You may want to answer all the questions below, a few, or just get ideas for your own questions that are more applicable to your specific AIDI needs. I’ll be adding to the questions over time and would love to hear about what you come up with as well! Your AIDI could be a sentence or two or a page or two, depending upon what’s most clarifying and useful to guide you, your family, or your organization. For each question, you may want to consider your response in both the short and long-term as AI has a cumulative effect.

1. What are the three primary ways you’re currently using AI, in order of priority? How is each serving and/or interfering with your growth, self-leadership, and sovereignty? How might it serve you to place limits on how and when you use AI? What support would help you maintain these limits?

2. If you’re not using AI, in what specific ways is that serving you well? In what ways, if any, might it serve you to consider using AI at some point?

3. Is AI inspiring you to do something or reach a goal? And/or are you using it as an avoidance mechanism when it would serve you more to further process something? What is it helping you to avoid? What support would assist you in reducing this avoidance?

4. If AI is saving you time, exactly how much time is it saving you for which activities? How are you specifically using the time saved? Does it feel like it’s worth it to save you time in each way you use AI? Why or why not?

5. What is your awareness of the complexity of giving your intellectual property to AI? For example, how it might inadvertently limit economic, job, and other options for individuals and groups over time? Contribute to surveillance and control? This is not to say you shouldn’t use AI, but instead, to remain aware of how we’re all connected through our larger cultural and economic heart and brain. Indeed, I think one of the meta purposes of AI is to show us this connection in higher relief. More on this in another post.

6. What is your optimally balanced AI diet? For example, it might be to use ChatGPT every third time you need to write something as an idea generator or never to intentionally use AI at all or to ask Google a question and read the AI generated response 50% of the time and do deeper research on your own 50% of the time.

7. In what ways is AI:

• Increasing your creativity? Getting in the way of it?

• Increasing the quality of your connections with other people in real life? Getting in the way of them?

• Increasing the quality of your connections with God / your higher self / spirituality / nature? Getting in the way of those connections?

• Enhancing your emotional regulation? Interfering with it?

• Enhancing your capacity to rest and rejuvenate ? Interfering with it?

• Increasing your capacity for deep thought and feeling? Interfering with it?

• Expanding your access to the many different kinds of intelligence you may have—intuition, kinesthetic, musical etc.? Diminishing your access?

In a few sentences, how would you summarize your north star for using or not using AI and how it connects you to your inner power, sovereignty, and self-leadership?

Whatever your answers to the above questions, I strongly recommend checking in with yourself, at least quarterly to update your AIDI and, when it feels appropriate, to encourage those around you, whether personally or professionally, to consider creating their own. Family, friends, organizations, government, and society at large all need some kind of AIDI! Imagine a world where being straightforward in what and who you’re dealing with is the norm in the midst of AI, and the truth, depth, and robust creativity that would be nourished. That’s the world I want to live in! Whether you see AI as an impending disaster, an answer to a personal or cultural prayer, or something in between, your relationship with it will be optimized as you intentionally clarify what you want it to be and, in so doing, step up to the plate of your own power.

I’d love to hear about your experience creating your AIDI or whatever you cook up to build your self-leadership around AI!

Welcome to The Self-Leadership Lens!

With so much competing for our attention, I’m grateful that you found your way to my Substack doorstep! I’d like to extend a warm welcome and invite you in to explore my research and decades of work around self-leadership for individuals, organizations, and society. My goals for The Self-Leadership Lens are to:

• Create an inspiring and informative space for you to experiment with ideas, tools, and thought-provoking questions and frameworks to assist you in further defining and connecting with your own self-leadership and truth.

• Help you access your inner power and maximize what you share with the world at a time where everyone’s ingenuity is needed to transform our challenges.

• Amplify your commitment to your own sovereignty and freedom, no matter what’s happening externally.

• Encourage you to flex your critical thinking about how self-leadership is and is not demonstrated in organizations and society and assist you in supporting others to build their self-leadership muscle.

• Draw on a wide range of my research, including my undergraduate degree in psychology and graduate degree in social work along with decades of multi-disciplinary studies from neuroscience to pop culture, history and much more.

• Curate and share the research, thinking, and ideas related to self-leadership of some of the wonderful and wise people in my circle.

What Is Self-Leadership?

While self-leadership may seem like a self-explanatory term, I want to be crystal clear about how I’m defining it. For me, it’s a many-splendored thing! First, I see it as the conscious process of connecting deeply to yourself and a commitment to get to know and share your always-evolving self—your one-of-a-kind combination of skills, experience, beliefs, fears, joys, knowledge, passions, curiosities, ideas, intuitions, and more. Over time, this connection becomes a well-defined place to root, a key to unlock your inner power and agency, and a liberatory consciousness and mindset where you discover that you’re sovereign no matter what happens to you. This can be very hard to believe when your emotions are highly activated and the world is providing a mountain of challenges and injustices. However, these are the precise moments when taking a leap of faith and trusting that you have a deep, untouchable well of inner power can be most transformative. Indeed, self-leadership provides a resting place to discern what you can do, think, believe, and focus on that will serve you best even when your inner and outer circumstances are overwhelming. In this way, it allows you to transmute and repurpose blocks—difficult feelings, thoughts, memories, and traumas—so you can utilize their energy in new and freeing ways. It also sometimes provides the momentum to ride a wave of ease and expansion, amplifying your alignment with purpose and passion.

Being a self-leader doesn’t mean that you strive for perfection or control, quite the opposite. Rather, whenever possible, you accept what you can and can’t influence, and engage with what’s actually happening in the present moment, looking for even small ways to create growth, meaning, and goodness for yourself and others. There’s no one-size-fits-all recipe for self-leadership—that would be antithetical to the process itself. Indeed, the very act of discerning its particular meaning for you is an act of self-leadership!

Why Is Self-Leadership So Important Now?

In a world where it’s becoming increasingly difficult to discern truth from lies, reality from virtual reality, virtue from virtue signaling, and authentic power from manipulation, it’s critically important to connect with self-leadership. Tapping into your inner power not only provides a kind of lifeboat out of the turmoil of our times, but also a ship you can steer into the calmer waters of integrity and creativity and, yes, sometimes grief, frustration, and even anger to create something better for yourself and others.

Self-leadership maximizes your ability to resist externalizing your power, whether in other individuals, social systems, political parties, or anything else. That doesn’t mean you should never be vulnerable or connect deeply with others, but rather keep circling back to yourself as your ultimate lighthouse and guide. Though this process requires effort, focus, and time, it’s far preferable to giving your power away to other people, institutions, or technology that wear the cloak of leadership and authenticity rather than embodying true positive power. Furthermore, when you regularly abdicate your self-leadership, you move farther away from who you really are and what you’re meant to share. However, when you step more and more into yourself, you dramatically increase your capacity to make your mark and really take a bite out of the apple of life. When we do this en masse, we transform our families, organizations, and society at large, so our unique and precious contributions and vibrancy birth a greater, more beautiful whole.

A Sample of Upcoming Posts

I’ll be personally writing as well as curating writing on a wide range of topics related to self-leadership. Topics for upcoming posts include:

• AI: The Self-Leadership Opportunity of the Century

• Core Daily Self-Leadership Practices

• The Job Search as an Engine for Self-Leadership

• The Role of Fear in Self-Leadership

• Organizational Self-Leadership

• Self-Leadership Vitamins: To inspire your self-leadership travels, I’ll be sharing brief insights along with recommendations for films, music, books, visual art, architecture, nature, inspiring individuals and places, and much more.

Substack Logistics and Culture

I intend to post once or twice a month and also hope to periodically post the wisdom of people in my circle starting next year. Please feel free to request a particular topic or ask me questions in the comments section—if I feel that I can add value and meaning, I will!

I’m not using AI to brainstorm or write my posts, but I am working with a living, breathing editor once I finish each piece to ensure that my writing has grammatical and content flow. Posts will be of varying lengths, and I’ll be sharing my eclectic writing style including social commentary, essay, advising, poetry, and more.

As I imagine you’re well aware, the online multiverse can be a little bit like the Wild West. I’ll be keeping this space expansive, positive, and inspiring to the best of my ability.

I seek to offer food for thought with The Self-Leadership Len and to support you in expanding your perspective and discerning your own truth, even if it’s very different from mine. Indeed, I hope to open up the space for your self-leadership to thrive. With that in mind, please take what helps and leave the rest. There is validity in debating ideas and presenting polemics, but neither is what this particular Substack stoop is scoopin’! That said, I’m not neutral on most of the topics I’ll be writing about. My intention is to be very straightforward about my biases, purpose, and intent so you’re aware of my orientation.

Lastly, if you or your organization is curious about deepening your self-leadership through coaching or consulting, please feel free to contact me here or at cathywasserman.com. See you in the Stack!

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