Graduates of the Class of 2026, this is your moment. You’ve earned it, so take it in. Celebrate it. But as you step into our AI-powered world that’s faster, smarter, and more distracting than anything my generation imagined, let’s skip the usual script.
The greatest risk to your future is not a lack of ambition. It is a lack of self-awareness.
You will hear the familiar refrains: Dream big. Take risks. Change the world. All true. All good. But incomplete. Because the greatest risk to your future is not a lack of ambition. It is a lack of self-awareness.
What you are aware of, you can bring before God, steward, and shape. What you are unaware of will quietly shape you.
We are living, it seems, in a self-awareness paradox. Nearly everyone believes they possess it; very few actually do. Research suggests that while 95 percent of people consider themselves self-aware, the true number is between 10 to 15 percent. So, you have roughly 80 percent of people walking around deluded about their own self-awareness.
When my book AWARE came out, friends called to say, “This is fantastic you are writing a book on self-awareness—I know exactly who needs to read it.” A voice in my head wanted to reply: Before you remove the speck from your friend’s eye… you might want to check for the plank in your own.
Blind spots, not incompetence, are what quietly derail careers.
Our research at Heidrick showed just 13% of leaders are truly self-aware; meaning they see clearly how they’re experienced by others. Blind spots, not incompetence, are what quietly derail careers—and even friendships and marriages for that matter.
And here’s the thing about blind spots: they’re like bad breath. Everyone else notices before you do. Furthermore, because self-awareness continues to decline the higher you rise in career and life, fewer people are willing to mention it.
All of this would matter in any era. But it matters even more in the one you are entering. Graduates, you are entering an AI economy where machines grow more capable by the month. Yet here is the paradox that should trouble every believer and non-believer alike: as machines edge toward something resembling awareness, we risk drifting farther from our own God-given self-knowledge.
One Silicon Valley overlord, an evangelist for what is known as a “singularity” between machine and human, was asked if God exists. His answer? “Not yet.”
We are rapidly falling in love with our own creations.
This is the modern Pygmalion trap. The ancient sculptor created a perfect statue, fell in love with it, and forgot it was stone. Today, we risk doing the same. We are rapidly falling in love with our own creations, outsourcing judgment, conscience, and presence, and at the extremes, even ascribing to it deification.
Do not misunderstand me. AI can optimize, accelerate discovery, and help heal diseases, including cancer. Praise God for every good gift. But it cannot sit with you at 2 a.m. in uncertainty without panic. It cannot hold a grieving hand with genuine compassion. It cannot speak hard truth in love when comfort is demanded.
It will never bear the moral weight of a decision that shapes real human lives made in God’s image. Your enduring advantage is not outrunning the machine. It is becoming more fully, imperfectly, gloriously human—the kind of humanity redeemed and renewed in the person of Christ.
Self-awareness is the meta-skill of the Christian life.
Self-awareness is the meta-skill of the Christian life: the quiet defense against the mechanization of our souls. For years, we have known that the most self-aware leaders make wiser decisions, build deeper relationships, have higher emotional intelligence, are more empathetic and are less likely to engage in unethical activity.
They make better leaders, better sons and daughters, husbands, and wives, and fathers and mothers. Yet digital culture assassinates self-awareness. Because we are constantly online, yet increasingly offline from ourselves, our neighbors, and our God.
So, keep these few lines close, like a compass (or more realistically, like a password you’ll forget unless you use it):
- “If you can’t lead yourself with God’s help, someone else will—and you probably won’t like where they take you.”
- “Your strengths get you hired. Your blind spots get you fired.”
- “If you become the smartest person in the room… find another room.”
- “The hardest person you’ll ever manage is the one in the mirror—and they don’t take feedback well.”
The one that rules them all.
And the one that rules them all: “The quality of your life and growth in Christ will rise (or fall) on your willingness to see yourself, warts and all.”
Christian thinkers Wendell Berry and Tim Keller have warned us for decades about living like machines instead of humans. "The Machine", Paul Kingsnorth’s term for that mechanical, materialistic spirit that flattens life into data, efficiency, and endless co-called “progress”, hums a lullaby of comfort and control.
Idols are good things turned ultimate.
It is a counterfeit god promising omniscience through information, omnipresence through connection, and salvation from boredom or effort. Timothy Keller taught us that idols are good things turned ultimate. The Machine is the latest and most subtle. But it cannot give you wisdom. And it cannot give you peace.
We are like the often told urban myth about a frog in the simmering pot. Similar to the mist I once watched settle over a country pond at dawn, soft and inviting on the surface yet warming the water beneath. We risk being cooked before we notice. The dopamine loops of our devices mimic the ancient temptation: “You will be like God.”
There is no true knowledge of God without knowledge of self.
But Scripture offers a better way. The Psalmist cried, “Search me, O God, and know my heart.” The French Theologian John Calvin reminded us that there is no true knowledge of God without knowledge of self.
Psalm 46 commands, “Be still, and know that I am God.” God wired our brains for reflection in moments of solitude and boredom. The Default Mode Network of our brain fires when we cease striving.
So, resist, dear graduates, with small, stubborn, Spirit-empowered acts.
Embrace what we might call a holy boredom.
First, refuse to fill every silence.
Put the phone down. Embrace what we might call a holy boredom. Your best ideas, your clearest prayers, your deepest creativity wait in the quiet spaces you too often crowd out.
Second, invite truth, not mere affirmation.
Give your community (your local church, mentors, brothers, and sisters in Christ) permission to name your blind spots. Real koinonia is not an audience; it is iron sharpening iron with grace and truth.
Third, return to the real creation God spoke into being.
Walk in the woods. Garden. Paint. Work with your hands. Staring at the stars. Nothing recenters the soul like remembering you are small, yet fearfully and wonderfully made, part of a creation that declares God’s glory far older and more beautiful than any feed.
Fourth, do not only mortify your blind spots and sins.
Unleash the gifts God has given you. It is a kind of sin to bury your talents in the ground. Steward them for His kingdom.
Go to church.
And if I may offer one more piece of advice (simple, ancient, and surprisingly countercultural in our time) go to church. Behavioral scientist William von Hippel once uncovered a finding so counterintuitive he thought it was a coding error: low-income Americans who attend church regularly report higher levels of happiness than wealthy Americans who never do.
A place that gently interrupts your self-deception.
As he later wrote, “Regularly attending services has a bigger impact on your happiness than wealth. Money buys a fair bit of happiness, but connection gives you more bang for the buck. The church reminds, week after week, who God is and who you are not. A place that gently interrupts your self-deception, anchors you in truth, and surrounds you with grace.
These aren’t lifestyle hacks. They are practices of discipleship and leadership. In a distracted world, presence is power. In a performative world, authenticity shaped by the gospel is rare. In an AI world, being utterly human and chasing after the creator God of the universe will become your edge.
Know yourself and know God deeper.
Twenty-five centuries ago, the Temple of Delphi carved it simply: Know thyself. Marcus Aurelius said, “Be tolerant with others and stricter with yourself.” And the Psalmist prayed, “Search me, O God, and see if there is any offensive way in me.” Not building your brand. Not going viral. Not even changing the world. Just know yourself and know God deeper. Because everything that truly lasts begins there.
So, don’t just ask, what will I do? Ask, who am I becoming?
Not rumination that stalls, but illumination that moves. Don’t just build to-do lists. Start building to-be lists. To be more curious, generous, kinder, humbler, courageous, and more self-aware.
AI will keep sculpting perfect statues, but you bring the imperfect, messy, laughter-filled, tear-stained beauty of being human. Because in the end, leadership, and life, isn’t about having the right answers. It’s about carrying responsibility when there is no algorithm to blame.
Choose to live as a creature, not a machine.
The day of your commencement ceremony (in some nations this is called a graduation ceremony) is not just a celebration, it is a rite of passage. A moment when the world quietly shifts its expectations of you: from being taught… to choosing who you will become. So, as Wendell Berry reminds us, choose to live as a creature, not a machine.
And that, dear graduates, is your real commencement.
Les T. Csorba is the author of the recently released book, AWARE: The Power of Seeing Yourself Clearly – Diary of a Corporate Headhunter, and was a former Special Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel in the George H.W. Bush Administration. With over 30 years of experience in executive search and leadership consulting, he is an authority in self-awareness. He has been instrumental in shaping the next generation of corporate leadership in the energy, political, and nonprofit sectors.
A sought-after speaker and commentator on leadership, Les T. Csorba has been featured on FOX News, MSNBC, and CNBC with Maria Bartiromo. His insights on executive leadership, corporate governance, and talent development have appeared in Corporate Board Member magazine, Oil and Gas Investor Magazine, the Houston Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. His expertise in leadership and governance makes him a valuable resource for keynote speaking engagements, boardroom discussions, and executive coaching. Beyond his corporate work, Les is deeply involved in philanthropy and education.
A graduate of the University of California, Davis, Les is the son of 1956 Hungarian refugees. He and his wife, Anne, have been married for 38 years and reside in Houston, Texas, where they enjoy time with their four children and seven grandchildren. Les is a long-time member of Grace Bible Church in Houston, Texas.
