How to Remain Human in the Age of AI,
with Florence Shaffer

What if the biggest threat of the AI era isn’t that machines replace us — but that we start replacing ourselves with machines?

In this episode of FOMO Sapiens, Patrick welcomes Florence Shaffer, founder and CEO of Becoming, a human performance company that helps leaders upgrade what she calls their personal operating system. Florence Shaffer brings over 20 years of experience leading digital transformation at global brands, including Burberry, where she served as Regional CTO, and Estée Lauder Companies, where she held the role of Global VP of Strategy & Operations.

Florence’s argument is urgent: as AI accelerates and external systems erode in trustworthiness, the people who will flourish are those who have done the internal work. Not the ones with the most tools, hacks, or protocols — but the ones who know who they are, what they want, and how to act from that place under pressure.

The conversation explores:

• Why high achievers often succeed externally while quietly breaking down internally — and why this pattern is built into the system, not a personal failure
• The difference between optimizing for performance and actually living well, and why the longevity obsession may be the clearest symptom of the problem
• Florence’s three core capabilities for the AI era: nervous system stability, clarity of orientation, and commitment to a direction
• Why 95% of decisions are made unconsciously — and how to start operating from a different layer
• How discernment, not more options, will be the real competitive edge going forward
• Practical ways to reconnect with your body and reduce reactivity, without turning wellness into another performance metric

Patrick McGinnis and Florence Shaffer also get into the slop problem in social media, the rise of AI-generated identities, and why people who are willing to close doors early will go further than those who keep every option open.

This is a conversation about reclaiming authorship over your own life — in a moment when every system around you is pulling in the opposite direction.

Meet Florence Shaffer:

Florence Shaffer is a former Forbes 500 executive. Named on Top 20 lists in both Business Disruption and Luxury, she spent over two decades working globally at the intersection of systems, innovation, and human design at Estée Lauder Companies, Burberry, BMW, and Lucasfilm.

Today, she is the founder and CEO of Becoming, a human performance company. Built on years of research and testing with over 250 neuroscientists, doctors, and practitioners, she brings the same strategic rigor to the question most high-performers never ask: how to succeed and actually live well at the same time.