#414 One Life No Excuses You Choose

Anxiety to Confidence - The Personal Development Unplugged Podcast

One Life No Excuses You Choose No Excuses, Just Choices

Hey, my unplugged friends! Welcome back to the *Personal Development Unplugged* podcast. I’m Paul, and today we’re getting right into the nitty-gritty of life. No fluff, no excuses, just real, raw choices. Because here’s the deal—you’ve only got *one* life, so let’s stop blaming, stop explaining, and start owning it.

Let me start with a little story, a personal one. It’s all about a Christmas card… yeah, a Christmas card. Sounds innocent enough, right? But it taught me something huge about responsibility. You ever done something and then thought, "What was I thinking?" or "Why did I do that?" Well, this is one of those moments.

So, let’s break it down:

### First, why do we need to take responsibility?

It’s simple—because when you own your choices, you get to shape your life. Every action you take, every decision, has consequences, good or bad. But here’s the magic—when you acknowledge them, you also get the power to learn, to grow, and to make better choices next time.

### Then, how do we actually do it? I’m sharing practical strategies for reflecting on past actions—whether they were brilliant or a complete mess—and extracting the golden lessons from them. That’s how you build a richer life. Not by avoiding mistakes, but by learning from them.

### And here’s a big one:

I’ve got five keys to success, and one of the biggest is acting *as if* you’ve already achieved your goals. When you start to live as the person you want to become, your brain and body align. Your decisions start matching the future you’re aiming for.

This isn’t about being perfect, it’s about making choices with intention. It’s about setting expectations for yourself and your life. And, my friends, it’s about choosing to take responsibility—because when you do, you take control.

So, are you ready to stop making excuses and start flying? That’s what this episode is all about. It’s about embracing your one and only life, and making it yours. No one else is going to do it for you.

Take a listen, absorb it, and most importantly, act on it. You’ve got the power, and it’s all within your choices.

As always, please share, and let’s keep spreading the word—because the more we all take responsibility, the higher we can all soar.

https://personaldevelopmentunplugged.com/414-one-life-no-excuses-you-choose/

That’s it for now—let’s unplug from excuses and plug into *you*. See you soon!

Shine brightly

Paul

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And the transcript WARNING if you're a lover of the written word this may make you frustrated, or angry - you have been warned - is it an 'ism

Stop your excuses and learn to choose how to live your life

One life, you choose how to live it. No excuses, no excuses. You've got this. There's no one else to blame. Now you've got this. Stop your excuses and learn to choose how to live your life. If you want more when you do

Cloughie says sometimes we don't think about consequences of our actions

M hey, welcome back to the longer podcast. One life. One life. And you choose it. And you choose how to live it. Here's a question to you. Have you ever said this to yourself? What the hell was I thinking about? Why did I do, what is going on? how could I have done just that? You see, a million years ago, in my other life, when I used to be a director of a business, each year we used to give out Christmas cards, send them to all, the local people who employed us and did this stuff and what have you. There's quite a few, quite a few. And one year I decided to do something different. I don't know why I did it at the time, the very second I did it, I thought it was such a brilliant idea, I wrote a cheeky note. Instead of just happy Christmas, Paul, I wrote something else. And what happened? Well, it was, they were seen and there was a big stack of these cards and someone said, what the hell are you doing, Cloughie? This is not it, you can't do this. This is so wrong, so wrong. We're going to have to take all the cards back, we're going to have to throw those ones away, order some more. The people who have already signed all these cards are going to sign them again, and so have you. What else have you got to do? And I did think then the only good thing to do, the right thing to do was apologize. So I don't know what I did, I don't know why. I've let people down badly, I let myself down badly. But at the time, I thought it was the best thing to do. I really did, I thought I was doing something. So I did apologize. And it didn't matter how good that intention was, that behaviour was absolutely crap, wasn't it? And it hurt, bloody hurt when I did it, when I had to go around to each person. So I'm really sorry, you know, I fucked up, but I did learn from it, I did learn because no one else to blame, no one else to blame. I could have argued, oh, it's such a good thing. No, it was wrong, just didn't think about it. What about you? What about you? Have you ever done something like that? Something that you. You've done, but it's quite painful when you think about it now, but at the time, you thought it was a good thing to do. You see, what I didn't do, and I think what we don't do is stop and think about the consequences of our actions. I think we do. Sometimes we get wrapped up in the moment. And you see, this is a little bit like following on from one of the, short five minute quickie podcasts about taking responsibility. No excuses, you see, because you're here right now, listening to me prattle on, and that's your choice. It's a good choice, by the way. Fucking good choice. Yeah. It's a really good choice. In fact, wherever you are in life right now, at this very moment, this very moment in time, whatever you do, where you listen to me now, but whenever you listen to me, or, whenever you're doing right now, is your achievements. This point in time has been created by your achievements, by your cock ups, by your relationships. Basically, everything has been your choice. You have chosen every step of the way. And yeah, you can say, oh, no, no, I didn't, Paul, I didn't clavy, I didn't do that. People made me do that. Things made me do that. The weather made me the weather. The business. Business world, the crash on the Internet, all that stuff that made me. Can you think about that? Just think about it now, really? You're going to blame other people for your choices? Things that happened, for your choices? Yeah, they happened. But you chose to do something when it happened, didn't it? I want to take you back. Take you back in time. I want to take you right, right. All the way back in time to your birth. Really. Yeah. You see, when you were born, you came into this world like a clean slate. You didn't have any beliefs, you didn't have any behaviors other than cry, shit, eat all that stuff. But that's all you did, isn't it? That's all you did. And, from that very moment on, that very moment on, you chose. You chose what you did. You chose at that very moment what to believe, what to do, how to behave. Yeah, I know. There's one caveat. Well, there is. There is one caveat to this. You didn't do it consciously. It was your unconscious mind. Your unconscious mind made these choices, made these learnings. But you had to choose who to believe. Yeah, I know. We've got. When we were born, we had these people around us who, we took on their beliefs almost uncritically, most of them, it's big generalization, but most of them, we took on their beliefs. But even those, even when we chose to take on beliefs uncritical, they weren't even their beliefs, because they could have been other generations and generations and time changes. But we still chose. We still chose to do the things we did and we might even give excuses to.

NLP is all about taking time to learn from the past

Well, in my childhood wasn't that good. I had some negative experiences. I had trauma. There was bullies, there was this. There was that. Nah You know, you might say I didn't have a chance and I didn't have a choice. Yeah, you did. We all did. Because, you see, there's always that counterexample. People from similar backgrounds had similar opportunities or similar things happening to them in life, but they chose a different outcome because they didn't. They're not the same as you, or they're not the same as me, and they're not the same as anybody else. You see these people who will just lay off all those bloody excuses because it wasn't their fault. But the thing is, when you live in this world of lie, I call them lies because they're just reasons. They're excuses. We chose to live that life and they didn't. And they took their opportunities. They made different choices. They did the things that, well, they just made different choices. So where am I going with this? You see, I want to get us into this place where we're not living in the land of what we think are, excuses, but. Or reasons. They're reasons, really. We go, oh, this is the reason. And sometimes we bloody believe it. But the thing is, this reason is just a bloody excuse. I can't even say the word. It's an excuse. We're not taking responsibility. And you see, when we acknowledge that we chose, and we albeit chose unconsciously, and when we go back to NLP, neuro linguistic programming training, that there's some presuppositions, useful assumptions, the presuppositions of NLP. And one of them is everyone is doing the best they can with the resources they have at that moment, their unconscious resources, their skills, their experiences in life. So we do the best we can, we try to make the best choice, just like I did when I did those bloody Christmas cards. But it was a fuck up. Sometimes we don't make the right choice. We don't think of the consequences. But, hey, that's life. But the thing is, if we take and acknowledge responsibility for that we become a cause, becoming empowered. And we can learn from them, can't we? We can learn from the results because they're not failures. They might see me at the time because they bloody hurt. but they're just results. We didn't realize what the result we're going to get. And what we got is what we got. We didn't like it. So no excuses. Yeah, I did it. That was me I chose. Don't know why. Something inside me, hey, I want to learn from it. Because when I do that, I can take control, control of my life, control of not necessarily what happens because you're not always certain what's going to happen, but we can be as certain as we can be, can't we? So it's all about taking time to learn from the past. And, it's not just learning about those so called failures, because the things that didn't happen, which didn't happen so good. We might call them failure, but they're just, as I say, they're just a result that we didn't expect to have happen. But we can learn from those, can't we? Because when we learn from them, any negative emotion around those events in our past disappears. Because we don't need the emotion. Because we've learned from them. We can now take that learning into the future. But hey, don't forget about the good stuff. You remember the good stuff. You remember and go, what can I learn from that? Don't just take it blindly. Oh, it was great. Now, what did I do to create that good stuff? What was my thoughts? What were my beliefs? What my emotions? What behaviors did I do? Because you can take that and take them into the future, too. So you've learning from both, not so good, but learning from the good stuff. Don't let the good stuff disappear because the golden nuggets strewn everywhere in your life. And, the thing is, when you do that, you just have to take time. It's about taking time to refresh both, I guess all those different memories. Quiet reflection. Now, you know me, I'm going to say, write that. Nearly swore that sucker down. Write it down. Make notes. Because if you don't, what happens is one comes in one ear and then it pisses off at the other because the other something else is coming in and something else is coming in. So write them down. Because when you write them down, you can really. Or you can come back to them for a start because they're always there. So you can improve. Not improve. Yeah, you can improve upon their thoughts. You can think we don't spend enough time thinking. I think. I think that. But you can ask yourself questions in those notes. What can I learn from this? And you don't have to relive it, because it will never be the same. Think about it. Every memory you have now is not true. It's not true. The emotion you're in right now will change that bloody memory.

You have a choice to make about your life, Paul Cloughie says

If you're happy and you think of a bit of a shitty time in the past, it's not that bad. Well, it wasn't that bad yet. If you're feeling down today, that same memory was absolutely worse than that. So bad. And, it's never the same. Never really, what happened. So we don't want to revisit them as such. Not the memory. But what can I learn from it? How can I do it different? How can I use these learnings to create, betterment in my life? Better experiences, a richer life, the good times. How can I use those emotions and skills to influence more things, to make life richer? And you see, when we do this, we're acknowledging that you have a choice, and you have a choice, and you've always had that choice. And you see, even if you said, well, I'm going to do nothing, I ain't going to do nothing about this. Cloughie, you just made a choice. What's the effect of that, that choice? The choice of doing something, learning something, putting it out there, using new skills, new experience, using those experiences to make a richer life in the future, or do nothing. Still choosing. No excuse. No excuse. You're responsible for this. Take it. And, when you're in that responsibility mode, you are empowered. I tell you that. You think about it and you see, why is this such a good thing? And I know it seems a little bit like hard work, but it isn't. You're here. You're here in personal development mode. And nothing I've said to you is complicated because I broke it. Not me. I'm just telling you in simple terms. Now, this is easy. Takes a bit of resilience, takes some bit of bottle, takes a bit of oomph. Gumption. I love that word, gumption, to do this. But it's so much worth it. You see? Why is this so good, to know this and do this? Because you shape tomorrow what you do now, what you choose now. Well, we said everything you chose in the past has led to now. So what you choose now leads to tomorrow and the next tomorrow, which becomes the now you created. That's all you have to do every time, if you're going to do something, just stop. I've talked so many times on the five minute quickie podcast, there's little episodes just to stop for a moment, take a pause, take a breath before you sign anything, and just think while you're just in this moment. And it doesn't take hours. It's just a few seconds, a few, just a minute or so, maybe. What's my intention for doing this? What is my intention? You know, what's my expectation? Same thing. What do I expect to have happened when I do this? What do I intend? what will be the consequences of my actions? What will be the consequences of my intentions, my expectations? Simple thing is what I'm going to do next, going to make my life better or worse. And if it's a big decision, as I said, write that sucker down. Write it down and look for, you know, if it's going to make my life, mostly better. But there's a few not so good bits in think and write, because writing is thinking. How can I mitigate this? How can I change this? And, when you've got that, decide, decide to take action. Now, here's the thing. And, if you look on, well, if you go to the hypnosis tracks, I [e-mail] podcast, there is a thing or a track, and I've talked about it in five minute quickly. So I think you can think of longer, longer podcasts.

The five keys to success start with knowing your goal. So you've decided what to do

The five keys to success. One is know your goal. So you, now you've decided, you've chosen what to do, your intention. So you've decided what to do, and now you're going to take intuitive, massive, and the big thing, continuous action. So you're going to move in that direction because you've thought about it now, you've decided, you've intended, you have an expectation, you take this continuous action. And the thing is, as you do that, you become aware, become aware of what's happening now, not just blindly accepting what happens, but if something happens and it's not quite, quite right, the next step is to become flexible. You change your approach, you do something different. You make sure that you're on target or even, sometimes even better still, you notice there's even a better way. So you don't blindly keep going the same way because you've got a better goal. Now that goal has become richer because you're taking intuitive, massive continuous action and you're aware of what's happening. You're flexible. And guess what? When you think of your intention, what you want, the last, the fifth key to success, and, I think one of the most important ones, well, they're all important, they're all linked together, is act as if. Act as if you've got that result already. It's calling acting as if from a psychology and physiology of excellence, as if you've got it already. Acting as if you've got the wish fulfilled, that feeling of the wish fulfilled, the behaviours of the wish fulfilled. What would you. How would you be? And this is not faking it, because this is you. How would you be if you'd achieved this goal already? How would you act? How do you breathe? How would you think? What pitches would you make in your mind? What behaviors and skills would you either do or learn? because you might need to learn a few as you go along and you just keep cycling around and it means everything you do, you could now take full responsibility for, because you've got to anyway. So you might as well take full responsibility of creating this wonderful life that you're going to create. Say, go to Paul Clough online and I think I've put it on a hypnosis track so you can listen to the. The, previous episode all about that. But the five keys to success, get it even deeper done. Goal setting and things like that. They're all intertwined. And now have the hypnosis track just go there. It's free. Bloody free. Goodness me. All you have to do is press buttons and you get it and then take time and you can choose. That's a choice to make. A choice to improve your life by listening to stuff which is done specifically to make your life richer. I hope I haven't garbled on too quickly. I hope I've made things as clear as. Well possibly I can. I know I swore a little bit. And that's me. Take it or leave it. If it upsets you, I'm really sorry, but just take it. This is me trying to be as. Well, not trying. I'm, being as true to myself as I can be and sharing what I know with you, because I want you to have the life that you really deserve, because you're here. One life. Let's make it brilliant by taking responsibility. Grasp it. I'm gonna make this suck of mine. Easy day. You've got this. And having said all of that, you might go. Actually, Paul Cloughie. When I think about some of the stuff I've got to learn from, it's a bit hard because, you know, it's all very well saying you don't go into the memory, but I do. And, send me an email, tell me a little bit about it. Don't want all the content. Just give me the process of what's happening to you. [e-mail]. i will certainly send you a personal reply. I will guide you, and I'll probably make an episode just for you that everyone gets a benefit on. it'll be anonymous, of course, but do that and we'll just keep enriching our lives, your life, everyone's lives. Because that's what it is. It's ecological, it's good for you, it's good for me, it's good for everyone around us, and it's good for little old planet Earth, because everyone is just getting a little bit better and life becomes good. So please do that. Just let me know and subscribe. If you haven't subscribed, please do. No, don't. Please do. Just do it. Do it. One button. Choose. Take responsibility and choose to subscribe and listen to us much as you can. I, know not everybody episode will resonate with you. Maybe there's one little golden nugget, but if you keep doing it, keep listening. I know when I listen to other podcasts, I go, that one's good, that one's good. And then the next one you go, shit, that was so good. I've learned something that is going to change me completely, and I hope to try to find those golden nuggets for you. So please do that and enjoy life, because it's time to fly. I'll see you, my friend. Bye. Warning. You are now leaving the unplugged mind of Paul Clough. It's time to fly on your own. Be brave, my friend. Personal development, unplugged.

Personal development [self improvement] [self development] [NLP] [Hypnosis]