You’re Not Who You Think You Are
Who the f*ck am I?
That was the question that dropped into my head while I was sitting with my puzzle book. And what started as a bit of quiet thinking took me somewhere I didn’t expect.
We often confuse who we are with what we do. I’m a therapist. I’m a parent. I’m a partner. I’m successful. I’m anxious. I’m confident. But those are roles, behaviours and experiences. They aren’t necessarily our identity.
So who are we underneath all of that?
I started thinking about Superman, Spider-Man, Batman and Wonder Woman. They all have different identities, different roles and different ways of showing up in the world, but underneath the costume there’s something deeper: values, purpose, a calling and a direction.
And perhaps that’s true for us too.
In this episode, I explore identity, self-discovery, personal growth, purpose and finding your North Star, along with a simple process for meeting the different versions of yourself and asking one rather interesting question:
Which one is pretending to be you?
I also share how my puzzle book has become a surprisingly powerful tool for thinking, asking better questions, exploring the unconscious mind and finding my way through change.
This isn’t me teaching you who you are. It’s me sharing what I’m discovering about myself and inviting you to explore alongside me.
Because maybe we’re not here to find ourselves once and for all.
Maybe we’re here to keep discovering who we’re becoming.
Enjoy every heartbeat.
What You’ll Explore
- Why we can confuse our roles and behaviours with our identity
- The difference between what you do and who you are
- How self-discovery can reveal parts of ourselves we’ve overlooked
- Why values and purpose may matter more than rigid goals
- Finding your calling and personal direction
- My North Star approach to personal development
- A simple process for exploring the different versions of yourself
- How a puzzle book can help uncover thoughts, ideas and unconscious insights
- Why leaving a question unfinished can sometimes be surprisingly useful
- How to use curiosity and reflection for personal growth
A Question For You
Which version of you is pretending to be you?
And perhaps the more interesting question:
Who’s noticing them all?
Don’t forget to share or should I say REMEMBER to share this episode https://personaldevelopmentunplugged.com/488-youre-not-who-you-think-you-are
And if you want to me recording this episode https://youtu.be/B1Ci7953cME
Shine Brightly 🌟
Paul
Hey there! I’d love to hear from you—questions, feedback, requests—all welcome. Drop me a line or leave a comment. If you’ve enjoyed this episode or any other, please share and subscribe! You can reach me at feedback@personaldevelopmentunplugged.com.
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Special Programs for You
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Connect with Me
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Remember: I’m a therapist, but I’m not your therapist. This podcast and any of my online resources are for educational purposes only. Never use the hypnosis tracks or exercises if you’re operating machinery, driving, or if you have epilepsy or psychiatric conditions. Always consult a healthcare provider if you’re unsure.
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Stay tuned, and keep shining brightly. ✨
Music Credits
Music by Wataboi from Pixabay,
Music by DreamHeaven from Pixabay,
Music by ccjmusic from Pixabay,
Music by freegroove from Pixabay,
Music by prazkhanal from Pixabay.
Music by prazkhanal from Pixabay.
Music by will |Marshall from will marshall.
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
So, welcome to this longer podcast with me, Paul. You’re not who you think you are. Sometimes the roles we mistake for ourselves.
You see, the other night I had a conversation with my puzzle book. Yeah, I speak to my puzzle. My puzzle book speaks to me.
And I sat there. Sometimes you sit there and you just have to wait for something to arrive and then completely out of nowhere, the question just appeared. And it was, who the fuck am I? Simple as that.
Who the fuck am I? You see, it wasn’t in a desperate way. It was a genuine question of me asking myself. Because sometimes, as we say, the roles we have or we think we have are a mistake.
A mistake of how we recognize. A long, not a long time ago, a little while ago on an FMQ and a longer podcast, I talked about behavior, the behaviors and the roles that we think we have. You see, sometimes, I mean, I used to say, I was a therapist.
I’m a therapist. I am a therapist. I’m a hypnotist.
I’m a parent. I’m a dad. And I’m none of those.
What do you call yourself? Who do you think you are? Who do you identify? Because none of those are what you are, who you are. They’re just the roles that you play. And you see, it’s just what you’re doing.
It’s not your identity. You’re not your roles. I want to think about something.
You see, what came to mind while this bloody question got into my head was, what does Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, and even throw Wonder Woman in there, all have, all have in common? What do they have? Take a moment. That’s what puzzle books do for you. They get you to think weird things.
And what do they have? They have two identities, don’t they? One that the world sees, yeah? Everyone sees them from the outside. But there’s another one. The one that they know private.
And that’s what the puzzle book does for me. Get inside. But there’s a twist, you see.
Neither are actually who they are. Clark Kent isn’t bloody Superman. Superman isn’t really Superman either.
Both are just expressions, aren’t they? Peter Parker is Spider-Man, isn’t he? Peter Parker. Bruce Banner is not the Hulk. And the Hulk is.
They’re all trying to, I don’t know, reconcile the parts of themselves. And there was this mixture going on in my head. And then I thought, this isn’t about superheroes, even though I’ve written notes about them.
It’s about integration. You see, I had another thought. Doesn’t every superhero have a calling? They’re not a goal, are they? It’s not the goal.
They have a calling. You see, Spider-Man never says, my goal is. Have you ever heard him say that in the movies? No, of course you have.
Because he lives by value. You see, they’re value and they have a great. Superman lives by service.
Batman, by justice. And a thought came up to me, and I’ve talked about my North Star. We’ve all have a North Star, a direction.
You see, my North Star, I started to think of goals, identity, direction, purpose. And it was as if I began to think about they’re all joining together to become one being, one thing. Bloody me, Cluffy.
Yeah, that was surprising. All coming through this, this puzzle book, sitting down quietly, being suddenly jolted. Who the fuck am I? Why don’t you do something with me? If it’s okay, by the way, I’d like you to close your eyes.
Because I want to do a little process. Because even though we’re doing conversations, I’m always going to include a process or two. So if it’s safe to do so, you can close your eyes.
Maybe be undisturbed just for a little while. I want you to do some imagining. It’ll be great.
So find a place where you’ll be undisturbed if you can. Close your eyes. Take a moment or two.
Give yourself permission to explore. Be curious. Yeah.
And if not, bookmark this place. But if it’s okay, take a nice in-breath. Allow your eyes to close as you breathe out.
Because I want you to use your imagining. See, I want you to imagine meeting all the different of yourself. So imagine now in front of you, the working, the career, what you’ve trained to see yourself, the work.
Maybe you’re a parent. So see that version of you now, the parent. Or if you’ve been like a parent to sometimes take that role, don’t we? So see that version of you, the work partner.
Meet that you, the notice what you know. And I guess we’ve all helped people in some way by talking, having a conversation, guiding, effectively being a coach. So see that version of you, the helper, the assistant.
And then we’ve all been frightened at one time or another in our life, haven’t we? What about that frightened version? It doesn’t have to be the big scary fright. Maybe we’re a lank. We’ve been anxious about something.
We’ve been worried. See that version of you. See them walking, thinking, talking, notice everything about them.
But then there’s a reverse of that, isn’t there? There’s that confident version of you. Confident because you’re competent. You have skills and you carry out those skills so wonderfully well because you’ve learned them over time.
So see that confident version of yourself now. And from that confident version, maybe there’s that successful version of you where you’ve just succeeded. Maybe there was a few obstacles in the way, but you got over them.
You were so successful. It doesn’t have to be the biggest success in the world. There are big ones and there’s little successes all throughout.
See that version of you, the version of you that’s just successful. And then again, there’s always a reverse of that. What about the version of you that’s, let’s say, failed just for the sake of it? You failed at doing something.
That could be a failure for not starting something, not finishing something, maybe not thinking. But see that version of you. There’s loads of them, isn’t there? You could probably find even more.
The lover, the person who stands up for what’s right. Maybe there’s that silly version. They’re all versions.
You can see them now all around you. Maybe there’s a stage in front of you where every version stands. And as they all stand together on that stage, I want you to ask one question, just one, and notice what bubbles up.
Here’s a question. Which one is pretending to be you? Or you can say it in your own voice. Which one pretending to be me? And then ask this question.
Who’s noticing them all? Yeah, you see, the observer has never changed. You see, going back to Superman, he wasn’t Superman because Spider-Man. He wasn’t Spider-Man because he could climb bloody walls.
They became superheroes because they chose how to live. And I want you just to let this mull in your head now. Maybe the real superhero is the one underneath the role you’ve been playing.
Yeah, beneath the surface, you have a real superhero with all those wonderful skills, behaviours and things you do coalescing into one super you. And then when you think about that, being your very own superhero, remember, every superhero has a calling, not a goal, a calling, a direction, a mission. I wonder what yours is? What do you think? What’s your calling? How’d you find out about calling? That’s the thing.
You see, oh, you can open your eyes by the way. I jumped a little bit there. I was in my own head a little bit.
But what I’d like you to think of is, how do we find out our calling? Now, I’ve called mine, my North Star. And I have conversations in my puzzle book, the direction, because I used to think it was a goal, but it wasn’t. It’s a direction.
Yes, there’ll be goals along the way, but ultimately, it’s just a direction, being who you truly are, and then living the life with all your wonderful beliefs and values. Now, how do you do that? This is why I do it, because this is a sharing, a personal sharing. And I use, well, I’ve started off this episode with the puzzle book.
You see, it’s not NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming. It’s not hypnosis. It’s not journaling, although a little bit, but it’s not journaling, journaling.
It’s not coaching, but it’s sort of coaching. But it’s conversations. It’s a conversation you have with the puzzle book.
And that puzzle book is you, isn’t it? And here’s how I use it, you see. I don’t, as I say, I don’t use it like a journal, because journaling is the thing, the bullet journal, all this stuff. Yeah, I journal in the mornings.
I listen to myself and write in the mornings just to clear. But puzzle book is a puzzle book. Life is a puzzle, isn’t it? Finding our way is a puzzle.
Finding that calling is a puzzle. So why wouldn’t you have a puzzle book? And in that puzzle book, you can have anything you like, all your ideas, your dreams, your goals, because they’re all related to your calling. And all I do is I find a place to sit quietly.
Could be anywhere, could be on a walk. I just suddenly sit down, have a little book, sit down somewhere nice, and take that time to pause, to breathe, and to ask questions. And I’ve got, talking about questions, in the next episode or two, I’ve got a brilliant question, which will really blow your mind.
But that came from a puzzle book, and listening to other things, and then developing it, all through having that medium to write on. Why do you write? Because it gets it out of your head. Because if it stays in your head, guess what happens? Something comes along and pop, that goes out.
And you try thinking about two things at once, it just disappeared. And we’ve all had that experience, when you have such a wonderful idea. Oh, this is going to be brilliant.
You know, you’re out on a walk somewhere, or you’re doing something, what a brilliant idea this is. And you don’t write it down. What happens? Yeah, fuck all, nothing.
Unless you’re very lucky, it comes back again. But if you can use your puzzle book to make a note, to ask a question, how can I develop this? How can I use it? That makes those ideas become a dream. And that dream then becomes a goal, and then becomes part of your mission, your calling.
And we discover who we are. Or I might just in my puzzle book, sit down quietly. I love to do it in the evening, especially in the summer, so I can sit outside, a little drink on the side, whatever your tipple is.
And sometimes I just ask myself, what needs to be expressed today? What would like to come up into my conscious awareness? What part of me would like to express myself today, to me? And sometimes I’ll get an emotion, and I can describe the emotion. And then words come. It’s amazing to me, the words just flow through your pen.
And I’ve said before, I don’t mind if I don’t complete that thought process there and then. Because sometimes leaving the end open, and I do it a lot now, you leave the end open, your unconscious mind carries on, carries on the thought process while you sleep and dream. And then you come back to your puzzle book, or suddenly you’ll get an aha moment.
And everything starts to make sense, because it’s, you know, it’s germinating. You just let it come to germinate and come to flower. And I think we talked about pulling up weeds and letting flowers grow or I don’t know, a long time ago, it was a lovely metaphor.
And I think when you leave, you know, when you have problems, you can just put your problem down and write some questions. You know, what’s the meaning? What’s the intention by having this problem? Or this emotion? What are you trying to do for me? We’ve talked about different ways where you can talk to yourself. You know, if your app of choice allows you to search, there was one about the shadow, talking to your shadow, did that in a puzzle.
You ask the question, when you identify this feeling, just say to yourself, how can I help you? And then something tends to just come out on the page, a thought that you write down, unedited. And then you just look at it and let it roam around in that brain. Answers just come.
And then you can take them further into projects and things like that. But just being around to know who you really are, getting away from the roles, getting away from you can always ask questions like, you know, what am I not doing, that if I started doing would allow me to achieve my, my dreams and goals that are not happening at the moment? What am I doing that I should stop doing that if I stopped, would allow me to live my life so much better, you can discover beliefs limiting and positive belief and just mull them round. And I’ll be going through a what I do, and it’s my journey.
And I want to keep this podcast as a conversation, a sharing, as it were, see, I want to share the hell out of what I’m doing with you. It’s not teaching. It’s not truly coaching, but it is a little bit.
It’s not NLP, but is a little bit. It’s not hypnosis, but it is a little bit, but it’s sharing what I discover with you, and then how we can use it. So it becomes, in a way, a philosophy of the ordinary people, some ordinary, extraordinary people are just ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
And that’s what you are too. So it’s not academic. It’s a lived philosophy, the sort that begins with, I don’t know, I was having a cup of tea, I was just sitting down with my, I had a question jump into my mind, and where that takes me.
And I think it will relate to you, because you’re here, you have similar dreams, similar goals, different ages, maybe different challenges, but they’ll all come together, and we get a better insight. And if I can help you discover your calling, if I can help you clear away some of the blockages, the limiting beliefs, the emotions that are stopping getting your full range of your full range of enjoyment, love, that’s what I’m here for. I do need some help sometimes.
And that help comes in a form of an email from you saying, Cluffy, can you help me? And the more you do that, the more I can really see how I can help. And what tends to happen is it tends to get into me, my head, maybe I’ve got an issue there, maybe what would I do to get rid of it? So between us, we become our own therapist, because I’m a therapist, not your therapist, but we become our own. We’ve got loads of hypnosis tracks here, as you know.
So the 90 seconds of hypnosis tracks. Why have I put hypnosis tracks on a separate website? Well, it’s so simple, really. I wanted you to have them all in one place.
So you can look through them all you can find the particular one you want. I’ve even made them downloadable. So you can put them on any of your playing devices that you prefer.
You don’t need Wi Fi, you don’t need the iTunes or whatever you can put them anywhere you like. You can even burn them onto disk if you want. Where do you get them? Well, there you go.
I told you it’s Paul Clough online.com forward slash podcast. If you’re worried about your email address, please don’t be because they stay totally safe with me. I only use them to send you out that email and give you access.
Simple as that. I send you a link, a special link, so you and only you can access those hypnosis tracks because I want them just for you. And the other thing about this is you’ve taken responsibility.
I don’t want to make these open to everyone just random. You have taken responsibility to listen and be part of this community of personal development. And I want to help you.
I want to help you personally to get your dreams, your goals, and therefore I’m giving you these tools, these protocols, these paradigms, whatever you want to call them, but in deep hypnosis. So just enjoy. Have more fun than you can stand with hypnosis.
You find them at paulcloughonline.com forward slash podcast. 65 I think hypnosis NLP pro all coming from my, my little adventure of creating my life and my way of helping others. And it’s a great thing to do paying it forward.
And when you pay it forward, like sharing this, this episode, this podcast, you are contributing for no one of it. And that’s true selfless service, isn’t it? And that’s when real joy comes to see others come, you know, making their life so rich, so beautiful. And you were maybe a little garden who planted that seed, maybe you watered it, nurtured in yourself and others.
So that’s what we’re going to do. I hope this has stirred something in your, in your mind, as it stirs in mind, maybe you’ll get your puzzle book, and we’ll start finding our way, our direction, our calling, our North Star, whatever you want to call it, together and live it. And that’d be brilliant.
That would be so good for you so good for me so good for the people around us. And so good for planet Earth, which means it’s so ecologically, bloody brilliant. And then, as we got to the very beginning, you’ll know who the fuck you are, you really will.
Because I think I know who the fuck I am. And I’m discovering it more and more. So with that, I’m gonna love you, I’m gonna leave you have more fun than you can stay.
And maybe you can enjoy every heart. And I wonder if I was to speak to your unconscious, just me and your unconscious mind and said, ask the question, what would it be like if you were to surprise that conscious mind by feeling happy for no reason? More and more. I think it’s time to fly.
All right, your six steps to achieving supreme inner confidence. Who’s this program for? This is for anyone who experiences anxiety, self doubt and fear. But deep down, they know they have something within them, just craving to be free.
It’s for people who want to achieve their ambitions to achieve their dreams with total confidence and self belief. So in the next five or so minutes, we’re going to realize your lack of self confidence is not the problem. It’s by letting go of the fear that’s holding you back and stopping that constant worrying what others think of you.
We’re going to let go of nagging fear of not being good enough and being found out. So you wake up and feel good about yourself and what that day holds to be excited about the future and what that holds for you. Want to find the old you and then the real you.
How to dream the dreams you want for yourself and have those dreams become real. So I promise to you is a step by step program to supreme inner confidence. But let’s be honest, this is not magic.
I don’t promise to maybe wave a magic wand and say, hey, presto, everything’s changed. If you really want this, you’re going to have to do some work to do whatever it takes. Hey, does this sound like you? Are you constantly in fear of not being in control? Do you overthink everything? Do you question everything and everybody? Do you wonder will this ever end? And what if it doesn’t see the real problem? You haven’t taken the steps to deal with the true cause of all your issues.
It’s okay. You’re about to discover them now. And once you take them, you’re going to feel so excited to see the world and the opportunities in it to have fun and laughter again, joy and happiness.
Wake up in the morning with a buzz of energy. Now that heavy load has been lifted to feel calm, content, empowered to feel free, the real sense of freedom, effortlessly to be in control again, and to simply be the real you. So who am I? I’m a master hypnotist, trainer of NLP and hypnotherapist.
I help people to be who they really are and let go of all their insecurities and enjoy their life again. In fact, for the past 18 years plus, I’ve simply been helping clients to let go of their issues and get their real results. That’s me, Paul Clough.
Let’s discover those six steps. There are six key steps you must take and make to let go of your anxiety and self-doubt fully, completely, while unleashing your undiscovered self-confidence. I’m going to walk you through all six steps.
Step one, don’t fight it, but honor it. You see, this program is not a bandage or a plaster. They simply don’t work.
We need to understand what your own confidence and low self-esteem is doing for you. That’s right. It’s doing something positive for you.
The mind shift, they’re not the enemy. If you fight them, fight it, push against it, the snowball just gets bigger and bigger. You know that.
And if you fight it and push against it, it just spreads in other areas of your life. You know that. The mind shift, work with your best friend, your unconscious mind.
You see, it’s all about unconscious learning, not consciously learning, because you see, you didn’t learn to be this way consciously. So why would you try to solve it consciously? It rarely works and probably makes it even worse. So what does work and make things better? You see, it’s all about learning at the unconscious level to truly understand what it will mean to you to be competent and confident in all areas of your life, to have your unconscious mind learn what it needs to, that once learned, will let go of all your negative feelings and debilitating and paralyzing self-talk.
That was the old way. People used to have many sessions with little or no change. You’d be guided to lovely places and feel so relaxed now, but not later.
They make you relive those past memories when things felt really uncomfortable and low. And they tell you to be confident this way, using and installing their own generic way. That’s not you, that’s not yours.
The secret, you see, you don’t need someone telling you how to be or how long it will take. You just need the will to do whatever it takes to follow this program, because we’re going to unconsciously learn from the past and keep the intention of your unconscious mind to create an empowering and confident present. And then with all of that, create the future you want.
You see, together, we’re going to learn to change old beliefs. Together, we’re going to find new behaviors and new ways to feel confident. See, it’s not my way of being confident, free, excited, happy, calm, content, and joyful.
It’s your way. And together, we’re going to create a recipe in all your senses of how you want to be in all areas of your life. You see, take your time and feel comfortable.
But time doesn’t really have to take that long. Some people change in a second. How long have you got? I like to work really fast, and it doesn’t have to be scary or uncomfortable.
Why would you want to struggle and make it difficult? I like to work in an easy, simple and comfortable and lasting way. And let’s make it easy and invest in you. See, invest in you with my help.
Self-help books and hypnosis CDs are good, but not good enough. You better pray and spray if you’re going that direction. There’s no game without pain.
And that’s BS. The pleasure that comes from being confident in being you is immeasurable. Because when you achieve success in your competence, confidence, and high self-esteem, you’re going to feel empowered.
What else couldn’t you do right now? You will never know how far the ripples of this change will go. Today, I promised you a step-by-step program to regain your supreme inner confidence. The secret, my secret to unconsciously learn from the past and keep that intention, unconscious intention, create an empowering and confident present, and then create the future.
Each of these three steps has two specialized hypnosis processes and a video for each one, making the full six steps to your supreme inner confidence. But the final piece of the puzzle, you have a choice, your responsibility. You can join me in this unique program and let me guide you to rediscover your supreme inner confidence, high self-esteem, and ultimately your freedom.
So let’s remind ourselves, who’s this for? If you’ve finally had enough, you’re saying to yourself, I’m prepared to do and have whatever it takes. This feels right. And you see it’s the right thing to do.
It’s finally time to take action and reclaim your confidence, your self-esteem, and to be the real you. If that’s you, hey, come and join me on this supreme inner confidence program. You have nothing to lose, but your low self-esteem and unconfidence.
There’s a 30-day money back guarantee. That’s it. Come and join me.
Paul Clough. We’ll have fun and regain that supreme inner confidence.
Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited