What Deserves Centre Stage In Your Life?
Are you choosing how you live your life, or are you just doing what needs doing?
You can have a full diary, get loads done and still feel as though you’re drifting. I’ve been there.
When some of my old routines and roles disappeared, I found myself asking, what next? But perhaps that was the wrong question. Maybe I didn’t need another project to fill the gaps. Maybe I needed a clearer direction.
In this deeper dive, I share what I’m discovering through my North Star work: how to stop running on autopilot, reconnect with what matters, and start designing a life that feels meaningful to you.
And it comes down to a wonderfully simple question:
What deserves centre stage today?
I’ll share how I use this question to check my direction, make room for curiosity and choose one small step that supports the life I want to build.
You don’t need a five-year plan. You don’t need to figure out the whole journey. You just need to pause, check your compass and decide what matters today.
Because we’re all works in progress. And sometimes, a small course correction is all it takes to get moving again.
Come and explore it with me. Let’s stop letting the days choose us and start choosing how we live them.
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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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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
Hey, welcome to the longer podcast, The Deeper Dive, and it’s me, Paul, your friend. And I have a question.
This is a question to myself, but I want you to ask it of yourself. Am I actually choosing how I’m living my life, or am I just doing what needs doing? That’s a question that came into my mind a little while ago. You see, until recently, just before this question came up, I didn’t realise.
You see, you can have a full day, or you think you’re having a full day. You can think you’re being productive. You can even enjoy parts of it.
But the thing is, you can still have that uncomfortable feeling that you’re somehow just drifting, maybe just treading water. And something for me, this drifting, just had a feeling of being disappointed. Being disappointed in me, the day I’ve done, but I thought I’ve been really productive.
Can I share something personal with you? Because this is what these podcasts are all about. I want to share something personal because my priorities are changing. That’s my experience.
I told you, if you’ve listened before on previous podcasts, I’ve been doing a lot of self-work, North Star work, looking for a change of direction. You see, I no longer have a hypnosis clinic. I’ve closed it down for a little while, but I’ve closed it down.
I do slightly fewer podcast episodes. You see, my previous structures just were all disappearing. And the things that at once were just automatically occupying my time, they disappeared.
I just started to feel, you know, what is happening? See, I wasn’t bored, but I was looking for something meaningful. Have you had that before, you know, where you just know there’s something more out there? And you see, I think that’s more about drifting, because drifting isn’t necessarily doing nothing, is it? It could just be doing the same things repeatedly without consciously even asking, why are you bloody hell doing them? And I think that’s what I noticed when I took those things away. There’s a gap.
See, my diary used to be full of everything. I’ll be doing this and doing that. And then something happened.
There were gaps that needed filling. See, my old life was really structured. There was things scheduled.
And just check, you know, if this resonates with you and your diary. Everything’s scheduled. I had defined roles in each of those different times of life, or different times of the day.
I had projects to work on. I had things specifically I was having to do, and I was doing them. Those people I was working with.
They were all things that needed doing, weren’t they? To me, though, they were all mapped out, and I was on autopilot. And the trouble is, when you’re on autopilot and you’re doing these things, and things disappear or things change, for me, I don’t know if these resonate again with you, there was an emptiness. Not real anxiety, but there was a hint of anxiety.
I certainly got frustrated. I got frustrated, and I got a feeling of being really stuck. You know, treading water, feeling stuck, bloody quicksand.
It’s horrible. But it wasn’t boredom. So I had to ask the question, what happens when things that used to give you a life structure, those things that gave you structure, or giving you structure, disappear? You see, I always used to look ahead.
Look ahead to my day, my week. In some ways, I used to look in the big picture of my life. What about you? Do you look out for your day, look for your week, look for your life? But you see, that’s big, your life.
But I got to be thinking, what the hell am I doing? Where am I going? Where is this taking me? You know, I felt lost with those emotions as well. It’s a pissed off feeling, really. It’s not major, but something was wrong for me.
I don’t know if you’ve had those feelings before, and maybe between us we can work out what’s happening. You see, for me, and it might be for you, when something disappears, we just naturally look for something to replace it, don’t we? Oh, I just need another project. Something with a beginning, an end.
Let’s schedule something, something to accomplish. You know, there’s space that needs occupying. To replace the old way, I just wanted to put in what I was familiar with, that old familiar zone, no stretch, no nothing.
And although I was asking what next, maybe that was the wrong question. Because I think a better question, what I’ve come up with a better question is, where do I want my life to be heading? Where do I want to be going? It’s a great reframe in the way that I was trying to solve this directional problem within just another project, something to put in its place. And it was a directional problem.
Where do I want to go? Where do I want to head? What do I want to enjoy? What do I want to discover? And I tried to make things fit, just to grab hold of things. But when you do that, just nothing seems right. Doesn’t feel right.
Get that off feeling. You’ve had that before, I’m sure. So, I used to have this file, I think I mentioned it on the FMQ.
This file on the computer where I kept my notes of finding me. But it wasn’t finding me. It was actually changed to finding my North Star.
So, there’s a journey from me, finding me, finding my North Star. But then I began to realise, I wasn’t necessarily looking for the perfect project, the five year plan. This new identity, you know, it was an answer.
But that’s not what we’re looking for, is it? When we go deep down, it’s a direction to explore. You see, when you look at life this way, it’s not, here’s the route, here’s the route. I don’t even know which way to say that.
This is where you’re going. It isn’t like that, is it? It’s more about a feeling of, this is roughly the direction I want to be heading. Because then you’re open, open to experience, open to synchronicity, open to, well, just open.
And it was my saving grace actually starting to look for this thing I called my North Star. It gave me a new view, a different perspective. It gave me permission to look at my life differently.
Not from that, doing things by rote, doing things over and over again, just the same way. Because when you do the things the same way, guess what? You get the same bloody answer, don’t you? And the more I did this, the more I looked at the direction I wanted to go, what was open to me, this was no longer a metaphor. The North Star, this thing, I write it down in my journal every day.
It’s not just a nice metaphor, it’s a meaning for me now. And it doesn’t mean that this looking for a direction has to have a destination at the end of it. Oh, no.
You see, do we sometimes make life harder by just believing we need to know exactly where we’re going? Because I think we do. But we don’t. Maybe, maybe we don’t.
Maybe we need to really just be open up to finding directions. And, you know, that’s where I moved from that previous podcast. How the hell did I get here? Because I realized the things that I cherish in my life, the experience I’ve had, didn’t come from plans.
And I began to realize again, I’m still that work in progress. Life offers so much more than what I’d thought was. And in fact, it’s starting to change from North Star work.
Still there, still in my heart, like my little candle that just glows. But it’s like an architecture, life’s architecture, Cluffy’s life’s architecture. And it gave me a feeling from moving on from feeling lost to be able to explore.
See, I wasn’t holding on to things so tightly now. And when I thought about direction, North Stars and this, how do you build a life around direction, this architecture? Things like learning. Yes, still being open to learn, creativity.
Having health, just reflection. Having good relationships and service, servicing people. Still got my podcast to get out, I know.
I’m still so curious about hypnosis. And sometimes just giving myself the discipline, as it were, to have 10 minutes of madness. And you’re going to hear about that.
I’ve talked about it once before. And you’re going to hear about it in tools, in transformation that’s coming up. I don’t know quite when.
I haven’t even recorded it yet. But that’s what I allow myself, time, just to be open to things. And then I just ask myself questions.
If this is the direction that I want to travel in, then what supports it? What supports it in my life? You see, in that case, the architecture isn’t a rigid schedule anymore, is it? And you see, what comes into our center stage? Let’s take a moment. Let’s take a moment to consider. Sometimes we can just ask ourselves a question.
Today, what deserves center stage today? It’s a lovely question, isn’t it? It’s a different question. I don’t know. I haven’t really heard that question before.
I don’t know where it came from. But what deserves to be center stage today? And then we’ve got those other questions. What matters most today? What will nourish me? What am I curious about? And what’s one thing that I could do today enriching or just being simply a good feeling? Knowing that I’ve done a good thing.
Now, if you can answer those questions, I think then we get direction. You see, the most important part about all those questions are they don’t have to be impressive. They don’t have to be productive.
They certainly don’t have to be profitable. And they don’t have to be important to anyone else but you, me. Use that lovely word simple.
It’s simply to us. That’s it. What a selfish thing.
Just to feel good about yourself, doing things that deserve center stage today. What matters to you? What nourishes you? And that curiosity is a learning thing, isn’t it? And you see, you could take a small step on that path. Maybe just look at the direction you’re pointing.
Where am I pointing? This is where puzzle books come in. How am I building my life? And think about that center stage. What deserves priority to you now, right now? Maybe what’s a small thing today that makes me or takes me on another step along that? Not 10 steps, not 20 steps, not a jump and a leap, all that stuff.
Not the whole journey, for fuck’s sake. Just one small step. You see, that’s where this FMQ, the seed to this, began, I think.
Because I felt drifting. And what is drifting? You need to know what you’re talking about, Cluffy. You see, for me, drifting is being lost in that autopilot of life.
It’s not doing nothing. It’s not having no goals, if you can have no goals, if that makes sense. And you’re certainly not being lazy.
But maybe we’re just losing contact with the direction we want to go in. We’re getting lost in the doing and not the being. I know it’s a bit cliche, but yeah.
And instead of you deciding what’s going to take center stage today, the day starts dictating to you, deciding what you’re going to do today. Then the week decides what you’re going to do this week. Then the months pass and we look back and go, how the fuck did I get here? And that’s sometimes not in the best way.
Because yes, some things beautifully happen, serendipitously. But that’s because you’re looking in a direction, you’re focused in looking for experience. And they just happen.
But it’s things by rote, treading water, just doing the things over and over again. So it’s, how the hell do I get here? And how the hell do I get out of it? So I guess what I’m saying is, are you choosing your days and what you do with them? Or are the days choosing you? I mean, we can do a little check-in, I guess. Because you don’t have to redo and rethink your whole life, because it’s not that.
It’s like a simple, I love the word simple, simple course corrections. And I’m trying now, and I have to say trying because it’s a habit I’m not quite there in. I still haven’t got it, I’m working on it.
To have like a daily check-in. Remember, I’m still a work in progress. In fact, we all are, aren’t we? We’ll always be a work in progress.
But just trying to get myself to think. Am I still pointing in the direction of my North Star? And does the way I’m living, acting, being, support me in that direction? Because sometimes we just forget. You know that question of what deserves to be centre stage? And what’s that one small step? Now if you can answer those, it’s such a sustainable process of just 30 seconds, a minute in the morning.
Could change your whole life. Now we could do a hypnosis process, but I’m going to leave that for a little while. Might do a separate one once I finish this just to, how we can just do this.
But I think this is more about getting our minds to think in a different way, to open up. Because for me, I felt stuck. And I didn’t know where I was heading.
And I wanted to find the whole route. But you don’t need it, do you? You don’t need the whole steps. You see, once I know my direction, I can find the one step and then the next step.
But we’ll think about that. But here’s the thing. Here’s what I’d like you to do over the next seven days.
Because everyone, everyone can do something for seven days on the run. Even you. Yeah, we all can.
Seven days is not a big deal, is it? No, it’s not. So, maybe tomorrow morning, write these down. And then tomorrow, ask yourself these questions, but write them down first.
You might even think about them just now. Maybe the question would be when you wake up, what matters most today? What matters to me most today? What will nourish me? What am I curious about? And then that one small step. What’s the one small thing, the smallest step I can do right now, today, that deserves that center stage? And maybe at the end of the day, you’ll ask yourself, did I give it space? It’s not a whole new life management system.
It’s just these little things. Does that make sense? I know it’s simple. And in simplicity, there is genius.
But it’s not easy. Just because things are simple, doesn’t make them easy. You have to put effort into this.
Because when you put the effort in, you get the reward, don’t you? You see, if you open this up just a little bit more, and we said to ourselves, what if this isn’t something we discover once and then follow it forever? Because that’s what I used to think. You just do this and follow. Because it changes, doesn’t it? It evolves.
Like, how the hell did I get here? These things happen to us along the way. And we take and make a choice of grabbing them, opportunities. But it’s when we ask ourselves, is this still the direction that I want to be traveling in? Because I don’t want to look back.
And I don’t want you to look back over time and go, oh, I don’t like this. Like, how the fuck did I get here? Because I don’t like it. I want you to say, oh, how the hell did I get here? Because this is gorgeous.
This is beautiful. There’s loads to think about there, isn’t there? And here’s a final thought. You see, a bit like at the beginning, where I thought I needed another thing to do.
Maybe, like me, you’ll discover you just need a direction. And in that direction, with curiosity, incentive, and all your wonderful skills, things are going to happen to you. You’ll find what you need to make such a rich decision.
And the whole point about this thing is, when you find this direction, it doesn’t mean you’ve got to know everything about it. Because you’re learning. You’re experiencing.
And then you’ll be able to share that experience with other people. That’s the beauty of everything. Hmm.
So here’s a sort of final thought. Maybe we just think about this. Maybe you, maybe I, don’t need to know exactly where we’re going.
That’s something to think about. Do we really need to know exactly where we’re going? Maybe we just need to know that we’re facing a bit clearer. Maybe we just need to know the way we’re facing.
And then decide, when we’re facing in the right direction, what deserves to be sensual. Today, I’m still doing this. I’m still building the architecture of my life.
And I’m still checking the compass. Because I can’t know which way I’m facing. And I want you to do the same.
I hope me sharing my little struggles and my learnings, the things that come to me, the little aha moments, the little epiphanies. I do hope they’re of benefit to you. Because this isn’t me telling you, oh, look at me, look at me.
Look, I’m struggling. I’m a work in progress. I just want to share things that we can grow together.
And in that growth, if there’s anything in there that you find has brought something up, an emotion, let me know. I’m already working on another episode from a question I had about OCD. And also intentions.
The positive intentions of negative emotions. Negative behaviors. That will be coming out as a standalone.
So if anything is brought up by this, let me know if there’s something I can help with. Or just some feedback. These thoughts came to mind.
I’m so pleased, you know, I’ve got a bit clarity. I’d love to know your celebrations. Because when you celebrate with me, it means you’re recognizing yourself.
How far you’re coming. You’re going. Where your direction is.
Because when we recognize our changes and celebrate, man, they just get bigger and better. Sharing with other people too. Just like you can share this episode.
And share the beauty of the Personal Development Unplugged podcast. That’d be great if you do. I know it’s difficult.
It is, isn’t it? It’s difficult to press share on that bloody thing. Or, you know, getting your WhatsApp and saying, here’s a link. Yeah, that is difficult.
I know it’s difficult. But if you could, you know, if you could only share it to five people at a time, that would be absolutely awesome. Because this is here for you.
And the more people that get this, it makes the world a beautiful place. Because the world needs a bit more beauty, doesn’t it? With all the shit that’s going on. You know, we can’t necessarily affect in detail or put hands on the stuff that’s going on.
But we can make an effect right here, right now. In our little bit of the world. Little old planet Earth.
We can make our little bit so much more beautiful. And then others can share the beauty too. And they’ll do the same.
And the ripples go further and wider than you ever think. Hope you enjoyed that. Send me those emails.
Oh, I didn’t even tell you what email was. But I’ve told you so many times. But here it is.
It’s feedback at personaldevelopmentunplugged. Send me a celebration. Send me a question.
Send me a challenge. Let’s see where we can go. Just creating a new world with a new life.
And we face in the direction that just produces riches for everyone. Have fun, my friend. Have more fun than you can stand.
But why now? Because it’s time to fly. Warning. You are now leaving the unplugged mind of Paul Clough.
It’s time to fly now. Be brave, my friend. Personal Development Unplugged.
Transcribed by TurboScribe.