#386 I'm Scarred and Imperfect

Anxiety to Confidence - The Personal Development Unplugged Podcast

I'm Scarred and Imperfect Part 1

Let's celebrate just how we are and then learn how to we can change to be who we wish to be and have what we wish to have.

We do need to acknowledge where we are in this striving to be the best version of ourselves so we can build on it, start and continue to build from a firm and stable foundation.

To me - We're all a ikkle bit broken or a little bit damaged, we've all got a few 'isms' and we carry a little bit of baggage and that's great! Because when we do truthfully acknowledge this to ourselves we can begin to make meaningful changes, which I guess is why you listen hear.

When we try to deny that imposter syndrome ism, guilt ism, anxiety ism and every other emotional ism you can think of we will continue the internal conflict and waste that valuable energy we have. Let's use it to create a life we can be proud of.

As usual I'll share some personal stories and insights.

In this episode we'll lay all the ground work for the changes you want to make ready for part 2. I won't keep you hanging for part 2 so get your skates on and DO THE WORK, which isn't hard but you have to do it if you want the results - and I know you do :O)

Please share the episode so others may learn too

https://personaldevelopmentunplugged.com/386-im-scarred-and-imperfect-part-1

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

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

Heads up to the longer podcast. It'll come on in the next few days

So here's your heads up. Heads up to the longer podcast. I'm scarred. I'm imperfect. Yay. I say, yay. Yay. Yeah. I'm celebrating. I'm celebrating and acknowledging that we're all a little bit broken, we're all a little bit damaged, we're all a little bit ism'd. And that's great because that means when we acknowledge it, we are going to change our world in such a wonderful way. And if you'd like to do that, have a listen after the little 15 2nd intro.

So, just to let you know, before we get into the whole of this podcast, when I recorded it, it just went on in a good way. And I felt there's a time when we should split it up in the middle so we can let things just integrate the thoughts, get together, and then hit the second half where we really get deep into the process of being able to look at these imperfections, these scars, and, make a difference to our lives. So look out for that. I'm not going to leave you hanging and have you hanging days and days and weeks and weeks. It'll come on in the next, I think the next three or four days. Okay, so listen to this first half, get into it, and then following few days will come that second half. But I think that'll give you time to really, I don't know, get your mind processing what we can do.

We're back with a longer podcast. I'm scared. He's not scared

Okay, here we go. Boom. And we're back with a longer podcast. I'm scared. He's not scared. I'm scared. I'm imperfect. That was a title.

You have to be honest about what you're thinking about, m

And, I have a question for you. I've got a question. Are you open? Open to what? Cloughie open. To be honest. maybe you might think. Honest about what? Well, let me tell you, m, I'll go through a few things. Have you seen that t shirt? The t shirt is advertised on a lot of social media. And it says, I'm broken with the okay in the middle is brighter, so you see it looks like I'm okay. But then you read it a little bit closer and it says, I'm broken. With that funny smiley face with a bandage or two and a cut and things like that, and a little plaster. I love it. I bought one. I thought about it for such a long time because I just loved that. Just love the emoji of it all. I'm broken. And let's admit it, we're all a bit, aren't we? We're all a bit broken. Somewhere. Some people maybe think they're broken more than others, but we've all got a little bit inside us, I think. Just, a little bit broken. Here's another one for you. Hear it. Hear it being talked about. Other people saying they're damaged. But I'm damaged. Yeah, that could be you speaking, couldn't it? And I hear you. I'm damaged. You are damaged. So am I. And so is every other bugger. Everyone. He's just a little bit damaged. I don't care what they say. I, know they're damaged. Yeah, we do. We are. We're a little bit broken. We're a little bit damaged. Everyone's got a bloody ism. They have. I've got an ism. Perfectionism. Knowing I can never be perfect. I mean, that's a real conflict in itself. And it comes from. Yeah, I'm not good enough. And, we've all got one of those, haven't, we. We've all got that. We've all got the other isms. Depression. Depression. Ism. Fear of missing out ism. I'm an imposter ism. We've all got those. We've all got them in bits, you know, we got little bits of it. Different criteria. Not different criteria, different context. I, may be as confident as anybody in the world in one context, and I could be a scared little mouse. Maybe in another context, maybe not quite.

Scared.

But we all think we're an impostor somewhere along the line, in a context or other. But you have to be honest. You have to be open to be honest. Somewhere we have these things going on, maybe not, you know, so they're massive, massive, massive. But if you go through your life and the things you've done maybe yesterday or the week, in the week, and just notice when you just felt a little bit m. that wasn't good. Oh, I felt a bit scared. Felt a little bit broken. Maybe I thought I was missing out. Maybe I thought, buck and me, they'll find me out here.

You know.

Shall I go on? Shall I go on? Yes, I will go on. I will. I want to get personal. Not with you. Not with you, of course. Well, I will. But this is about me, you see. I'm an introvert. Now, is that broken?

Maybe.

M maybe sometimes when it'll be better to be not extrovert, but be open and connected as opposed to sitting in the corner or it feels like I'm sitting in the corner, even when I'm, in a room with people, sometimes I think, I think too much. They are thinking about thinking too much, and it bogs me down. I wonder why I do that. We don't ask why here. I wonder, what could I learn from that? But on the other hand, I know sometimes I don't think enough.

Do you ever get lonely? Do you ever feel isolated

So again, we've got another dichotomy, we've got another conflict. I get lonely. Do you? Do you ever get lonely? And I don't necessarily mean, like, the big pandemic of loneliness that we're experiencing in the world now, but there are times when I just feel quite lonely now, whether that's because I'm an only child. And when you're an only child, what do you do? You think a lot. You talk to yourself. There's no other bugger around to talk to, to play with. And, maybe sometimes that's good, but other times feel I might be missing out, you know, from siblings, people who maybe protect you, maybe push you up, support you, maybe they knock you down. I don't know. We're all a little bit like that, are we? Or is that just me? Does any of this resonate with you? What else? What about you? I've been open. I've been honest. I mean, I get angry too much. I'm working on that, and it's gone down a lot, at least I think it has. So all these things I'm working at, and working on with myself, some of them aren't m quite. They're not very comfortable. But I do know each one of those is just a little bit broken. He's just a little bit damaged. He's a little bit, you know, an ism of some kind. But I know they're all trying, you know, each one is trying to do something for me. It just doesn't feel that way sometimes, does it? You know, if you're feeling a little bit scared, not scarred this time, but scared, a bit fearful, bit anxious.

So.

Can you say, you know, you don't go through the week and you're not a little bit anxious, if you don't, that's awesome. You crack that code. But is there something else? Maybe a little bit, you know, when you're going to work or when, you know, how many of us have that conversation, which we know, we know it's the conversation to have, and we bottle it. I don't know if that's just a UK term, but we bottle it. We not bottle it up. we just bottle it by getting scared. We can't go through with it. And then we think too much.

And.

Then we get angry, maybe. And you have thoughts about other people, you know, what do they do? What am I doing? You know? So it's like being an imposter in your own life sometimes, but not massive. hopefully you can see when I talk to you, you know, reasonably sane, can hold a bit of a conversation, communicate, connect. I can learn stuff. I, share stuff. But there's these little things in the background just inside. And they're going to stay there unless you're open to be honest about them. You have to bring them out in the open. Bring them out into the light. Sometimes just bringing these things up into the light, into the light of your open mind is enough to look at it and go, well, I don't know where that came from, but that's not me. Oh, I remember where that came from. Yeah, I can understand how I felt that way, but not anymore. So now I've got to change. I can change. This is a lovely little reframe. But how can you bring them all out into the open? Because I don't want it to be super depressive. Because I've come out with my bits and I'm happy with that. Not happy that I've got them, but I'm happy that, you know, there are things I can work on. So how do you bring them out in the open? Or maybe you can do a Cloughie mind map. And my sort of mind maps are just with a circle, and lots of lines coming off. I don't necessarily do lots of lines off lines, but just little headings off each one. So a mind map, my imperfections, because none of us are perfect, are they? Are we? So it'd be nice just to bring out into the light, into delight my imperfections. And there'll be a flip side to this, I promise. There is. There is a flip side. If I want to start anywhere, I always start on the down because I love to finish on a high. So stay with me. Stay with me. But yes, you'd have to get a piece of paper, a book, your puzzle book, your idea book, whatever it is, a piece of paper. Don't do it in your head, because if you do it in your head, you'll never be able to come back to it. And it's not bringing it into the. Into the light, is it? See, I've written these down.

And,

I'm going to do something with them. Well, I'm doing something with them anyway. But I'll explain what I'm doing. So write down a little. Draw a little line away from that big circle in the middle of that paper which says my imperfections, and just write them down. You know, sometimes I think too much. Sometimes I get a little scared and just say the context. Sometimes I get a little anxious about. Sometimes I, this imposter at work. That's what I feel. Maybe feel imposter with your, with your friends. Which is crazy, because I just said in the sentence, you're friends. But it isn't crazy, is it? Because that's what we feel, and it's just an emotion. And emotions are there to, teach us something until we've learned it, and then they'll disappear. So that's where we're going.

Cloughie says sometimes the lonely and the sad go together

So just write them down and just notice. And we're not going to criticize ourselves. We're not going to we're certainly not going to edit them as you think of them. You I'll say that a bit more clearly as you think of them. Just write them down. So, you know, I do get lonely. I'm not lonely 100%, but I do get lonely occasionally. I do get sad occasionally. Sometimes the lonely and the sad go together. And I can actually sometimes link those together. I had a pretty deep experience of that, which is quite weird. I was looking for something really positive, and I came out with loneliness.

And

That affected me for a day. Not grossly. I could have worn my I'm broken t shirt for a day. But then, I got into it. But I'll tell you how I did that. You see, you have lived, haven't you? You've lived a life. You have life experiences. You've had experiences. Some of them will be absolutely brilliant and give you the confidence to carry on and do other stuff. They will affect other areas of your life. The ripples of that confidence will affect more than one context. But just like that, by having experiences and lived a life, we'll have had a few experiences that have scarred us, created these little. We could call them imperfections. And I only call them that is because I'd like to change them then. And they're never going to be perfect, but they're, just little imperfections. And you see, by bringing them into light, weirdly, I want to celebrate them. I want to celebrate being able to be honest with myself, celebrate being totally authentic with myself. I nearly swore then so did the rest. I'm not thinking about other people, about being authentic to everyone out there. Because you can't be authentic, really authentic, until you're authentic with yourself, until you're open and honest with yourself, because that's a safe place to be. You can have a little chat with yourself and go, okay, got to work on this. You talked yourself with your best friend as your best friend. Okay, Cloughie. So what are you going to do about this loneliness? Well, I changed that, you see, into a, into a superpower. I worked on that and, I'll tell you how that came about. Maybe, maybe, maybe this episode, maybe another episode, see how we get on. But I want to bring them out and celebrate. Celebrate that, this is me. Because, you see, I've already done a mind map of my qualities ages ago. And you see, when we're celebrating, we're simply acknowledging, acknowledging our imperfections, the things we would like to change. Bringing them out into the open to the light of day, as I say, as I said before, because when you acknowledge them, don't accept them. I have this thing about acceptance. If you accept them, you're accepting. In my mind, you're accepting it as it's being okay. It's okay to be, and it is, by the way. But I'd rather just acknowledge, acknowledge this emotion, those emotions. Because we acknowledge good emotions or say positive emotions and the ones we feel that are negative or give us a negative emotion, we just, yeah, we could just acknowledge them and it takes away their power. As soon as I wrote these things down, they were out. They're not bubbling inside. I'm not trying to push them down. I'm not trying to fight them. Because when you fight them, they just get stronger because they're trying to do something for you. And you're going, no, I don't want to learn. And they're going, well, you're going to have this emotion double then, until you get it Cloughie. But as soon as you bring them out, whoa, you get to own it. And just by owning it, I'll say that again properly, just by owning it, you get a little bit more inner confidence. Not like the pain in the ass people who are so ego led and overconfident. You see, the reason people are that confident is because they're not. They're trying to hide it from you and themselves. I know they have anxieties, they have fears, they have all those isms, and they're overcompensating. We've all seen those people. They are a pain in the ass, but we've all seen them. And if you could get them one to one and to be honest with themselves, they would admit to it, but they try to hide it. And the more you hide it, the more you push it down, the more it just fights back, as it were. So that's why I say, when we acknowledge these imperfections in air quotes, we really are, being truly authentic. You see, that's when you can really start working on yourself or working with yourself. See, we sort of celebrate, but, I don't want to celebrate them. And going, yeah, I'm so pleased that I'm a lonely old person who just thinks too much and. No, no, no, no. Because that's just being a bit of a dick. And that's what I call myself, by the way. Not you. I have this thing Cloughie. Sometimes you're a dick cloughy. Get back. Get back into the world and look at it for what it is. Because that's how I compliment myself. Cloughie, you're a dick. But I've made a little note of this. A well intentioned dick. Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear.

We think we should be perfect, but being perfect never happens

Anyway, you see, we do think, I think, we think anyway, that we should be perfect. We have to be perfect. Certainly, if you've got I'm, and I'm not good enough. Below the surface, there's another belief. But the behaviors we have and the thoughts we have is, well, if I'm really perfect, no one's going to pick me up. No one can find my fault. And that's never going to happen. Never ever going to happen. Because you're never going to be perfect. That's why I sell, I say sometimes celebrate our imperfections, because you might as well, because, now they're out, you can celebrate the fact that they're out into the open, because being perfect is never going to happen. And so on.

I've split this up into two parts so you don't get tired

that note, this is where we're going to stop, part one. And all I want you to do is just sit with that mind map. Don't do anything with it. Don't have to think about it for the moment, because it's a tool that we're going to use in part two. So just get it out on paper. And then in just a couple of days time, the next one will be out, part two. And we're really going to make the difference. The difference that makes a difference, where the ripples of change will go further and wider than you could ever believe. And guess what? It's really simple. Because in simple there's genius, or in simplicity there's genius. And I really want you to get the best of it, which is why I've split this up in two now, so you don't get tired. You can concentrate on one, and then you can really focus on the second part where the change happens. So do have fun, take a breath, relax, do the work, and then we'll be ready. I'm giving you time to make this change so wonderful. There you go. So I'll see you. I'll be with you in the next couple of days or in the next. Well, put it, part two. It's not gonna be very long. Okay, have fun. It's time to fly. Until the next time. Bye bye.

Paul Clough launches personal development Unplugged podcast

M. Warner, 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. Hey, welcome. Welcome to the personal development Unplugged podcast. So pleased you're here. Your time is valuable and precious. So what I would like to do is fill that time that you share with me with the most shiny, golden nuggets to help improve your life, to get your goals, your wishes, your dreams, to come to fruition quicker, bigger, better than you could ever imagine. Using your imagination, using hypnosis, using NLP, neuro linguistic programming, all of that. Using all things of the mind, no brain hacks, but real, solid processes to deconstruct what people do to become great, and then find the processes that we can install that in ourselves to support you in your dreams and get what you really want in life. Anyway, who am I? I'm, Paul. Paul Clough. And just going to have conversations with you in this podcast and get you thinking, but also share those processes, because we're going to have so much fun. That's it. We're going to have fun for a change, because we can sit down for a spell and have more fun than we can stand creating the world we want to live in and be the person we want to be in that world. The only limitation, the only limitation is your imagination. And you've got bucket loads, by the way. Bucket loads. Have a listen. You really must.