#418 How To Think - For Success

How to Think Better for Success Are you ready to unleash the power of your own mind and turn those dreams into reality? This episode is all about learning how to think better—simple, down-to-earth strategies to shift your thoughts toward success. Through a mix of storytelling and practical tools, I’ll share personal insights and experiences that have helped me along my journey. Together, we’ll dive into the art of *intentional thinking* and explore ways to create your own “puzzle book” to spark creativity and keep your mind focused. You’ll discover how dedicating even a little time each day to clear, intentional thinking can bring clarity, solve problems, and unlock fresh ideas. Writing, as you’ll find, isn’t just about putting words on paper; it’s a way to expand your thinking and gain new perspectives. We’ll also tackle some classic excuses we all have—“I don’t have time!”—and explore why time isn’t the barrier we think it is. Here’s what’s inside this episode: The Power of Intentional Thinking** – How setting a clear direction for your thoughts can lead to real breakthroughs. Creating a Puzzle Book** – A tool to help organize ideas, connect dots, and keep those creative juices flowing. Overcoming Excuses** – The “no time” myth, busted. I’ll show you simple ways to make time for your own thinking sessions. Building a Thinking Habit** – Practical ways to make regular thinking a part of your life. What You'll Take Away: Clarity and Focus** – Get a handle on what’s urgent vs. what’s important, so you can move forward meaningfully. Confidence and Calm** – Experience that peace of mind that comes from having a clear direction. Inspiration to Act** – Feel ready to tackle new challenges and inspire others along the way. *Are you ready to think better?* Jump in and start your journey now. And hey, let’s spread some good vibes—share this episode and let’s create a wave of positive change. https://personaldevelopmentunplugged.com/418-how-to-think-for-success/ Shine brightly, Paul Shine brightly Paul Please remember you can leave a comment or email me with questions, requests and feedback.  If you have enjoyed this or any other episode please share and subscribe. Just email me feedback@personaldevelopmentunplugged.com If you want to subscribe to the podcast (I know you do) click here to learn more Or simply click here to go straight to Apple Music / iTunes to subscribe OR leave a review Remember for my specially designed programs for developing Supreme Inner Confidence, Free Your Life of Anxiety and specialize Hypnosis tracks go to PaulCloughOnline.com   If you want to access my FREE HYPNOSIS tracks go to paulcloughonline.com/podcast Follow and inter-react on twitter @pcloughie  I’m a therapist but not your therapist The information with this website or online work, techniques and exercises provided within these free and paid products are for educational purposes only. Do not use the techniques or exercises contained within some of these free or paid products whilst driving or operating machinery, or if you suffer from epilepsy, clinical depression or any other nervous or psychiatric conditions. The information provided is not a substitute for proper medical advice. If in doubt, please consult your doctor or licensed medical practitioner. Any decision you make having received any of Paul Clough's free or paid products are your own and you remain wholly responsible for any decisions and actions you take. Why not look for me and the podcast on  SPOTIFY AND the app Castbox I'm also in iHeart radio YouTube - copy n paste UC3BlpN4voq8aAN7ePsIMt2Q into search bar The Libsyn podcast page http://personaldevelomentunplugged.libsyn.com tunein, learnoutloud, Google Play Music Music by Wataboi from Pixabay, Music by DreamHeaven from Pixabay, Music by ccjmusic from Pixabay, >, Music by freegroove pixabay seduction-jazz-112149 from Pixabay, Music by prazkhanal Pixaby ventura-117073 from Pixabay, 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, how to think better for success. Who am I to tell you? But I've got a couple of things, just got a couple of things that I know that if you did them, you would create success for your life and those dreams and goals would become your reality. And it all starts with stories, because we love a story. I got two or three of those. So come and dive in with me and learn. Or just sample a few ways of thinking better.     How to think better for success. Thought about this and I made loads of notes. And then looking at my notes again, I thought, who the nearly swore. Who am I to tell people how to think better? Now I do think I've got some things to share and it's not the only way, but I do think I'm on the right track. If anyone's listening to Jordan Peterson, I really think he's got it when he thinks writing is thinking. Because if you think about it, if you didn't think when you wrote, you just have a mass of lines everywhere and that'd be crazy. And I know you're thinking now, oh, shit, he's talking about writing it down again. Well, bit. Bit more than that. A bit more than that. I want to tell you a couple of stories. Maybe three. Maybe three sort of little stories. They're not much, but they're a little bit, you see, not. Well, a few years ago, A few years ago, my eldest son came to me and said, hey, dad, do you want to go away for a couple of days? I want to hire a barn, one of those converted barns. Not a barn with. With animals in, you know, but a converted barn for a couple of days. So we could just think. You think in one end of the barn, I'll think in the other end of the barn and we'll have lunch and then you'll think again and then we'll go out for dinner, and, then maybe one afternoon we'll just have a little ride around and things like that, see the countryside. But we'll. It'll be nice to be together, but also nice to get into a thinking mode, to plan. And I thought, that's a hell of an idea. Because you see, before I used to prattle on about, about sort of thinking and setting intentions, but it didn't really do anything. But going there was really setting intention. As soon as you walked through the door, you knew what you're going to do. We had a great time, did lots of thinking, still got me in my books, my notes I made, and so did he. And it was lovely to be with one of my sons just for a couple of days by ourselves. Awesome. And in my, My other life, when I used to be in, like a business type thing, and my partner, Mike, and he would often say to me, hey, Paul, we got this thing happening. It's like an issue. We've got a problem. Go away for a little while and think of how you think we could tackle it. Now, I'm an options man. I love options. And I would do, option one, option two, option C, D, four, five, whatever. And I'd come back to him with these lovely options. I'd really spend a lot of time thinking of the, different things, mitigations and all that stuff. I was following all different processes, and it really worked well. So I used to go away quietly by myself and do it. And then I'd go through with Paul. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Just before we go. Too bad. We. Which one? Well, I like to go through it with you. No, no, just tell me which one. Because you've done a lot of thought on this. You know the answer. You done a lot of thinking. So I came up with, well, I think it's this one. So we'll do it then, because we're going to use your plan, and if there's something better comes along and we find that we can do it even better, we'll just change course, we'll be flexible. And that's exactly what I liked. And I think that type of thinking with options and mitigations got me into, when I started into this, getting deeper into personal development and trying to solve my own issues. Because as much as I do all this work and I do hypnotherapy and I work with clients, you know, we all have issues, we all have stuff. you know, if you want to get better at life, you want to enjoy life, create a better life for yourself, have dreams and goals, you know, this podcast was just a little idea at one time, then it became something into reality, but came through this like a thought process that I did. And I think with these type of things, I developed this thing I call my puzzle book because I used to have a lot of journaling and thinking in journaling, but I wanted something more specific. And what is a puzzle book? Well, a puzzle book to me is a book with plain paper in it. Plain sheets of paper. That's all. I don't like lines because they. They restrict Me, my lines restrict me. M dots are quite good sometimes but I really prefer plain sheet. A4 size if I can get it slightly, maybe a little bit smaller. But when I open it out I've got a nice big double sheet type thing. Anyway, enough about the puzzle book because you can buy them anywhere because it's literally just a book with pieces of paper. But for me when I sit down with that, it in itself and of itself, I love that thing. It fires off my intention when I sit down. It's like triggering my unconscious mind. Thinking is anchored to the puzzle book and because of that I changed my state. I'm sure I changed my state. Love my mind maps in there. But they just things seem to flow not always straight away but it allows me to be open, open to ideas sometimes strange and weird thoughts, creative thoughts that just might work. And I've done a little podcast on spending a few moments, a day or a week just doing the most weirdest thoughts you could have about what you want in life. Not just weird thoughts because that would be weird. And writing those suckers down. And that's the whole point about this puzzle book. You write them down when you just spend time. And I know I made a note that the previous longer podcast about thinking about your hero, becoming your hero.     Cloughie says most of his ideas come from either his puzzle book or journal   The best version of yourself getting more something you can get hold of, something you can see more clearly. That came from just someone mentioning something than me going into the puzzle book and it just exploded into thoughts and I got more clear. So if you look at be your superhero or be your hero, something like that, it's only a couple of podcast episodes back that came from that. But when I thought about it, virtually every, everything I've talked about seems to come from either in my puzzle book or my journal. And what are they? They're all sitting down thinking and writing. Writing is thinking and it's a wonderful habit to get into. And as I said, a lot of my writing can be just in the form of a mind map which explodes in my mind sometimes giving me all the different options, different thoughts that I can develop them. And I say it just allows me to see options taking time. But I know what you're going to say, well, not you personally because I know you're in there, in here for the, for the long haul. But there's, there'll be some who will say, oh, Cloughie, I haven't got enough time. I haven't got enough time to sit down and think. And that's Bollocks. It really is. It's a load of old balls. That's just a petty, flimsy excuse. It's for wimps. It is, it's an excuse. People think, I think they haven't got time. And you see if you believe that and you haven't got time to sit down and think about things, what happens? And I made two or three notes about this. You know, they just react. They react there and then. There's no thought at all. React without thought. There's no plan. There's no plan of any kind. In fact, it's just a reaction, isn't it? Just a reaction with no real intention. And what tends to happen is they might get lucky. They might get lucky and come up with something, but they end up doing something. The first thing that comes to mind, a knee jerk reaction and that goes wrong. And then they find something else and that goes wrong. Then they get overwhelmed and then they. It's just such a waste of fucking time. And it could have been stopped so easily if they'd have stopped and thought, did a little bit of thinking first. And this thing about time. We waste time every bloody way, don't we? Have a look, have a look of how much you do on the typical things. Social media, maybe gossiping, maybe just actually just bonky stuff walking around. I even started putting in my diary. Instead of planning, along with planning the things I wanted to do in the day, I actually wrote down what I actually did. And as soon as I started writing down what I did, it made me think of what I'm going to do next. And I started to get more things done just by looking at it going, no, I don't want to keep writing down. I spent 15, 20 minutes looking at bloody social media. I want to be writing down that I'm making changes, doing stuff. Even if it was sitting down thinking 15 minutes. And what else happens when people don't think? Well, they end up just doing the urgent things that keeps things giving the impression that they're busy. Oh, I'm so busy. I'm so busy now. You're fooling yourself if that's the case because you're doing those urgent things, you're not doing the important things, you're just doing stuff. And there's that knee jerk reaction again. Does this make sense? maybe, I'm talking about me time ago. Hopefully I didn't do a lot of this, but I'd seen it. I see it so much, people just doing, you know, these urgent things. Flitting and flopping to each different thing and not making any bloody difference in the world. Certainly not making no difference to their life and creating more problems. I see a lot of this when I deal with clients because they come in, certainly when they come from business and I'm doing my coaching course, maybe overwhelm, because there's so much going on. And if they just resolved one thing from a place of clarity, the world would change. And it does change when we get there.     Putting 10 minutes aside to think about a particular subject can make life better   So how long. Here's a question to you. How long does thinking actually take? I got you thinking now. How long did that take? I didn't. I didn't plan that. That just came out that way. But thinking can be as much as five minutes, where you just stop and, pause and you think to yourself, what am I going to do next? Is this going to make my life better or worse? What a wonderful question. Because then you can go, actually, I need to stop and think maybe a little bit deeper about this because I don't know, maybe you don't know the answer. I don't know if it's gonna make. It seems to think I'm gonna make my life better. But on the other hand, oh, but least that stopping and pausing has got you to think of all. What would make my m. Life better? If this is gonna be it, how can I do it? Lovely questions again, but you're writing these things down. Because if you just sit there and think about it, great start. But then someone goes, hey, did you want a coffee or did you want this? Oh, yeah, that's great. How you been? And it's all gone. Those thoughts are gone, and you're back to reacting, doing the urgent stuff. Now. You could actually just put 10 minutes aside, allowing yourself to be open with the intention of thinking about a particular subject. So you got that first one is, something happens. I just stopped before you react. Have a little field book in your pocket or something like that, or just a piece of paper, scrap of paper, just notes. But ten minutes to think about something more specific. So you're getting close to that puzzly book type thing, because that's the next one. I think sometimes it's. I love. Let's Talk about Me. I. I love sitting there for about 30 minutes with a puzzle book. And it's not every day. I don't do it every day. Do it at least once a week. I think, on things I find that are important to me. They haven't got urgent yet, but they are important. And I might sit down for 30 minutes might be less, but the mere fact I get that puzzle book out again and says it fires my unconscious mind because I have an intention. And you see, when you think about that 30 minutes, that's nothing compared to that bloody time that you waste on that social media, on gossip, on just simply doom scrolling all that stuff. And the thing is when you're not wasting that time and you're doing, it's just an investment in you and it's such a small investment that has such a high return, the return on your investment, the RII return on investment, I think that's what it was in business, is so high that you can't help but being more successful. And with that success comes, I want to say happiness, but it comes with maybe a calmness, maybe it comes with a little bit of peace of mind, maybe it comes with awareness, maybe it comes with conviction, maybe it comes with an expectation because you know what you're doing, you get from that, you get confidence. And when you do this, and here's a kicker, your unconscious mind can start to think, hey, this is a safer way to be because we are creating a world, a life for ourselves with less stress. We're dealing with stress before it becomes stressful, we're dealing with anxiety before it become anxious. We're planning our success, you and I are then planning our, our success and mitigating, I'm going to say failure, but mitigating where our results aren't what we want or what, what may come and blindside us or may come along. We can mitigate that as best we can. And therefore again we get more confident because we know what we're intending to happen and we know how we can, you know, mitigate things that aren't quite, may happen the other way. And again we've got it covered. And your unconscious mind goes, this is a great place to be. And it only took 30 minutes and we weren't going down the route of doom scrolling gossiping. That's great to have, great to communicate. But now think when you've got yourself in control as much as control is, but when you feel great about yourself and you feel like you've got purpose and you feel like you've got everything in hand, those conversations you have with other people are so, so much more richer.     So I've got a challenge for you. Get yourself a bloody puzzle book. Now am I going to get those excuses? I don't know   So I've got a challenge for you. Get yourself a bloody puzzle book. Now am I going to get those excuses? I don't know where to get one. you talk about a field book. What's a field, A Field book is just a small, little thin book. Have a look on places like Amazon or ebay or whatever, they're cheap. Or you can get a larger book and call it a puzzle book. How much are they then? They're peanuts. A few dollars, few pounds. When I say a few. One, two or three. You don't have to go mad because it's a plain book or, you know, I nearly swore. But just get a piece of paper, you know, print some out the copy machine, anything, piece of paper. Get a pen, pencil, whatever you bloody like. And I want you in your diary. Oh, I haven't got a diary. Well, get a bloody diary page, a day diary, that's all you need. I have one with times on it, so I can really block it out. But I want you to block out some five minutes and some 10 minutes for thinking time daily, every day, at least a, ah, five minute, or I would suggest a ten minute, because once you get into it, you'll want to spend longer than five minutes. But 10 minutes is something where you go, well, I can put 10 minutes aside because I'm going to have my cup of coffee, I want to just sit down the first thing in the morning. Sometime in the day, lunchtime, my break time, anytime on my commute, unless you're driving, of course. And, block it in your bloody diary. So before you start the week, you know roughly what you're going to be doing most days. So block it down. You can move them around a little bit, but once they're blocked in, you have to do it. And, block in 1:30 minutes time for yourself. Time to create success, time to think. Time to really get deeper into a specific issue, a specific thing, a project that you want to just solve, resolve, get better at, maybe learn it. Because they don't have to be all issues, do they? Things that you might want to learn. So how can I learn this? And when you sit down and think that's what one of the questions just jumped in. How can, what do I need to learn? You ask yourself questions. You write those questions down. What do I really want? Is it going to make my life better or worse? How can I make it better? What do I know already? What do I need to know more of all these wonderful questions? And questions go on forever. There are so many people now who have questions that are, so brilliant. Tim Ferriss has lots of questions and I love his questions and they're very closely aligned to the type of things that I would ask myself and what we could do. Because I Always threatened to write a book about just the questions you ask yourself, but I thought that was a bit pretentious. But we could do another podcast episode on the type of things you could do in that 30, minute session. The type of questions you could ask that would get your unconscious mind going in a direction to find the answers. Because it's. And again, it's because you write these down, your unconscious mind goes and finds the answers. And the beauty of this, you sit down for 30 minutes, you might not get everything done that you wanted to. They're open questions. You haven't maybe found the answer yet. You've thought of some options, but you're not quite sure. One of the old Cloughie guarantees is you'll go away. You'll close the book, you'll go away and you'll come back suddenly go, ah. And you'll have that aha, moment, where's my book? I must make that note down. And you can't find that, so you put it in a little piece of paper or your field book, and then you come back to your thinking book in that. And it. Just because it's written down, you can always go back to it. And it gets richer and it gets more inspiring, more intuitive and it gets you to start to dream and think without you really sitting down hard because you just go, ah, becomes a habit that, that ideas muscle starts to really get strong. You begin to resolve and solve what? whatever you need to solve and resolve. I hope a lot of this, I hope this has made sense because, to be honest, I try, I always try to think of the meta side of all of this. What am I trying to do? And I'm really just. It's a reminder that, to me anyway, that there's so much more that you can find and it's all in you and there's so much more of you to find and to keep it, put it on paper. And I think it just makes so much sense. I love you to think, well, that makes sense. I'm going to do that. Take up my bloody challenge. Take up my challenge and find out. You see, I believe this is where your dreams are formed. And then they're made and then you plan them and then you begin to schedule. We've got that bloody diary again, haven't we? And then we start scheduling for stuff and then we review the week and we review our plans and without that puzzle book, without that diary, without you consciously committing to this, your life might just say the same. And I don't Want that for you. I want your life to get so rich. Rich in every way, shape or form. So colorful, so exciting, so passionate with wonderful emotions. And I know you might thinking, yeah, you're bigging this one up, Cloughie. I don't think I am. I really don't think I am. It comes from these simple little things. In simplicity, there's fucking genius. And this is so simple. Take up my challenge.     Go on, I dare you. Go away and have a think about thinking   Go on, I dare you. And then when you do, let me know how you got on. Always love your feedback. Hey, your feedback might be claphy. You're not swearing enough. Sorry, I have started swearing a bit more in here. but that's because I'm getting more passionate about some of the stuff I'm talking about now, I think. And it's me, but hopefully that's okay. But do email me feedback@personaldevelopment unplugged.com if there's any of those questions. Well, I'm sitting down, but I'm getting a bit stuck. Let me know what you're getting stuck on. I'll find something that will take that unstuckiness, away or that stuck in us away. I promise I will. I can. That's what I do. Please do that. And maybe get somebody else on the challenge as well by sharing this episode. Let them know it's just a thinking thing. And it is only thinking better because that's what you do. You think. So we might as well use that skill of thinking and get it better. Get that muscle really pumping. And when you do that, people will see you and they'll go, shit, look at them. Look at them go. I can do that too. You inspire people and you'll never know how far the ripples of that change go. You really won't. But you know, you're creating that change in you and other people. What a wonderful thing to do. All because you listened to Cloughie and you did that seven day challenge and you continued listening and you continue to subscribe. Because if you haven't subscribed, why the not, please press that subscribe button. But the feedback is great. I'd much more prefer, much more prefer the feedback, but I'd like to subscribe too. Okay. Anyway, that's all there is. Go away and have a think about thinking and then take up the challenge. I dare you, dare you to create your dreams and the life that you really want.     Personal development unplugged. It's time to fly on your own   Time to fly. Bye. Warning. You are now leaving the unplugged mind of Paul . It's time to fly on your own. Be brave, my friend.   Personal development unplugged. Personal development [self improvement] [self development] [NLP] [Hypnosis]