Show notes
How To Consistently Do Your Best How often do you really do your best? Honestly? In this short 5-minute quickie, we dive into a simple but powerful way to consistently show up at your best — without pressure, without overthinking. It's all about the magic of the pause. Just a few seconds between tasks can reset your focus, break negative carry-over from the last thing you did, and set the intention for doing your best on the next. You'll learn: Why your "best" should be your baseline, not an exception How a 2-second pause can change the quality of your whole day The role of feelings and intention in achieving your personal best A quick reflection practice to avoid carrying stress from one task into another It's not about constant improvement. It's about consistency. And when you do this, life feels better, easier, and more rewarding. Give it a try today — and share this with someone who could use a reminder to hit their best more often. https://personaldevelopmentunplugged.com/fmq-515-how-to-consistently-do-your-best 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 [email protected]. Subscribe to the Podcast Ready to subscribe? Click here to explore your options. Or, if you're on Apple Music or iTunes, you can go straight to subscribe or leave a review here. Special Programs for You For tools on developing Supreme Inner Confidence, finding Freedom from Anxiety, or specialized Hypnosis Tracks, visit PaulCloughOnline.com. Free Hypnosis Tracks Want access to my FREE hypnosis tracks? Head over to paulcloughonline.com/podcast. Connect with Me Follow me on Twitter: @pcloughie 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. Find Us on Other Platforms Catch the podcast on Spotify, Castbox, iHeart Radio, YouTube, or on our Libsyn page. 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. 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 back to the five minute quickie, Amuse. Amuse, just for five minutes. On today, how can you, me, constantly do our best? Consistently do our best. Constantly, consistently, both the same. Got to do our best. I was thinking about it. I was journaling about it. Because I looked back over yesterday and realized, yeah, I didn't quite do my best. And it's not the, can I? Constant and never-ending improvement, which means doing better than your best. But it means just doing your best. Because we can't, or we could, we could always do 1% more. But if nothing else, surely our best should be the bottom line, the minimum bar. We should be able to get above that. We certainly should hit it more times than enough. And then when I was looking back, I looked back over yesterday, didn't quite do it. Didn't quite do it. Some things I did, and some things I didn't. And I bet if you just looked over your day, say yesterday, did you do your best on everything you did? Bloody difficult, isn't it? It is bloody difficult. So what do we do? What do we do? It's how to think. How to think. So I want to know how I can do my best through the day. Because the day is split up into little compartments, isn't it? Each one is a different thing. We're doing different things. We've got different aims, different goals for each one. So how are we going to do it? How are we going to remember? Because I think we need something like a pattern interrupt. And what's one of those? Well, you interrupt the pattern. And the pattern is, we just flow sometimes from one to the other. You know, I'm doing something, and then I just go into the next thing. And when you go into the next thing, it's as if you're not thinking. You think you're thinking, but you're not really thinking. That makes sense, doesn't it? It does. So what can you do? Well, I think it's like meditating for two seconds. It's the magic of the pause. Yeah, I talk about pause so many times, and it is a magical thing when you do it. And the pause doesn't have to be long. I talk about pausing, you know, for a couple of minutes, three minutes to see the beauty of the world, to listen to hear everything, be present in the moment. But all I'm thinking of now is a two second pause, or one second pause to go, I finished what I've done. Am I happy? Can I be grateful of what I've done? Did I do my best? If I never did, what can I learn? And then, you know, you take another breath. And then you think, now what am I going to do? What do I want to do? And how good do I want to do it? Set the bar. What is your best? So you don't flow from one to the other and let things just, you know, because sometimes when you do a shitty job, and you go to the next one, you've got to break it, haven't you? Because if not, you just take that shittiness with you. So we break it with a two second pause, maybe slightly longer than two seconds, isn't it? Maybe four or five. But we can all spend that. So when we finish, it's just about going, I finished. Did I do my best? Can I learn from this? Can I take it further? Do I need to just spend a little bit more time to reassess what I've done? Or am I happy where I am? And then move on. And it's also a time to celebrate. A mini celebration, say, well, you know, I'm moving on, I've done that thing. And I'm now going to celebrate doing the next. And I can make a note about it. But the thing is, it's that thing about setting your intention on that next one. What is my goal? What is my desire? What do I want out of this? But you could just spend a second to say, well, how do I want to feel doing this next thing? Because if you can get the feeling right, the feeling of doing your best, what would it feel like if you did your best? Think about it now. Because you listen to this, and you're doing something and just stop for a moment and go, how do I want to feel when I've completed this at my best? How do I want to feel and feel that? And then move through that section of your day. Try it. I know it works. But just because I know it works, I want you to know it works. And the only way you'll know it works is by doing the bloody thing, taking action. It's not about the knowing, it's about the doing. And when you do it, and then you know, you know it's the right thing to do. And we've only wasted, if you call it wasted, four to five seconds of our time. But I guarantee you, if you do that, the next hour or so, half an hour, whatever you're doing will turn out better. So it's not wasted, is it? In fact, you're investing in yourself by remembering, re-reminding yourself of what your best is. What is that minimum bar that we're going to set ourselves? It's like a personal best, because we should be able to hit so close to our personal best all the time, because we've done it before. And if you've done it before, you can do it again. But the only reason you can do it again is because you set your intention to do that by going, how do I want to feel? What do I want? Let's break the pattern of the last one to the next one, next thing we're doing. Hope that really made sense. I really do. I do. If there's something that's stopping you, though, I want to dive deeply into this, by the way. The five minute quickies are always like amusing to get me to think of something for a longer podcast so we can use processes and hypnosis and all that stuff. But if there's something you go, it makes sense, Paul, but I can't bloody do it. Something's stopping. Maybe there's a negative emotion when I think about this particular type of thing. Maybe there's a context in your days that you go, well, the rest of the day is great, but this one thing, I get this anxiety or I get this FOMO or I get this imposter syndrome or I get, you know, a sadness, a grief or an emotion I can't even bloody explain. Send me an email, feedback at personaldevelopmentunplugged.com and then I can make sure I can add that into the longer podcast. So I tend to leave like a couple of weeks between the five minute quickie and then the longer muse. So if you listen to this, send me that email. It doesn't take a second, but it does. And do your best in that email. And if there's something you think you could share with somebody, if you think it's, there's a little nugget in here that you'd like everyone else to remind themselves to do their best because it would make the world a wonderful place if we're all trying to do our best, wouldn't it? Even if we don't actually make it, when we strive to do our best, you're going to get there more times than enough, aren't you? Yeah. Anyway, do that. Please share. And I'll see you in the longer podcast. Go muse. Go muse. And then go fly. See ya. So before you leave this unplugged mind of mine, this hypnotic mind, if you enjoyed this podcast or any of the other podcasts, please do subscribe. It helps this podcast grow and affect so many more people. And we love to leave everyone in a better place than we found them. And this will help, help the podcast. It will help you and it will help, well, everyone that you know. So if you can just subscribe and share, share this podcast to everyone you blooming well know. That's the only cost. Pay it forward to everyone. And when you do that, boom, we are all going to make a difference to this little old planet earth of ours and the people in it. But let's make a good world. A nice world. Okay. Okay. You can now prepare to leave this unplugged mind. Warning. You are now leaving the unplugged mind of Paul Clough. It's time to fly. Be brave, my friend. Personal development unplugged. Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited Personal development [self improvement] [self development] [NLP] [Hypnosis]