#452 The Key To Unlocking Your Potential

Anxiety to Confidence - The Personal Development Unplugged Podcast

The Key To Unlocking Your Potential

What if everything you want is already within you—just waiting for permission to emerge?

In this unplugged deep dive, I share the true, no-fluff key to unlocking your potential… and it’s not just motivational fluff or clickbait—it’s practical, doable, and wildly empowering.

You'll explore:

• What potential really is (and the Latin origin may surprise you)

• Why you’re not living up to it (yet)

• How to smash that invisible box of limiting beliefs

• A simple 10-minute imagination exercise that can change everything

• How to prime your unconscious mind for success

• The tiny, powerful decision that turns dreaming into doing

No guru-speak. No hype. Just honest tools to unlock your inner power and go further than you thought possible.

Because your potential isn’t fixed. It’s only limited by one thing… and it’s time to break that.

"You choose to empower yourself. I’ll give you the key—you turn it." — Cloughie

Listen now and take the first step toward your true, limitless self.

Share this with your friends, start a WhatsApp group like Paul’s boys did, and spread the power of potential.

https://personaldevelopmentunplugged.com/452-the-key-to-unlocking-your-potential

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].

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Music Credits

Music by Wataboi, DreamHeaven, ccjmusic, and others 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

And what a title, eh? What a title. The Key to Unlocking Your Potential. And it's not clickbait, by the way.

It's not clickbait, because I do have a key. But think of this, though, first, as a question to you. Why is unlocking your potential, my potential, anybody's potential, important? I know we think it's obvious.

And it's also probably hiding in plain sight. Because there's a question. Do you ever ask yourself, am I living up to my potential? Well, I'm guessing you probably don't.

It could be just me, though. I don't know. It could be just me.

I know I don't. I don't ask that. I strive for it sometimes.

I strive for it the best I can, set my intentions. But do I ever look back and go, was I really living up to my potential? The other question we never ask is, what would happen if we did? What would happen if we did ask that? Are we living up to our potential? And again, the answer is probably bloody not. Or is that just me again? Because when we get into what really potential is, we can never actually be living it, I guess.

But we can strive to be better than we were. And we have that striving to live to our potential, be living a life with the aim of being over our potential, up to our potential. If I'm trying to get the words right, you see, if you just think that with me, just for a moment, what would it be like? What would it be like if you were living a life, living up to your potential? What would it be like? What would you feel? What would it feel like when you're doing all the things you want to do? And they're probably way beyond your thoughts at this moment.

Because we're not probably living up to our potential anyway. So what would our potential be? But if we could just shake off any limits in our head, in our mind, what might you be doing? What would your potential allow you to do? What would it attract you to? Just for a moment, I'm sure you're thinking about it just as I am. Imagine it now.

Now take off those shackles, any limiting beliefs, because they're the buggers that, well, they just get in the way, don't they? Just imagine if you took away every limiting belief that you have. You forgot about all those negative experiences of the past. And you were doing the thing or things you were meant to be doing on this world, living up to your potential.

What might you be doing? Yeah, it's hard to see sometimes, but if you, I can know if I can't see exactly what I might be doing. I know it'd be at least minimum, twice as much as I'm doing now. I'd be twice as successful as I am now.

And I don't mean successful as in, oh, you're big, you're getting all this, you're doing that. No, twice as successful in the things that I want to do. I'd be achieving twice as much as I set out to do.

I'd be reaping the benefits of that. And that could be in richness as in monetary, but it could be richness in experiences, meeting people, learning from people, mentoring people, getting taught, being a mentee, because you would put yourself out there because you'd want to make sure that you are living that life. Play with it just for a moment.

So take off those shackles, limiting beliefs, just disappear, past experiences disappear. And if you could have whatever you wanted, which is in some ways potential, what might you see? What might you hear? And then just feel it, feel it, feel what it might be like. And that's just to whet your appetite.

That's just a snippet. You see, I think we need to, there's so many questions here. What limits your potential? You know, think about it now, what does or what is limiting your potential? And for me, my thoughts were, it's a box we allow ourselves to live in.

We choose to live in. Choose, choose to live in a box. Yeah, a box where we let past experiences define us.

And those past experiences create limiting beliefs. And most of those limiting beliefs are not even our own. Where do we get them from? Well, we either got them from other people, mainly our parents.

Where do they get them from? Well, maybe their parents and their grandparents and grand, all those generations ago and the world is changing so much. Those limiting beliefs are just what they are. They're limiting beliefs, trying to do a good thing for you.

I know, but they're no longer appropriate. And we're choosing to allow them to be the walls of this box that we choose to live in. And I'm picking my words quite carefully, you're choosing to live in.

And it could be me, by the way. But I know this is like just being safe sometimes in this box. It feels safe in the way that which is not a comfort zone.

It's just a zone that we we just know it. We just know we're here. And we don't want to go above or outside the boundaries.

And to keep you in there. We'll even have those wonderful beliefs either. I'm not good enough, that'll keep you in the box.

Or I'll never be good enough. Oh, shit. That's even going to take you even further into the future because I'll never be good.

I'm not just right now. Right now, I'm not good enough. But in the future, I'm not good enough.

And it's any of all that any of all that any of all that true. No, it's bloody bullshit, isn't it? We know it now. But we're choosing to live in this box made up of these limiting beliefs made up from past experiences.

And the past is a bloody past and the past is gone. We can learn from them. So we get even better in the future, not unlearn from them, as it were, and make the box even stronger.

Now I know on certain things, I've managed to do that. I managed to change some limiting beliefs, because by the way, I do all this for a living. Therapy, NLP and all that stuff.

But yeah, I'm a human as well. Guess what? I'm a human. And yeah, things come and blindside us, but you work at it.

You can change but sometimes you have to work really hard. Because even though these processes are easy, they're not complicated. I don't do complicated processes.

But they do take effort, that effort is rewarded so much. And that effort is really just sometimes just choosing by setting your intention. And I think we can all see that little box just imagines now being in that box, which is strengthened by those limiting beliefs, and now the lack of imagination.

And I can understand that. Let's give us give ourselves just a little bit of ease there. Because we've had that, excuse me, we've had that imagination knocked out of us by those experiences, by other people.

We've listened to other people, we've been affected by the noise outside. But I've decided, I've decided that's not going to happen. No more.

Not going to happen to you, not going to happen to me. And it's not going to happen to you if you choose, just sitting in this moment, just for a moment, to play. Play with your mind, play with your imagination.

And then let's just see what happens. Let's just see what happens. So just for a moment, look around, look around and notice everything that you can see.

Yeah, the chair, the lights, maybe you're looking at a computer, maybe you've got your telephone out or whatever it is. But even outside that, everything you see, everything you see was first an idea. And that idea was sparked by imagination and then action.

And that imagination and action was supported by the belief of something like, I can do this. Ah, I get to do that. I get to do this.

Everything you see, absolutely everything, everything you read about, even the book, even whatever, all started with an idea sparked by imagination. And the most, well, they're really powerful beliefs, but they're really subtle. They're just, I can do this.

Because when you believe I can do this, you bloody can. Right, the technical bit, sort of technical. I had to look at what potential is, as in the definition, because I thought, well, we can talk about potential all you like, but what are we actually talking about? And I looked at the Latin.

Yeah, I didn't understand a word of it, but I did find out potential is being able, which allows you to have power and currently unrealised ability. Now think of that currently unrealised ability, which means you have the ability, but it's just unrealised. Because you are able and when you are able, and you do realise this, you have power, which is your potential.

And it's unlimited, by the way. There is only one limit on your potential. And there's only one person who can limit that potential.

You know the answer. So frigging obvious, it's you, but it's a limit of your imagination. Who puts a limit on your imagination? That fucking box that we created, we chose.

So if we chose it, we created it, we can just let it disappear now. Because you have the ability. You're just not realising yet.

Yet, yet, capital Y-E-T, yet. You see, I made a note, who sets the limit to your potential? And I just wrote fucking you. Sorry about the swearing, but I did.

You and the use of your imagination. Who sets a limit on your imagination? I actually wrote fucking you again. Just me, all me.

I'm talking about myself, by the way. Because it's like when I write these notes, I'm writing notes to myself. It's like sometimes my unconscious mind gives me a good kick out the backside.

And that's it, full stop. That's all there is. It's you.

It's me. I limit my potential. You're limiting yours.

And I don't care. You might say, yeah, but I'm the most successful person in the world. You could have more if you wanted it.

If you choose not to, there you go. That's fine. But I think we could all do something better.

Even if you're wonderful in career, maybe we could have a better relationship. Maybe if we had a better relationship, we could maybe become a better mentor. If we were a better mentor, we could help people.

We could do things. The limit of your imagination of what your potential is, is for you to find. Not the limit that is, but what your potential and your direction is.

And how do you do that? You have to suspend those limiting beliefs. Park them. That's shit anyway.

They're not doing any good. Oh, I'm not good enough. I'll never be good enough.

Who bloody knows? Nobody. So, suspend those limiting beliefs. Park them.

You can bring them back later if they're going to serve you. Bloody not, are they? But anyway, then just give yourself permission to dream. That's all it is.

Dreaming. And because it's only dreaming, it's not an issue. You can't have an issue of, I'm not good enough, I'll never be good enough, because it's a bloody dream.

And if you're dreaming, it's possible. If you dream something that is possible, it makes it possible in your head. So give yourself permission to dream.

That's all we're doing. Dreaming at the moment. Not telling you to do anything, just dream.

And how do you do that? You unlock your imagination. Because again, it's just dreaming, using your imagination. And that's the answer.

This is the answer. This is how you find that key. Don't know what the lock is.

I do, but this is the key. So think, just for a moment. And these are some things I was thinking.

You know, how do we do this then? It's all very well for Cluffy to say, oh, just suspend those limiting beliefs, park them over there, and dream and use your imagination. We'll do it this way. Put 10 minutes aside.

10 minutes, Cluffy? I haven't got 10 minutes. You've got half an hour to doom scroll. You've got 10 minutes to stop doom scrolling and dream.

Because I guarantee you, once you start dreaming, you will start to see things, maybe online, maybe in books, maybe hear things from a podcast, maybe the personal development type. Unplugged, that is. Things will be attracted to you.

But when you dream for 10 minutes, I want you to give yourself total freedom to create. What does that mean? There's no critic. There is no criticism.

Oh, that can't be done. Oh, that's not an option. No criticism, no self critique.

Nobody else gets to see this, by the way. So you've got nothing to worry about. No imposter syndrome here, because it's a piece of paper and a pen and a pencil or whatever you want.

Write it down. You could do it on a computer. But that's pretty anal.

Use your hands and a pen. They'll flow. It'll flow.

And take 10 minutes to just dream. What could I do? What would I want to do? If I had no limits, what would I start doing now? If I could do it now, what would it be? What belief could I have that would support me on it? What would be the most supportive belief to allow me to do this? And it's just your imagination. It's just a dream.

So it could be anything. And things like I get to do this. I've got this.

I can learn. I don't know all of this, but I could learn. And then you go, well, I wonder what my potential is.

What direction would my potential take me? How do you use your life? How do you use your body, your mind, your words? I always like to leave a little bit for selfless service. How can I serve people with what I know? Because everybody wants to know what you know, if they don't know it. And write it down.

Don't just think. Just let that pen go. Don't let it stop writing, basically.

For 10 minutes, just let that pen just keep going and going and going. First few might be a bit random. I'm not sure about it.

Keep going. And all of a sudden things will start happening. And even as you get one, you might go, oh, well, what that allowed me to do? Or what would that bring? And just keep going.

You're not trying to find the how. You're not trying to find the why. You're not trying to find anything like that.

You're just imagining. You're dreaming. If I was living to my true potential, what form might that take? What direction might that take? You can also put, you know, what would that give me? What would that get me to do? What would be the next bit? What opportunities? What people would I see? And then when you've done that for 10 minutes, you can take a breath.

Now, you could go doom strolling. I think I said that right. Doom scrolling or anything else.

Sometimes it's good to go for a walk just for a moment, get it out of your head. But effectively, I want you to set another few minutes aside and give yourself permission again to pick one. Pick one that excites you.

And it may be totally out of this world, but it excites you. Well, I could never do that. No, that's a criticism.

That's a limiting belief that created that bloody box we used to live in. This is imagination. This is dreaming.

No limit on your imagination. No limit on your dream. So just pick one, one that just comes out of the page and excites you.

Close your eyes. It's easy to close your eyes. And then imagine doing it.

Imagine doing it now. You've learned all this stuff, or you're learning this stuff. You're on your way.

This is one of the steps. See what you'd see. See it now.

Hear what's going on. Maybe there's a smell, a taste, I don't know. And then feel.

Feel what it would be like when you're doing it. Because this is the essence of this dream. The feeling.

The feeling of the wish fulfilled, we call it. But this feeling that you generate through your dreams, your imagination is going straight into your unconscious mind. And as you say the words, this or something better, your best friend, your unconscious mind, it's going to find ways.

It will. It will find ways. The reticulating activating system, which is biological, will start to notice your unconscious mind and your conscious mind will start to notice things that are attracted to that dream, that imagination.

Opportunities will appear. Coincidences will be there. Because you'll start taking action.

Yeah. And the thing is, how long did it take? It took 10 minutes sitting down quietly. No distractions.

Oh, wow. If nothing else, 10 minutes of quiet with no distractions. And just being able to play is awesome.

And then taking two minutes to imagine doing it now. And you can do those two minutes anytime, anywhere. You can just sit down and imagine.

And what are we doing when we're imagining? We're priming, priming our unconscious mind. We're priming our imagination even more. Because the more you do this, your imagination muscle gets bigger, stronger, better.

You get to enjoy it even more. When you enjoy it even more, you get, you just get better at it because you can't get not better at it because you, it's just yours, your imagination. And it'll just work.

Now, having said all of that, all of that, having said all of that, you have to make a decision. And what's that decision? You have to choose something. You're going to have to choose what you're going to do next.

Now, if you've ever listened to me and listened to the thing I talk about called the five keys to success, you can, I've even got a hypnosis track on it, I think at paulcloughonline.com forward slash podcast. And it's five keys to success. But the second one, the second key is to take action, intuitive action, continuous action, inspired action.

And the inspiration comes from your imagination. The intuition comes from your unconscious mind created from or from the thoughts that you have, that imagination. And then if you go to start doing things, and you go back to those first pages that you wrote out in those 10 minutes, you might find there's even more stuff you can put down and write them down so you don't forget the bugger.

But you have to take that action now. So set some time aside if you would. I mean, if you want to live to your potential, fine, if you don't, then what you're doing here, but organise 10 minutes, piece of paper, big piece of paper, if you can go mad, get an A4 book and open it up becomes A3.

It's massive. And you can just go for 10 minutes, set yourself a time 10 minutes, you can do more if you want. But 10 minutes is a good time just to go wild in your imagination to let loose.

Because it's only dreaming, you will not be able to thank me enough. When you do this, because the things that it's going to produce, it is the key to living to your potential. It is.

I'll do more on this as well. But this is the key. This is the basic of the key.

And you have it in your hand. You have it in your heart, you have in your body, you have an imagination, you have it everywhere, this key. But there's only one thing you have to choose to take the action to first of all, set the 10 minutes aside, then you just have to have that big decision to spend two minutes imagining, priming your unconscious mind.

And if you wanted to do two minutes on another one that jumps out of you, because you find those feelings will be something so intense now inside that your unconscious mind has to do something for you. It's as simple as that. So there you go.

That's the longer podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. I did.

I enjoyed doing this. But I had a couple of notes what I said about this. And it was, you know, what I really want to tell you.

And the message is, I guess, you choose to empower yourself, full stop. I'll give you one way. There's plenty of others.

But this is, this is the dog's bollocks. It really is. And what I'd like you to feel is excited to think and curious, excited and curious what was going to come out of those 10 minutes and excited and curious what you're going to start imagine doing and excited and curious and taking action.

That's my dream. That's my dream. I've dreamed of you doing it.

And I know how it makes me feel when I do that. So do enjoy, do enjoy. Please share this with everyone you can always say that but I do ask, I wonder, do you really share this? My son set up a lovely little WhatsApp group for his brothers and myself, when we find a good, good podcast episode, or a book or something, we just throw it into that WhatsApp group.

And we go, Oh, I'll go and listen to that. Oh, I'll go and read about that. And that's just between ourselves.

But then we share it to other people to you might want to do the same, but please do share the podcast. So people get to know a little bit more about their potential. So they can choose to empower themselves.

Okay, my friend, have fun. And yeah, you go fly. Warning, you are now leaving the unplugged mind of Paul Clough.

It's time to fly. Be brave, my friend. Personal Development Unplugged

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Personal development [Unplugged] [podcast][NLP][Hypnosis][self development]self improvement][awareness]