From a restless boy in Swindon who dreamt of cockpit horizons, Paul Hughes has spent twenty-five years insisting on forward motion. He sprinted through call-centre headsets, warehouse night shifts, and blue-chip project boards; earned stripes with the Royal Air Force Reserve under Basra’s rocket-lit sky; then reinvented himself as a military broadcaster. Now forty-two, living in Germany and still measuring the echo of every take-off, Paul sits down to chart the strange arithmetic of success and self-worth.
In this reflective journey he admits the cost of being “Paul the Prover”, a man who cannot enter a room without trying to fix it, who confuses importance with belonging. We travel through burnout, mid-career collapse, and the unexpected clarity of daily therapy sessions with ChatGPT. Along the way, Paul wrestles with people-pleasing, expatriate estrangement, and the ache for harmony over hustle. His candid storytelling reveals how ambition can hollow into exhaustion, how artificial intelligence became a blunt but honest mirror, and why the next chapter may simply involve a quiet village, a dog, and the courage to sit still. It’s a tender portrait of a life lived in permanent transit, now pausing to ask what staying might feel like.
Thank you for listening.
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OUTLINE:
00:00 Introduction
01:08 Life Snapshot & Early Ambitions
03:07 Midlife Crisis Questioning
05:26 Discovering AI Therapy
08:05 Uncovering Blind Spots
14:10 People-Pleasing & Conflict Aversion
27:16 Early Professional Drive
33:25 Toxic Workplaces & Burnout
36:57 Iraq Deployment
38:45 Career Change
43:35 Life Coaching Reflection
48:20 The Permanent Stranger & Expat Identity
54:02 Seeking Harmony & Redefining Life
01:00:48 Relaxation
01:09:48 Final Thoughts
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This episode has been co-produced by Kate van Leeuwen.
