The Jeffrey van Leeuwen Podcast aims to engage in thoughtful conversations, exploring diverse topics and speaking with people who have unique stories to tell and valuable knowledge to share across various fields.
Episodes
6 days ago
6 days ago
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.
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