3 Surprising Habits That Will CHANGE YOUR LIFE

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to One to One with James Laughlin. I'm a former world champion and now I work with and coach professional athletes, entrepreneurs and CEOs of billion dollar companies. I'm going to share with you in this episode some of the insights and strategies, some of the tools that I use with my clients. Every week I'll bring you an insight, an action or a tool that will help you go from great to to greatest. My mission is to cut through the noise and help give you the tools that truly transform your mindset and help you to take the right actions towards your desired outcome. So let's dive in. A very special thanks to NZ Mortgages for sponsoring this episode of the Lead On Purpose podcast. You can check them out at nzmortgages Co nz. Would you like to know one habit that will change your your life? I imagine that's a yes and that's why you clicked on this. So it's James Laughlin here. It's time for one to one. Every week I bring you one to one coaching that I share with my clients, both on the field, off the field and in the boardroom. So these are three habits that actually changed my life. These are three habits that I really wanted to share with you because they're simple and all good habits when you look at them are common sense. But as I've said so many times before, common sense isn't always common practice and I want to share with you some of the most important habits to set yourself up for success. As many of you know, I've mentioned it a few times now. I've got a book coming out this year with HarperCollins. They've been an amazing publisher to deal with all around habits. In particular those of the most high performing people in business, sport, financial, philanthropy, politics, science and beyond. I've spent years working with, coaching and interviewing those people and that book's going to come out later in the year, so stay tuned. Now let's talk about these three habits that really shaped and changed my life significantly. Number one, you're going to laugh at this one. Three liters of water. Three liters of water every day. Keep it simple by hydrating. This is my little bad boy here, My one liter flask that I take everywhere with me. I geek out on this because it's my Antarctic one. And of course that was a very special trip that I can't stop talking about. But in Antarctica, I mean, it says on the bottle you're going to have a laugh. It says here, hydrate or die. For those that are on video, I'll hold it up so you know I'm not just making that up. It does. It says hydrate or die. Indicators that you may be dehydrated include headaches, constipation. So, yeah, if you're struggling to poo, maybe this one's for you. Elevated heart rate, skin rashes or dryness, sleeplessness, feeling sluggish and bad tempered. For you grumpy buggers out there, inability to regulate your body temperature. It says here, if uncertain how to stay hydrated, follow instructions as outlined below. Take bottle, unscrew lid, place bottle under tap. Fill bottle, drink contents, refill bottle. Repeat above steps three times. Right. They have a good sense of humor down on the ice and particularly with the Antarctic NZ program. So hydration down there is do or die. But it is every day for you and I, I want you to think about, okay, you maybe have half a liter of water a day, that's enough, is it? Well, I've had Dr. Dana Cohen on the show and she's an expert on hydration, wrote an amazing book called Quench. And she talks about the ability to perform those cognitive tasks, executive decision making, thinking. It all comes down to how well hydrated you are. So if you're dehydrated, you're not making the best decisions that you could, you're not responding as quick as you might be able to, you're possibly a little more grumpy, you're feeling these physiological things like constipation, sluggishness, poor sleep and so forth. So I want you to really think about how much water you actually drink. I used to always go, oh, probably seven or eight cups. I think today I've just ruled out the friction. When it comes to habit installation, friction is the biggest killer. It's when you're trying to say, not drink alcohol, but you've got wine in your fridge, that's pretty easy going. But if you take the wine out the fridge, that creates the friction, right? So you're not going to go there. So I want you to think about water. For me, I have to have a 1 liter bottle of water. I fill it up at 6:30am and I start going at it. And usually the front half of the day is when I drink most of it. I like to kind of slow down at night so I'm not up at 2am peeing. But if I have a bottle like this, I know three of those a day. Plus I have the odd cup of tea. And coffee actually counts, just so you know. Dr. Dana Cohen said that up to four cups of coffee counts as hydrating, after which it becomes dehydrating. So your coffee counts as well, but not if you're having six, seven, eight of them. So I have three of those bad boys. And then of course, in your food, I eat a lot of plant based food. Not fully plant based, I have the odd little cheat, you know, meal. But plant based food has a lot of natural water content in it. So I want you to be thinking about that. Why? You'll feel better, you'll operate better, you'll think better, you'll be operating at a much, much higher level. So let me share the second one with you. And this one to me is one that most of us struggle with. A lot of the clients that I work with, so some of them are CEOs and running large companies, they're busy, they're busy being busy and they sit on their butts a lot. Now what happens when you sit in your arse all day? Well, you live a shorter life. Not only your lifespan is shortened and this is proven, but your health span shortened. So movement. So here I, you know, work from home often, if I'm not speaking on stages or working with teams, I'm at home and I can sit a lot. I write, I create content, I have to clear a ton of emails, I can be sitting a lot. So Caroline decided she'd get a treadmill, pop it under the desk. So when I'm not filming like this or doing something that requires me to be on screen, I'm on the treadmill, responding to emails, just walking, of course, not sprinting, but I'm able to get 10,000 plus steps a day. Now, the science shows that most humans only need 8,000 on average, not the 10,000 that's being reported, but I aim for 10,000 plus when I'm on the treadmill during the day, I'll maybe get 12 to 18,000 steps. So that has really changed my life. Why? Because I just feel better. I've got More energy. I come off and my heart rate's elevated. And there's some days when we just have to plunk ourselves down and get the mahi done, get the work done, get the emails cleared. Whatever you're doing that you need you to sit down, it's still got to get done, right? But you could be standing on a treadmill, walking with a desk in front of you. Standing desk, they're awesome. So I'd highly recommend recommend you look at how you can get your steps and if you work for someone, ask them, can you get me a standing desk and a treadmill? Greatest investment they can make in you. Why? You'll be more alert, you'll be happier, healthier, less sick days. That thing will pay itself off in a hurry. If you work for yourself, do yourself a favor, go and get a standing desk and a treadmill. It's just so simple, right? Okay, so last but not least, what's that last habit that I feel that has really changed my life? Can you guess? Come on. I know you can. If you've been listening before, you'll know what I'm about to say. Journaling, Specifically high performance journaling. I've got my own journaling approach and journaling method that I share with my clients. High performance journalers journal every day at the same time. They use structure, they have questions that they answer that help them to dial it in to get really clear on wmi, what's most important. So get yourself a journal and start journaling. I do it every morning and every night. Some people that might be a bit much. So maybe you'll pick one or the other. But every morning I start with what I'm grateful for. I am grateful for three things I'll then talk about. My MVP for the day is and for those that I have worked with in the past or you've came to my event, you'll know what MVP stands for. Most valued priority. Singular priority. Priorities was never meant to be. It was always supposed to be priority. One thing. When you've got too many priorities, you've got a to do list. So what's my priority professionally and what's my MVP personally? Each day I know exactly what I'm stepping into and wmi, what's most important. So I want to challenge you to pick one of those. If you don't already do them. Which one seems easiest? Do that. Pick the low hanging fruit and do that now. As you know, habits take 66 days to install. That's the point where we get to what's called automaticity. When you take a new habit and you get to the 66 day point, you're at the point of automaticity. According to research from University College London, it takes on average 66 days to do that, so a couple of months. So if you're going to pick three liters of water, start noting it down somewhere. You know today's date, the next day's date, the next as you're doing it. Tracking there's something very powerful that happens when we track our progress and track our goals and then score it off when we get there. Please do that. Please take the time to do that. Look, if you've enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and until next time, please get out there and lead your life on purpose. A very special thanks to NZ Mortgages for sponsoring this episode of the Lead on Purpose podcast. You can check them out @nzmortgages.co nz. Thanks for tuning in to Lead on Purpose. If you find this episode valuable, please share it with one person that you think might benefit from it. 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