Avoid These 4 Mistakes or Stay Stuck All Year

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 have you ever set ambitious goals in January only to get to the end of quarter one and be nowhere near it or have dropped the ball totally? Well, join the club. I've been there too. And let's be honest, quarter one is done. It's time now to reflect and get ready for how do we reset and head forward. So I want you to think about why is it that we give up on those goals that we set early in the quarter. Look, I remember maybe six years ago, maybe seven, I made like a public announcement, I'm going to write a book and it's going to get written this year and launched to the world. I was so excited, so passionate and January 1st, started writing, still writing by the end of January, early February. Then life happened. A public holiday kicked in. I think change of season and some sickness kicked in. Yep. By like midway, late way through quarter one, I'd given up on the book, got to the end of the year, was totally annoyed at myself. I'll do it again next year. Year. Guess what? Did the same thing again. There's this kind of syndrome called Blue Monday. And it's this idea that we set goals very early in January, but by the third January Monday, we give up on them. That has happened to me so many times. What about you? Have you ever given up on yourself? Have you ever given up on a goal? I'll tell you what, it really jarred me off. Like I was so annoyed at myself. It's so frustrating when you know you want to do something, you have a passionate reason why you want to do it, but you just don't seem to follow through on it. We're all human. We've all experienced that. If you're saying that you don't, I mean, you're kidding yourself. We've all had these moments where we set big goals, get all excited, tell everybody about it, and fail to show up, fail to call it in. Look, I've geeked out on why people gave up on their goals. That's something for a long time now with the people that I work with who are very high performers, I'll let you know. You know, they are top of the pops, top 1%, but they still procrastinate, they still quit on things, they still get distracted. So I'm always very, very alert as to what it is that gets them off track. And I'm going to share that with you. Look, let's cut to it. Let's cut the fluff. Here is the reason that people don't follow through on their goals. First things first, they're too vague. That's right. Vague goals get vague results. If you're vague, expect nothing in return. You're going to get distracted. So it's really critically clear to be going, am I vague in my thinking? I see this all the time with people, people that want to get healthy. I had a client at one point and he said, I want to lose weight. I said, great, I'll see you next week. He said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Our coaching calls are 40 minutes, James. Where's the other 39 minutes? We just started. I said, no, but you've set your goal. Get after it. I don't want to waste this valuable time. Go for it. So reluctantly, he parted ways, came back next week and he had lost, I don't know, half a kilogram. I said, that's epic. Well done. Now let's find a totally different goal. Non weight related. Let's go somewhere else. And he said, well, James, I haven't reached my goal. I said, well, you have. You said you wanted to lose weight. You went and you lost it. Job done. He says, james, that's not what I mean. Like, I want to lose a lot more weight.

So I kind of chuckled, explained to him what I was trying to achieve with him. And that was, I was acting like his subconscious mind acts. And that was, I've got a job to do, I've now done the job, I've lost the weight, I'll quit. There's no need to put any more effort in. So if you're really vague with your goals, I promise you the chances of you quitting are through the roof. Okay, here's the second reason. People don't install great habits and don't follow through on their big goals towards the start of the year, they have no check ins. No check ins means no accountability. This world of ours, we're living in a world of very little accountability. Look at some of our political leaders around the world. They say what they want, when they want, they flip flop and they waffle. It's horrific. If you want to create meaning and meaningful goals and actually achieve them, it's important that you think about that. If there's no midpoint check ins, you're just not going to be able to nail it at all. It's really, really important that you have midpoint check ins. Okay, next thing, letting setbacks derail the big picture. I am so guilty of this. The book I was telling you about that I started six or seven years ago, it got derailed by a few minor little things. Got derailed by me getting distracted. It got derailed by a little bit of sickness. It got derailed by somebody else's priorities. Has that happened to you? Just take a moment and think. Have I set out to do something and then been derailed by something? Have a wee think. And fourth, the other big thing I see a lot, I see this across a lot of high performers is not having a 90 day plan. I call it a sprint. This is the sprint. If you don't have a 90 day plan, don't bother. Get really clear on what the next 90 days, three months look like. Quarter by quarter by quarter. Crush it. Right, So I want you to think about that, right? I've got one small to do for you. One task. I want you to take five minutes, 10 at most, and I want you to write down three wins and three challenges from this quarter. So from January to this point, that's right, folks, we're almost done with the quarter. What were three wins that you've had personally and professionally? What were three challenges that you've had? Reason. Being, self. Reflection is the seed of self mastery. Taking the time to reflect is so crucially important. Don't be busy being busy on the treadmill of life. Just Busy being busy. Stop reflecting. It's time to look back on the quarter with my clients. I love going deep. Tell me about your quarter. What went well? What didn't go well? What are you proud of? What are you not proud of? What did you achieve? What did you set out to do and you didn't do? I'm asking you to do that right now. Get clear on this last quarter. If this resonates with you and you're ready to reset for quarter two, the quarter that we're about to step into, and have a 90 day roadmap for yourself, then please come and join me for my free masterclass quarter two, or I like to call it Q2. The Q2 reset masterclass is all about helping equip you with the tools to set up an unstoppable quarter so that you don't get to the end of 2025 going, I shoulda, coulda, woulda, I don't want you to do that. You're here listening to this today because you're invested in your own growth. You're keen on making the most out of this incredible life that you've got. So please come and join me on Sunday, April 6 at 7pm New Zealand time. It's absolutely free and I promise you, if you give me 60 minutes of your life, I will give you a 90 day roadmap that will change the trajectory of your entire year. Come and join me for that. I promise you it will be a ton of fun. In the show notes, you'll see a link where you can come and join us and in those 60 minutes we will reflect critically on your previous quarter's progress. We'll identify what's truly moving the needle for you. We'll eliminate those time wasting activities and get down to dollar productive activities. And last but not least, we'll create a crystal clear one page roadmap for you stepping into Q2. So I can't wait to see there. If you're serious about setting up for an incredible year ahead, let's make Q2 count. Come and join me for that free masterclass to reset it. But until then, please get out there and lead your life on purpose. Show notes Guys. Sign up for that masterclass. 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. 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. And if you're serious about levelling up. Please make sure you're subscribed to the show and continue to lead your life on purpose.