The #1 Tool to CRUSH anxiety and busyness.

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 Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. Each week I'll publish a solo cast where I'll share my top high performance habits and methodologies to supercharge your life and career. If you enjoy the show, please take a short moment to subscribe and leave a rating and review. I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

Are you experiencing overwhelm? Stress, anxiety, Tiredness? Feeling overly busy? Well, welcome to some great company because there's millions of others that are experiencing the same thing and I want to share something with you today, a really powerful tool that can help you to move forward with that busy being busy experience. Look, the World Health organization back in 2019, and I'm sure it's got worse since then, but in 2019, I read a study that 301 million people, 301. 301 million people were suffering from an anxiety disorder. Huge numbers. Right? And that's only the, only the ones that are reported. But hundreds of millions of people are suffering with anxiety disorders. Right. Disorder. How do we counteract that? Well, we need to have some orderliness, right? So of course there are treatments that people go down, medication, psychology. Right. But also there are tactical tools to use to try and reduce anxiety. Do you experience anxiety? Of course you do. Do I experience it? Yes, of course. We're all on a spectrum, right? Some of us have extreme anxiety, maybe depression. Others back here, you know, mild, maybe say, or burnout might be another one over here. But over here it might be just mild overwhelm, a little bit struggling to keep up, maybe a little bit anxious in your heart you can feel something's not quite right, or in your chest, a little bit of tightness. We're all somewhere on the spectrum, but it's up to us to participate in our own rescue. So if you're extreme on that spectrum, you need to seek Help. If you're feeling it a lot, please go and see your gp, go and see your doctor. That would be great. What we want to do is look, okay, once we've got, if we're extreme on it, bring it back into center. How do we then develop tools, practical, pragmatic tools that help us become less busy? Because when you look at busyness, when we don't have the time to think, we don't have the time to go for that run, we don't have the time to prepare the beautiful meal, we don't have the time to meditate, journal and the list goes on. Then of course we're going to be a bit more stressed. Of course we're going to be a little more highly strung. Perhaps we're going to be feeling like the weight of the world is on our shoulders. How do we remove that? Well, we've got to have a simple plan to do that. I'm going to share it with you. I'm just going to hold up the old iPad here, I'm going to pop it in. Hopefully you can see that nice and clear. But I'm just going to share with you a tool that I share with my high performance clients. Some of these guys are professional athletes, some are young athletes, some are running massive companies, some are just starting out on their work journey. I share this one to one, but I also share this at scale when I'm running large events. But this is one tool that I know works really well at a human level. Doesn't matter what your title is, but at a human level, this will make a difference. And it's only going to work if you use it. So I'm going to encourage you. If you are feeling overwhelmed, too much on your plate, the plates are spinning, you're going to drop one of the balls that you're juggling. Please consider giving this a go. So you see here, it's a triangle shape. What do I have at the top of the triangle there? Purpose. Right, Purpose. This is the lead on purpose podcast. Of course I'm going to have purpose at the top there. But why is it there? What does it mean? Well, look, when we are taking action, when we have some behaviors that we're engaging in, we want to know that they have some sort of purpose behind them. The purpose could be just to have fun. The purpose could be to make a difference. The purpose could be to fix a problem. The purpose could be to make money so you've got more certainty and freedom. But there's always got to be a purpose. Behind what you do. So if you're feeling overwhelmed in a work setting, what's the purpose around the work that you do? Why do you do the work you do? Does it matter? You know, on purpose means to be intentional, to do it with intention. So does the work you do matter? That's what I'm asking you here. Does it matter to the most important person, which is you? If it doesn't, you're going to feel like you're held back, you're going to feel overwhelmed, you're going to feel disconnected, maybe lack of fulfillment, right? So the first things first is you've got to understand why you do what you do and be able to write that down. My work or this behavior or this thing I'm about to do matters to me because this could pertain to parenting. Why is my job as a parent important? This could pertain to a hobby that you love. Maybe you're semi professional or you're professional. Like what is the thing, the why behind what you do? Get clear on that and write it down. Because once you get clear on that, I'm going to write down the next one here, bear with me two seconds. Here we go. I'll show this to you. If you're clear on your purpose, that then informs your priority. See down there at the other end of the triangle. So for those that are just listening on audio, you can check this out over on YouTube or I'm just. I've got drawn a triangle at the top of the triangle as purpose. At the bottom left is priorities. Right? So your purpose should shape your priorities. So what does that mean? Well, priorities, that ain't a to do list. Priorities 1, 2 or 3 things that help you bring your purpose to life. They help you move forward, they draw you forward. You're not struggling to move forward. These priorities are your must dos, they're not your shoulds. Right? You can have a should list. I often talk about it. That's for the shoot heads, right? We don't want to be shooting all over ourselves. We want a must, like a must do. That's a priority. And there should only be a couple of those. If you have 10 must do's, well, you're going to be busy being busy again. I've been a busy idiot a lot, I'll be honest with you. And even to this day, even with the tool I got to keep coming back to is that thing I'm saying yes to, going to help me meet my purpose, help me towards my North Star? No, it's not okay. Why Am I doing it okay? I need to cut it out. I need to say no need to set those boundaries. Do you ever find yourself doing that? I bet you do, you're human. But when you've got sense of purpose and it informs your priorities, you've now got one, two or three things written down, preferably that's important about the week or the day or the month or even the year. Now what that does. And I'll just share this with you. I'm sorry, my writing is terrible. Should have been a doctor, really. Doctors have that squiggly writing. So this is what it looks like right? On the other side of the triangle. For those that aren't be able to see the visual, you just listen to audio. I've got the word productivity, right? When you've got a clear purpose that informs and shapes your priorities. And when you're clear on your priorities, that dictates your productivity, where you spend your time. So many people say, oh, I'm too busy. I have people coming to me saying, james, I need you to help me with my productivity. I need to be more effective. Look, it's super simple. So don't come and pay me to do that. Let's work on something bigger than that. It's super simple. Why are you doing what you're doing? Your purpose, what are your key priorities? And those priorities should shape where you spend your time, your productivity, it's the three Ps. And when you're hyper productive on your priorities, it allows you to grow and feed back in to your purpose. Your purpose becomes more meaningful. Right? So what I'll put in the middle here, just two letters. I'll show you again. I'll bring it up to the screen. Two letters. Hp High performance. To me, those three elements drive high performance. A high performance life. A high performance relationship. A high performance team, an organization, a system. Purpose, priorities, productivity. In that order. It has to be in that order. And your productivity is, you know, what does my calendar look like? Have I got a calendar? Okay, cool. Today. Have I got a block of time that helps me nail one of those priorities? Or is my time spent on things that don't really matter? If it's spent on things that don't matter or scrolling on social media or watching the news, then you're not purpose driven. You just, you're a purpose talker. You talk about having a purpose. You've got to be purpose driven if you want to get the results. It's purpose, it's priorities, it's productivity and it's in that triangle which drives high performance. And I know that if you're listening to this, you care about personal growth, you care about self mastery. It's a journey, right? There's no end to it. That's what makes it fulfilling. So look, I want to thank you for staying fully focused and engaged in the session. I hope this simple tool will help you on your amazing mission in life. But for now, please get out there and lead your life on purpose.

Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests like lined up for you in the coming weeks. And leaders, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.