The Formula for Making Hard Decisions

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.

What's the next big decision that that you've got to make? Let's face it, we've all got big difficult decisions ahead. Do we take left or do we take right? Do we go with that career or do we go with that? Do we pursue this relationship or wait for the next relationship? Look, there's always times in our lives when we've got big decisions to make and often they can be hard decisions. Should I go to that wedding or should I take the weekend and climb in the hills with some friends? Hard decision, right? Should I go and do the yoga session at 6:30 at night or should I watch the latest episode of something on Netflix with hot chocolate? Hard decision, right? So I believe when we've got a process or a formula for making hard decisions, it makes it so much easier in the moment to do what we know is going to serve us. And that's what high performance is. It's about continual upward trajectory, continual growth, continual movement in the direction that we know we want to go. None of us want to get more unhealthy. None of us want to get more overweight. None of us want to make poor food choices. None of us want to have relationships that deteriorate. I know that more than any I've had relationships in the past that deteriorated went through marital separation. That's hard. How do we make better decisions when those hard moments face us? Well, look, I wanted to share something with you and please write this one down. If you're driving, pull over, write this One down, it'll take you a minute. So, so valuable. I know it will serve you right now. It will serve you today, this week, this month. But there's going to come a time when you need to make a decision. Here is your formula for doing that. And look, I'm not going to take credit for this. I have to put full credit on to Renzi Hannam. Renzi is my mentor. He has been for some time now. He's an incredible, incredible man. He's in his 70s, he's a black belt in karate and he's a musician. He done a lot of the sports mental skills training for some of our top athletes and top teams still does that. And we get to go for walks every now and then. And he helps me make those hard decisions. And he came up with this really simple formula and it's an easy one to remember, but it's really powerful. It's helped me to say no to certain business opportunities. It's helped me to say yes to certain things in my personal life. And I want to share it with you. And the acronym is Dapper D A P P dapp.

The D stands for detach. So when you're making a tough decision, often your emotions are heightened. Often there's a lot invested. Your heart rate might even be increased when things are tough. So you got to detach. What does that mean? You got to remove yourself emotionally and maybe even physically from the place, from the. From the decision, from the carnage. How do we do that? A great way to detach is to walk in nature, is to exercise. From a vigorous cardio standpoint is to meditate, box breathe even. But you can detach by closing your eyes, focusing on something positive. You can go out in nature. All those different things will help you to detach once you've detached and only once you've detached. The A in Dapper stands for assess. Don't try and assess the situation when you're in the heat of it. If you're in a crashed car and it's burning, you don't sit and assess the situation while you're in the car going, huh? What are my options here? You get out of the car, you detach from the car, you move away from it in case it blows up, and then you assess. Right? It's no different with any situation in your life. In a relationship, at work, if there's something major that needs to be decided, detach first. And when you detach, you can look at it from an aerial point of view and assess the full situation. A Great question to ask in the assess part of this equation is what's really going on here? What are all the factors at play here? Those two questions alone will allow you to assess the situation really in depth. Now, the first P in DAPR is prioritize. Now that you've detached and you've assessed the situation, your next question is, what is my number one priority? And in the case of a, you know, car accident, the car's on fire, it could be to call for help, it could be to remove someone from that car, could be to move away from the car further right. But what's your number one priority? And maybe you've got two or three key priorities, but you shouldn't have 10.

Then the next P stands for plan. Now that you're clear on your priorities or priority, what will be the plan to actually take action on that? Write down, here's my plan, here's how we'll do it, here's when we'll do it, here's what it will look like. What's your plan? Most people jump straight to plan when they've got a decision to make. Okay, yep, done. And we'll go straight to planning. But you and I, we've just went from detaching so that we have a better heightened awareness. Then we assessed the whole situation, then we set our priorities, then we planned. Now, once we've got a plan, we don't want to be sitting in a holding pattern. We need to move right. So that's when we get to the E in dapper, which stands for execution. So many people talk a good game, so few take big action. You've got to execute on your plan. You got to execute on it exactly, precisely, succinctly. But you've got to take action. And when you execute on that, you're going to be given what you're going to be given information. You're going to be given feedback in the form of outcomes. Am I moving towards resolving these challenges and having solutions for these problems, or am I not? That's when you go to R in dapr, which stands for review. Review. Did my plan work? Did I take the correct execution on that plan? Am I moving forward? If the answer is no, go back up to D, detach again, assess, prioritize, plan, execute, review. If you did get a better outcome, brilliant in the review, you'll go, okay, what did I do well there? What can I apply the next time I have to make a similar decision, but I want you to have that certainty and that formula around making hard decisions. And at the end of the day, sometimes there are no good choices. You've got to make the least bad choice, right? Sometimes in life, that's the situation and that's just how it is. And I want you to think, okay, in certain situations, there won't be a brilliant choice, but there will be the least worst choice. Now what I'd love to ask you to do is please take a moment to share the podcast with one, just one friend. That would be a huge help. And if you'd really like to contribute and help the podcast grow, please leave me a rating review and subscribe to me on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. It really helps me to continue operating lead on purpose and to get that message out and bring on the most incredible guests. So folks, for now, please get out there and lead your life on purpose.

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