The Secret Habit Of World Changers

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 is the secret habit of of World Game Changers? People who are world changers doing amazing things. What's the one thing that they do that's different from everybody else? Look, when I discovered this one thing, it really blew my mind. And of course I'm very fortunate to get to interview Formula One coaches, presidents, prime ministers, Fortune 200 CEOs, people from all walks of life that are doing incredible things in their careers. Some of them started with nothing, others had an amazing privileged start. But the one thing in common is they've got these traits. But this one thing kept coming up in the interviews and I started discovering when I challenged my clients, the different leadership clients that I work with, whether that's one to one or in the large big programs that we run, the high performance leadership programs. When I challenged people to do this one thing and they actually stuck to it, the difference it made was just profound in their personal lives and in their professional lives. It's a very, very simple thing. What do you think it is? If you have to hazard a guess right now, what do you think is the one thing, the one habit, that is the core of what Game Changers actually do? Super simple. That is journaling. You heard me right, Journaling. Now, I was recently met with someone who wants to work with me. One to one, we're chatting about what that would look like and I said, look, there's some heavy lifting that needs to be done. That heavy lifting is doing the work in between coaching sessions. Because coaching sessions are not Consulting sessions. A great coach shouldn't tell you what to do. They should challenge your thinking. They should heighten your awareness and provide you with tools. And I feel that one of the most important tools, and I shared this with the new client, was that to be great at heightening your self awareness, your social awareness and your situational awareness, you must journal. Now journaling is not just, hey, we'll get some fluffy things down on a page. Journaling. To me, when you're a high performing leader and trying to continually grow, it should be really structured. There should be moments to self evaluate and there should be a portion of gratitude there. The one thing when I talk about gratitude, some mostly male leaders will go, what's that soft stuff all about? I'm not writing a gratitude journal. Say, okay, do you think the Navy SEALs are soft? Do you think the SAS are soft? Oh, no, no, of course I don't. Is what they usually respond with, okay, well a lot of those elite military officers have a gratitude practice and a gratitude journal. Why? Because the neuroscience supports that when you're practicing gratitude, that helps you in times of stress, helps you in times of, you know, crises. It helps you to build up resilience. So by simply being grateful and writing down what you're grateful for, you're actually giving yourself a chance to be able to combat the ambushes that life and business is going to throw your way. So I'm going to share with you a few things to get you started with journaling. Rather than just start writing random things, I've got a few questions that I know will really impact you and really add value to the direction that you're going with your leadership and with your life. So please take a moment and write these questions down and I'm going to challenge you. I always like to set challenges every week. The challenge is I'd like you to journal every day for a month. Now that might not sound like a lot, but for most people that's a big challenge. I'm going to challenge you to journal every day for a month. You're not going to see any results unless you do the work, right? It's just the law of life. You do the work, you get the results. In Mori, they say you do the mahi, you get the magic. So mahi is work in Mori here in New Zealand. That's a saying that really resonates with me. You do the mahi, you get the magic. So the results come. So first question that I really want you to ponder each and every day, what went well today Right. Super simple question. But what went well? Write down a few things. Hey, I got to work safely. I finished a project. I spent 30 minutes with somebody I love.

Second question. What didn't go so well? Often we want to avoid answering that question. Sometimes it's not fun. But that's a crucial question that we need to ask every single day. I didn't maybe hit an example. I didn't respond in the way that I'm most proud in that situation. I got to a meeting five minutes late instead of five minutes early. I intended to do the workout, but didn't get round to it. That's the kind of stuff we're talking about, right? So what went well today? What didn't go so well today? Next question. Crucial 1. What am I grateful for today? Is it a person? Is it a thing? Is it nature? Is it the air? Is it the journal that you're writing in? Now, this might seem so simple and why should I do this? But again, the neuroscience backs it up. This is not oofy, floofy stuff. Neuroscience backs up that when you're journaling regularly, the outcomes for your wellbeing increase, the outcomes for your relationships increase. And from my personal experience, and certainly with a lot of my clients, I've noticed that it's helped grow business, it's helped be more creative, it's helped revenue. Because getting out of your head and onto the page is a. Is a habit that's going to serve you at a very high level. There's one last question, and this one is only a question that true high performers who are committed to self leadership, they will answer this, others will skip it, maybe answer it for a few days, then forget it. But this is the one thing that they do really well when they're journaling. This is the one thing they take time to ponder and they write it down. You ready for this? The most important question of all, to put in your journal and answer every single day. What did I learn today?

Now, I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, a young kid, mom and dad would often ask, hey, what did you do at school today? Like, not much. What did you learn today? Oh, nothing really. But if I was to go back and look through the day, I'd be like, oh, yeah, we learned multiplication, we did a little bit of comprehension, we did a bit of geography, and I learned about, you know, Istanbul today. But it was so easy to go, ah, not much. And so what I'm going to challenge you to think about is, are you doing that now, as an adult, I certainly do. If I don't write it down what my lessons are and what I learned in a day, they're gone. So it could be, I learned today that getting up 30 minutes early gives me so much space and flow. And that really flows right in through to my first meeting. By lunchtime, I'm feeling less groggy and more. More alive. And I get to come home. The work is done. I can relax. It could be, you know what I learned today? That when I work out at lunch, I. I don't have an afternoon slump. Could be, you know what I learned today? That when I react like that, it really hinders the relationships around me. I need to react in a much more patient, calm way. But every day you'll learn something. It could be, I learned that you don't leave the trash out five minutes late because the trash van goes by and doesn't pick it up. It could be that I read three pages of a book and this was the one lesson learned from that. So I'm going to challenge you to get yourself a beautiful journal. Or if you want to do it digitally, do that. I tend to not. I like to keep away from devices because they are designed to distract us. I don't want you or I or any of my clients to join that club of digital dementia. And I firmly believe that so many people who are headed towards greatness get distracted by digital dementia along the way. Please don't be one of them. You have so much greatness in you, it's a matter of getting focused on what's most important. So get journaling. You know what went well today, what didn't go so well today, what am I grateful for? And most importantly, what did I learn today? If this was valuable and helpful, please forward it to someone, share it with someone. And I really appreciate you tuning in. Again. We've got an incredible guest coming up. You do not want to miss them, so stay tuned. Hit subscribe, follow. Follow the show. Share it with a friend. But for now, please get out there and lead your life on purpose.

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