The Top Habit of the Mega-Elite!!

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.

Welcome back to the show. Look, this week I spent some time chatting to a guy who's the vice president of Behringer Inc. Inkelheim, which is America's largest pharmaceutical company. He also sits on the board with Rupert Murdoch at the News Corp. Inc. So quite an incredible individual. Very intellectual and really aware, highly aware of his surroundings, highly aware of what's happening at a macro level and right down also at an individual level. It was an incredible conversation. I am going to have him on the show very soon and he shared some things that I just wanted you to know because there are certain things that the super elite, the mega elite, the high performers, certain things that they do differently. And there's this one habit, I would arguably say it's the top habit of the mega elite. And this one thing I believe can shift the dial. And it's not just reserved for people who are the highest performers in their industry or people who are running large companies or billionaires. This is for you and I, simple things that you and I can do right now in this moment. And it's one habit that I do believe will shift things for you. So as you know, when I'm talking about leadership and personal mastery, because at the end of the day it starts with you. It's not about others, it's about you. I talk a lot about the soft stuff and yes, I get the eye roll from people from time to time who are a little bit, maybe more on the alpha side and not wanting to go into the empathy going into the working on themselves and developing emotional awareness. But actually I will stand by it that the soft stuff is the hard stuff. When you look at some of the greatest leaders this planet has ever seen, one of their greatest strengths is empathy. It's emotional mastery. And that's something when I'm working with client, whether it's one to one or one to many, in some of my larger group settings, I'm always talking about emotional mastery. We are never ending on our pursuit of trying to understand ourselves better, trying to respond rather than react when times are difficult and challenging. But look, I'm going to get to this. I know you're thinking, well, what's that one habit? Tell me what that habit is. Look, it's this. I was asking Rafael what he did and how he approached things at the companies. He's worked at Ikea in a very senior role. He's worked at American Airlines, Coors for those that like their beer Coors Light. He's very senior there and now at Behringer, Inkelheim. And I said, what's the secret sauce? What's the one thing that you see and that you embody that allows you to be happier and more fulfilled and allows the people around you to be their best selves? And he brought it back to this Love. That's right, a four letter word. L, O, V E. Love. Love. I think that that's quite unusual to hear from a high flying vice president of a multi billion dollar company. Very unusual. Often it's like drive and pursuit and relentlessness. Love. So refreshing to hear that. And I see this time and time again with the greatest leaders, the greatest athletes. I've got friends who are incredible performers on the field, you know, world class, world renowned athletes and they will spend hours after a game signing things when they're knackered. They shouldn't be on their feet. They're strength and conditioning coaches pulling their hair out, going, please get off your feet, you need to recover for next week. But they take the time to show love and appreciation. The greatest companies that I've ever worked with and helped and consulted from the top down, they have a sense of, of love, a sense of appreciation, a sense of hey, I value you, how can I support you, how can I help you on your journey of mastery? Love is the secret ingredient. And I've got a friend, Alistair Gray, you should look him up, you should go check out his work. Great place to check him out is on Instagram. Alistair Grey has a whole movement based around love. It's called I Am Love. And he works with some of the greatest leaders, too. And it's all around the fact that we can solve so many things through love, as opposed to loathing, as opposed to hatred, criticism, nay saying. And I'll be honest with you, I really love that filter that both Rafael and Alistair look through of love. And for the recent period in the last few years, we've been building up quite a bit of traction on different platforms, one of those being YouTube. And I get some hatred on there, right? And if you're watching this on YouTube, hello, appreciate you, but there's a lot of keyboard warriors, right? I get some hatred, get some naysaying, some critics. But what do I respond with? Love? Compassion? When someone hits me with hatred or criticism, I know they must be going through a tough time. I know that they're taking out their inner feelings on me. It's easy to do that when you're not having to front face someone. It's easy just to type it. And you know what I get when I go back with love? 99% of the time? A dialogue back and forth. And within five to six comments, that individual is saying, hey, you know what? I just had a bad day. Really sorry. I can totally see what you're coming from. 99% of the time, people turn and they look towards what is positive. Now, look, I'm not always going to be able to do that. Let's take YouTube, for example. The channel is in its infancy, so I'm able to respond to many people's comments. Eventually I won't be able to do that, but right now I love doing that because I get to know the people that are listening and get to connect with you. That's really important to me because I want to understand what makes you tick. And for me to do that, I've got to do that from a place of love rather than a place of protecting my ego. Somebody said something bad, so I better fire up and defend. But it was really amazing to hear it from this past week from Rafael at that top end of what he's doing and how he approaches diversity, equity and inclusion. And it's all centered around love. So my challenge to you is what are you doing to lead with love today? Is that that you're making some time for meditation? Is it that you're being patient and not cutting that person off or letting that person in in traffic? Is it that you're being more patient when you're at home with your loved ones and not snapping? Often people that we love the most get the short End of the stick. So, you know, is that you extending your love capabilities by just being more patient, caring, thoughtful. What does it look like to you? I'm just, I'm setting that as today's challenge. It's a short and sweet solo cast today, but I just got off the call with that individual thinking I need to share that message. More of us need to hear it. And when we see what's going on around the world, and I'm no expert on the different challenges that different parts of the world are experiencing, what I do see is a lack of love, compassion and understanding. And I get defending yourself and your nation and I get standing up for what is right. But also there's a point where how can we do things with a lens of love? It's very complex and the human condition is very complex. But imagine if more of us decided to look through that lens of, hey, if I did this with a sense of love, if I was doing this and responding to my grandmother, how would I do it? Or if someone was talking to my grandmother, how would I want them to talk? I think that thing kind of filter changes a lot of reasoning. It changes a lot of the way we approach challenges, changes the way we approach that person who's aggressive driving, trying to cut us off. When you think of, hey, if that was my grandmother, how would I respond? You'd probably smile and give her the benefit of the doubt, let her cut in in front of you, wave her goodbye. You wouldn't be giving her the one fingered salute, that's for sure. She's driving by. You'd be making sure that you're polite and loving and caring and compassionate. So that's all I ask of you today, is just to think about what is your top habit and could love be one of them? I promise you, when you look at love as a top habit, it will have a massive impact on your health, your wealth, your energy, everything. The six core human needs, and we've done them in length before here in previous solo casts. Certainty, variety, significance, love, contribution and growth. Those are the six core human needs. Very similar to the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but that's what makes us humans tick. Love is in there. We've got to embrace it, we've got to use it, we've got to connect with it. So I hope that today's short session has inspired you to think about love and how it impacts what you do. And I hope that it just inspires you to embrace it a little more. And for those that haven't had a chance. If you want to double down on your personal mastery, you want to master yourself. I've created an amazing free resource for you that's insights from some of my top guests from last year, and I've distilled them into really practical ways that you can actually implement them in your life. You can download them in the link that's in the description and enjoy. 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 lined up for you in the coming weeks and leaders. It's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.