The Truth About Your Mindset

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, I get asked a lot about mindset. Hey James, you know you work with professional athletes on mental skills and mindset. Hey James, you know you've been working with these CEOs and trying to shift the mindset of entire senior leadership teams. What's mindset and how do I get a better mindset? What's a growth mindset? And look, let's slow down a minute and actually define what mindset is. Once you clear and you understand what mindset is, it makes it so much easier to really impact it, change it, empower it, and take direction of your own life. Look, before we get into that, I want to first of all apologize for my voice today. You'll hear it's not its usual self, is a little bit croaky today. But I'm here. I'm excited to be here, excited to connect. And I know in future episodes my voice will sound a bit different. It'll improve. But I hope you are well and as I want to just reinforce, we've removed all ads and promotions and I've got a short small favor to ask of you. For us to continue to improve the show and we're number two. As it stands currently on the Apple podcast charts, I'm yet to reach number one and I would love your help in getting me to number one. Why is that important? Well, the higher up the charts it means the show gets organically promoted to other incredible people like you who will benefit from it. And I love that organic reach Rather than paying for it and so forth. So please, if you want to help me organically impact more lives, all I ask is that you subscribe or follow the show. Leave me a five star rating. If you like the show and just a short reason why you like it, you can do that through Apple podcasts or Spotify and the Big One. Please share this podcast with three friends. We bring on so many different people, thought leaders, presidents, prime ministers, formula one teams, people that are into neuroscience, spirituality. So there'll be something for your friends in here. There's always something for everyone. But the big focus is obviously around leadership, leading on purpose, self growth. So thank you. Now let's get into it. What is mindset? I'd like you to think about this. This is, this is how I look at mindset. Mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how you make sense of the world and yourself. Going to repeat that. Mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how you make sense of the world and yourself. And it really influences three things. Influences how you feel, how you think and how you behave. So your mindset is the foundation, it's the starting point. So those beliefs that you have, they shape how you make sense of everything around you. People who have really deep beliefs around, say, religion that will ship, how they make sense of the world around them, radicals, they have a very deep belief, a radical belief that shapes how they make sense of things that they do. So I want you to think just for a moment, what are your beliefs? And in a recent session, we just looked at belief systems, but your mindset is made up of these belief systems. Okay? So my challenge to you is if you haven't listened to the episode around your bs, your belief systems, go back please, and take a moment to listen to. That was a solo cast like this, where I share with you around beliefs and how we can redefine our beliefs and actually get clear on what our beliefs are. But in a mindset standpoint, you've either got a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. Now, fixed mindset is, no, I can't do it. I wasn't born with that skill. No, that person over there, they're just naturally quicker. No, they've got a better network than me. No, you know what, they've just had a better start in life, or they live in a better neighborhood, or they live in a better city. So they get access to this. Look, all these excuses of, hey, I wasn't born with it, I don't have it, therefore I won't succeed. That Simply is a fixed mindset. Now, a growth mindset that can be cultivated and grown by anybody. Yes, you heard me right. People aren't just hey, their growth mindset, they're special. They were gifted with that at birth. No, growth mindset, that's a choice. You choose to be growth minded. Now growth minded people still have fixed mindsets in certain parts of their lives, that's for sure. Now what is a growth mindset? Well, simple. It's this belief that hey, I am capable of learning that skill. Hey, I know I can't do that thing right now, but I know I can go out and figure that out. That is a growth mindset. It's looking at failure as a lesson and a springboard to then strategize, ask for help, be curious, gain new skills and improve. Growth mindset does not mean you win all the gold medals. It means that you move incrementally, steadily and confidently forward whilst always believing that you can grow. It is an absolute choice. So right now you're here with me. What way would you define your mindset? Let's do it across a few pillars in your personal life. Let's say your most important relationships. Are you growth minded or do you always opt for the negative, always opt for the bickering, always opt for the easy option in your relationships. Are you growth? Are you fixed? What about your career? Do you believe you can grow? Do you believe there's more abundance? Do you believe there's a next step? Do you believe you can achieve it? Or do you think I wasn't born with those things So I can't be the insert title, CEO, leader, whatever, chief of marketing, whatever it might be, or parenting. You know, I just, I'm not a great parent or I'm a busy parent saying I'm busy. Well, that's a belief a growth minded person will go, oh, my priorities aren't really straight so I am doing lots of things and wearing myself down and I feel really busy. Okay, how can I get clearer on my priorities? So growth mindedness is getting clear on what you want. Strategizing, prioritizing, using my MVP system. And some of you will be very familiar with that. I'll do a session on that. But understanding what your MVP is and then working towards that, growing, learning, acquiring skill sets, acquiring the mindset, acquiring the heart set to get there. Look, I want you to really start to think about your mindset and go back to the start and think it's a set of beliefs that shape how you make sense of your world and you within that world. It influences three things how you think, how you feel, and how you behave. So if you feel frustrated, go back to, well, what's my mindset? It's influencing that. If you are behaving in a way that you're not proud of or that's not empowering, go back to, well, what's my mindset? Keep it simple, but keep going back to that definition. I hope today's solo cast has really served you. Got an incredible couple of episodes coming up, some amazing guests, but 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.