Unlocking a Longer, Happier Life: The Power of Purpose

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.

A huge welcome back. Today I'm going to talk about life in terms of how do we live longer? How do we have less stress, how do we sleep better, be more productive? There's one thing, one secret to doing all of those at a higher level and having a longer life. One thing. You're not really going to believe it, I don't think. But I'll tell you what, there are scientific backed research papers that actually back all of this up. I've went deep on this. I geek out on this stuff because when someone says do the thing because it'll make you healthier, happier, wealthier, whatever it might be, I always question it. I'm always a bit of a healthy skeptic. I'm going to encourage you to continue being that skeptic as well. We want the research, the data to back up the things that we do, right? Those things I talked about longevity, less stress, better sleep, better focus, all of those things. What's the one thing that can actually improve all of them? Purpose. You heard it right first right here. Purpose. When people have a sense of purpose, they live longer. People with a personal purpose have less stress on average. And again, these are not ideas that I've dreamed up or someone's dreamed up. They've been studied by the best professors, researchers and universities on the planet and the research is damning. If you have a sense of purpose, you live longer and better and better sleep. And we all know that better sleep leads to so many other better health outcomes and better relationship Outcomes. Nobody likes being hungry and tired. Yes, I've been there. And sometimes I get there. I need to sleep well, eat well. I need to do fulfilling work. Otherwise I become frustrated. I imagine you're no different. We are all human. We are not robots. Yes, AI is coming, but we are not that. We are simply people trying to do our best. And when we do it with a sense of purpose, we have so much more. Flow, connection, joy, fulfillment. You want more of that, Right? So what do I mean by purpose? You might be going right now. Look, I get it. I've got a purpose. I know exactly what it is. This is it. Or you might be saying, I have no idea, James. I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't really know what my purpose is. Yeah, it'd be nice to have, but way too hard. Well, look, a personal purpose could be that you get out of bed in the morning to care for someone. That could be your child. That could be a sick partner. That could be people that you are teaching. That could be an elderly person that you visit once a week to spend a few hours with to make their life less lonely. Those are all forms of personal purpose. It could be to care for your dog. Look, I want to be clear here. There's a difference between passion and purpose. What's the difference? Well, passion is for you, whilst purpose is for others. Right? So passions, things you love doing. Our hobbies, sports, maybe art, that's for you. That's great. It's amazing. It's important. It's vital to a joyful life. However, for a deeply meaningful life, we need to have purpose. And that's when we do things for other people. You know, this guy in the background here, for those that are watching, not just listening, you know, I've got a frame of Nelson Mandela yet to be hung. It's going to be popped up this week, so hopefully in next week's session you'll see it up there. But I love having him around my life in the form of his books, artwork, listening to conversations of him regularly from when he was leading and prior. Why? He had a deep sense of purpose, right from a young age and stage, very young, he understood what it was to have purpose and different levels of purpose. Most of us know his overarching purpose, which was to really free South Africa from this apartheid, this injustice. But he also had many micro purposes, and that's what I'm talking about here. You know, he, every day, when he was in jail for 27 years, had a purpose to get up and keep his body strong and fit. So in his small cell, he would work out, he would eat well, he would help other prisoners who were sick by rinsing out their little porta potty kind of toilets. They had a different name for it, but that was a small micro purpose that kept him going. We all need that. That could be, as I say, helping a pet, teaching. If you've got kids you teach, or other people you teach or coach, great. That's a sense of purpose. It could be that you're putting something out into the world that helps people. It could be that you're a barista and you want to make the most perfect version of the coffee you can make and hand it over and see that person light up. That's a sense of maybe you're passionate about making coffee, but you're purposeful about lighting up the person receiving it. Because if you were passionate about making coffee, you could just make it at home for yourself. But if you're doing it in a cafe and handing it over to someone to wait for their reaction when they take the first sip, there's purpose to what you do. Please don't put purpose on a pedestal. Purpose is personal. It's yours, it's yours to have. But it's only when you're focused on helping others by others could be people, it could be the planet, it could be animals. Others is all encompassing. But finding that purpose will give you the opportunity to potentially live a longer life. The studies are just so thorough and deep and damning on this front that if you go through life without a purpose, you're putting yourself at risk of worse sleep, more anxiety, shorter lifespan. Find your purpose. And if it changes over time, which it likely will, that's okay too. But if you do one thing today, make it your mission to understand what is my purpose? You know, what's my purpose today? Who do I want to serve? Is almost a. A better question. Who do I want to serve? Or who do I want to help? Because often I find that working with clients, when I say, you know, let's look at your purpose. Anxiety, frustration, you know, they put up blocks and obstacles. But when I say, hey, who do you want to help the most? Or what's happening in the world right now, that really upsets you or angers you or you get emotional about it, when you start to tap into those things and answer those questions very quickly, you understand what your purpose is. For me, one of my purposes is to be a dad. I find it very purposeful. Do I find it difficult at times? Yes. Do I find it frustrating at times? Yes. Is it overwhelming? Yes. But I also find it joyful. I also find it just deeply soulful. I find that I'm learning a lot whilst dadding. Why? Because I'm a rookie. I'm just learning I'm on the way to becoming a better dad. But I do that through trial and error, trying to show up and be present. That's very purposeful to me. I get out of bed because that's something I'm doing. I'm serving someone other than myself. The studies also showed that when you serve other people who've got challenges or problems, you often spend less time ruminating on your own problems, which more often than not are not as big as you make them out to be in your own head. Taking the time to focus on others means you focus a lot less on yourself if you're a reader. There's a great book I read many years ago called the Blue Zones, Blue Zones of Happiness, but it was a collaboration between National Geographic and the amazing Dan Buettner. Brilliant book. There's five specific regions in the world where they have the highest concentration of centenarians, people living healthily and actively past 100 years of age. The highest concentration of them are in these five areas. There's one in Greece, one in Italy, one in Japan, one in the United States and one in Costa Rica. If my memory serves me right. It was amazing reading about what they did. And he comes up with the power nine, which is the nine principles that they all lived by. One of them was purpose. That's why I've committed, you know, it's coming up to, you know, we're stepping into, I should say, our fourth year with Lead on Purpose podcast. Why? I firmly believe that purpose is the lifeblood of a life well lived. It's something that we need and that we really need to really share with others and help others tap into that as well. So I hope that today's solo cast has served you. As I step onto stages in the next couple of months, delivering keynotes all around Australia, New Zealand and America, I promise you I'll be doubling down on purpose. How do we do it? How do we extract it? How do we share it? Why? Because that's part of my purpose is to help others uncover purpose that's joyful for me, but also I can see the joy it brings others when they start tapping into that. So if I see you in person, please do come and say hello and let me know what you're liking about the podcast, but also what you'd like to see more of or less of. Really important to me. Also, if you're watching or listening right now, I'd love to know who would you like me to interview this year? We've got an incredible lineup of guests already, but we've still got vacancy for the last part of the year. Who would you like me to reach out to and interview? If you're watching this on YouTube, comment below. Who you would love me to interview. Give me two or three options maybe. And if you're listening to this, send me a message probably either on LinkedIn. You can catch me jameslochlan on LinkedIn or over on Instagram jameslochlanofficial whatever's easiest for you. But please, for now 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.