Unpacking High Performance: A Conversation with James Laughlin

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
James Lachlan, Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Doctor Paul Taylor. So good to see him, man, pleasure
to be here.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
I think I might have all the swear words out
of my system before week.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
You know, no fun, Oh Jesus Christ. Just for the listeners.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
I'm having such tech issues. It's just like I'm a
moppet on this end. But I actually think it's the technology.
I don't think it's me.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
I would agree, Thank you, Thank you, James.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Yes, and so we are going to talk all things
high performance.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Right.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
You are a globally recognized high performance coach, a seven
time world champion musician, so you're what I call a
p academic, all right, somebody who's actually been there, done that,
and then dug into what behind it, and I coaches
other people on it. Right, And you happen to be

(01:05):
from about thirty miles or twenty miles down the road
for me, as it turns out, And I was a
guest on your podcast just the other day.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
By synchronicity.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
It's unbelievable how it happened that. God, we need to
get you on about another ten times with so much
to chat about.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yes, it was actually a fun podcast, but let's focus
on it.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
So when did you When did you leave Northern Ireland
and were you under witness protection?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, the relocation program possibly. So I left in two
thousand and four to Vancouver, Canada, and then went back
for a couple of months and then headed down to
New Zealand. So I've been here twenty years.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Right, okay, and by Vancouver first.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, So had two options at lisburn or Vancouver. So
for those that listen that don't know if Lisburne it's
a little town in Northern Ireland, so which.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
I lived by.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
I ended up living about ten miles away from that
place called Moyer. Used to I used to hang out
in Lisburne quite a lot.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Brilliant, I love it well. The thing the two reasons
where I wanted to be in the world's best pipe
band bagpipes and drums. One of them is called Field
Marshall Montgomery there in lisbon I remember that, bloody brilliant
And the other one is Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.
So when that opportunity came up, I shot shot straight
over there and I got the experience a bit of

(02:24):
North America.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Do you know, my Yeah, I just had a flashback
when you said Lisburne, it's probably oversharing with listeners.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
But one of.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
My prevailing memories of Lisburton is getting head butted. One
night when I was about sixteen, I was up with
my girlfriend. I was waiting on the last bus home
and these guys walked past.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
They were drunk. They were a lot older than me,
and one of them come up. They came up to
me and they said, say the alphabet.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
You know where you're going as a certain letter, you'll
get pay here.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, so you go ab cd EFG and I went
h and this guy went boom and head butted me
and broke my nose and said this mates, hold him.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
I'm going to get my gun and I'm going to
come and shoot on my mind. And I knew he was.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
In the udall right, this guy called Skippy and I
nearly shot my pants enough right, I actually managed to
run it because they were drunk.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
I managed to wriggle three and get away.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
But that that is one of the two times in
my life that I was actually a freeing from my life.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
I'm so glad you share that, because I'm always a
freidy share my stories. Northern Ireland people think, Ah, that
couldn't have happened. Then there's no way, no, seriously, like
every Friday or Saturday night that you're right. It's like
potential death zone legit.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, I know. And so for the listeners out there,
H or H.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
Right, how you pronounced that letter is driven by what
your religion is.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Right.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
So if you're a left for like I was, I'm
being in recovery for nearly thirty years. I was born
a Catholic, right, and Catholics say h and Protestant say.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Nobody in the world would know that, right, except for
Northern Irish people. It's just ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
So there you go.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
So anyway, I'm glad you're here to tell the story.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
A little micro trauma to start the podcast is obviously, well,
so may.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Tell us.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
When did you realize that the skills and processes that
you developed to become a seven time world champion musician,
When did you realize that they were transferable and that there.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Was actually a system behind it?

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, good question. Not till thirty years of age. I
got to thirty, just became a dad and started getting
a bit worried because I was James the Drummer. I
taught drums, I played drums, and I sold drums. I thought, Okay,
if I break a wrist or something happens, I'm not
going to be able to earn a crust. So I thought,
you know, what could I do? I need to go
and get a piece of paper. So Otago University here

(05:08):
in New Zealand. I went back to UNI and did
a Bachelor of Applied Management, so essentially looking at your
life experience, what you've achieved, and unpacking all the theory
from that. And so it ended up being it was
a three year degree, but you skip the first two
because they say you've done the first two in your real,
real life existence. The last year you're going to unpack

(05:29):
it all. And it was just the most amazing thing.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
So this is a degree that is specifically for people
who have a bit obviously a bit of life experiences.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
A lot of athletes, like a lot of my clients
who have been professionals, like all Blacks and Crusaders, they've
all done exact same course where it's like, hey, we
went straight into our passion and our hobby, skipped Uni,
but we actually gathered a bunch of skills and things.
How can we get some theory behind that's some understanding
that give me confidence to go, there's something behind this.
I could transfer all these skills and help people in

(06:00):
a different realm.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
And you know, I've never heard of a university degree
like that, and it just it makes so much bloody sense.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
It's like a real word.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
I suppose the closest thing to that that that I'm
aware would be like an m b A. But but
people can do an MBA fresh, right, But if you
have had a fur bit of experience in an MBA
makes us a shitload more sense.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Totally.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, that's very cool.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
And so let's like, let's let's talk about high performance
in general and why you talk about getting radically clear?
So what does that mean? Explain I unpack that for
our listeners.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
So few people know what they want. When someone comes
to me, it's like, I want I want I want this,
I want that, So what do you really want? And
they always respond with when someone says that, they actually
don't know what they want, and they're generally making decisions
based on what they think other people want. Their parents,
their family, their loved ones, their colleagues.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
Get rad society exactly.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Society, their church, whatever it might be get radically clear
on what you want. And you know, an example would
be Sam Whitelock, So, former All Black rugby player. He's
sitting around the table with me and a few other
clients and we're talking about what we want. He speaks last,
as always, and I think great leaders tend to speak last,
they tend to listen more. And he says, guys, what

(07:20):
I want is to be the most capped All Black
of all time. Now, this was COVID lockdown kind of
time right and around there. So he had probably two
or three years left in him. COVID was stopping games,
so he'd last games that he could get to play.
He wasn't getting any younger injuries could start cropping up
selection issues, and we asked him what do you mean

(07:41):
by that? What does that look like? You know who
you up against Richie McCalls who he was up against,
And so that was what he wanted and he wrote
it down. He says, don't share it with anyone. He says,
this stays within this group until I do it. And
when he walked out onto the park and he matched
Richie's God, it was a special moment at the Rugby
World Cup and then when he walked out the next
week like I was watching from afar, but the hair

(08:02):
standing my arms today thinking about it, that's someone who
is radically clear on what success looks like and nothing
could stop that. Man. We all need to get radically
clear on what we want in our lives, relationships, and
our work.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
And how do you how do you help people understand
or are there signals or feelings that that that that
people will realize that they're on the right track right
in terms of being radically here and what they really
well like, how do people know that, hell, yes, this
is this is it for me and this is not

(08:39):
something that's been imposed on me by society, by my parents,
by those sorts of things.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Is there any little indicators?

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Absolutely, emotion really drives that. So when we're in our head,
we're dead, Like we've got to get out of the
head into the heart, or maybe out of the head
and onto the page. A couple of questions I would
always ask people who think they kind of know what
they want but they're not radically clear. Is what keeps
you up at night, what makes you cry, what pisses
you off? What angers you? Start writing those things down

(09:09):
and all of a sudden, it becomes clear what they're
passionate about. You know, what difference do they want to make,
What do they want to stand up for? What are
they working for, what's the difference they're trying to make
in their industry? What kind of dad do they want
to be? So I always try to get into the
emotion of it because that emotion often drives our behavior.
And when people are up here like who picks I
want to be a lawyer at eighteen and they go

(09:30):
and do a law degree, I mean that's madness. At eighteen,
you should be on a Kontiki bus traveling around Europe
getting pissed, having fun. You shouldn't be studying law. You
should be having fun. You're eighteen to twenty five, go
and try things, say yes, be an entrepreneur, work for others.
Once we get into those mid twenties, that's the time

(09:51):
to get radically clear. Where do I want to go?
What does success look like?

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Yeah? I think that's that's critical.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
So my daughter is nigh and nine teen and she's
at UNI, And when she was finishing school, I was like,
you need to go travel, you need to go see
the world, like just and you know, we talked about
different options and like, go to Asia, go and see
different cultures, see different people. I tell you that two
and a half months that she had you could see

(10:19):
that she came back and changed person, right, and now
she's just like every whole day she wants to go travel.
And I think it's really really important to go and
see the world, see different cultures, you know, work out
kind of who you are, what sort.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Of person you want to be.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
At that age, it is critical because we just we're
in this, We're in the we're just in the bloody system.
You go to school, you then either go to university,
you go and get a trade, and that's it, freaking
on a path.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
I see interesting.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
My Cola Cardi's nephew has just come over from Switzerland, right,
And what they do in Switzerland is you get to
I think it's our equivalent of year ten. And they
actually say to them based on their on their scores, right,
you lot year off to university, you lot you. I

(11:10):
need to do a trade because you don't have the
results and maybe the academic way is not suitable for you.
You need to do a trade and you need to
pick a trade now. And you're right, and this guy's
sixteen and he started cheffing walking really late at ninety
you know, developing a tree at the age of sixteen.
But I just think it's it's too young to be

(11:32):
set in the past, right then, get that's all laid
out for you.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
In terms of that, it's a bit scary to.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Think that you need to be making those decisions. I
think just being trying lots of things. You know, I
was I sold ice creams when I was fourteen. I
was a waiter in a little restaurant in Danadri when
I was sixteen to nineteen. I then taught drums for
I don't know, twelve dollars an hour, Like, try a
bunch of things, work for other people and learn, but

(12:02):
don't settle for what someone tells you you should do.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, no, absolutely, And so we've talked about that radical
clearness and a little bit of a steer on this.
Now you also say it's important to be full of bs.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
You're full of bs. Yes, belief systems.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Talk to us about belief systems, you know, give give
his whole thing?

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Where do they come from? How do you get clear?
How do you build a system?

Speaker 3 (12:30):
And already you understand where those beliefs are coming.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
From Yeah, absolutely, so a couple, if they're serving you
or not, well.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
They're either empowering or disempowering. Right, And often our beliefs
are given to us by school, family, church. All these
things are on the social media, now traditional media, people
that we spend a lot of time with. That's what
forms our beliefs. Anything that's repeated to us, or we
repeat over and over, we begin to believe. Now. I
don't know about you, but I believed in a guy

(13:00):
in a red suit with a white beard and he
delivered presents. Now that belief was bullshit, right, And eventually
I rewired that belief at school at the age of
seven when someone said, this guy's a fake. It's your parents.
Now that's a good thing because we can do that
with any belief right. So, when you look at a
psychological model, say the bab model, where it's beliefs will

(13:23):
influence your attitude and your attitudes will influence your behavior.
Now we all want to go straight to behavior. I
want to go to the gym six days a week.
I want to eat no upfs, I want to do
all the good things. Well, actually, don't start with the behavior.
Start with the beliefs. What do you believe about health?
What do you believe about nutrition? What do you believe

(13:45):
about money? And so high performers spend a lot of
time in their BS. It's subconscious. But to get into
that subconscious, we've got to learn to repeat and use incantations,
writing down what we do believe rather than what we don't.
So but let's take a irishman. So often if I'm
on stage, I'll say, guys, don't be kind, just give

(14:08):
it to me. When you think of an Irishman, what's
the first thing that comes to mind? So here's what
I hear down this part of the world. Guinness, drunk, Leprechauns,
Fildy d potatoes. Right, I hear all this right, and
I'm like, good Petro bab Yeah, I haven't heard that
one yet, but I'm sure that's that's coming. I never
hear great rugby team. I don't know why you no.

(14:33):
Not in Ausie either. So that's their BS, and I
remind them they didn't need to think about that for
very long. It's sitting in there now the same thing
as sitting in there Paul, about our potential, about our careers,
about our health, about our bodies about money, and it's
either empowering us to move towards a very positive direction
or the opposite. So it's asking yourself what I believe

(14:57):
about money, health, happiness. Those would be great things to
stay art with, maybe even success and failure if you
wanted to add those in. But I believe money is
Some might say scarce. I believe money doesn't grow on trees.
Others might say I believe it does. So the belief
systems will ship your outcomes. So don't go straight to

(15:17):
going to the gym, and don't go straight to you know,
starting to invest money, stop rewire rbs. And I've obviously
got different exercises in there for people to do that,
and they don't happen like that. It's not an overnight thing.
It's going to happen. You got to take your time.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, that I mean, that's okay.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
I mean with like, in talking of Northern Ireland, you know,
I had a bit I was brought up well, I
actually a lot of people in Northern Ireland are brought
up and living in a house in the state that
is ninety nine percent on religion, right, and they go
to a school that is one religion.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
I remember growing up in Northern Ireland.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
The first integrated school in Northern Ireland that mixed religions
was nineteen eighty five. And only if you remember this
lag In College, that was the first school in Northern
Ireland where it was mixed Catholics and mixed Protestants. So
if you think about just that, you brought up in
a house of state. There's peace lines between a lot

(16:17):
of these houses states, and to you and me, no
peace lines. When you say peace lines, people have a
different kind of covert Yeah, so beautiful. So basically a
fucking thirty foot corrugated iron fence between the Catholics and
the Protestant neighbor's.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Petrol bombs coming through exactly.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
And so but if you think about that environment, you're
brought up thinking that the other side has got two heads, right.
And I was very lucky that I was from a
mixed marriage, which is a different connotation where I live.
Right there, you go, and probably when your parents get married,
I mean I'm a bit older than you. But when
when my parents got married, it was massively taboo.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Right.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
My grandfather didn't speak to my mother for years because
she married a cast like right, so you just you
think about what that does though to your unconscious belief systems. Right,
And I always say to people were talking and not
necessarily about performance, but just understanding who you are.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Is it's particularly.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
Your formative years that a lot of these belief systems
are developed. Because we're born with over two billion neurons
and by the time we're about the age of four
or five, we've lost a billion of those neurons or sorry,
sorry to you, one hundred billions and have a sleep here.

(17:42):
Two hundred billion neurons were born with and we lose
about one hundred billion in our forma years our life
because of what's called synaptic pruning.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Right.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
So the brain is born with all this potential that
gets shaped by experiences, right, And that's where those early
life that those experiences in early life, your parents were,
your in the environment you're brought up in, all of
this can have an indelible imprint on your.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
Mard and that's where it becomes like our responsibility as
adults to have synaptic strengthening. So the pruning happens naturally,
but we can strengthen as well and install new beliefs
and create new neurons and I grew up in a
Protestant town. Obviously mixed marriage, very quiet. We didn't tell
our neighbors, clearly, that was a very private thing. But

(18:31):
at school, so mom and dad would never talk about religion.
We never went to church. But at school I got
an education on who Catholics were. And you know, they
all wore balaclavas, and they were all terrorists, and their
eyes were all really close together and nuts is that
their Eyebrice met in the totally like people are like,

(18:51):
yeah right, I'm like serious, I believe this. This was
like bred in to me by my mates at school,
which would have been from their parents and grandparents, and
that he's not. But that's actually exciting because that's how
easy it is to start believing that you can be successful,
that you can achieve what you want to get your doctorate,
like all those amazing things. It starts with a belief

(19:12):
I can do this.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Of course I can do this.

Speaker 3 (19:15):
And so let's say, so you then talk about taking
your meds right in the book, So what do you
mean by taking your meds?

Speaker 2 (19:24):
All high performers take their meds. Look at I say,
in high performance sport, particularly, you know, people get obsessed
with winning. I was obsessed with becoming a world champion.
Now when people like peak underneath the hood and look
at your life behind the scenes, they realize for a
lot of those people that are high performers or anything,
but high performance doesn't mean burning out. High performance doesn't

(19:46):
mean annihilating your most precious relationships and your body. You know,
my marriage was going like that, started to go downhill
and ended in divorce. As I was going towards all
these world championship titles. I was drinking alcohol like it
was going out of fashion. That is not high performance.
I believe, Paul that consistently exceeding norms whilst maintaining healthy

(20:07):
relationships and well being, that is true high performance. And
so that's what I try to aim for with my
clients and the teams I work with.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
So not being driven to the point where you're just
single focused on this one out come and everything else
in your life is collateral damage.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Relationships, all of those thingstfully. And you hear that with
some people, right, God, you hear that.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
With so many people. You know. When people are career focused,
I think it's a beautiful thing. But when it's totally
out of work, you've got to have something that brings
you back. So I use this very simple acronym MEDS
and once a month I ask my clients and hopefully
the listeners will do this as well. It will cost
you ninety seconds of your time once a month. Mental
training is what the M stands for, allowing your mind

(20:49):
to slow down, allowing you to actually think, allowing your
heart rate to slow down, your blood pressure to drop
a little, and that could be through mindfulness, meditation, simple
breath work, all that stuff the E exercise and they're
probably your listeners are going Jesus. This is such common sense,
but Paul, you and I both know it's not common practice.

(21:11):
Look around us, how many obese people do? We have
unhealthy people psychologically and physiologically. The simple stuff is not
getting done. So once a month, how am I moving
my body? Am I sedentary? Am I getting you know,
strength and conditioning? And am I eating enough protein? That
takes us to d diet? What are we consuming? And

(21:32):
that includes liquid, coffee, soda, pop, alcohol, that includes substances
you're vaping, your cigarettes, your cannabis, whatever you're taking, Well,
how did that go this month? What's my diet look like?
What am I putting into my body? Could it be better?
And last, but not least sleep. A chatting to Alex,
who's George Russell's performance coach, the Formula one driver. What

(21:56):
do you measure? He says, We just measure two things
in terms of his performance, happiness and sleep. If Georgie
boys happy, the rest of us are happy. And if
he's well slept, quality sleep with a good balance of
ram and deep and we know that his reaction times
will be greater. I said, well, how do you work
on that sleep thing? He says, well, same time to bed,

(22:17):
same time, wake up, very comfortable, mattress and pillow that
we fly to Miami, Melbourne, Aba, Dabi, wherever he flies.
All that stuff goes with them because sleep is where
it's at. Most of us are willing to have shit sleep.
I did four or five hours. Look at me, you
know doing it tough. That's not something to celebrate.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Like.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
We've got to prioritize our sleep and none of us
are going to be perfect. But meds once a month,
which one's the lowest ranking, and just focus on that
one for the month ahead. How could I sleep a
little better? Could I cool my room down? Could I
maybe have you know, say caffeine. Caffeine has a quarter
life of twelve hours. So you say you have a
cup of coffee at ten thirty am, Well you need

(22:58):
to know at ten thirty PM of that caffeine still
running through your system actively. So maybe have your last
one at nine or eight in the morning. Get up early,
have an early coffee, and enjoy it. But these simple things,
just we tweaks, one habit a month could really shift
those meds and allow us to stay in the game
a bit longer.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
I love that there's a monthly audit of that because
you know, we talked about belief systems, and you talked
about wiring your Brian. Like those four things that maids,
the mental train, the exercise to a sleep, they are
the essential ingredients of neuroplasticity, the ability to change and
rewhy you're brilling and the exercise particularly creates all the

(23:43):
conditions necessary for neuroplasticity. Right, something called BDNF and brain
drive neurotropic factor that helps you to grow new brand sales,
create new connections.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
Right. You can only do that when we're exercising, right, Paul,
You can't do that any other way. There's no exactly
BDNF no know.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
And and and there's drug companies all around the world
trying to develop b d NF in pill form and
to the point where you can take and cross the
Bloodbury and barrier. And I tell you what, the first
drug company to take out a patent on that, I
will sell my businesses, sell my house, pawn my children,
and buy shares in that. You heard it here for
folks exactly, but I mean the diet thing as well.

(24:24):
And a lot of people don't realize this, Like everything
that goes in your gub influences your gene expression.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
And either regulates you know, bad or negative things are downregulates. Essentially,
every single thing is upregulating or downregulating gene expression, which
autoimmune disease, like you're either eating your way towards it
or away from it.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yeah, absolutely, and and and supporting you know, diet supports
all of the chemical reactions, like we are an ecosystem
that relies on external imputs to be uptimal, right, and
some of those inputs being that what you stick in
your gub, how much you move your body, and that
recovery like you're talking about George Russell and flying it right.

(25:08):
You know, I pick my hotels because I travel a lot,
as you probably do with corporate speaking, And I pick
my hotels based on the comfort level of the bed.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
And the pillow.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
And sometimes if I'm going away for a while i've
got space, I'll take my own pillow with me.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Rightly, the small things that are the big things.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah up.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
And is that so many people think setting goals and
being a high performer and winning in whatever realm that
it's psychological. It's about thinking. Yes, that's a component, but
there's a massive physiological component too.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Like, you can have the greatest goals and the greatest
system and the greatest plans and coach and everything, but
if your internal system, let's say, your neurotransmitters are not
supporting that, you're not going to be motivated to do
the work, best plan, no motivation, you won't get the outcome.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
Yeah, Like you are preaching to the converted here, because
I'm all about a psychophysiological approach.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
I mean, I call myself not a psychophysiologist.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
I'm I'm not a psychologists or an exercise or a physiologist.
I'm a psychophysiologist. Because you've got like the brain controls
everything your body does, but it's completely dependent upon the
health of your body for optimal functioning.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
Right, I guess if there's one, I mean, we are
are clearly very aligned on that.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
And if there's probably one take home for listeners, it's
that thing like Brian and anybody who told you brain
and body are fucking separate entities is full of mad
dog shite.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
As you used to say, run a mile.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
So mean, let's talk about hormones and neurotransmitters because you
mention those in your book.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
And what role did a play in peak performance?

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yeah, significance. So I guess first things First, neurotransmitters, people
might go, Can I go and get those measured? It's
quite impractical to try and measure and real transmitter. However,
through habits and behavior, you can moderate them, you can
enhance them to work for you. So that's probably the
first thing. A couple of ones people should be aware of.
No epinephrine, endorphins, dopamine, and seratonin. Those are four really

(27:17):
key neural transmitters that if they're out of whack and
they're not serving us, good luck chasing your goals. You know,
if you take something like a dopamine. You've got a
rat that is absolutely starving, starving, However, it's got dopamine depleted.
They've removed the dopamine from its system. If you put food,

(27:37):
and this has been tested right in front of that rat,
I mean, it will not move towards that food. It
has no motivation. There's no dopamine to motivate it to
move towards its goal, which is to eat because it's
been starved forever. And yeah, I don't believe in animal testing,
but that's a very very helpful piece of knowledge as
a human. If you don't have your dopamine in order,

(28:00):
and you're maybe having dopamine crashes and you're exposing yourself
to too many dopamine hits with social media, alcohol, porn,
whatever it might be, I promise you you're not going
to have the dopamine balance to chase your goals. You're
going to be starved of it. So people need to
realize there's ways that we can influence and not manipulate,

(28:22):
but we can influence these neurotransmitters.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
Cold therapy, yeah, sleep massive massive increase in dopamine by
getting into cold water, and it persists for fucking hours.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Literally yeah, like most of the day. And that's why
people who do cold therapy, even a cold shower, they
come out like ready to take on the world. Their
their voice pitch is elevated, their energy levels have elevated.
They are willing to take on challenges and not bicker
and complain like.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
And sorry sorry James.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
Because it also as well as released in dopamine releases
no epneffort or no adrenaline, which is about focused attention.
So you have focused tension, motivation, mood enhancement, all from
turning that lovely bomb charticle for thirty seconds.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
I think how simple is that it costs you nothing.
It doesn't come in a pillbox. That when I talk
about these neurotransmitters, like do everything you can in your
power to influence them in a holistic way. Meditation incredibly helpful.
So if we take something like a cortisol, we need it,
but we don't need as much as some of us

(29:28):
are getting, so meditation helps to bring that back. Also meditation,
I was chatting to a leading longevity expert out of California. Recently,
him and Peter Attia wrote a book called Outlive. Yeah,
brilliant book, and we're just chatting about meditation, he says,
if you've seen the research, he says, men are after

(29:50):
thirty five to starsterone starts to go down and eventually
starts plummeting. His meditation has been shown if we do
it twice a day for two to five minutes, starts
the level at and then eventually we start to see
natural incline intotosterone.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Really I did not know that. Wow.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
I was blown away because I'm like, great, I'll keep
keep meditating. So that was quite fascinating.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Wow, these new transmitters, don't you know, don't downplay them.
They are a thing. They are very important in our motivation.
If you're looking for Tony Robbins every Monday and Tuesday
Wednesday morning, stop with that crap. I mean, he's amazing
at what he does. But don't don't rely on that crap.
Sort your bloody hormones out, you know, and you don't

(30:33):
need injections. Some of you go to your GP. That great,
that's awesome, but most of us can manage these things
through changing our habits and our behavior.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
And I think the key thing I really want to
double click on the dopamine.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
How's the lady who wrote the professor Anna Lemke Nation one.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah, and she highlights a whole heap of research in
that which is really cool, research that shows that there's
a difference between cheap and easy dopamine and dopamine that
you earn, right, So cheap and easy you talked to
them things like pornography and food, alcohol, drugs, scrolling, right,

(31:19):
this is why we get addicted and our kids get
addicted to smartphones.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
Is that scrolling those little dopamine.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
Hits and the surprise that you get the novel type right,
is something that just keeps you doing that. But she
has shown anything that's cheap and easy dopamine. I mean,
she talks about the research that shows that you get
a dopamine crash afterwards, which is what you talked about.
Whereas dopamine that you need to earn through exercise or

(31:48):
cold exposure by doing something hard means that that dopamine
that you get from that persist for a long period
of time and name when it drops, it just drops
the physiological levels, whereas the easy doublemine it drops underneath.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
That's why you feel shitous after.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
Of course, you feel depleted, you feel down, you feel
maybe even depressed or anxious like things like take the stairs.
You know, you jump in an elevator and you go
up twenty floors, you get out the elevator, there's no
sense of reward. You take the stairs, You're going to
get to the top and feel like a champ. That's
a really beautiful dobamine release an instrument like drumming. I

(32:26):
didn't become a world champion overnight. I was not an
overnight sensation. There was probably five to six thousand hours
of practice before I won my first world championship, maybe
even more. But sitting down for an hour and playing
a pattern over and over and over and over for
an hour signs boring as hell. But I'll tell you what,
when I got to the end of the hour and
I could play a little bit better and a little

(32:46):
bit faster, felt pretty good for the rest of the day. Yeah,
what's looking for those delayed gratification way to gain that?

Speaker 3 (32:55):
Yeah, I said we need to talk about delay gratification
in a bit, so make a note of that.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
But it's just the other.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
Thing I wanted to to just mention around dopamine is
there's so much research out here ei there not that
shows that your brain releases dopamine when it knows it's
in forward motion towards your goal. So that comes back
to your whole idea about getting radically clear on what

(33:21):
you want, because when your when you set goals and
you're focusing in and chasing a goal and you're doing
actions towards it, that's what releases dopamin. I always say
to people who there's many people sitting waiting for the
fucking motivation. Fair you knows what I said to people.

(33:44):
If you want the motivation for her to come, get
started right, get acting towards your goal.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
But it's got to be towards your.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
Goal because it's about goal directed behavior and that's what
gives you the motivation to continue.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
And if I think of dopamine, you set your goal.
So I was working with Canterbury rugby team and you
know we're talking about, you know, why is the season
not looking the way we'd want it to look. I said, well,
let's go back to the games and let's go into
the micro moments. He says, why did you not celebrate
that tackle, Why did you not celebrate that pass? Why
did you not celebrate that good kick? You celebrated the try,

(34:19):
but there wasn't nearly enough tries Why you're not celebrating
the micro goals along the way.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
Yes, yeah, that releases dope.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
I meane every time you celebrate a little moment. I
you know, I got my book out tonight before I
went to bed. I read three pages bloody, brilliant. That's
a little moment. Celebrate that. So we've got to take
a moment to actually celebrate the mini victories. That's going
to help.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
Yes, yeah, I see there's research on that.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
I remember, you've you've just tweaked back memory that are
triggered it that you need to celebrate your wins, save
them for about ten to twelve seconds for them to
impact upon your brain and.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Your reward pathways.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
So many people just go, oh yeah, move on, move on,
slow down, save, celebrate.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
Fucking hell, all that hard work was worth totally.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
And I mean the toughest guys I work with, whether
they're special forces athletes, are you know, big important businessmen
like journal have a journal. Get your pen out and
write about your feelings, right about your achievements, right about
your challenges. That's one of the cheapest and most powerful
self development tools there is out there.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
Yeah, I completely concur with that, and I need to
get friggin' better.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
I think Carlag's brilliant at it.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
I am so hit and miss, but when I do it,
it is actually really really useful, right, And I love
the whole stoic idea of Mars Aurelius talks about, you know,
when you get up in the morning, and I kind
of do it mentally. I don't write it down, but
I think there is value in doing that. Is like,
who do you want to be today? What sort of
person you want to be? What sort of values do

(35:55):
you want to exhibit today? And then at the end
of the day, and you're on it. Here's what I said.
I was going to do what worked well, what didn't right?
That whole process of observing your behavior. It's like you
do talk about taking your med's monthly. It's that observation around.
Here's what I said I wanted to do. How did
I do? We've got to keep ourselves in check.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
No one else is, no one else cares nearly enough
to check in on us with our goals, with our
self discipline.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
It's our job.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
And you've got to participate in your own rescue. And
like every day.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
I like it. Yes, that's very cool.

Speaker 3 (36:30):
Yeah, participating in your own rescue and participating in your
own fucking destiny too.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
Now, let's talk about because you're a little bit critical
around traditional education and how it kind of comes up
short when it comes to peak performance.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
So what do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Look, I think there's so many constraints around traditional education.
It's got its place, and there's a lot of it
that I do admire and love. However, for the individual
who think differently, for the individual who wants to take
a different path, the education system's not set up to
support them at all. And when you see high performers,
you know, people that are credible athletes, people who are

(37:11):
you know, incredible creatives, the education system usually doesn't serve
them very well in their formative and often stifle them.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
It does.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
And so how many people are we losing out on
that could actually be you know, the next Beethoven, the
next Michael Phelps. They might never make that because the
education system doesn't make room for that creativity. And even
I was chatting with our former Prime minister recently, we're
talking about critical thinking. The way it's set up, it's
now discouraging critical thinking. The ability to use your mind.

(37:42):
It's like, how do we just get on laptops at
year two, year three and use chat GBT, use your nuggin,
like use your brain. So I firmly believe that traditional
education has its place, but it's a parent's duty to
fill the void, fill that gap, help your kids at.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Big goals at school.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
You're not certainly New Zealand. I'm sure it's similar in Australia.
You're not encouraged to have massive dreams like and celebrate
in this tall poppy syndrome thing.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
Yes, yes, it's big in Australia.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yah massive.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
How sad is that? It's awful?

Speaker 3 (38:16):
So I judge to James, sorry for our international listeners.
I think all the Ausies and Keywis would understand tall
poppy syndrome, but just explain it for maybe some of
the international listeners who may have never heard that term,
like what the hell is tall poppies?

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Yes, So essentially, let's say you're passionate about something, you
give it, you're all, and you start to get some results,
and you start to you know, maybe get some wins,
and all of a sudden you're maybe the national champion
or you launch the business and you make a million
bucks and all of a sudden, you're in newspapers, whatever
it might be. You're starting to kind of rise up
above everyone else in their eyes. And you're a tall poppy.
And often what happens when you rise above the masses,

(38:53):
some people will go, oh, oh, we need to chop
you down. We need to chop you right down so
you can back down the size. That's tall poppy syndrome.
It's I was chatting with Richie McCaw when him and
I became fathers, I don't know, nine years ago, and
we're talking about tall poppy syndrome with our kids and
he said, James, when someone tries to blow out someone
else's flame, it doesn't make theirs burn any brighter.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Oh, that is fucking good. I love that. That's cool.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yes, that's his perception. And I says, did you receive
tall poppy syndrome because obviously New Zealand's most well known
rugby player, arguably one of the world's most known. Yeah,
And he says, James, when I received it, and I
received it a lot. It made me double down. It
made me just get to work. And I think that's
pretty cool. That was his response. So it's up to

(39:42):
you and I how we respond to that kind of
naysaying critics, And you got to take the high road
and keep moving.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
I remember Richie McCaw thing all right. I bought his
book and The.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
Real McCaw which is a frigging brilliant book, and I
was I was reading it, and then one day just
disappeared and I'm like, the card, where have you seen
my book?

Speaker 1 (40:05):
And I was thinking, fuck the hell, did I leave
it on a plane or whatever.

Speaker 3 (40:09):
And then one night I was walking past Oscar's bedroom,
who was ten at the time, and it was half
past ten, and I could see a light right and.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
And I thought, you little ship, what are you doing?

Speaker 3 (40:22):
And I opened the door and went in and there's
Oscar sitting up in bed with the head torch on
with my book, The Real McCaw with a highlighter, reading
it and highlighting.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
That's amazing.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
Was just And he did that for his his karate, right,
because he was big into his karate. And when he
was he had I think he entered into the national
Karate Championships and he wasn't supposed to get in because
he was too young, but they screwed it. Up in
terms of the entry. So he sense his wife just
entered him into the street and up and I was

(40:58):
talking about it. We were thinking him right, and so
we're going there and I said to him, look, osk,
look this is just going to because you know, daddy
in a year makes a big difference.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
And I said, look, let's just go and have a crack.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
Right, and you know you'll get some great experience for
next year.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
And he just stopped and he looked at me and
he said, what are you talking about. I'm going to
win it.

Speaker 3 (41:20):
And he ended up winning it. But a lot of
it was the stuff that came out of Richie mccaugh's book. Right,
So if you ever see Richie McCall again and tell
him that story.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
I'm going to tell him that.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
It had a It was just unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
I'm reading it. I don't want to forget that he
had talked.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
On just just reading the book and and the systems
that Richie McCall put in players.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
So, yeah, that was very cool when you mentioned Richie McCall.
And let's not talk about so.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
Modern society quick fixes? Right, Hell, are member running a gym?
And I had this guy working for me and you know,
younger generation and came in and was a trainer and
said to me, I think you need a penny two
hundred grand a year.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
And that was your response, right, you laughed, But I'm like.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
No, talk me through this.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
And he says, well, I think I'm worth it, and
I'm like, okay, so do you know how business works?

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Right? But anyway, so there is this culture.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
A lot of it is driven by the whole social
media thing of quick fixes, right, of of instant wins,
of making being a fucking millionaire super quick and all
of this, and it's just there seems to be more
of a culture where they just want it all and
they want it really quickly, and people aren't prepared to

(42:52):
do the hard yack, right, so.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
Talk to us.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
Can you hack your way to peak performance?

Speaker 2 (43:02):
There are no shortcuts? Look, the long term consequence of
short game thinking is regret.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
Oh I like that, say thathity.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
The long term consequence of short game thinking is regret.
And people who think that they can just fast track
and pay their way there, or mummy and daddy or
silver spoon me there and get me all the right
schools and coaches. Good luck. You know, the people have
sat down with whether they're running countries, companies, Formula one teams,
ninety nine percent of them work their asses off and

(43:36):
n naebercent them went to a regular old school like
me and you did back in Northern Ireland. They didn't
get all the silver silverware and silver spoon treatment. So
there is no such thing as a quick win. There
is no such thing as an overnight sensation. And I'll
tell you what. The people who do get given the
lotto win, who get given you know, that nepotism kind

(43:56):
of rise, they're miserable. You know, I've sat with people
who billionaires who got there very quickly, and they're miserable.
There's something beautiful about delayed gratification, working for something, earning it,
you know, slowly getting there, failing a bunch of times,
getting back up. That's the only way to be a
high performer. And you know, I might be quite unpopular

(44:17):
here with the Gary Vaynerchuk fans of the world, but
you know the difference between a high performer and everyone else,
it's not hustle, it's not luck, it's habits, you know, hustling.
I don't believe in that at all. If you're a hustler.
Good luck to you. Can't wait to high five you
when you've burnt out, because that was me. I burnt out.
I haven't left, I said of drumsticks in eight years

(44:40):
and that was my hobby, that was my joy. It
was my passion. Too much, too intense, not enough balance,
you know, its habits. Habits is what will get us
anything that we want in the world, you know, whether
that's a better relationship, better body, more money, that winning
whatever titles you want, get the right habits, and I
promise anything's possible.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
And if you are a fan of the secret, I
don't know if you've seen that movie where you can
manifest your future in to fucking rewind and erase all
of that ship from your memory.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
That doesn't work, like manifesting and sitting doing jack all
like you're not going to get anything. But you know
a sore oars, so.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
You're gonna fucking manifest long term failure. That's what you're
gonna manifyde why not take an action?

Speaker 2 (45:34):
The fact in the book poll I share with everyone
a really powerful visualization technique. Now, visualization and manifestation different things, yes,
and I walk them through like this is how you
visualize your future. This is why you focus on what
it sounds like, feels like, who's going to be there
at the finish line? You know, how might you feel?
What might you hear? And then I'll walk them through

(45:55):
like let's do that regularly. So on the build up
to my first world title, I I was lying in
bed fifteen to twenty minutes a night visualizing like a
three four minute performance in detail and how it's going
to feel and look at a potential obstacles. But when
I win that title and I left up, how's it
going to feel? Who's going to be there? What will
I hear? And then have a plan to get to work.

(46:18):
Don't just visualize all day long, have a plan to
do the work.

Speaker 3 (46:23):
That called functional imagery training, right is exactly what you
talked about. And there's a lot of research Commander of
the University of Portsmouth around that whole visualizing, but a
structured process just like you're talking about. It's not just
fucking close your eyes, I'm going to be a multi

(46:44):
millionaire or a pop star whatever. It's about the process
as well and visualizing the process that bringing in the feelings,
the emotions and making it as real as you can
so that you can actually taste, and it's.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
Proven to to actually create results. Like a great neuroscientist
and neurosurgeon, doctor Dody. Him and I were chatting about this,
and so he's obviously knows how the brain works and
works on the brain for his entire life has been
doing this exact same visualization technique, journaling about it and
then doing the work. And he's created a life he's

(47:20):
deeply proud of. He's ticked off all his big goals.
You know, there is a process, but don't watch the
secret and just think you can sit in bed all
day and think about your drink, like, get up and
get to work.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
There's a guy I think it's Anders Eric sim Yes, yeah,
but but he also talked about the process. Now this
is this is very deep in my memory banks years
and years and years ago.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
Abute the whole deliberate.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Practical, deliberate blackness is the key.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
Yes, yes, so, and I actually use that.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
So I'll tell the story and then I want you
to give the the kind of cot around this.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
So why this is important?

Speaker 3 (48:02):
So when my kids were doing karate, I eventually thought
I was going to all these tournaments and I thought
fuck it, I may as well do karate, right, And
then I set myself a goal to become Australian Master's
karate champion, right.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
And I'd never done karate ever.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
But what I did and kumite, which is is the
comebat bit right, And I can't My hips are shot
because of soccer, so I can't kick. So all I
had was punch is front punch and reverse punch, right.
But what I did is I got a coach who
was a multi national champion, right, he was done at

(48:39):
our dojo, and I would get him to teach me
this skill, the front punch and reverse punch, but I
would get him to then film me do it, and
I would film him do it, and I'd go home
and I'd watch him in slow motion and break it down,
and then i'd watch myself in slow motion and see

(49:01):
what was different and then adjust and film mcgeean and
adjust and film mcgeean. And then when I got at
that point, I would just repeat it over and over
and over and over and over again, and then film
myself and then see was I executing it properly?

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Right?

Speaker 3 (49:19):
Talk to us about why stuff like that is important
and what other elements are involved in deliberate practice.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Yeah, it's interesting because I read that ten thousand hour
rule by Andrews Erickson actually before I asked that, how
did you get on with your goal?

Speaker 3 (49:34):
Yeah? You know, I think I was a white belt
with a yellow stripe or a yellow belt that everybody
else was a like second down black belt.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
That is outstanding, well done. But that's that's the proof
is in the pudding, right And.

Speaker 3 (49:48):
I may actually me and know that that was a
brilliant moment because me and Oscar both became Australian champions
the same event and the same event, yeah, which was
very precial.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
And that's when you come down to actually the it's
not luck. There was some habits and discipline there. What
did you both do?

Speaker 3 (50:03):
You know?

Speaker 2 (50:04):
So Andrews Ericson would say, you know the ten thousand
hour rules. So I heard this when I was ten.
I've been drumming for a year and I thought, oh,
all I've got to do is do ten thousand hours
and I'll be the world's best. And so you know,
maybe two or three thousand hours in god, I'm still
pretty average. And then I started reading again and seeing
this one line that said it's only going to work.
If there's deliberate practice, shit, what does that mean? So

(50:28):
I got a VHS cassette tip called the Essential Principles
by the sixteen time World Solo Drumming champion Jim Kilpatrick.
Popped it into the VHS cassette player and it was
teaching the basics, and I would stop, rewind, try it,
stop play, watch him stop rewind. And I didn't have

(50:49):
a video camera at the time, but I had a
like an audio recorder, record it and listen and listen
to him, and listen and listen to it. And about
two years of doing that every day, and I used
to skip school and not tell my parents, and I'd
sit at home in practice for six hours on the
most basic rudiments, you know, these basic essentials. And when

(51:10):
I got to the World Championships and wanted at thirteen,
people are like, how did you do that? Like you've
only been drunning for three or four years. This is
just the simple things done consistently over and over lead
to positive results. There wasn't I'm not a talented drummer,
not naturally born as a talented drummer. You weren't naturally
born as a karate legend like you get clear and

(51:31):
what you want, then you reverse engineer, well what's the
things I need to do? And then you focus on,
you know, sweat the small stuff.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Get brilliant at the basics.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Right, common sense not common practice?

Speaker 3 (51:43):
Yeah, absolutely, so may you. So let's talk about motivation. Right,
So we did, we did mention it. But some people,
and particularly when they when they listen to things, they
get all motivated and go, right, I'm going to do
it hot. Is there a way that people can naturally
are deliberately enhanced their motivation?

Speaker 2 (52:05):
Absolutely? Success is an inside job and it's not about
winning the world championships. It's not about making the big money.
It's about getting clear on why why do I want
to do this stuff? So if you look at the
research Daniel Pink did on motivation, he wrote a great
book on this and.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
The Drive Drive. I've seen actually seen Daniel Pink speak.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
He's pretty amazing good in person, because not very many
authors are equally as good on stage. It can be
a bit dry.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
He's great.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
We had him on the show but a year ago
and it's just outstanding speaker. But it's very simple. Mastery, autonomy,
and purpose, purpose those three things and here's the problem.
So many people are extrinsically motivated money, status, power, fame,
and I would say, in my younger years, win win, win,

(52:59):
be the World championship, be on stage. It was very extrinsic.
I remember I told you I burnt out as a drummer.
There was too much extrinsic going on, not enough intrinsic,
which is doing it for the love of doing it,
doing it because you enjoy the process. You've got to
find the balance. And then finding the balance is having
a sense of mastery, of learning, of growing, of you know,

(53:21):
purposely moving towards getting better and helping others. Autonomy, the
sense of I can take the direction, I can head
in the way that I want, I can work autonomous
from anyone else, no micromanagement. And the last one purpose,
like why am I doing this? Is there an actual reason?
Is it making a difference to my life for other
people's lives? Those three things help. I don't know what

(53:43):
it's like in Aussy, but in New Zealand you've got
people who will fly with their in New Zealand and
they'll get silver status if they fly off enough, then gold,
then gold elite, and that's awesome. You and I probably
fly enough where we've got these these status things, right, Yes,
Now they give you we bag tags, two luggage tags,
and they go on your big, badass thirty kg luggage

(54:04):
and you check them in. Now, some people will take
those little gold Elite or platinum status and they'll put
it on their backpack, the backpack that's going on the
plane with them. It's never going to get lost, and
they'll have them abel stuck out in such a way
that everyone can see their gold Elite, their platform, all
their colleagues, everyone at the airport. No, that's not wrong,

(54:27):
and that's not right, but that just means that they've
got quite a bit of extrinsic motivation.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Yes, yes, yeah, absolutely, And.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
I think this is a real warning for parents, right
because when you are constantly rewarding your kids, like I
know some parents that would pay their kids' money to.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Do well in sport and to do well.

Speaker 3 (54:58):
In exams because well intentioned that they think then that
they are going to motivate their kids to do that thing.
Or you do well in your exams, I'll buy you this. Right,
you score a goal, I'll buy you this. You win
the tournament, I'll give you x amount of money. And
when when I hear and I've heard that sort of stuff,

(55:20):
I'm like, hell, that's why I've no heard because what
they're doing is they're driving extrinsic motivation and they're destroying
intrinsic motivation.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
And we need to be very very careful with how
we use.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
Extrinsic motivation because it can motivate people to get started for.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Short term, quick pass simple tasks, yes, brilliant yes, correct
long game it's not sustainable.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:52):
And then the other thing you talked about there was process,
And when I coach, there's mindset coaching for karate Australia athletes,
the ones who want to get to the Olympics and
things like that, and chatting with them and process versus outcome.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
It's big.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
And I say to them like because because sometimes they go,
you know, in a big event, you know, that's when
they screw up and everything was there and I'm like, well, well,
what was what was happening in that event? What how
do we how are you thinking? And often it was
like my family's in there and my girlfriends in the crowd,
right and they're thinking about I better win, I better win,

(56:33):
I better win and the stress comes from focusing too
much on the outcome. And then I show them the
research that shows that over ariusal inhibits motor control. So
when you're overarrised, right, when your your your arisal systems
are too high, it actually slows down your reaction time. Right,

(56:56):
there's a sweet spot for arousal, and that over comes
from thinking about the outcome rather than the process, like
what do I need to do? What skills that I
need to execute? Right, As I said to those athletes,
process beats outcome every fucking day and twice on Friday.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
One hundred percent agree with I'm working with rugby players
or tennis player, doesn't matter. If you follow the process,
you're going to get better results over the long term.
And what you said around they were thinking and it
affects motor emotions, find more emotions. Goes back to that
model you and I talked about earlier, belief attitude, behavior,
and the behavior is the motor control. Right, So as
soon as they're starting to believe, oh, if I don't

(57:39):
win this, I'm not enough for my girlfriend in the ARDA, Yes,
you know, I'm letting my mom and dad down in
the audience. That's the belief. I'm a failure, I'm a disappointment.
The attitude then goes, oh shit, well a better step up,
and all pressures on a better not lose this. Then
all of a sudden, as you say, things start to
slow down. So you get into the brain top two inches.
That's wherever and is managed and controlled.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
Yeah, absolutely so you right. So last last couple of questions,
because you're right that high performance aren't high performers aren't busy,
which kind of seems counterintuitive. If you want to be
a high performer, you've gotta fucking work your ass off
and be busy.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
So tell us what do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 (58:24):
So a client come to me and say, look, James,
I have not getting the results I wanted. And I says, yeah,
why not? I'm just so busy, got too much on
this is great, give me your phone's give me the phone.
It's a good screen time reality check coming his way.
It's four hours so Facebook nine hours fifty one minutes

(58:46):
in a week. I says, maykay, how many of your
clients are on there? How many of the things are
going to help you become successful in your sport or field?
Going to be on there? You went none TikTok eight
hours and twenty minutes a week, and you can see
where it was going. Another five platforms. I says, you
don't have a busy problem, you have a priority problem. Yeah,

(59:07):
so the true high performers aren't busy, they are priority focused.
I talk about MVPs. If you don't know your MVP,
don't get out of your bed. What's your most valued
priority today? What's that? One in your professional world and
one in your personal world? You don't know that, like it,
don't get up like because otherwise you're just kind of
bounced them from thing to thing and you're straight on

(59:27):
your phone. Look at your socials and answering emails.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
Well, we didn't drift through life and we get just
sucked into those old habits and no routines, right that
often don't serve as right one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Prioritize your priorities. You know, if you look at the
average leader that had a study on CEOs and they
were asked, what's your number one value and priority in life?
But ninety nine percent of them family, Okay, great, for
the next two weeks, we're going to do a time
on it. You're all going to report a time on it.
So for the next two weeks they did that. They
came back and they reported that they spent on average
three percent or less of their day with their family.

(01:00:02):
That's less than forty three minutes a day present with
their family. Massive values alignment. High performers are super radically
clear on what they value, what their priorities are, and
they schedule that and they say, no a lot. That's
why they're not busy. No I'm not coming to that thing.
No I'm not agreeing to that. No, sorry, I'm too busy.
But they're actually busy being productive rather than busy being busy.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
Yeah, I love your time, audit.

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
You know, I have a similar thing which I just
wrote a chapter part of a chapter in my new book,
A Bite an Attention audit, Right, Like, where is your
attention placed on a daily basis? And is it placed
on the places that it needs to be for you
to become the person that you want to be?

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
And that includes not only how much of my attention
is on social media or watching shit TV, how much
of my attention is in my own head?

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
I can struggle with my thoughts and my emotions and
those sorts of things because whatever you pay attention to
your bringing commit sales.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
Two. That is just absolutely critical.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
So James, we do have to wrap up unfortunately, and
I think I definitely need to get you back on
the podcast here.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
Where can people go?

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
So your book is The Habits of High Performers by
James Lachlan, or can people go if they want to
find out more about you other things that you do?
If they want to book you as a speaker, either
in New Zealand, across the ditch here or anywhere else
where's the best place to say? No?

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
Thanks, Paul, It's been great chatting. So a couple of things.
If they want, I'd like to give them a high
performance planner for free and they can just go to
jj lachland dot com forward slash planner and if you
want to put that the show notes, that would be awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Secondly, if they're on LinkedIn or if they're you know, Instagram,
just James Lochland, they can connect. Then obviously run a
podcast lead on purpose if they want to listen, they'll
hear the amazing doctor Paul Taylor very soon on there.
And then the book's available all good bookstores. Amazon Australia
will have it and if they want some of the
extra one to one client resources I have, they can

(01:02:15):
go to the habitbook dot com and they can get
it in there. If they buy the book, they get
all those resources to

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