5 Habits to Lead from Your Heart. Johnny Covey
had no clue how to reach my potential.
This was the start of 14 years of searching for the answer to this question: why don’t I choose to do what I know? I’ve read hundreds of books, attended dozens of conferences and invested over 10,000 hours to create the answer: the 5 Habits to Lead from Your Heart and the head-to-heart framework. It enables you to create change within your family, company or culture.
Stephen taught us to be proactive (habit 1 of his 7 habits) by choosing our response to conditions and conditioning. The 5 Habits to Lead from Your Heart expands on his principle of proactivity. It enables you, regardless of your previous experiences, to not only choose your response, but choose your present experience—creating a world of possibility through conscious creation.
In my first book, Choose Your Experience, I expanded on his principle of proactivity to encompass choosing not only your responses to environmental stimuli, but also choosing what you experience as a result. I subtitled this book Getting Out of Your Head to Express Your Heart because I tried to capture the essence of the proactive process.
When I first started playing golf, I was told that the only book that I would ever need to read on the sport was Ben Hogan’s classic Five Lessons, because this book captures the fundamentals as expressed and experienced by a master golfer so well.
Now, in this book, I convert the head-to-heart handbook into a Hogan-like playbook, a progressive series of five habits that propel your personal and professional development, as well as your business development: 1) be courageous, 2) be you, 3) be present, 4) be restored and 5) be a conscious creator.
My Aim: Facilitate Experiences
My aim here is not to inform and inspire you with examples of my experiences. Rather, as a mentor I hope to facilitate new experiences, enabling you to choose to create change as you go from your head to your heart. I show you how to get into your heart—to enable you, regardless of who you are and what you have experienced in your life, to create new experiences.
I know I have not had your experiences. None of us has identical experiences. For example, consider siblings who grow up under the same roof. Even with the shared environment and common genetics, their experiences are vastly different. While I haven’t had your experiences, I can offer to mentor you because I too have had experiences where I’ve misunderstood my conscience and chosen to go against it. I have felt that pain and used that pain to change.
I can mentor you in the head-to-heart process because I have gone through it myself. Other mentors will come when you are ready. Also, you can use this process to mentor others. We become who we are by learning from our own experience and the experiences of others.
My aim is to help you understand why you do what you do and how to choose wisely. Throughout this book I outline these principles and provide plays that will change what you think, feel and do—if you choose to create change. My intent is not to tell you what to think and feel, but rather to show you a new way of how to think and feel, enabling you to consciously create experiences that change what you do.
I will focus first on principles, then practices. Why?
Principles = Timeless truths that work every time
Truth = Reality based on principles
Practices = How people apply principles
This process is not meant to be understood all at once. In fact, you will only fully understand it when you experience it.
My Personal Experience
While I haven’t had your experiences, I have had similar experiences with many of the fluctuations of life.
For example, 10 years ago, my wife and I, as newlyweds, built a $500,000 home. I had started my career investing in properties and was riding high during the 2006-2007 real estate boom. I bought my dream car, a boat and another car to tow the boat. We vacationed in the Caribbean and our HOA provided the pool and tennis courts.
We loved our lives. We were involved in our community. We contributed in meaningful ways to our neighbors. Our marriage relationship was strong. We were fulfilled. Our first two children were born in our dream house. We planned to live there for a few years before selling it at a healthy profit. However, we made the wrong investment choice at the wrong time and we went through foreclosure.
We then moved from house to house to motorhome to house to motorhome to house to house—all within a five-year time span.
I no longer had a booming business, big home, fast cars or an impressive income; in fact, I might be considered a failure by some people.
But here’s the thing: as my wife and I were losing everything, we were just as fulfilled. Yes, we were curious how things would work out, but we were still happy. We did not gain fulfillment from owning a nice house, boat or car. In fact, without the pressure of maintaining a certain standard of living, I could see myself more clearly and I learned how to choose my experience, no matter how my circumstance changed: whether I was rich or poor, single or married, father of one child or seven children.
Even now, internally, I continue to feel that I am incredibly successful. In my business I only work one day a week with clients; the rest of the time I think and write. We live in a small split-level home that we rent. We drive cars that we buy with cash—models from the 1990s—and plan on a budget for annual repairs. I earn enough money working one day a week to provide modestly for my family. We have many things and experiences we want and everything we really need.
I tell you this because I am now choosing to experience my life, not just doing what others say is best for me. Many people have told me to change, but I feel that this life is what is best now for me and my family. It is how my wife and I want to live. We give up some aspects of other’s lives so that we can have some perks that most families don’t take advantage of. I am choosing to experience life based on something internal, not external. I go out with my wife twice a week on date nights. My work schedule is flexible and that allows me to be a very hands on dad. We chose to have our children fairly close together, so they need a hands on dad to match their mom. As of June 2016, our children’s ages will include newborn, 21 months old, 4 years old, 5 ½ years old, 7 years old, 8 ½ years old, 17 years old and 17 years old (No twins - teenaged foster daughters). Because I’m not working with clients every day, I can split the load of carpool, laundry, dishes and discipline with my wife during the day so that she can play tennis and commit to other projects outside her family. I spend personal time with each of my eight children every day. I spend most of my time thinking and solving problems, which is what I love to do. I am very fulfilled.
This does not mean I am not progressing and seeking more financially. It’s just that I am enjoying this stage of my life, not pining over the past or fearing the future. I have dedicated much of my time over the last five years to thinking about and writing this book. Soon I expect to leave this stage, as I switch from writing to scaling—taking what I have developed in this book and giving it life outside of my small circle of influence. I am reinventing myself and my focus, applying these same 5 habits and the head-to-heart process.
An example of a time where I was going through the head-to-heart process is when I was meeting with a mentor of mine at my favorite restaurant. I was eager to tell him about what I would be doing with my life. I could count on one hand the number of people in my life who had the same impact that he had on me. I was so excited to tell him about what I would be doing because I was leaving a business where the only purpose was to make money and joining the industry he was in, which changed people’s lives through teaching principles.
The reason for leaving my money-making business was not as noble as it sounds. It was primarily because I had lost everything. That failure changed my thought from making money so I could fulfill my mission, to fulfilling my mission and trusting that the money would come.
As I told him my plan to be a speaker, mentor and business consultant, I could feel something was not right. He was not excited like I thought he would