5 Habits to Lead from Your Heart. Johnny Covey

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       INTRODUCTION

       Experiential Playbook

       Choose to Experience the Possible

      When I first read Stephen R. Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, as a teenager I was searching for who I really was. I had a vague sense of what was possible for me, but I 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.