5 Habits to Lead from Your Heart. Johnny Covey

me in kindness and promoted our team connection. She wouldn’t let us ostracize or hurt each other. She accepted us all and taught us to accept each other.

      We may have lost these feelings of inherent self-worth for ourselves. We can see worth in others, especially in children, but to regain these feelings of self-worth we may need to undo what we have done (or what others have done to us) and restore ourselves to who we truly are. The only way to restore ourselves in this way is to listen to our conscience. All the plays that I share with you are designed to show you what you must do to listen to your conscience.

      Each of us has different experiences and make different choices about those experiences. It is neither possible nor prudent to instruct you every step of the way to do what you must do to restore yourself. However, you can know what to do because you have been there every step of the way. You are perfectly equipped to retrace your steps and restore the parts of you that have been left behind.

       Plays and Practices

      We apply the 5 habits through plays—specific timely practices based on timeless principles that enable you to personally experience the habit.

      In sports, a game is made up of many plays that are used to score more points than the opponent. A playbook is a plan designed by a coach to produce a result, a win. Plays show you how to move around on the court, going from one spot to the next, both on offense and defense, so that you can execute effectively and win the game.

      For example, in the sport of basketball, many coaches use a whiteboard to sketch X’s and O’s, showing their players how to move on the court. I sketch plays on the court of the head-to-heart framework to help you recognize where you are on the court and how to use the whole court to your advantage. The plays help you achieve both public and private victories.

      In basketball, there are five fundamentals: dribble, pass, shoot, rebound and defend. During the game, all ten players on the court are applying these fundamentals to win the game. What makes the game exciting is how they execute these basic skills against their competition.

      If you are on offense trying to score, you dribble and either pass or shoot. If you don’t have the ball, you maneuver into position so someone will pass the ball to you, or you set a screen so someone else can receive a pass or shoot. On defense, you guard someone to prevent them from scoring, or you rebound the ball to prevent opponents from having a second chance to score.

      In life, when we are on offense, we are playing to progress by being courageous. When we are on defense, we are protecting ourselves. Likewise, the head-to-heart plays deal with being courageous on offense and changing on defense. When we play from our heart, we are open to courage and change. When we play from our head, we inhibit courage and halt positive change.

      Throughout this book I have drawn out some plays for us that have worked for me and others; however, I hope you will also create your own playbook—designing plays that enable you to experience new possibilities.

      For example, the play called be present is recognizing what you are thinking using your head and heart and recognizing what you are feeling using your conscience. When you do this, you can choose a play that enables you to change or be courageous or both.

      If you can’t automatically do the play, personally experience it and explain the play to others, the play is not yet yours. None of these plays are of any value to you if they are my plays—they become valuable only when they belong to you. So, pay the price of repetition to make these plays your own. Again, you may understand the play quickly, but to personally experience it automatically you need to feel it over and over by doing it over and over.

      You can master the 5 Habits to Lead from Your Heart by mastering the fundamentals—mapping out plays and executing them. The play framework helps you to see how it looks, where you should be and what you should focus on doing. In basketball, you might watch game tapes so you can see what the plays look like in action. I will help you visualize the play in your mind so it becomes real with mentoring questions.

      Finally, you should execute the plays over and over until they become natural. In this process, you can experience the play for yourself. The only reason to learn a play is to use it in the game. The game you and I are playing— the game of life—is always going on. Until we master the fundamentals and know how to use the plays, we will keep losing, settling for what we’re given, not getting what we want. In fact, without the right playbook, we can never win the game of life.

      My basic plays—the 5 Habits to Lead from Your Heart—are designed to work whatever your skill level in the game. If you are beginning to choose your experience, you’ll focus on courage. If you have been choosing your experience and are ready to restore yourself, to live the life you were meant to live, you will continue to work on these plays to master the fundamentals.

      This book is like having a personal mentor to help you learn the principles and plays and get in the game. The sacrifice of playing is great. It’s hard to be engaged in an intense game, but the sacrifice of only watching, of being a spectator or fan of other players, is even greater. By playing the game of life, you feel the pain of defeat and the joy of triumph. And you will eventually see that every aspect of the game is good for you and that playing the game in your own way is what makes life fun.

      This new game plan is being present to the times you are in your head, listening to your conscience and having the courage to change by being in your heart. This is the process of aligning your experiences, whether they be previous, present or possible with your conscience.

      As you become aware of your biggest problem—using your head to protect yourself instead of your heart to progress—you next need to outline the steps to reach a new solution.

      When something happens to us, we have the opportunity to choose what to do. If we feel threatened, we react with our head. We protect ourselves from feeling bad. The most common ways to avoid feeling bad is to try to make other people do what we want them to do or to do things that distract us from the pain.

      When something happens to us and we feel safe, we connect with our heart. We progress forward. We are open to our own potential and the potential of everyone around us. We are able to figure out solutions to our problems.

      Your feelings are how you know what to do. Feelings are very important. Your conscience uses your feelings to tell you to make a different choice or to keep going on the choices you have already made.

      If we don’t understand the messages our feelings give us, they don’t serve their correct purpose. They just pile up on top of each other, day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after painful decade. It doesn’t feel good to feel bad about ourselves. With the pain of everything that’s ever happened to us dragging us down, we can’t move forward to where we want to be. The painful feeling is dissolved when we realize what it means.

      That is one of the many results of practicing the 5 Habits; You see things as they really are. You aren’t paralyzed by the pain of the past. You can use your head and your heart simultaneously in the way they were meant to be used. You don’t live in your head, afraid or angry. You live in your heart, progressing and purposeful.

       We are in our HEAD when . . .

       We use our brainstem and cerebellum or base part of our brain

       We trigger flight-or-fight responses

       We think that we are alone and feel something is wrong with us

       We worry about what others think about us

       We feel wrong when we are disconnected from ourselves

       We feel alone when we are disconnected from others

       We feel awkward, uncomfortable and embarrassed

       We feel inhibited in expressing our best talents and natural gifts

       We feel insecure, even disposable and dispensable

       We feel unneeded,