5 Habits to Lead from Your Heart. Johnny Covey

feel insufficient—that we are never going to be enough

       We hold back, self-censor, withhold

       We seek control or seek comfort

       We become raptors to protect ourselves even when we are not in real danger

       When we are in our HEART when . . .

       We use our neocortex, or right/left brain

       We use our intelligence and imagination

       We think, “I am acceptable”

       We feel our inherent self-worth

       We feel worthy of having the best in life

       We feel worthy when we feel valuable, regardless of previous experiences

       We feel accepted when we feel enough, regardless of previous experiences

       We lose our inhibitions in a healthy way

       What we say and do builds us and others up

       We can drop our masks and be ourselves

       We creatively express ourselves

       We may laugh, dance, sing, dream

       We listen to our conscience

       We cultivate growth and discipline and experience progress

       We are not threatened by the imagination and intelligence of others

       We welcome change, innovation, imagination and improvement

       We thrive on abundant thinking

       We sense our potential for greatness

       We create change within ourselves, teams, schools and organizations

       We gain the courage to consciously create

      Think about the most influential people in history: Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and others. They were not successful or celebrated because they did not have challenging experiences. They are known because, just like us, they had challenges and yet chose to have the courage to change. Challenging experiences do not go away. The only thing we really need to do is choose to experience life from our heart.

      The flow of the arrows will give you a starting point when you use the headto-heart framework. When we have an experience, we will choose to lead using our head or our heart.

      The left side of the diagram is what we experience in our head, what we are thinking, feeling and doing in our head. Our conscience will be sending us a message to change through how we feel. When we recognize that the icky feeling is telling us to change, we can listen to our conscience to change.

      The right side of the framework is what we experience in our heart, what we are thinking, feeling and doing in our heart. Our conscience will be sending us a message to have courage through how we feel. Our conscience is telling us to have the courage to continue our experience.

      Whenever you recognize you have a feeling that doesn’t feel right, it’s an opportunity to go from your head, the left side of the diagram, to your heart, the right side of the diagram.

      To see the full head-to-heart framework and have the definitions of each word used on it, go to the appendix page 237. If you are someone who likes things to be added a piece at a time, wait until you have read the whole book to use the definitions. If you are someone who wants to see the big picture of what the framework will be at the end, I suggest you turn to page 237.

       Using the Head-To-Heart Framework

      We are in our head or heart all day, every day. If we are willing to explore and express what we are experiencing, we can then choose to experience what we think, feel and do aligned with our conscience.

      The simplest form of using the framework is to recognize when your conscience is sending a message. Explore what you are thinking and express what you are feeling so you can choose a new experience. This is done by asking yourself a question and leading from your heart while listening to your conscience. We listen for the answer through pondering or writing it out, which I call “pen pondering”. Doing the pondering process means trusting that the principles of the framework are correct and that your conscience will be your guide. Until you experience it for yourself you may not believe it, but the answers come when you sit and listen.

      My son, Johnny, is an animal lover and activist. He watched a close family member remove a stray cat from their home and he was furious. He thought the cat had been mistreated and deserved to stay inside. He came home, insistent that our family member had been cruel and selfish and couldn’t possibly be a good person because of this one act.

      I took a deep breath, and prepared to show him the other possibilities when Johnny said, “Well, since I don’t feel good, I should ask a question. Can you help me think of the questions to ask him?” He nailed it! His strong feelings were telling him that something was wrong with what he was thinking. We came up with these questions. Do you hate cats? Why did you make that poor stray cat leave your house? Do you love me? After finding out the answers to his questions, Johnny could form new thoughts, which were based on reality, and he could feel genuinely better about the person and the situation. Head-to-heart does not mean pretending you don’t feel what you really do feel. It means letting your feelings move you to explore what is really going on and expressing those feelings so they don’t pile up to affect your future experiences.

       Follow Three Ground Rules

      The three ground rules to choosing your experience are:

      1 Be Respectful to yourself and to others: follow your conscience in what you think, feel and do. Your conscience tells you what to change and what to have the courage to continue.

      2 Be Your Best: follow your conscience at your 100%.

      3 Be Present: experience what you previously would think, feel and do, experience what you could possibly think, feel and do, and then choose to experience what you will think, feel and do.

       Now You Know How to Play the Game

      I have just outlined new ways of how to play the game of life. What the headto-heart framework can do is more than what appears on these pages. I have just said that you can choose your experience regardless of what happens to you and this is how you choose, but you may not fully believe it.

      Suppose I told you there is this game where each player is represented by a little metal figurine and you make revolutions around a square board as you roll dice to let you know how many spaces to move. You have the chance to buy the spaces you land on and other players get penalized for landing on your space. There are other surprises in the game. You might “go to jail” or receive bonus money for continuing the game. The winner is the last person left with money. Great concept, right?

      I know how to play Monopoly and I’ve just told you the rules and explained to you how to play. I’m certain you agree that I know how to play, but after hearing all of that information, you still would not know how to play, had you never played Monopoly before. Or maybe you’ve already played and no one explained all of the rules properly to you. You would have to experience it for yourself. When someone has a new game to explain to you, the basics are explainable, but when someone new has never played, you can almost always count on the comment, “Let’s just start playing. You’ll get it.”

      If you are interested enough to play the game a different way, learn it by trying it out for yourself and keep reading. Your responsibility is to keep reading and my responsibility is to help you experience the Head-to-Heart framework. Let’s just start playing. You’ll get it.

       Journey of Courage

      I offer to be your mentor in this journey of