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Learn to Shift from Head to Heart
“Wherever you go, go with all your heart.”
~Confucius
We are born to play the game of life leading from our heart.
From the movie Jerry McGuire:
JERRY: All right, I’ll tell you why you don’t have your ten million dollars. Right now, you are a paycheck player. You play with your head, not your heart. In your personal life, heart. But when you get on the field, it’s all about what you didn’t get. Who’s to blame. Who underthrew the pass. Who’s got the contract you don’t. Who’s not giving you your love. You know what, that is not what inspires people! Shut up! Play the game, play it from your heart.
ROD: No heart?! I’m all heart!
Like Rod, you may think that you are “all heart” and are worth millions more than you are being paid; however, you may be stuck in certain habits of the head that hold you back.
Once, you and I were all heart. As children, we played at life in the present with a sense of our potential. As we aged, however, we tended to shift out of our heart and into our heads—and then tried to drive forward by looking in the rear-view mirror, back toward the past.
Being in our Heads
“For every thousand hacking at the leaves, there is one striking at the root.”
~Thoreau
The root problem is that we play from the past, from our previous experience and from our head, not leading from our heart. In this book, I try to strike at the root problems you face in life—the things that keep you up at night, the things that have haunted you for years.
Our root problems are not due to lack of information—they are based on what we choose to experience. We tend to think that information alone will solve our problems—that if we only knew what to do, we would do it. However, even when we know what to do, when we have all the information we need, we still have the same problems. In fact, they may get worse! We can solve many external problems with information, but resolving internal problems requires us to experience something new.
We also accept the idea that when we solve external problems, our internal problems will solve themselves. For example, when I have enough money, I’ll have the security I need to feel at peace. When I lose weight, I’ll love my body and find the perfect partner for me. When so-and-so stops doing such-andsuch, then I can be happy.
We all know that solving external problems will not automatically create what we want internally. And yet, we still want external things to create what we want internally. We wish that measurable things—like money, weight and time—could start and sustain intangibles like happiness, peace, love and joy. We know we should work on internal issues; however, since working on them is so immeasurable, it’s hard to pinpoint where to start, what to work on or how to get the results we want. So, we look outside ourselves for answers.
If you are like me, you have been looking for answers outside of yourself for years. Some of these external things have helped me to a small degree, but have never given me the complete results I really wanted or needed. Often I received the results that were promised, but they did not translate into what I needed.
Why is this?
We may know the truth of who we are and what we want to do, but often we can’t do what we want to do because we’re not currently experiencing the truth of who we are. There is a gaping hole, a Grand Canyon gap, between where we are and where we know we should be.
Like all games, the game of life has winning and losing strategies. Your ability to win has everything to do with you and your choices. Yes, there is an element of chance or luck in this game, but you still get to choose what you do and who you become as you play.
I use the word play because I think that it best describes what you are doing. You are trying something out, seeing if it works. If it does work, you progress; if it does not, you may regress. You have to keep trying until you figure it out.
We all start life at basically the same place when we are born and then we move to where our family, or team, is. If our parents, or team captains, have been implementing losing strategies, we face a daunting challenge—but it’s one that we can overcome when we know what game we are playing: the game of our one and only mortal life.
The game of being popular, rich and famous is a difficult game to win. There are few winners; and even when some people win, they feel the excitement of victory for only a moment. Competition demands constant volleying for position and the prize of first place. There is almost always someone who is ahead of you, and you only feel glimpses of satisfaction because of the temporary nature of first place as everyone is trying their best to beat you.
Where are you playing this game?
Christine: I play this game with other moms. I want to be better, to mother better, to measure up and make it on the pedestal if there are medals being handed out.
This competitive game can never truly be won because the end goal is not to be your best, but to be the best—to be better than others. Out of necessity, we all play this game to a degree; however, we can play it in unhealthy or healthy ways. Few people disagree that competition and comparison do not bring what we really want in the end, but most of us still play this game.
This game says when I do____________ I will feel___________. Christine mothers to the best of her ability so that she feels good about her efforts. Yet what about when her ability changes? Or her responsibilities increase to the point that she cannot maintain her normal standards? Rigid expectations usually result in disappointment. Feelings should not have a foundation of actions because individuals produce so uniquely. Because feelings based on what we do are not sustainable, we stop trying. The reason it does not work is because you are going backwards on the results continuum. If Christine wants to feel good about her mothering efforts, there isn’t a checklist long enough for her to feel good. There will always be a way to mess up actions. What you do does not permanently change how you feel. Here is the correct order of the think, feel and do continuum: what you do is a result of how you feel. What you think is what actually changes how you feel. The feelings you have are a result of the thoughts you choose.
Maybe you have had these experiences like I have. Whether the game of comparison is something you struggle with or whether you have unhealthy feelings towards yourself, these experiences are trying to get us to change. As you look at this list, notice the experiences you have unhealthy feeling towards:
My body looking the way I want
My house looking the way I want
My significant other being the way I want
My friends being the way I want
My kids being the way I want
My income being the way I want
My job or business looking the way I want
My bills being the way I want
The experiences where you have unhealthy feelings that paralyze you when you can’t move through them, like embarrassment, frustration, anxiety and disgust create a troubling problem. The problem is that you don’t think you know what to do. However, rarely do we not know what to do, even if it is just the next step.
Eat more greens
Pick up the living room
Schedule time to talk
Spend more time with a specific friend
Spend more time teaching and less disciplining
Find how I can add more value
Talk to an employee who needs support
Call up and cancel a service I don’t use
Even if you were to take the next ten steps on each of these, the result may be that you still feel the same. You still feel you have to do more to feel better.
The root of the problem comes from believing if I do____________ then I will be______________.
The reality is that we must experience something different. The game of avoiding painful experiences does not last. The reality is that no matter how successful you are and how much you do, you will still have many experiences that will be very painful.
Death of loved ones
Sickness
Trust being betrayed
Being judged by others
Being misunderstood
Lied to by those you love
An example of this was a particular time when my wife and I had a disagreement. It was a real doozy. I ran my usual play of being hurt and offended. I truly believed and told myself she is the problem. I took it so far in my mind that I really believed that, for my life to be better, she needs to change. Otherwise, I’m stuck here. Anyone who knows my wife would know how incredible she is. What hurt me was that she was letting me know about something that I could improve upon. Instead of listening to her and trusting her, I spent a lot of time and energy trying to help her see what she needed to do to change. It was very obvious to me what she should do and I could not figure out why she would not just do it. I created a lot of pain for her, with unrealistic expectations and instructing her on how she could change.
Maybe you have been like me and wanted someone else to change in order to solve your problem. The real problem in my situation was that I was not being respectful. I was trying to protect myself by making her wrong. I was not trying to be disrespectful; the problem came from playing a game that did not work.
Shocking Experiment
We often don’t see options that are right in front of us, especially if our previous experiences show us that they are impossible. Consider the implications of this “shocking experiment.”
In the 1960s, before animals had any protection, rights or representation, researchers would electric shock dogs when conducting experiments. One group of dogs could stop the shocks by pressing a lever. Another group of dogs could press the lever but it would not stop the shocks. So then when they put those dogs in a box where they could escape shock by jumping over a short divide, the dogs that had previously been shocked without relief simply laid down, as if to accept their fate. The dogs that had pressed the lever to stop the first shock jumped over the divide to escape the shocking situation. The dogs that laid down could not be threatened, bribed or shown how to jump over the simple obstacle. They had to physically experience being walked through it. The scientists lifted the legs of the dogs and mimicked the action of step-by-step going over the divider. After two experiences, the dogs could do it on their own. (Seligman and Meir, 1967).
Seligman, M.E.P.; Maier, S.F. (1967). “Failure to escape traumatic shock”. Journal of Experimental Psychology 74: 1–9.
The reason we do not change is that we have had experiences over and over that bring us to the belief that those dogs had. We cannot change our experience, so we lay down and accept it. There are usually a few things we are willing to change, but they are external rather than internal. The reason for this is because we are using the part of our brain that is designed to protect us. I refer to this as being in our head. In our head, our conscience sends our feelings as messengers, telling us to change. We don’t understand the message and try and protect ourselves. If we understand that feelings are actually indicators that we need to change, we can choose to use the part of our brain designed to progress. I refer to this as being in our heart. In our heart, our conscience uses our feelings as messengers, telling us to have courage and progress forward. Like the dogs, we can jump up and get out of that box. If we are in our head, we protect ourselves and let the past dictate our future rather than progress by leading from our heart. We keep playing the same game looking for different results, even though the solution can be as simple as jumping over a divide. I want to show you how to jump over the divide in your life. The problem is I can tell you all about it (remember the scientists threatening, bribing and modeling for the dogs), but it will not change anything until you experience doing it for yourself.
Rather than closing our heart so we do not get hurt, we need to have courage and choose to change how we experience the same experience from our heart. This new way of playing the game is not easy to learn or master, but it is a lot more fulfilling because we progress rather than repeat the same experiences over and over and over.
You can probably think of experiences you have where no matter what you do, you cannot seem to change. They may even be experiences that others are enacting on you. I am telling you there is another way.
You might have had an experience where you walked away feeling:
| Ignored | Unappreciated |
| Left out | Rejected |
| Made fun of | Misunderstood |
| Gossiped about | Judged |
| Unhappy | Unwanted |
| Unloved | Disrespected |
We interpret these feelings to mean that something is wrong with us and that we are alone. What if these experiences weren’t what you thought they were? What if the feelings you felt were telling you something different?
In summary, the problem is that we have had experiences where we have chosen to use our head to protect ourselves. We think knowing more or doing more will solve the problem, but in reality we need to choose a new experience by leading from our heart.
The Core Solution
Expressing Your Heart
“When we forget how to love and play, we start to fret, fight and go to war. When we forget to listen to our conscience, we risk doing the unconscionable.”
~Ken Shelton
As children, we love to play games because games give us a healthy outlet for our competitive drive and a chance to test ourselves against competitors or against some standard of performance. As adults, we play less and work more to solve problems. But remember, the root problems we face are caused by what we choose to experience—and they can’t be solved by working harder and longer. We need to play the game a different way, a better way.
Play the Game a New Way—Your Way
I offer you a chance to play the game of life in a way that is far more challenging and rewarding—the game of your life, your way. You were born to play this game. You have yearned to play it well, but perhaps not learned how to play it in healthy ways.
Even though I am now an author, I actually received my college degree in recreation. I studied the science of games. I like this definition of what a game is:
“A game is a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude” (Jesse Schell: game designer, author, professor at Carnegie Mellon).
In order to play this game, you must first give up the plays in your current playbook that don’t work for you. Yes, they may work for you in one area, but they are not really working for you. You might not even know it, but you will be able to choose only what works. This will be hard at first, but over time you will see that winning this game of life is the real win you are looking for.
During this game, with the right plays, you will feel worthy and accepted. And there can be more than one winner! This is the abundant mentality— all who play with a winning strategy can walk away a worthy and accepted winner. It’s not like in second grade when the teacher told you that everyone is a winner just because no one is supposed to lose.
The feeling of being worthy is what it feels like to look into a child’s eyes. You know that children are worthy regardless of what they do or do not do. Their inherent worth is not based on doing, but simply their being.
Do you remember feeling this worthy?
Christine: I don’t. But I assume my parents felt the same way about me that I feel about my children. I had a great childhood. I guess I can remember feeling worthy in Mrs. Bizzell’s kindergarten classroom. She didn’t have favorites, rewarded hard work and respect and was kind to everyone.
The feeling of being accepted is what you feel when children hand you their drawing. You are not sure what it is, but you are proud of them. You know that this was their best effort—and that is enough. It’s all you need and all they need. You accept them for being them.
Do you remember feeling this accepted?
Christine: I remember my softball coach in third grade. I can’t even remember her name. But she coached 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, unappreciated, unrecognized or unwanted
We 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 courage because I have personally experienced the head-to-heart process and mentored other people in experiencing these exciting new possibilities. This journey takes the courage to say, I need help or I don’t know. If you are not there yet, consider the possibility that there might be a higher level at which you could play the game of your life. What does the end of your life look like, having experienced everything you could possibly want? The difference between now and the end is what I’m committing to help you achieve.
I promise you that when you experience this change for yourself and become a mentor to others, your pain will be replaced with gain and your anguish and panic with acceptance and peace. You will see that all of your struggles have purpose—because they brought you to this point. You can let go of the pain you have felt from previous experiences because you will have what you need on the inside to choose a new experience.
You were born to be yourself. You were meant to have everything you need. I’ll help you see that you get exactly what you want in life—a life worth living, along the road less traveled. This road “less traveled” is a challenging one, but one worth traveling. Undeniably, this road means more work for the traveler. Moving toward progress means exploring, expressing and having new experiences. Yet all of the work is worth the sacrifice because of the value the traveler gains. The traveler is transformed. The traveler moves forward with all the confidence in the world because the traveler knows how to get exactly where the traveler wants to be.
Two roads diverged in a wood and I—I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.~Robert Frost
The Path to Progress
“Four chambers make up the heart of every true leader: competency, intimacy, integrity, and passion.”
~Dusty Staub
This section gives you an overview of the principles and practices you need to personally experience the head-to-heart process. My core message is to lead from your heart. We do this as we get out of our head and express our heart. Each of the 5 Habits enables us to do this, which results in our ability to consistently choose our experience:
Habit 1: Be Courageous
Habit 2: Be You
Habit 3: Be Present
Habit 4: Be Restored
Habit 5: Be a Conscious Creator
The first four habits focus on the mental and emotional work of thinking and feeling. You focus on what you think and feel by doing the work to be you. Habit 5 focuses on the physical work of doing—of being you and doing something—of consciously creating something.
The only way to make something a habit is by repetition—to do it over and over until it is what you naturally experience.
Each principle can be learned in multiple layers of understanding. And each habit builds upon the principles of the last habit. It is a developmental sequence. We may be at different levels within different habits. It is not requisite to master habit 1, be courageous, in order to move on to habit 2, be you. Yet without the ability to be courageous at some level, you will not be able to truly be you.
Because the 5 Habits to Lead from Your Heart are connected and built on each other, there is a lot of overlap. Habit 3, be present, is explained again in less detail in habit 4, be restored, because it’s interconnected. The first step of being restored is being present. In this way, each habit can be used on its own without reading all of the previous habits. For some, this may feel repetitive. It is, and that is how we learn: by repetition. If, by the end of the book, you are able to explain each habit and the principles behind each habit, then I would know that it was repeated sufficiently enough so that you can remember it and use it in your everyday experience.
Principles and Practices
Principles are timeless truths; practices suggest how to apply them. True principles don’t change. Our understanding of them may change, but the principles do not change.
You will probably agree with all of the principles embedded in the 5 habits. The challenge is making them part of what you think and feel so what you do is based upon them.
Principles have far more depth and breadth than practices. A practice is a specific way to apply a principle. There are multiple ways to apply principles. Principles explain the what. Practices explain the how. You may understand these principles mentally, but you can’t understand them completely because each time you feel something, you add to those previous feelings.
Since there is no end to the ways or number of experiences we can feel, we won’t ever fully understand these principles. Understanding one principle mentally and emotionally enhances our ability to understand other principles because we can make more connections. Learning a principle or practice is easy, but understanding only comes through personal experience—and experience always comes at a price.
The low-hanging fruit of learning is a blessing and a curse: a blessing because it is easy to harvest, hold and consume—we eat the reward with little effort; a curse because soon after the easy-to-reach fruit is gone, we must expend more effort to gain the same reward. In effect, we must climb high in the tree to find the most delicious fruit. Over time, our ability to know where to go to find fruit, and how to quickly pick the fruit, expands. We know the climb will be worth it, but harvesting the fruit is a skill we still need to develop.
As you go through the 5 habits, first pick the low-hanging fruit; when it is gone, start climbing. Make connections with these principles and the practices you currently use.
Are you willing to get to the roots? Are you willing to take what you know and then to create consciously, on purpose, not by accident, those experiences that will give you what you really want and need in life? Are you willing to experience it for yourself? If you keep reading and do what I ask, I can promise that you will.
What Is a Habit?
For the purposes of this book, I define habit as a predictable experience of thinking, feeling and behaving (doing). Likewise, a heart habit is a predictable experience of thinking, feeling and doing based on principles from the heart.
How do we acquire habits? We form habits when we choose something so many times that it becomes what we naturally think, feel and do. The first habits we choose as children are based on what those around us choose. In order to fit in with our family or team, we pick up their habits. They seem natural for us because we are so familiar with them. We naturally mimic what we see others around us doing. In this way, parents model much habitual behavior—how and what we eat, what we do with our free time, how we treat each other and what we say.
These can be healthy or unhealthy habits. We may not distinguish between them at first because we presume one or the other is the only option for us. We follow the path of those who raise us. Even if we see that the habit causes us pain, we are likely to keep the habit because it serves a purpose. Changing a habit can alienate us from those who taught us the habit. So, we tend to keep doing what we are taught in the way we are taught.
What are your unhealthy habits costing you?
Christine: My unhealthy habits are costing me friendship, connection and happiness.
If a habit protects us by keeping us alive emotionally or physically, we will keep doing it. The alternative—being vulnerable—seems too risky and painful. Since we have not personally experienced another way of life, we may not see that there is one. The ability to see a new possibility comes primarily from observing the experience of others. Unless we deeply understand what they think, feel and do to choose differently, we find it hard to make the change. Moving from observation to execution is a difficult step. Just having information is insufficient—we must experience the difference for ourselves.
The process of choosing your own experience is the same, regardless of the experience. Besides learning from someone else’s experience, you can choose to blend it with your own experience. Learning the process takes time, since there are many levels of experiencing it. So, be patient with yourself. Where you are now is where you are—just take the next step.
We each have the ability to choose our experience, but we need to nurture it. We need to grow in each of the 5 habits to produce and harvest the fruit of our experiences.
Are you willing to be patient with the process?
Christine: I am willing to be patient. I think it will actually help me in my relationships, which is what I really want to improve on.
Do vs. Be
Habits are formed by shifting how we think and feel over and over, so that we act (do) out of habit. I focus on being (what we think and feel) because what you are constantly doing is a result of who you are consistently being.
This shift enables us to focus on what we can choose rather than on what we want. When we have experiences that align how we think and feel with what we want to do, we can easily do it. Usually we need to experience being who we need to be in order to do what we need to do. We need to choose a new way of thinking and feeling over and over to do something new.
Your conscience will tell you what to do if you listen. It communicates with you through your feelings. It sends feelings that you must learn to decipher in order to be who you really are. It helps you examine your thoughts and feelings, to learn from experience (yours and others), to choose your experience and to consciously create from potential.
For decades, you have been choosing your present experience, so don’t expect your life to change overnight or feel disappointed if more of the same is what you want to choose. You may think that you’re failing or that this makeover is not working fast enough. Or, you might think that this is hard work and you are in this for the long run.
All it takes is one new thought to change what you experience. Celebrate every time you choose a new experience. As you do, you will stay invested in the process until it becomes part of your life. It becomes a part of you that you recognize because it’s always been part of you.
This is not my process—it is our process. We’ve all been doing it for years whether it has been in healthy or unhealthy ways. I’ll point out to you the ways that you are already doing it. I hope that you will make this process your own and mentor others to do the same.
I am just one messenger who is teaching other messengers to listen to the messenger—the conscience: the greatest gift each of us has been given. And no matter how much we have gone against it in the past, we can experience a restoration of it.
Have you ever had an experience where you felt you were restored?
Christine: I feel restored when I am outside. I love my bare feet touching the grass. It reminds me of when I was little and would run around with fewer cares in the world than today.
These habits outline how to use your conscience as a compass. The best way to use your conscience compass is by personally experiencing using it through plays.
Development via Progress and Experience
My progressive development format is captured in the head-to-heart framework, which is used to explain how to choose our experience by following our conscience. The two primary paths of development are progress and experience.
3 P’s of Progress: Previous, Present and Possible. The top of the head-toheart framework outlines the 3 P’s of progress. As you personally experience the 5 Habits to Lead from Your Heart, you will progress by reflecting on your previous experience—what you used to think, feel and do—then recognizing your present experience and choosing to experience what you will think, feel and do to create a new possibility.
3 Phases of Experience: Think, Feel and Do. Our conscience influences what we experience—what we think, feel and do.
Think is receiving information—what we need to learn or know and why it’s important.
Feel is making that information personal so we can experience how it feels. We can memorize that feeling so that we can recognize it and trust it and make it part of our habit. We can learn to recognize our feelings and accurately interpret what they mean. Our feelings are the most personal things we can share with others. And the deepest connection we can have is to feel something together—not just verbally describe a feeling to someone else. Although others are not with you physically, they can feel what you feel—and you can feel what they feel. This emotional empathy enables you to make their experience your own. Even when you have not had the same experience, you can experience their feelings vicariously.
Do is a natural result of what you think and feel. The key to doing something new is not to force it but to change how you think and feel about it. Most information is geared toward convincing you to change what you are doing, pleading a case as to why what you are doing is wrong and figuring out the best way possible to do it. We focus so much on changing what we do, but you can more easily change what you do when you think and feel differently about it.
As you go from a previous way of experiencing something (the old way of thinking, feeling and doing) to a possible way of experiencing something (a new way of thinking, feeling and doing) you are likely following promptings from your conscience.
I don’t presume to tell you what to do because I don’t know what you should do. I don’t know what you are thinking and feeling. I don’t know what you have experienced; hence, anything I prescribe as the specific solution would be off. However, I can give you a principle-based playbook that works. You don’t need to know the specifics of what to do—the principles enable you to listen to your conscience so that you come out a winner, every single time.
Pyramid of Experiential Learning
As seen on the learning pyramid below, or cone of experience, how we actually learn best in life is inverse to how we typically prioritize and practice learning activities in homes, schools and workplaces.
As you see here, we remember the least in the ways our society teaches the most. Our children are sitting in classrooms, reading and listening to lectures about information. The greatest retention is showcased on the bottom of the cone: experience. We see that we learn most and best by doing, by having experiences, especially by proactively choosing our experiences.
Plays for Thinking, Feeling and Doing Differently
You can read this book, or you can experience it. To help you experience this book, I give you plays that enable you and others to go from your head to your heart. The delivery of the head-to-heart experience comes from my think, feel and do method. Each habit uses information to change how you think and stories and examples to change how you feel. You then have a chance to do something to make it your own.
Mentoring questions and plays enable you to record the new way you think, feel and do and then share what you will think, feel and do with others using the 1,2,3 method:
1 Mentor yourself by exploring and expressing your experience.
2 Mentor one other person about what you discovered.
3 Implement it in a group of 3 or more. This could be in a work, family or social setting. This is where you choose a new experience.
Another way to say that is 1) teach yourself, 2) teach another person and 3) teach a group of 3 or more people.
The first step of the self-mentoring process is listening to your conscience and you will see an improvement in your ability to choose your experience. If you want to see more improvement in your ability to choose your experience, make it a daily habit. I’m always pleasantly surprised at how much better I feel when I have committed myself to exploring, expressing and consistently choosing my experience. Christine and I are always reporting to each other, celebrating over our choices. This, this and this happened but it didn’t hurt like it has before because of this, this and this. After we can mentor ourselves, we are then able to mentor another person and eventually implement it within a group.
To hear the experiences and examples of others going through this process, go to www.5Habits.me to experience it for yourself.
