Читать книгу 5 Habits to Lead from Your Heart - Johnny Covey - Страница 9
ОглавлениеChoose 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.
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 be. He was distant. As I finished explaining my plan I asked him, “What do you think?”
He said, “You will starve.”
I was shocked, embarrassed and hurt. Never before had I ever heard anything but encouragement. I defended my position as best I could, yet he did not change his view based on his experience of what it would take to succeed.
The next few days I was frustrated and depressed. I did a lot of exploring what I was experiencing through writing about what happened to get clarity on why he said what he said. It was not because his love for me had changed. It was because he did not believe that he could do what I proposed. He was trying to protect me. He got into the industry a traditional way, after putting his time in at a normal job, after completing his undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate degrees.
The courage to explore why it happened, to still believe in myself and to choose for myself was the most courage I have mustered up until that point. It was courageous, not just because of what he said, but because of the hundreds of obstacles I would have to overcome. I was in my mid-twenties with practically no money, no credibility, no content, no mentors. However, my conscience kept telling me to have courage because I knew it was what I was supposed to do.
That meeting was a turning point for me. I had to dig deep and really commit to my path. Yet at the same time, I knew the value of listening to the experience of someone who knew far more about what was ahead of me than I did. I had to figure out what was really going on for me. I had to become present to where I was really at, not just where I wanted to be or where I would end up eventually if I took this path, but to be aware of and present to that moment.
I had so many experiences where I felt like I was doing what I was born to do. This was what I should be doing. I also had many experiences with my mentor believing in me. I was able to separate the lie from the truth. What was so painful was the lie that he did not believe in me, that he was not supporting me, that somehow I was less than what he thought I should be. These were all lies that I had created in my own head. I made my own pain. It hurt so badly because it wasn’t true. The truth is that if I chose the path I explained to my mentor, it would be a hard road. The truth is that it would take years to make the money I would need to support my family on that individual business plan.
It is incredibly painful when we believe that something is wrong with us and we are alone. I have had plenty of other experiences where people who did not believe in me told me that what I was doing made no sense. Those experiences gave me feedback to change. Not that what people said was always accurate, but that there may have been something in it that I did not see before.
What it all boils down to is that our experiences either take us to a place of trying to protect ourselves or to progress. It is up to us to choose to use our experiences to progress, to learn from our experiences, to learn from the experiences of others. That can mean following their example or to know that is what you do not want to do.
My guess is that you are presently having experiences where you feel that others think something is wrong with you, and perhaps where you actually think something is wrong with you.
If I only…. If they only…?
My guess is that you are presently having, or have had, experiences where you feel alone, where you do not fit in.
I am too… I will never…
What if the problem was only in the way you were choosing to experience those things? What if the problem could be solved, even if no one else changes?
The first step to solving a problem is to know what the problem is. The second step to solving a problem is to know how to know how to solve it. The third step to solving a problem is to put energy into solving it.
The reason we keep having the same problems over and over in our lives is because we don’t know what the problem is, step one. Yep, I said it. I don’t think you know why you are having the problems you are having. It took me years of going against the grain, not believing that the current solution was working, to get to the root problem, which brought about a different solution, step two. I will give you everything you need for steps one and two. Your responsibility is to complete step three and put energy into solving it.
In the next two sections I will outline the problem and the solution. The rest of the book is there to support you in putting your time and energy into choosing your experience.
My Invitation and Challenge
I invite you to learn, apply and share the 5 Habits to Lead from Your Heart and the head-to-heart principles. Much of this material may seem familiar and foundational—it is. That is why it works. You are already choosing to do it at some level—to choose to create the results you want in your life. After reading this book, you will know how to choose to consciously create change, but ultimately you must choose to do it.
Section 1 will lay the foundation to use the head-to-heart framework. Section 2 will use the head-to-heart framework as a tool to have you experience the 5 habits. These 5 habits allow you to lead from your heart and will give you everything you need to know to get out of your head and express your heart. I have put together additional tools and resources for you at www.5Habits.me so you can keep experiencing the process of going from your head to your heart long after reading the book. It is the best way to take the practices and principles of the book and personally experience them.
The plays at the end of each chapter ask questions and give an example encouraging you to create your own experience. Try the principles for yourself—test them to see if they allow you to choose to be you—your best self—and share them with others.
