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