I grew up knowing exactly what love was supposed to look like.
My father is a pastor. I went to a private Christian school K through 12th grade — the same school as my church, the same 50 kids my whole life. By the time I was 15, I was preaching and teaching in front of crowds of 1,500 people. I believed everything I was saying. I had no reason not to.
The verse at the center of all of it was 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
I spent the first thirty years of my life trying to live inside that promise.
When I left for college, something shifted. Not dramatically — just quietly. The distance between me and my family grew in ways I didn't fully understand at the time. I was the one making the calls, making the trips. I told myself that was just how families worked when kids grew up and moved away.
It took me a long time — longer than I'd like to admit — to understand what I was actually feeling: that I hadn't known what love looked like as clearly as I thought I had. That maybe none of us did. That the gap between what we preach and what we practice is where most of us are living, most of the time.
That realization didn't make me angry. It made me curious. If love never fails — and I still believe that — then what is love, actually? What does it look like practiced on purpose, every day, not just when it's easy?
That question is where the Hart Habits began.
The Birth
In 2007, I was sitting on a black leather couch with silver legs, crying over a man who had preached 1 Corinthians 13 to me while lying to my face.
I opened my journal and started writing. Not about him.
About the text. What if love isn't a feeling? What if it's a set of behaviors — specific, learnable, practicable behaviors — that anyone could study and get better at? What if 'love never fails' isn't a promise about outcomes, but a description of what love actually does when it's actually practiced?
I wrote down ten behaviors. I called them habits. I've been studying, practicing, and refining them ever since.
The Naming
The Hart Habits aren't something I built alone. Spirit, the Universe, God — whatever name you give to the thing that is larger than any one of us — was the real architect. I was just the one paying attention and taking notes. In 2018, I formally named the framework with the help of my coach, Isha Cogburn.
Introduced to the World
In 2020, I started sharing it publicly. What started as quarantine ended up as the most realistic example of exactly why The Hart Habits are needed and why building strong relationships is the most important work we do in both our digital and analog lives.
The Real Work Begins
Seventeen years of practice. Four layers. Ten Habits. One framework — finally given the home it deserves. If you've been here since the couch, thank you. If you just found this, welcome. Either way, you're right on time.
I'm Bridgett Hart. Here are the identities that guide me most.
Consultant
I've been an entrepreneur and consultant since 2013. Before that, I spent 15 years working in out-of-school time programs and progressively higher-level human services administration — Boys and Girls Club, YMCA, 21st Century Community Learning Center grants. In 2005 I took over my family's group home business and ran it as executive director until we sold it in 2013. I like to say my art is turning chaos into order.
Coach
I was certified as a Law of Attraction Life Coach in 2013 by Anthony and Melanie Clark, the Amazing Clarks. I began coaching women in leadership roles alongside my consulting clients and their teams. While coaching and consulting, I developed The Hart Habits as a decision-making framework to help clients navigate challenges while staying aligned with their vision and goals.
I Am
I am everyone, and I am no one. I am a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend. I am a gardener, a painter, a writer, a philosopher. I am a white woman with a Black husband and a Black daughter in the racist USA. I am a descendant of sausage - making Polish immigrants, adventurous English and Scottish settlers, and persuaded Mormon colonizers who ventured to the Wild West.
My home in Chandler, Arizona sits on the ancestral territory of the Akimel O'odham and the Pee-Posh - River Peoples whose ancestors, the Huhugam, built one of the most sophisticated irrigation civilizations in the ancient world right here in this desert. The canals that made Phoenix possible were theirs. The water rights that sustained their way of life were stolen and remain under threat - a century of legal battles still unresolved, and the current federal administration actively working to roll back what little has been restored. Today the Gila River Indian Community and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community are my neighbors - sovereign nations whose sovereignty I honor and whose continued presence on this land is not a historical footnote but a living reality. I say this not as a performance, but as a recognition of my personal, ancestral responsibilty to actively fight for Land Back. This land was stolen and destroyed by my forefathers to my benefit.
I am a student of humanity, and a goddess within myself. I am always evolving, always widening and always deepening into my own existence.
I am love. My purpose in this life is to help you remember that you are love too.
What drives me is a belief that healthy relationships — with ourselves, with each other, and with the planet we share — are the fulcrum for achieving real, global health equity. The tiny actions you and I take in our communities, politics, families, personal health care, ond connection to one another are the pebbles that will move the course of time in our favor.
The Hart Habits are ten habits built around one question: how do you actually implement love in real life, all the time, not just when it's easy?
They started as a personal reckoning. They became a framework. Now they're for anyone willing to get intentional.
Want to work together?
If you're a leader, an organization, or someone navigating something specific and you want Bridgett in your corner — she's available for advisory and coaching work through Hart Connections.