Living with Heart: From Birth to Death

The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 

The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 

The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 

The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 

The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 

Click here to read the episode highlights. 
 
The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
Be sure to subscribe to Dr Chip Dodd’s new Substack. He will be sharing two to three articles a week. The topics focus on healthy relationship, personal growth, and leadership. Dr. Dodd shares content two to three times a week. To subscribe, use the link above or go to chipdodd.com.
 
Purpose of Therapy
Therapy is about healing; restoration; and returning to normal interaction in a society that finds genuine fulfillment in participation, appreciation, and contribution. 
Those who develop the healing and “heart” of wholeness or identify themselves as an improving “work in progress” have tolerance for difficulties, ability to work communally, and desire to contribute.
 
Disruptive Therapy
 
Healthy therapy loses its focus on healing and restoration when it loses the wisdom of consideration. 
 
The wisdom of consideration is the process in which a “client,” for example, does healing work around family of origin wounds and identifies the need to restore the true self.
 
To restore the true self is to be able to know one’s own feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope without toxic shame or self-doubt.
Toxic shame and self-doubt are diminished through community with non-shaming people.
 
Therapy disrupts the healthy process when boundaries become walls and feelings become weapons—
If the therapist and client do not go beyond “what happened” and move into the consideration for the people who through ignorance, denial, or incapability were part of the loss of self, boundaries become walls instead of fences and division is increased. Walls create isolation. Fences create respect.
If the therapist helps the client turn feelings into rights rather than the tools that help a person make decisions, they are helping client’s get “stuck” in a victim status, rather than choice making response-ability.
 
The true self is not the right to not have to feel and make choices. It is the ability to know yourself and become responsible for your own actions that never give up on love and restoration—though a person may have to grieve deeply that the ones they hoped to be in relationship with do not seek restoration, too. 
 
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.

Click here to read the episode highlights. 
 
The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
Be sure to subscribe to Dr Chip Dodd’s new Substack. He will be sharing two to three articles a week. The topics focus on healthy relationship, personal growth, and leadership. Dr. Dodd shares content two to three times a week. To subscribe, use the link above or go to chipdodd.com.
 
Surrender:
What surrender does not mean.
It does not mean defeat, as in you have been beaten.
It does not mean that you are through defeat establishing a peace treaty, as in you remain sovereign over your country, which is yourself.
It does not mean that you are giving up benefits and have to tolerate abuse.
 
What surrender does mean
It literally means, “to render over, or give way, for one’s own benefit”
It is a relinquishing of my attempt to control what I cannot control; from that standpoint, the “defeat” is the relinquishing of pride, denial of need for help, or actions that make my life unmanageable
Recovery from any kind of addiction has surrender as a key beneficial step: 
A person first admits that they cannot control “life,” but they wish to live life
Surrender occurs when we seek a path, person, or process that can do this for us  
surrender: “I cannot; therefore, I surrender to what God and others can do for me what I cannot do for myself”
 
God and surrender
Actions of surrender imply that a person is “rendering over” “giving back” or “returning” something that was taken from someone them or someone else. In emotional and spiritual surrender, we, as humans, are “giving back” to God what we “took” from Him. 
We “stole” our hearts from God; we took our feelings, needs, desire, longings and hope and refused the dependency upon God that these inherent characteristics require. 
 
We are created dependent, but will we remain vulnerable to using that dependency well or refuse to depend?
 
Surrender really is “re-depending” on God as the Source of primary connection, presence, and fulfillment. 
 
We were born dependent and created to develop resilience in life and living through dependence. 
God gave us:
Fear - so that we would ask for help
Hurt - so that we would seek healing
Sadness - to resolve loss through grief
 
When we surrender, we are returning to how God made us, with the ability to be: 
connected to Him
present with Him
fulfilled by Him 
This allows us to experience all the relational wonder that life has to offer. But we must be “good at dependency.” We must start with knowing our feelings and using them as they can be used for our benefit.
 
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.

Click here to read the episode highlights. 
 
The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
Be sure to subscribe to Dr Chip Dodd’s new Substack. He will be sharing two to three articles a week. The topics focus on healthy relationship, personal growth, and leadership. Dr. Dodd shares content two to three times a week. To subscribe, use the link above or go to chipdodd.com.
 
Anger is discussed in depth in The Voice of the Heart by Chip Dodd
The following are ideas that relate to the chapter on Anger.
 
Rage versus anger
When discussing anger, we have to start with what it isn’t because we have been misled to confuse anger and rage:
Rage is what a person does to avoid vulnerability. It is always rooted in fear of helplessness.
Anger is what a person has when they are willing to be vulnerable. 
Anger really is the feeling that expresses our willingness to be hurt because something or someone matters to us. 
 
Synonyms that relate to the experience of anger are yearning, longing, hoping, wanting, hungering, thirsting, and desiring. All of these words are vulnerable experiences that require courage to reveal.
 
The gift that comes from anger is passion that leads to a willingness to be in pain/care for something or someone that matters more than pain or discomfort.
 
To “find” or discover your anger, it helps to ask yourself these questions:
What do I hunger for?
What do I desire that I am willing to be in pain about?
What do I see that needs to be improved, changed, or grown and will require me to risk and “sweat”?
What matters to me enough that I am willing to speak up about or show up in to help make a positive difference?
What do I imagine could be that I am willing to invest in?
 
Anger and hope
When a person “finds” their anger, they are also facing their hope for something to be fulfilled that has not yet happened. 
 
Anger helps us deal with the fears of failure because the risk is worth the pain. 
 
Anger is invaluable if we are going to risk taking action related to hope.
 
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.

Click here to read the episode highlights. 
 
The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
Be sure to subscribe to Dr Chip Dodd’s new Substack. He will be sharing two to three articles a week. The topics focus on healthy relationship, personal growth, and leadership. Dr. Dodd shares content two to three times a week. To subscribe, use the link above or go to chipdodd.com.
 
No Magic Wand
If parents had magic wands, most of us would tap our children with one. 
At minimum, we would guarantee a future of being a good citizen of their community. 
Even more, we would bless them to make a significant impact for good. 
Even better, we would give them the wish fulfillment of their own hopes and dreams.
 
Parents do not get to escape the rigors of parenting, and children do not get to escape the rigors of growing up.
 
Even without a magic wand, we can create an environment and offer our strength to help children face the rigors of growing up. 
 
To do so, parents must do four most difficult things:
We must let them fail.
We must let them feel.
We must let them struggle.
We must let them learn.
 
Whether we like it or not, children have to grow up in the same world that their parents grew up in.  
 
The realities of life are going to occur—hopes dashed, hopes resurrected, hopes attempted, hopes fulfilled, and heart-ache. 
 
We can offer something of immeasurable value to our children in order to assist them in their learning curve of living fully, loving deeply, and leading well. 
 
There is a “place” and a “person” we can offer our children of any age. 
 
We can become a “safe place to land” for our children. 
 
Being a “safe place” means that we give our children an environment and a person to turn to in order for them to be able to face, feel, and deal with life’s difficulties—and celebrations—without terrible fear of rejection. 
 
This person knows that the name “Dad” or “Mom” is the most important title they will ever have, and it is the title that children want you to value above all others. 
 
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights. 

Click here to read the episode highlights. 
 
The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
Be sure to subscribe to Dr Chip Dodd’s new Substack. He will be sharing two to three articles a week. The topics focus on healthy relationship, personal growth, and leadership. Dr. Dodd shares content two to three times a week. To subscribe, use the link above or go to chipdodd.com.
 
Living Creatively
Relationship with creativity requires that we not only dream and imagine what could be, but we also think about “it” and step into doing something about “it”.
Dream/Imagine > Think/Plan > Do
When a person steps into living in Creativity, the fourth relationship, which we are created to do, they are willing to be vulnerable to hope. 
 
Hope is an action verb that means a person is reaching towards what may not be realized. 
 
Living in the fourth relationship entails risk, making the other three relationships a foundation of security and a place to report to and return to after “pouring out” or “reaching out.” 
 
We need to know our own hearts, the hearts of others and the heart of God to have the foundation and resources to maintain courage in the struggle to create.
 
Many people live lives of quiet desperation by not letting themselves be known, and thus, they never really take the risks of stepping into their own creativity.
 
Many people do everything possible to avoid the possibility of “stepping out of line” for creativity’s sake, to avoid being made fun of, resented, mocked, or rejected.
 
The empty approval for “staying in line” can become the practice of living in the fantasy of doing something, but actually not taking true action. Our need for others’ approval and the anxiety of losing approval can “make” us postpone our lives’ possibilities—sometimes unto death. 
 
People who do “step into” paying attention to how God made them to create, will get hurt more, sometimes feel very lonely, will have periods of sadness, because that is the price we pay to fulfill how God created us—to live fully, love deeply, and lead well in a broken place. 
 
Knowing our feelings and being able to use them is essential if we are to create.
 
Anger is required for creativity to have expression: 
Anger, as referenced in The Voice of the Heart, is required if we are to live creatively. 
 
Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.