Living with Heart: From Birth to Death

53 - The 12 Movements - #3 A Man Remembers How He is Made

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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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
Endurance and Perseverance are different:
Endurance is the ability to “take the blows” that life delivers.
Perseverance is that and more; it is the ability to fight back.
 
We are created to persevere, but we need to learn how, and we need help to know how.
We have to practice asking for help.
 
A Man Remembers How He is Made:
 
A man needs to admit every day, with deep awareness, that he is not God, and is created by God. He did not create himself. He was created.
 
An inspired man, versus just one who is ambitious, knows that he is in service of something greater than himself, a mission that his heart is “called” to.
 
A man humbly faces his need of God, and he does not attempt to take credit for what he did not create.
 
Therefore, a man serves a higher authority and a higher purpose than himself, and he orders his life accordingly as was discussed in Episode #52.
 
In serving a higher authority and purpose, a man contends with three areas of struggle, as part of the purpose of living with passion, intimacy, and integrity.
He brings full hearted presence into a society and “world” that often lacks the heart leadership.
He brings advocacy; he speaks up for issues and people who suffer in silence or suppression.
He brings order into chaos or destructive influences.
 
No man succeeds alone. He needs the help of others; he needs their encouragement, wisdom, and strength. He also needs God’s encouragement, wisdom, and strength to keep him inspired to persevere in his purpose.
 
Surrender is vital for a man to succeed and persevere. Surrender does not mean defeat. The word means to “render over,” or “give back.” 
 
Much of our society teaches self-reliance and self-sufficiency, when actually a man needs to hand himself over to God, as in surrender himself to God, to be the strength and courage that he needs to live his purpose.
 
A man who attempts to live self-sufficiently or with self-reliance only needs to surrender to God who can do so much more with His strength in a man than the man can ever do on his own.
 
The “Living with Heart” podcast series on Codependency is vital to grasping the difference between self-reliance and God-reliance. Episodes #32 - # 44.
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52 - The 12 Movements: #2 A Man Faces and Struggles Being a Work in Progress

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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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
A man faces and struggles with being a work in progress by admitting and struggling to accept that “clumsy is as good as we are ever going to become.” 
 
Though we carry eternity in our hearts and the picture of perfection in our hearts, we cannot achieve it. 
 
A man faces four realities and perseveres in the midst of them and in spite of them: 
Mistakes are inevitable and yet a man continues to pursue living fully, loving deeply, and leading well so that he leaves a positive legacy.
We all have to live life on life’s terms. Life is tragic and God is faithful. We have to struggle with that conflict, without becoming resigned or giving up.
Everything in life is practice. We never get to stop needing to ask questions and learning how to live.
It takes a lifetime to learn how to live.
Remember that the movements are not a “twelve steps list.” They don’t work as an ordinal ranking, checking one off and then going to the next, and then assuming that you are done.
 
The Twelve Movements of a Man’s Life:
offer a “path” not a “pill.” 
offer a process of how to live so that a man offers his best to who he loves and what he loves. 
require that a man submits to the reality of how life works. No one “beats” life or changes how it works. 
Samuel Beckett said, “We are on earth, and there is no cure for that.” However, the courageous struggle to succeed in the midst of life’s realities; therefore, the twelve movements are not about perfection, but about living with passion, intimacy, and integrity.
 
A man will leave a positive legacy when he is: 
living fully
loving deeply
leading well
This man will exhibit:
passion
intimacy
integrity 
A man must bring these three characteristics to each movement.
 
Remember that God controls the process of life. Listen to Episodes 23 and 24, “Trust the Process” Parts 1 & 2 for a better understanding.
 
A man or woman, who lives with passion, intimacy, and integrity is a competent person; therefore, a successful person. 
 
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51 - The 12 Movements: #1 The Order of Love

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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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
The Twelve Movements of a Man’s Life are about a way of living with daily routines over a lifetime. They are about bringing your heart, head, hands, and habits to your relationships and life. We build a lasting legacy one day at a time and one step at a time. 
 
The Twelve Movements of a Man’s Life focuses on the invitations, “response abilities,” and opportunities for men to see who they are created to be, so they can do what they are created to do. 
 
A Reminder:
We are all created to live fully
love deeply
lead well. 
 
Both men and women are created with the desire to live with:
passion
intimacy
integrity
 
Questions to ask yourself about living fully:
Am I courageous? Do I bring my “full-hearted” participation to what I am doing?
Am I curious? Do I ask questions so that I may learn more? Am I teachable?
Am I compassionate? Do I have enough awareness of my own feelings and needs to identify and relate to others?
The desire to answer, “Yes” to all three questions means you desire to be a competent human being. 
 
Courage + Curiosity + Compassion = Competence
 
Men are called to: 
“stand-up” to bring order into chaos
“speak up” when no one is speaking up for what is just or merciful.
“show up” to fill the void or absence of what is good or right.
The Twelve Movements of a Man’s Life:
Movement #1  A Man orders his life following love’s code
God has directed us, allows us, and moves us to live life with these priorities.
The Man’s Life
God
The Man (Self)
Spouse
Children
Friends
Mission
 
The Woman’s Life
God
The Woman (Self)
Children
Spouse
Friends
Mission
If a person is going to love anyone or any place, then they must be willing to suffer and feel all the feelings that come with love. 
 
They also have to ultimately recognize that they are powerless over life. We have choice-making powers, but we don’t have power over all the outcomes.
 
Love is worth it, and it is a contract of a willingness to be in pain. 
 
Love hurts. Think of raising a child—all the concerns, fears, heartaches, joys, struggles, worries, sadness, celebrations, daily difficulties, hopes, and dreams. 
 
A man is given opportunity and a calling to 
live fully
love deeply
lead well
 
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50 - 12 Movements of a Man's Life (Intro Part 2)

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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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
The preface to Twelve Movements of a Man’s Life is vital because the movements are not just a list of twelve things to accomplish. They are twelve movements that are about a man’s whole life. They are processes that interlock and “circles” that join and move a man into wholeness and love and legacy. 
 
The 12 Movements are about a man’s character of heart and having actions that match his character in order that he leaves behind a positive legacy.
 
Men are created to become someone who practices a lifestyle of:
Living fully
Loving deeply
Leading well a life that is worth treasuring by others
 
These three territories integrated create a positive legacy.
 
It is vital for a man to practice healthy anger as part of the lifestyle that we will be discussing in the following episodes. 
 
For greater clarity about healthy anger, listen to “Living With Heart” Podcast  episode #19 and episode #20. 
 
Also, read The Voice of the Heart by Chip Dodd
 
Healthy anger is a feeling that moves a person to live with passion. Passion is the gift we receive when we live our lives expressing healthy anger. 
 
Passion is a willingness to be in pain for something that is greater than comfort or pain.
It communicates that a person values the heart and cares about something greater than his own self-protection, and vulnerability.
 
Healthy anger moves us to care, hunger, thirst, hope, want, and desire. It moves us to deal with and express the truths of the heart. It expresses our willingness to be vulnerable enough to care about something.
 
 “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)
 
A man is created to live with passion, even in a world that belittles it and mocks it.
 
A man who has passion is going to be on mission to accomplish that which he is moved from within to do. 
 
A man is created to be capable of intimacy, or “into-me-see.” In other words, he is capable of sharing the truths of his heart. 
He will accept his needs for the sake of mission. 
He will accept that he will need help to accomplish his desires. 
He will need other men in his life to help stay strong to care for his family.
 
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Season 5 Episode 49 - The 12 Movements of a Man's Life (Intro)

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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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
This new podcast series, “Twelve Movements of a Man’s Life,” is not going to be exclusively for men. We want women to learn and have confidence in seeing and expecting men to be who they are created to be. 
 
I created these twelve movements over 15 years ago when I was in my early 50s. I knew that I was not old enough to present them with assurance, because I had not witnessed them as a “lived experience” yet—even though I knew they were true. 
 
I am now more of a witness to how extraordinarily true and vital they are for our society, for families, for marriages, for mission, for men in community with other men, and for a man with God. 
 
I learned these truths and concepts from the thousands of men, couples, and families that I have worked with while running my treatment center and in my own  consulting/mentoring practice that I started in 2019. This material is the culmination of work that began in 1988, if not before!
 
These twelve movements are not a list that a person checks off, completes the next step, and then gets his diploma. These movements are actually real processes, or interlocking circles that expand over a lifetime. They are never completed. They only end when the man’s life ends.
 
This episode lays the foundation for the twelve movements to follow:
 
We are all feeling creatures. We feel, need, desire, long and hope; and we imagine our lives being fully lived related to our feelings.
We are all emotionally and spiritually created to do one thing in this life, to live fully (all purpose in life begins from the desire to live fully).
We are literally born to find full life in relationship with ourselves (our own hearts and heads connected), with others, and with God. We are not created to “do” life alone.
Neuroscience has “caught up” enough to verify and validate what has always been true. We are connection seeking creatures. We come out of the womb looking for who is looking for us. We find fulfillment through connection.
Unlike all other mammals, we as human beings can attempt to run from or deny how we are created. We can attempt to use our “heads” to deny our heart’s makeup—to avoid vulnerability.
We can use our minds to avoid engagement with the feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hopes of the heart. When we do so, we isolate ourselves from each other, our own makeup, and God.
We all look to connect in three ways: (a) we all need to belong and matter; (b) we all seek safety and care; (c) we all crave the experience of being fully alive.
 
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48 - The Real Meaning of Resolution

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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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
Welcome back and Happy New Year’s Eve!
 
We are talking about the real meaning of resolution, what many us set our minds to focus on in the first of every year. We often fail not too long after we commit ourselves to some New Year’s resolution. There is a reason we often give up on our promises and commitments to ourselves. 
 
We deal with that today:
What sets us up to fail, and how do we actually succeed.
 
New Year’s Day is often a marker day, one in which we look towards the future and ask significant questions:
What do I want to happen?
What do I want to achieve?
What do I imagine?
What do I desire?
 
Out of the answers to the questions, we set up markers and set our sights on getting to the goal lines of our hopes and dreams. 
 
We often fail, not because we lack desire or good intentions. We fail because we attempt to achieve certain things with tools that do not work, starting with a mistaken understanding of what a resolution is.
 
We have been trained to think that a resolution means that I need to become hyper-focused, and that I need to become bound and determined through will power to achieve the goal. The mistaken teaching actually sets us up to fail. 
 
Failure occurs in the following way:
The phrase “bound and determined” literally means to be “tied up” or “bound,” by being constricted, or not free. 
I actually become deterred (discouraged) by the very determination I think will bring success. 
Being bound means to be tied up, and determined becomes deterred, or stalled, from the very success I have resolved to achieve. 
Being tied and deterred is not the way to success.
 
By going back to the word resolution and grasping its real meaning, we can start down a path of accomplishing what we seek.
 
Resolution actually means:
To re-solve, literally to untie what has become a knot. 
Resolve means to re-decide, to untie myself from something that binds me or stops me from having the life I seek.
 
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47 - Our Year in Review

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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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
“Living with Heart: From Birth to Death” podcast has been downloaded in 49 states and 68 countries. Thank you to all of our listeners. We are very grateful to you and also grateful that so many of you have shared this podcast with family and friends. We hope for many more listeners in the coming year because we deeply believe in what we are offering and how it can do for people.
 
I have never tired of or even thought I knew all the depths of The Spiritual Root System, even after all the years that I have been talking and teaching about it. We truly are created as emotional and spiritual creatures, created to find fulfillment in relationship. What seems so basic now, to almost everyone, sounded foreign to many, many people in 1991 when I began to communicate the power of surrendering to how we are created.
 
About 15 years ago, neuroscience research began to validate the material I have been talking about. The material I talk about is ancient, has always been true from the beginning, and is amazingly Biblical. 
 
It is a reliable scientific material, and yet even more, it is faith-based proof of the existence and goodness of God.
 
We are “heart” people who have the addition of intellect that develops over time after birth. 
 
We are born as “heart” people, and we are all created the same way. 
 
This fact sets the stage for the actions of a loving and moral people. When I look at you, I am looking at myself, in terms of being a feeling, needing, desiring, longing, and hoping creation. 
 
This factor allows me to recognize the benefit of practicing the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12). As our sameness allows us to develop conscience, we can bless each other. 
 
The more we deny our sameness, the more we harm each other. Of course, no matter what, we are going to still need to seek forgiveness; we are going to harm each other. 
 
We have truly entered a new era, one of the heart. 
 
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46 - Gratitude - Life is a Gift

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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
Click here to read the episode highlights.
 
Now Available at Amazon
The Jesse Tree: A Christmas Devotional for Individuals, Couples, & Families is a 24-day devotional that prepares us for the birth of Jesus. It is offered as a free eBook at chipdodd.com, and it can be purchased from Amazon. The Jesse Tree includes daily devotions that start with creation and end with the birth of Jesus.  Each day has a list of ideas for extending the day’s “study” and opportunity for fellowship with your family, friends, and God. Your Jesse Tree will be covered in Bible-themed ornaments that will be a daily reminder of the stories you have read and the promise of the coming Messiah. Order now, the devotional begins December 1st.
 
There are three books that listeners may wish to go to about gratitude:
 
One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp which I mentioned in the last episode. This wonderful book deals a lot with gratitude that can come from loss and grief. 
 
Gratitude Works and Little Book of Gratitude by Robert Emmons. These two very practical books were written by Emmons, a researcher who has studied the benefits of gratitude, how to develop it, and sustain it.
 
When we experience life as a gift, then we, as the receivers of the gifts in life, naturally have gratitude. Emmons and others have shown that having gratitude benefits our emotional and spiritual lives, as well as our physical well-being and our prosperity. Gratitude multiplies itself with its impact. When we yield to being in need of others and God, and experience the effect of needing, we receive a yield, or a harvest of benefits.
 
Not only do we have an expectation of good things in our lives, we also are able to recall good things in times of trouble. For example, recalling or remembering times when we received something good can help us persevere in troubled times. We can hang on to hope because of remembering.
 
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45 - What is Gratitude, and How Do We Experience It?

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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
Episode highlights:
 
Now Available at Amazon
The Jesse Tree: A Christmas Devotional for Individuals, Couples, & Families is a 24-day devotional that prepares us for the birth of Jesus. It is offered as a free eBook at chipdodd.com, and it can be purchased from Amazon. The Jesse Tree includes daily devotions that start with creation and end with the birth of Jesus.  Each day has a list of ideas for extending the day’s “study” and opportunity with fellowship with your family, friends, and God. Your Jesse Tree will be covered in Bible-themed ornaments that will be a daily reminder of the stories you have read and the promise of the coming Messiah. Order now, the devotional begins December 1st.
 
This is the first of two episodes on gratitude.
 
The final episode of the year will drop November 26. In this final episode, we will look back over our first year of “Living with Heart: From Birth to Death.”
 
We will start the new season December 31 with a new episode that focuses on New Year’s Resolutions.
 
What is gratitude and how do we experience it?  Three factors play a part in experiencing gratitude.
 
Gratitude begins with our needs. God created us with an abundance of needs. 
 
Whether we like it or not, we are “needy” creations of God.
 
Having our needs addressed and fulfilled is how gratitude occurs.  
 
Our needs cannot be fulfilled without being in need of God and others.
 
Gratitude is experienced through relationship.
 
Needs are covered in great detail in:
Needs of the Heart by Chip Dodd
“Living with Heart: From Birth to Death” podcast, episodes 2-16 
 
The 3 factors that summarize our essential needs are:
We all desire to belong and matter.
We all seek safety and care.
We all crave to experience a full life.
 
Being in need or being “needy” is not a bad thing or a weakness. It is a human experience over which we are actually powerless.
 
We are created in ways that we cannot change. We can run from how we are made, but that does not change how we are created. 
 
Many of us are trained to believe that having needs means you are weak.
 
Most people see having needs as:
a weakness.
putting yourself in danger of being rejected.
a negative experience that can keep them from belonging and mattering.
a negative experience that can keep them from being safe and cared for.
an experience that will keep them from having a full life.
 
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44 - Recovery from Codependency: The Power of Prayer for Recovery

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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). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com. 
 
Congratulations to the 5 Winners of the Chip Dodd Book Bundles! Thank you to all of you who submitted a review of this podcast.
 
2 helpful, FREE Resources at chipdodd.com:
14 Symptoms of Codependency: A Personal Inventory
Return to Being Human: 6 Freedoms from Birth
 
The Boy & The Ogre: Finding Freedom from Codependency by Chip Dodd
 
Now Available at Amazon
The Jesse Tree: A Christmas Devotional for Individuals, Couples, & Families is a 24-day devotional that prepares us for the birth of Jesus. It is offered as a free eBook at chipdodd.com, and it can be purchased from Amazon. The Jesse Tree includes daily devotions that start with creation and end with the birth of Jesus.  Each day has a list of ideas for extending the day’s “study” and opportunity with fellowship with your family, friends, and God. Your Jesse Tree will be covered in Bible-themed ornaments that will be a daily reminder of the stories you have read and the promise of the coming Messiah. Order now, the devotional begins December 1st.
 
The reason for this podcast is because for people to have more life, more fulfillment. The things  talked about here, and the materials referred to, are about knowing the language and content of your heart, and what that can do for you. It won’t stop pain, but helps you know what to do about it. It certainly doesn’t promise perfection or even happiness. But knowing the language and content of the heart helps people develop the ability to live life on life’s terms, with all of its heartbreak and heartache that conflicts with our craving for life without tragedy.  
 
Our goal is for people to experience time in this life as Kairos, which means to experience your life emotionally and spiritually, fully participating in living, rather than Chronos, which means just getting life over with, letting the clock run down.
 
If we don’t allow ourselves to live emotionally and spiritually connected, then we have to find an escape or addiction. 
 
Without living in Kairos, we are simply on a race to the grave.
Codependency recovery moves us into Kairos. 
 
Because there has been so much misunderstanding about the proper use of feelings, there is a rising backlash against the importance of facing, feeling, and dealing with life by being able to be “response-able” with feelings.
 
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