Living with Heart: From Birth to Death
Dr. Chip Dodd’s ”The Voice of the Heart” is one of the seminal and most practically impactful books of the last several decades in the counseling, coaching, and mentorship space. In ”Living with Heart,” Dr. Dodd joins co-host, Bryan Barley, to discuss with greater depth, detail, and practicality how to live with heart through the entire journey of life - from birth to death.
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Episodes
Tuesday Aug 20, 2024
Tuesday Aug 20, 2024
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). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.
Episode Highlights:
Codependency is the loss or the sacrifice of:
God-created true self.
self-trust.
self-awareness.
self-worth.
self… in terms of assertiveness.
Codependency is not being able to:
say what you feel.
say what you need.
say what you desire.
trust that your own feelings have validity or accuracy.
We are made for love; we are made to be connected.
In order to be accepted and loved by our significant caregivers, we often end up hiding our own needs. Examples: If I don’t like sports, my dad will not love me. If I don’t make good grades my mother will be so disappointed. If I have opinions that are different from my teachers, they will reject me. If I’m not artistic like my older brother, I won’t be as loved.
We end up acting a certain way or pretend to be someone we are not in order to be loved. We eventually begin to “believe” in the pretending rather than being our true selves. We slip into denial.
We perform for love instead of being ourselves.
God designed for us to:
be who we are made to be;
so, we can do what we are made to do;
then, we will have what we are made to have.
In a codependency environment we end up:
doing what we’ve got to do;
so, that we can have what we’re made to have;
and hopefully, if we do enough, we will become somebody.
Codependency becomes the belief that I can perform enough and do enough so that I can finally rest, trust, be believed, have my worth, and be valued.
Codependency is a disorder of distrust. You trust the anxiety. You don’t trust listening to your own fear and exposing it.
Sadly, if a codependent person stays stuck in their past and sOll believes feelings are the enemy, they will, no matter how much they are loved, never trust the love.
Codependency is bringing your “bucket of desire” into life, and your caregivers poking holes in the bottom of it so that in your future, no matter how much love gets poured into it, it goes right through it.
There’s not enough love; there’s not enough approval, there’s not enough trustworthiness because it all slips right through the holes in the bucket.
Codependency recovery is about repairing, or healing, the holes in your bucket (revision).
Codependents are always trying to find their fulfillment externally by withholding what’s happening in them internally.
The Voice of the Heart by Chip Dodd
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Tuesday Aug 13, 2024
Tuesday Aug 13, 2024
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). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.
Episode Highlights:
Click here if you would like more information about Champion's Path
Chip Dodd- The Boy & the Ogre: Finding Freedom from Codependency
Melody Beatty – Codependent No More
The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations for Codependents
Sarah Young - Jesus Calling
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Tuesday Aug 06, 2024
Tuesday Aug 06, 2024
Episode 31: The Rediscovered Treasure (Part 4)
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). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.
Episode Highlights
Needs are:
how we’re created.
what God works with.
what we have to have fulfilled, or we die.
Our need to belong and our need to matter are more important than food, shelter, and clothing. We will give up food, shelter and clothing in order to belong and matter. The unseen needs are more powerful than the seen needs.
God gives us the desire of our hearts.
We are born with longings.
We long for justice. (We see a small child lying in a bed in a pediatric intensive care unit with bandages and tubes, and we cry, “NO!” We don’t have to know the child to recognize the injustice of it.)
We recognize that we are not made to die of disease. We’re not made to kill each other. We’re not made for war.
We are made for love and peace and eternity and raising each other up.
We are made to experience the grace of a hand that can reach into the farthest depths. There is no mistake that is so far away that God can’t reach us.
We long for a place where we can put our heads against a safe shoulder, where there are arms to go around us, and there is a voice that says, “It’s okay now, it’s okay. You can rest now.” We long for a place called “home,” where God lives.
Longings are deep cravings within our hearts that will never be fulfilled as long as we live on this earth. It’s living in the wishing every day. It’s living in the wanting forever. It’s meeting God every day, and God says, “One day it will all be complete.”
Surrender your heart every day, and it will change. Walk in the surrender every day. Live in the world of miracles. Tell the truth and live in the truth. Open your eyes to see the joy of what happens when we walk in the truth.
If we do not deal with our hearts, we end up living counterfeit lives.
We grow into shriveled, little trees, not oaks of righteousness.
We live lives of shame. (We are ashamed of how God made us)
We lower our expectations.
We don’t expect much from people.
We don’t expect others to show up in our lives.
We have counterfeit fulfillment.
We pursue power.
We pursue mood-altering experiences.
We seek relief.
We plan events in hopes they will make things different/better.
We refuse to face where we live.
We pursue all forms of counterfeit fulfilments instead of believing that God can fill us.
Sadly, we end up practicing hopelessness. We practice hopelessness as a way of not taking a risk to believe that our heart’s yearnings are real. We refuse to believe that our feelings really matter. We refuse to be vulnerable. We refuse to surrender our lives to the God Who made us.
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Tuesday Jul 30, 2024
Tuesday Jul 30, 2024
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). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.
Episode Highlights
We are born as emotional and spiritual creatures. We are born with feelings. Before we ever think or speak our first word, we are expressing ourselves as feeling creatures.
We experience life in the very beginning as God made us through our feelings and through the longings to be in relationship with our mothers and fathers.
We came out of the womb experiencing life through what we feel.
We came out of the womb looking for who was looking for us. We were looking for emotional and spiritual connection through relationship, before we were ever able to think or speak.
This emotional and spiritual language is the language of the heart.
We communicated from the very beginning of our lives with our feelings.
Hurt
is a feeling you feel when you experience a wound.
is possibly the most embarrassing feeling we carry and experience.
is acknowledging that someone or something “got to me.”
is a feeling that acknowledges that I am vulnerable.
Hurt that is not acknowledged becomes resentment. It is the impaired expression of hurt. It is a justification of your right to act badly towards another person because you carry a pain that they’ve given you. Resentment takes us out of relationship.
People who won’t acknowledge their hurt, hurt others with their resentment. (Hurt people, hurt people.)
Loneliness
God gave us loneliness so we would seek out relationship.
We can be lonely for ourselves. There are times when we just need to be alone and have solitude.
We can be lonely to be with others.
There is a loneliness for “home” (heaven, or to be with God) that will not go away while we live on this earth. We will always walk this earth with some loneliness because we are not complete. We are lonely for God.
Loneliness that is not acknowledged becomes apathy.
Apathy develops when you try to make your heart stop caring about relationship.
Sadness
is a feeling you get when you lose something that matters to you or is important to you.
is the feeling that honors; it values what you value.
is a cleansing feeling.
is how you relieve ourselves from carrying the burden of the pain of daily life.
Sadness that is not acknowledged becomes self-pity. Self-pity is a way of trying to escape your pain.
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Tuesday Jul 23, 2024
Tuesday Jul 23, 2024
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). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.
Episode Highlights
The focus of this episode is a recording of a men’s retreat that Chip did in Texas in 1993. The retreat content was edited and put on CDs. The CDs were included with the first edition copies of The Voice of the Heart published in 2001.
You’ve got to get defeated to become rich in this “God world”.
God says that what He is after is our hearts. Our hearts that He made, that He created, that He loves.
“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7-8 (NIV)
What is feeding the roots of the tree? Its roots are planted in what feeds it, and it receives emotional and spiritual food.
God feeds our hearts with emotional and spiritual food.
God stamps our hearts with feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope at birth. This is what God is after. This is what puts us into a relationship with the God of our forefathers.
Through our feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope we end up growing into a strong person who others can love and trust.
Torment in our lives does not come from exposing the truth about our hearts; torment comes from the energy we take to keep our hearts hidden.
We are as sick as the secrets we keep within us, from the smallest manipulation to the largest secret.
The difference between an unhealthy family and a healthy family is the willingness to seek forgiveness. Healthy families seek forgiveness.
Truths:
Pain of the heart is the teacher.
Love is the lesson.
Life is the result.
Sharing that is the practice.
God loves us so much that He will go to any length to get us back. There is nothing we can do to earn it. God doesn’t need anything we have.
God does not need us:
He craves us.
He wants us.
He wishes to be with us.
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” Luke 19:39-40 (NIV)
God doesn’t need us; We need Him. The price we pay for needing Him is having to go through the excruciating and glorious pain of being loved, without being able to do anything to get it.
What we can do is live out our salvation. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He came to bring life and life abundantly.
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Tuesday Jul 16, 2024
Tuesday Jul 16, 2024
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). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.
Episode Highlights
The focus of this episode is a recording of a retreat that Chip did in Texas in 1993. The retreat content was edited and put on CDs. The CDs were included with the first edition copies of The Voice of the Heart published in 2001.
The CD intro song is “Capshaw.” The banjo is played by John Balch. It is available on iTunes and Spotify. John’s website is hidebanjoheads.com.
Living With Heart Podcast “Becoming a Portable Sanctuary” Episode 26
The message on the CD is just as true today as it was in 1993 when Chip did the retreat.
Our God absolutely looks toward us, moves into our world, and changes our lives, not a little, but a lot, not as an event, but as a journey.
Our God is not a god of an event; He is the God of the journey and the God of relationship. God is also our destiny.
“Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” Genesis 3:9 (NASB)
“…Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.” Revelation 22:17 (NIV)
God is in pursuit of our hearts; He is in pursuit of what He created.
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Psalm 139:13
When we came into this world, we were stamped with the image of God. God made us in His image.
You and I were created to live fully. We were created as emotional and spiritual creatures, created to live fully in relationship with myself, with others, and with God.
We are made to live fully in 3D.
We’re made to feel it.
We’re made to seek it.
We’re made to hurt over it.
We’re made to laugh about it.
We’re made to take joy in it.
We’re made to hunger, seek, and ask.
We’re made for play, and work, and creation, and sharing.
We are made in the image of God!
Everything about life is about relationship.
The 18” journey from our heads to our hearts is the longest journey that we will ever take. It is a journey of wholeness. The journey never ends. If we don’t make that 18” journey, we will be a failure. We will fail within the walls of our own home and we will never be of maximum service.
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Tuesday Jul 09, 2024
Tuesday Jul 09, 2024
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). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.
Episode Highlights
Awaken-Awakening is to know and experience ourselves as emotional & spiritual creatures, created to live fully. We do so through relationship with ourselves, others, and God. We awaken to feelings, needs, desire, longings and hope, or “The Spiritual Root System.” And we awaken to our inborn need to connect.
Free Resource, The Spiritual Root System
Acquire-Acquiring is to gain the skills of using how we are created to live fully in a life that is wonderful and yet difficult. We are created to live full lives in relationship with ourselves, others, and God. In living full lives, we embrace and express our feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope with others and God. When we awaken and then acquire the skills of living fully, we are moving through life in the River of Euphoria.
Free Resource, The River of Euphoria
Arrive-Arriving is a reference to us becoming people who are Portable Sanctuaries. People who are Portable Sanctuaries are people who live in the River of Euphoria and have become safe people because they offer replenishment to those who are empty. They offer redemption to those who feel worthless, and they offer restoration to those whose storehouses are empty. We never fully arrive; we are always growing and learning. But we become more able to be of service.
The Four Essential Questions allow us to remain in the life-long process of Awakening, Acquiring, and Arriving.
The Four Essential Questions are:
Where am I? (Where are you emotionally? (I feel sad. I feel hurt.)
What am I doing with where I am? (I’m hiding out. I want to run away. I am celebrating.) • What happened? (I dared to try something new, and I got laughed at.)
What was it like? (It was scary and lonely.)
These Four Essential Questions are never summed up or finished completely. They are circles that are moving forward, headed toward where you are made to go. They continue for the rest of our lives.
These Four Essential Questions allow us to continue to grow. The answers keep us connected to awakening, acquiring skills, and arriving over and over again.
These questions keep us fully involved in living exactly how we are created to live and move us to do what we’re made to do.
We are created to do one thing in life, and that is to live fully. Meaning, purpose, and significance develop out of being fully alive emotionally and spiritually.
The only way we are going to remain fully alive is through all of the relational experiences we have with others and God.
If you’re fully alive:
You will find your meaning.
You will find your purpose.
You will display and receive your significance.
You will be able to give yourself to something greater than yourself.
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Tuesday Jul 02, 2024
Tuesday Jul 02, 2024
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). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.
Episode Highlights
We cannot escape the way God designed us. (Only addiction gives us the illusion that we can.)
There is no escape from our design. We’re designed by God as feeling creatures who are spiritually hungry and craving. We’re designed to do one thing in this life, live fully. And we can’t live fully unless we are doing so in relationship with ourselves, others, and God. And being fully alive, expresses God’s glory.
“The glory of God is man fully alive.” Saint Irenaeus
A human being who is fully alive as God created us to be, is God glorified, because He created us to shape, make, do, multiply, create, serve, help, etc. It means to care when others quit; to continue on when others stop; and to walk when others lie down.
Where do we draw the strength and courage to carry on? It comes from God Who generously gives it to us. Given to us so that we can give it away to others. God made us to live like that.
Once we give ourselves to The Process, we have gotten off The Ladder. We are living in the River of Euphoria. The river takes us forward to becoming a Portable Sanctuary.
More on Euphoria River in Episode 18, “Living Fully in ‘The River”
FREE DOWNLOAD > River of Euphoria
What is “The River of Euphoria” or “Euphoria River”? Euphoria means “good bearing.” The River of Good Bearing. It means to bear life well. Live the good life. It’s a flow. It’s a promise. It’s a process.
The river is where we meet God’s faithfulness.
We want to live fully in The Euphoria River. This means we are moving in a particular direction, going somewhere specific. And it leads us to a place that is called a “portable sanctuary”.
Euphoria means “to bear well”.
Hyperphoria is an escape to action. It is anxiety-driven.
Hypophoria is an escape to apathy or escape-to-control.
Both hyperphoria and hypophoria are about escaping having to feel.
The Three Movements of living fully, that move us into becoming Portable Sanctuaries are:
Awaken-to return to or awaken to feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope and imagine what can happen if you enter living fully again.
Acquire-gaining the skills required to live my passion and my purpose.
Arrive-you have become a portable sanctuary, a person who others can come to. You can relate to them, and they can relate to you. You can have your feelings heard and your needs addressed.
Once you awaken and begin to be in pursuit of the life you’re made to have, you need to know how to do hurt, sadness, loss, celebration, grief, hope, desire, needs, and fear; in other words, we live life as feeling creatures who have to struggle.
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Tuesday Jun 25, 2024
Tuesday Jun 25, 2024
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). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.
Episode Highlights
“The Process”
Feel your feelings, tell the truth about your feelings, and trust God with the process, because He owns the process.
Free Downloadable Resource - The Ladder (https://www.chipdodd.com/free-resources-download)
The Ladder is a disrupter of The Process. If you get trapped on The Ladder, you will miss The Process and you will miss the actual “arrival” that you’re created to have because you never acquired the skills of living fully.
We are created for connection; created to find fulfillment through relationship with ourselves, others and God.
Parents often want to prevent their children from having to experience the pains of the world, so they teach them to act in an “acceptable” way; they teach them to perform. The result is, children wind up giving up their presence (God given uniqueness) and putting performance in the place of how God made them.
We come out of the womb with healthy shame. Examples: I am going to make mistakes. I’m dependent. I can’t help but be fully present. I can’t help but be in need. I’m a feeling creature. If something is sad or I lose something, I’m going to cry. If I walk into the dark, I need someone to hold my hand, etc.
Webinar on Shame > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Pjb6EsAGI
We are created to find fulfillment through relationships. When this need isn’t met through relationship, we will give up our God-given identity and start looking to others to fulfill what they want from us, and claim a false identity, in order to find fulfillment through belonging and mattering.
“Adorning the Dark” by Andrew Peterson
“Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.” Psalm 8:2 (NIV)
“And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’” Matthew 18:3 (NIV)
Once healthy shame is rejected, once it becomes not okay to make mistakes, once it becomes not okay to be in need, once one becomes distrusting of questions, an unwillingness to risk having answers/ideas, and once we start to have to be more than human, we lose connection with healthy shame.
Healthy shame is a dependency feeling that allows us to have the humility to be people who can be of equal worth to other people. We have the same needs. We have the same heartaches. We have the same struggles. We have the same feelings.
“It’s a Small World” is considered a children’s song, but it is so deep and rich. The lyrics are pure and true for everyone, young and old.
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Tuesday Jun 18, 2024
Tuesday Jun 18, 2024
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). To consult or setup a session with Bryan, you can e-mail bryan@vothcenter.com.
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