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.

Keeping Heart, a book by Dr Chip Dodd, is written in short sections that are self-contained as specific pieces. Each section focuses on a dimension of living fully, loving deeply, and leading well a life that leaves a legacy of goodness.

Please visit chipdodd.com to download a free resource of the “Feelings/Needs Chart.”

The chart integrates the essentials of The Voice of the Heart and Needs of the Heart that leads to experiencing the Gifts of the Heart.

The Equation for the Gifts of the Feelings

By practicing the equation, we can live fully; we can love deeply; we can lead well.

By practicing the equation, we discover that core feelings lead to genuine relational needs, which move us to admitting the desire of our hearts, as well as our longings and hope.

Feelings > Needs > Desire > Longings > Hope, as explored in Episode #80 and Episode #81.

The equation requires courage, that is, bringing your heart to who and what matters to you.

WILLINGNESS + PATIENCE + WORK + TIME = GIFTS

• Willingness: Willingness is the courageous energy of allowing your heart to be given over to hoping again. Hope has become dangerous to many of us because of past experiences that turned out very differently than what we had hoped. Taking the risk of hoping again is fearful. We need help in risking hope, but we must take the risk if we are to experience new, better, or improved outcomes. Running from hope makes us sick.

• Patience: Patience is ability to persevere amidst the struggle that comes with your desire to live fully. Patience literally means, “burden of hope.” So often what we seek and what we desire requires the ability to wait—to delay gratification—as we continue to move towards fulfillment. Waiting means that we continue to hope even though it is painful. Waiting requires feeling and needing, and means that our hearts carry the “burden of hope,” as we persevere, with the encouragement of others and faith in God.

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.

Keeping Heart, by Dr Chip Dodd is written in short sections; each section focuses on some dimension of living fully, loving deeply, and leading well a life that leaves a legacy of goodness. It can be used as a daily form of orienting yourself for the day ahead of you or a book to read cover to cover.

Visit chipdodd.com to download a free resource of the “Feelings/Needs Chart.” It integrates the essentials of The Voice of the Heart and Needs of the Heart that lead to the experience of the Gifts of the Heart.

On page 23 of Keeping Heart, there is a sentence that shows the dark side of avoiding love’s requirements:

“Avoiding love’s demand, though, requires that we hide our hearts, and, therefore, remove ourselves from living this life.”

Contact is not connection

We experience a vast array of what we call “connections” through all forms of technology that has given us the internet and its multiple forms of social media that offers the illusion of “connection.” We call it “interconnected.”

However, it does not actually give what it says. We are “inter-contacted,” not actually connected.

There are multiple forms of contact, but we still remain disconnected from each other, and even ourselves.

Sadly, loneliness and relational isolation are two of the most talked about forms of misery in our society today, even though we have more pervasive contact than ever before in the history of humanity.

When Caesar connected the Roman Empire with roads, it led to people groups being connected—for better or worse. The technology of today is not a road to connect us. It is the technology that actually keeps us from “facing each other,” which is where genuine connection begins.

Contact is like watching a movie. In a movie, we experience life vicariously, which means “not really in it.” Even more, if we watch it alone, we experience life vicariously in isolation. We do not share a lived experience in reality

True connection is a shared experience in reality.

Contact does not feed the heart. Connection feeds the heart.

Connection requires that a person shares the experiences of their emotional and spiritual lives with another who is capable of doing the same.

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.

Keeping Heart, by Dr Chip Dodd is written in short sections; each section focuses on some dimension of living fully, loving deeply, and leading well a life that leaves a legacy of goodness. It can be used as a daily form of orienting yourself for the day ahead of you or a book to read cover to cover.

Visit chipdodd.com to download a free resource that describes The Spiritual Root System. This resource identifies each “root” of how we are created as feeling, needing, desiring, longing, hoping people who seek to live fully in relationship with ourselves, with others, and with God.

A path not a pill

So often, people offer a “pill” (metaphorically or literally) to a person who is struggling with life’s difficulties. The struggle could be anxiety, depression, or addiction. Most people, however, need a path instead of a “pill.”

This podcast is part of the path we are created to walk in life’s struggles.

The Voice of the Heart, Needs of the Heart, and Keeping Heart, also, are part of the path.

This podcast and the books speak to the need for relationship and its power to help and heal us through relational connection.

Communion connects to community

We quickly think of communion as a religious experience only. It also means to share; it is where we get the word community and communication.

We are created to be in communion with each other—a group of people who share the truth of their hearts.

In Genesis 2:18, God declared for the first time that something was “not good.” This declaration clearly made reference to a man and a woman. It also speaks to how we are created for fellowship; the fellowship of truth telling about our struggles and celebrations that connect us to each other.

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make him a helper suitable for him.”

Genesis 2:18 (NIV)

When Adam & Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, they not only hid their physical bodies, they also hid their hearts from God. In the cool of the day, God comes to His creation and asks them, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9) This phrase in Hebrew is “ayeka” which is a lament and a question.

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