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 [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

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. 

Click here to continue reading 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 [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

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.

To read a short encapsulation of episode #81, go to pages 28-29 of Keeping Heart.

We are created to BE, DO, and HAVE

In order to live fully, love deeply, and lead well lives that leave behind good legacy, we must:

We only find fulfillment by living fully in relationship with 

 (The Voice of the Heart by Chip Dodd) 

Surrendering to the process of how we are created occurs through three developmental movements:

Be-Do-Have vs Do-Have-Become

If a person is raised in an environment that diminishes his/her essential makeup and places too much emphasis on performance in order to be accepted, the person’s worth becomes wrapped up in the constant need for approval of others and in competition with 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 [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

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. 

Please visit chipdodd.com to download the free resource, The Spiritual Root System. This resource describes and illustrates the specifics of 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.

Spiritual Rot System (SRS) = Feelings - Needs - Desire - Longings - Hope

Basic premise of The Spiritual Root System: 

Understanding the connections of the roots:

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 [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

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. 

Please visit chipdodd.com to download the free resource, The Spiritual Root System. This resource describes and illustrates the specifics of 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.

The Spiritual Root System (SRS) explains:

Spiritual Root System = Feelings - Needs - Desire - Longings - Hope

If I feel, I will need. 

For example: 

The identification of feelings, leads to the needs of others and God.

The book Needs of the Heart describes the many essential emotional and spiritual needs that we are created to have met through expressing them.

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 [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

The Pitfalls of Leadership are descending steps, one connects to the other with predictable effects. 

Some leaders have referred to the descent as a “chain reaction.” 

The descent can be stopped at any time, with an intervention from others who the leader listens and healthily responds to, or a cry out from the leader in descent who is heard and responded to by others. 

The Five Pitfalls:

These pitfalls can destroy careers, friendships, reputations, marriages and families—unless one is freed from them. 

Living in freedom from the Pitfalls is work. It is a daily activity and a lifestyle. 

In the Pitfalls, we are driven by what we are running from. Essentially, we are running from: 

The daily activities that become the recovering leader’s lifestyle are:

Daily activities have to be practiced until we see the results and their benefits; 

The daily practices become a lifestyle. 

The leader eventually desires for his/her life to be different and adopts the new lifestyle because it is “better” than what life was like in the Pitfalls.

Click here to continue reading 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 [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

The Five Pitfalls:

These pitfalls can destroy careers, friendships, reputations, marriages and families—unless one is freed from them. 

Out of the Pit

Hopeful Truths:

we are created for it.

That which we think has destroyed us has opened up a future before us. Listen to Episode #26 “Becoming a Portable Sanctuary.

The woundedness of the leader, coordinated with their healing, becomes the leader’s newly discovered productivity.

Liberation from bondage is available. If there is breath, there is hope. 

Recovery from addiction to control begins with:

In these two beginning steps, the impaired leader must admit the specific nature of his/her secrets in order to get relief. 

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 [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

Remember that the Pitfalls are descending steps; one connects to the other with predictable effects. 

Some leaders have referred to the descent as a “chain reaction.” 

The descent can be stopped at any time, with an intervention from others whom the leader listens and healthily responds to, or a cry out from the leader in descent who is heard and responded to by others. 

The Five Pitfalls:

These pitfalls can destroy careers, friendships, reputations, marriages and families—unless one is freed from them. 

# 5 Secrets sap the leader’s passion and purpose

Once the leader’s true self is isolated, the “getaway” or “cure” is usually a closely held secret. 

     A secret is anything one withholds from appropriate people because they 

     fear rejection, judgment, censuring, or being controlled. 

Secrets: 

At this point, a leader begins to survive in a cycle of work, performance, isolation, and secrets that increase toxic shame and guilt. 

To dissipate the shame and guilt, the leader tries to work harder, perform better, which cycles into a repetition of isolation and secrets. 

As the cycle continues, a leader will begin to experience symptoms of burnout, depression, excessive anxiety, addiction, and other forms of impairment.

Jesus says in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (NIV)

To many leaders who are caught up in the swirl of Pitfall #5, this scripture reference seems like a long-lost illusion. 

By Pitfall #5, the leader is far away from everything they had once hoped and believed. 

Jesus also says in John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” (NIV)

This reference is a living, breathing experience for the leader. He or she is being robbed of every blessing they were created to experience in the passion, struggle, and joy of getting to do what they were created to do. 

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 [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

The Pitfalls of Leadership are descending steps, one connects to the other with predictable effects. 

Some leaders have referred to the descent as a “chain reaction.” 

The descent can be stopped at any time, with an intervention from others who the leader listens and healthily responds to, or a cry out from the leader in descent who is heard and responded to by others. 

The Five Pitfalls:

These pitfalls can destroy careers, friendships, reputations, marriages and families—unless one is freed from them. 

#4 To be an example to others, the true self is isolated

Leaders often put pressure on themselves to: 

This demand for perfection sets up a leader to deny his/her own feelings and needs. 

Denial does not stop needs, but instead arouses toxic shame when the leader has a need. Isolating the heart from being known from the inside-out leaves a leader hungry to get needs met and yet unable to need people to meet the needs. 

An inanimate source of fulfillment can become the “getaway” or “cure” for the leader at this point. Therefore, counterfeit fulfillments for needs take the place of relational fulfillments.

Problems that trap leaders are so widespread and repeated that they are considered normal, but they are not.

The Pitfalls are not normal, but they are so abundantly common that we can easily relate to them, and often get trapped by them. 

We must not confuse what most people consider as common, with what is normal. 

The book Keeping Heart by Dr Chip Dodd is a series of meditative “pearls” on what true normal is.

In the description of Pitfall 3, “People Become Things,” the drive for perfection in the leader begins to emotionally and spiritually drain the leader because he/she is not addressing their need for replenishment.

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 [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

The 5 Pitfalls are descending steps. One step connects to another with predictable effects. 

Some leaders have referred to the descent as a “chain reaction.” 

The Five Pitfalls:

These pitfalls can destroy careers, friendships, reputations, marriages and families—unless one finds freedom from them.

People Become Things

Leaders enter the world of doing good because they wish the pain of the world to be treated, bettered, or healed. 

However, as the leader slips into the pitfalls: 

The leader whose worth is trapped in work, and whose performance is valued more than their presence shows symptoms of people becoming things

They experience “feeling drained” of the passion or energy that had compelled them in the beginning. 

Whether slowly or rapidly, the leader becomes restless, irritable, and discontent.

Indicators of restlessness and irritable can be overt or covert, but the symptoms are “known” to the leader, but not accurately taken responsibility for. 

Compulsivity takes over for “being compelled.”

Blame, projection onto others, and denial are hallmarks of the impaired leader at Pitfall #3.

*The family is usually affected first and foremost, before the signs are noted by others who the leader influences.

In the name of loyalty the family members begin to take on feelings of “self-blame” and toxic shame that comes with the leader’s self-negligence.

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 [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

The Pitfalls are descending steps, one connects to the other with predictable effects. 

Some leaders have referred to the descent as a “chain reaction.” 

This descent can be stopped at any time, with an intervention from others who the leader listens and healthily responds to, or a cry out from the leader in descent who is heard and responded to by others. 

The Five Pitfalls:

These pitfalls can destroy careers, friendships, reputations, marriages and families—unless one is freed from them. 

Pitfall #2: Performance Begins to be Valued More than One’s Presence:

When a leader’s primary personal value is associated with performance, they become someone they are not—"human doings.” 

To be present means to be able to present the truth of our inner selves as human beings to others. 

Presence is the ability to speak the feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hopes of one’s own heart. 

People who are actively present can be “in need” and be led. 

Performers develop contempt for their neediness. They also eventually develop secret contempt and fear towards the needs of others because they see others as the ones who demand that they perform. 

The “ease” of being one’s true self is lost in the “dis-ease” or stress of believing that one is only valuable for their performance.

People who are performers can be driven by anxiety

A leader who believes that their performance matters more than their personal presence is actually driven by anxiety, more than they are compelled by inspiration or mission/calling.

These performers:

A leader is expected to be effective and productive 

A leader is expected to perform and meet the needs of those they are on mission to help, which is good. However, every leader needs a place to go where they can honestly share their own needs, without toxic shame, and where others can do the same. 

Click here to continue reading the episode highlights.