Living with Heart: From Birth to Death

Voice of the Heart Center

13 - The Need for Support (Surviving vs. Thriving) Apr 02, 2024

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Dr. Chip Dodd

Voice of the Heart Center

12 - The Need to be Heard (Listening + Trust) Mar 26, 2024

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Dr. Chip Dodd

Voice of the Heart Center

https://americanliterature.com/author/aesop/short-story/the-tortoise-and-the-hare/#google_vignette

11 - The Need for Accomplishment Mar 19, 2024

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Episode 11: The Need for Accomplishment

Episode Highlights:

“When we know our need for accomplishment, we know when we need to stop, we can be grateful for what has happened so far, and we can rest well in anticipation instead of dread.”

Needs of the Heart by Chip Dodd, page 53.

This episode on accomplishment takes us back to our roots so we can re-establish how we grow the fruits.

Accomplishment is not achievement.

Accomplishment is not about winning. It has to do with success. Success is desire plus pursuit that contends with challenges.

Accomplishment is being the turtle in the old fable, the Turtle and the Hare.

Accomplishment is how to live fulfilled and successfully live one day at a time.

The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

Achievement reduces creativity, and the need for accomplishment advances and multiplies creativity.

Accomplishment has 3 movements or steps:

knowing when you have reached your limits; knowing when to stop.
celebrating the results of having given yourself to something that matters to you.
Resting well to allow you to begin anew as you move toward the completion of that which inspires or moves you.

If we don’t know our limits, and we continue to press on in spite of being tired, not creative, not ready, not prepared, we will put out the same amount of effort with less and less results that are productive.

We need to know when we have reached our stress point of being drained, empty, tired, finished, and reached our limit. Know that you’re not quitting; you are stopping so that you can continue to participate in excellence.

By acknowledging our limits when it’s time to stop, we are actually setting ourselves up for higher productivity or excellence.

A recovery term, HALT, stands for:

hungry
anger
lonely
tired

When you reach HALT,

You’re isolating from your needs.
You’re removing yourself from “life on life’s terms.”
You’re setting yourself up for relapse, “burnout” (wear out.)

We must face our limitations and stop when we have reached our limit.

After you become aware of your need to stop, take time to celebrate (that you gave your heart to something that matters.)

The Gap - If you have a vision for your life, a long-term goal, if you measure your daily success based upon how far you are from finishing the mission, then you will be miserable. You’re comparing yourself to something that hasn’t happened instead of assessing what has happened.

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10 - The Need for Touch Mar 12, 2024

Show notes

Episode highlights:

Touch is one of our essential needs.

It is important to be able to ask questions.

The Needs of the Heart by Chip Dodd

“The need for touch is one of the deepest forms of fulfillment that we have, and it can be one of the most abused needs that we possess.” (Page 27)
“The child will literally not develop physically according to developmental norms without being touched well.” (Page 27)
“Emotional growth and trust are connected to touch if we’re touched well.” (Page 27)
“Your need for belonging and mattering [is] fed through brief moments of appropriate, caring touch.” (Page 28)

Touch is so vital that we cannot truly grow without it. When human beings are only cared for custodially, they can develop a condition called failure-to-thrive.

Babies and small children need to be “touched” appropriately and lovingly through:

cuddling
being held
carried in arms, on shoulders, or in a sling
being rocked
sitting in caregiver’s lap
hugging
snuggling
holding hands
brushing their hair
patting them on the back
a genuine smile
a bedtime story
a lullaby

Our needs never stop from birth to death.

Our toxic shame tells us that we “should” not have needs anymore.

Examples:

“You’re 12 years old! Quit being such an attention seeker.”
“That’s not scary. Put on your big girl pants and go back to bed.”
“What are you crying about? Dry those tears up and quit acting like a baby.”
“There’s no need to feel scared or nervous. You’ll do great. It’s just an interview.”

Healthy touch creates a response called attunement. In attunement:

You become regulated within.
You’re in tune or in rhythm with others and the world.
You experience a symphonic connection with the outside world.
You know you’re not alone.

When you attune, you connect to others in a peaceful synchronized way, like night bugs singing a symphony.

Out of that connection, you are fueled to go attend to life’s tragedies.

This connection is called autonomy; it sets you free to make decisions, go take risks and possibly fail, because you have a safe place to go back to in order to be refueled. This place is called “home.”

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9 - The Need to Grieve Mar 05, 2024

Show notes

Dr. Chip Dodd

Voice of the Heart Center

The Needs of the Heart by Chip Dodd

8 - The Need for Guidance Feb 27, 2024

Show notes

Episode Highlights:

“We must continue to rediscover and surrender to the reality that we are emotional and spiritual creatures, not slugs, raccoons, rats, birds or scorpions. Do you get it? Those things get by on essential provisional existence. We're made for more than provisional existence. We're made to live fully. We're made for more than survival and instinct. We are created to be guided and to guide.” -The Needs of the Heart, Chapter 9

Neediness is the key that unlocks the treasure trove of God.

Neediness “allows” God to:

Meet us in our dreams
Touch us in our desires.
Address our longings for a world that we can’t create, but we long to make it better. • Continue to maintain hope that the future can be different than the present.
Return to a place that was better than where we are now.

When we stop only being grateful for our provision and equate love with provision only, we stop our imagining having more than what we were given already.

When a person says their parents were great because I had food, water, shelter, and clothing, then you have stopped your imagination and you’ve stopped yourself from feeling the rest of what’s true. You stopped yourself from feeling sadness, from acknowledging hurt, loneliness, or fear. Once you stop your feelings, you stop acknowledgement of needing.

Guidance is neediness and the need to learn.

“Thus says the LORD: Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:5-8

The heart of guidance is the willingness to recognize you need help.

When we run from how we are made, we wind up doing things that:

end up being nonsensical (not connected to our senses/feelings.)
we do things that we think are very raLonal, but they are crazy, because we try to use the rational to avoid how we are made.
we run away from the solution.

The solution is to admit the pain.

Hurt people…hurt people. Hurt people who don’t admit hurt, harm people.

Our shame and defensiveness keeps us from asking for help and guidance.

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7 - Forming a Circle of Secure Relationships (Part 2) Feb 20, 2024

Show notes

Dr. Chip Dodd

Voice of the Heart Center