84- Keeping Heart: The Equation for the Gifts of Feelings
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.
Work: Work is the surrender of your whole self to the experience of what matters to you. In work, we bring our hearts to what we do with our heads and hands. We are “all in” when we are at work. Work is the courageous energy of wanting to finish the mission of your heart’s desire. On the other hand, labor is what we want “to end.”
Time: Time definitely involves the “clock.” But in the equation, time is the space in which you are able to bring your whole self to your desire. You bring your hope, your ability to be patient, and the investment of your heart in what you are doing that matters to you. When we invest our hearts in time, we become three-dimensional; we are experiencing living fully, which is thriving, versus getting something “over with,” which is survival. In “Chronos” we “see” the passage of time. In “Kairos” we “experience” time as a “place” in which we get to live fully.
Through Willingness + Patience + Work + Time = Gifts, we experience the outcome of living fully.
If we surrender daily to feeling our feelings, telling the truth about them, and trusting God with the outcomes, as emotional and spiritual creatures who find fulfillment in relationship, we will experience the gifts. The gifts move us to confidently and competently live fully, love deeply, and lead well because we are fully connected in relationship with ourselves, others, and God.
Sadness can bring us to acceptance, allowing us to live life on life’s terms.
Anger can bring us to passion, allowing us to experience pain while persevering.
Hurt can bring us to healing, allowing us to continue to live courageously because we have others help.
Loneliness can bring us to the friendship and encouragement from others, allowing us to know that we are not alone.
Fear can bring us to knowing that we can have help if we will ask, allowing us to grow in faith.
Shame can bring us to the humility of knowing that we will always need others, allowing us to be good at depending and trusting, and reinforcing our need to be trustworthy.
Guilt can bring us to admission of harm done to ourselves and others, allowing us to seek forgiveness and experience the freedom that mercy brings.
Gladness can bring us to the joy of knowing that we can withstand life’s struggles and continue to remain willing and patient, amidst the work of pursuing life to the full. In gladness we experience life as something we “get to” live.
Surviving requires hiding our hearts, moving us away from the Equation.
Thriving requires that we continue to experience our hearts—come what may.
The Equation is hard work, but that work sets us free to live fully, love deeply, and lead well.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center