The Map of Freedom, Part 1

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

You're listening to the Sage Hill podcast with Dr. Chip Dodd. Sage Hill is a social impact organization that helps people see who they are made to be so they can do what they're made to do. The following podcast was recorded at this year's Sage Hill training, an in-depth experiential training that helps people bring their heart to what they are called to do. To learn more, you can visit sagehilltraining.com. Okay. What we're gonna do next is the map of freedom. It's the result that everyone's looking for, but almost no one wants to go to the lengths they're required to get it. From what I can tell, everybody who I've ever known who wants to participate in life and not just see themselves as a victim, they want to lead well, which means that they want to be able to offer something that other people want and can use. Okay? That's what I think of the simplest way I know how to put leading well. Everyone who thinks in ways that not just as a victim, and I don't mean negative. I mean, they're out of victim, and they're after something, even if they are wanting to affect a world where people aren't turned into victims, it's a form of leadership. And even if they're doing that out of their wounds of having been a victim. See, they're still fighting. So a leader person leads well is someone who's offering something that other people need and want, and he wants she wants to get it to them. Leadership. So leadership is actually an offering, and you do it because it matters to you and you want it to matter to others. You believe it does, and you're stepping into a a felt need. A true leader I hate to add to, like, you know, like a real Christian, a true leader, a true Christian. You know, we we have to do that these days. It seems so many ways. Right? So, like, to, authenticate something. But okay. A real leader or a true leader is someone who's offering, putting out a call for people to respond to if they want to come get or go where that person's going. Now a leader is a person who has a call upon their lives. I'm talking about a true pure leader. A leader is a person who's got something on them and in them, something that compels them. In other words, I'm talking about a passion. Remember a passion is something that a person is willing to be in pain to have, something they they want more than pain affects them. Okay? A willingness to be in pain for something that matters more than pain. Passion. And they have a passion for something, which means they picture something, they see something, they want something, they know something, they want to create something and make something that is going to be a benefit to others. When that leader offers out offers a call for help, who wants to participate in this thing and do this with me? That person has a call at which they're compelled. In other words, the true leader is the first follower. In other words, that person is actually understands following because that person is following something they can't get away from. CPE to me is a passion. And it was like something I got going in me and then I put out a call. And, Phil Herndon responded to the call. I was the first follower and Phil, was, said I wanted to be a part of this. And Phil came to this, was worth it to him. Now, he came to follow a mission that I was called in to be first follower. So I'm leading Phil, but Phil and I are following something bigger than me. So true leadership invites other leaders into participating in something bigger than all of them, but the one who has the call upon them is the leader because it's their mission that other people are called to participate in. People who are following are looking for certain categories of behavior in a leader, which we'll touch base on some. But the main thing that a follower is looking for in a leader is integrity. They want to know that their insides and their outsides are consistent. Like, you're not just using me to get something from me that suits you. Okay. So that person ends up being a demagogue. A demagogue is a person who promises to get something for other people if they will participate with him or her. That's a demagogue. That's not a true leader. That's called that's cutting a deal. That's a contract. That's if you come with me, you'll get stuff. That's not what true leadership is. Or a lot of people say, if I'll take you somewhere, if you'll come with me and if you we get this, you won't have to do anything anymore. They're offering a deal and that's not a true leader either. That's a person who's requesting that others give up their identities to participate. I'm thinking of elections that we've had. I feel your pain. I'm a fix your pain. You elect me, and I'm a stop your pain. The victims who are looking for a deal to escape having to deal with their lives voted him into office. Well, persons who's a leader, the people who follow are giving their hearts to it and him or her. I'm giving the heart to this, but you're the one called to it. I'm trusting you to know what you're talking about to help us get there, to be truthful, to be honest, to be thorough, to be for me too, that we are doing this together. Does that make sense? So a real leader is asking for a person to give their hands, their heads, and their heart to something. That's why a lot of times when something gets big, too big or big, it loses its mission identity, and the mission identity is a memory rather than a person who's leading it. So it it becomes a thing instead of a community or a people or anything. Somehow Disney I don't know how they've done it, but Disney has held on to the consistent mission. It's just brilliant. Now my mission, my personal mission is I wanna do whatever I've gotta do to help people see who they're made to to be so they can do what they're made to do. See who they're made to be so they can do what they're made to do. That's me. And I've got I I want to continue to prayerfully be aware of what move gets in the way of that and sim simply pray for where is it that I need to go. Passion plus a vision. K? So I I am a true leader. K? Because I'm after something whether anybody goes or not, but I desperately need people to go with me because I can't do it. So the the leader is very needy, but at the same time not counterfeit or selling out or, you know, mistakes get made, all that kind of stuff. So so a mother and a father are true leaders if they will face themselves. They're called to something greater than themselves, compelled to do whatever it takes to raise the hearts of their children. In other words, to to bring their children into their their hands, their heads, and their hearts being all involved in life. Right? So a real leader going back to where I started, a real leader is a person who wants to offer something to people that he or she values that like for other people to have if they're called to it to take it. So some scientists who are just inventing things are not necessarily leaders. They just like the inventing itself. They're not necessarily thinking about people. Alright. So this is the map to get to a place of leaving a legacy. Now legacy is what everyone wants who who who cares and loves and walks in wanting, just simply wanting. They want to leave something behind that people can keep for themselves. And the only thing that people can keep for themselves that we leave behind is something of heart, qualities of heart. Because money is isn't a legacy. Life, motivation, and that which adds to courage, faith, and work is legacy stuff. Do you remember a long time ago and even last night, I mentioned that when a child is born, a child probably is bearing an image bearer of God, image of God. But that little baby not idealizing the child, but naming accurately what this creature is doing. Probably the purest faith this person will have for quite a while. This child comes in with sure of what she hopes for and certain of what she cannot see yet. That there will be two people here who will take me in and grow me up and turn me into a Creator. Give me freedom to create and protect me and keep me safe. All of these things, that's what so many people who come to therapy are weeping about or in denial about. We become impaired through our families of origin and the people around that and we become repaired in relationship too. We become impaired through relationship, we become repaired through relationship. Everything else is chemistry. We lose our hearts and hide them because of the relationships that didn't accept them. And we become repaired to life through relationships that we can risk being vulnerable to, and we get our lives back. So leaving a legacy is leaving something behind that makes you remembered even though it doesn't have your name on it. Some of you heard me tell the story about if you live your life fully, if you love deeply and lead well, then two hundred years from now I always use this beach. I always picture this beach. But two hundred years from now, you know that you're not here anymore. And I'm assuming there will be Bibles around or at least ancestry.com because in the old days they had a tree in the Bible and the names of the people who are dead were in that Bible. It was a family Bible. So I guess ancestry.com will be the thing you could click on and go find who who people came before you what people came before you. So two hundred years from now, you're dead. And two hundred years from now, unless you're George Washington or Martin Luther King or Moses or Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt kind of people, Ronald Reagan, you're forgotten. I mean, Benjamin Harrison, who? He was a president. But, I mean, yeah, I know he's the president, but, really, you know, Harding? Warren g Harding? Yeah. I think he was president. I don't know which one, but he was. Forgotten. But if you live fully, love deeply, lead well, two hundred years from now, there are gonna be a couple of children playing on a beach. And it's, music drifting in from the waves, and the waves are loud, and the sun is bright, and the sky is blue, and the waters are clear, and the sand is is sparkly white, and the umbrellas and the beach chairs are there, And the breeze is warm, not hot, humid, but not overwhelming. It's like it's it's just right, like Goldilocks. I mean, it's really nice. And so mama, the mother says, you know, sweethearts, you know, come up or take a break. Come up and take a break. And, you know, the the the chairs and the umbrella are, like, you know, 20 yards away. And she has to kinda talk loudly for them to hear them. One of them says, not yet, mom. Like, no. Come on. Just for a few minutes and sit. And they come up, a boy and a girl perhaps, and they're beautiful to her. And whether they're beautiful or not to you, they're beautiful to her. And she gets out the little container of dark skinned grapes and graham crackers and Sprite, iSprite. So she calls them up and she says, y'all sit down for just a little while. I don't want to. And then I'm not even tired, but let's just take a little rest. Otherwise, we need to go in and rest, you know. And they sit down, and the one who says I'm not tired just sort of sits there in the breeze, starts to dry his hair, and the the wet sand and water starts to dry, leaving little sparklies on his legs. And she starts reading one of the children's books because they're, like, six and seven, you know, kind of thing, or five and six. And she starts reading just a book to them. And the little girl sits and just nibbles on grapes. She didn't just like toss them in and crunch them. She eats them in halves, which is kind of like just her way of doing it and drinks Sprite, like Yeah. And she didn't care for graham crackers much. She likes Sprite and grapes. Okay. And the boy eats graham crackers like like bunches of them. And it takes a minute to open his mouth and show his sister, you know, a mouthful of graham cracker mush. And then he's bored again. He's, I'm done. And then after a while, she's reading and she realizes the boy who wasn't tired is asleep. He's just napping. And the little girl settled in and just just listening to the pages, watching the waves, and listen to her mother read a story. And she looks at them, and she loves them. And they don't know to say, mommy, I love you so much because they just simply are. It's not they just simply do. They just simply are. And in fact, the love is such that they kind of take it for granted. Like, so therefore, it's really sweet sweet love because there's no debt yet. And the debt if when it ever does come is when they grow up and they realize, I was given a lot. That's a long time from then to grow up and go, I was given a lot, mom. Thank you. And it didn't come till then because there's no debt until the person sees what it cost mom to love that much. Do you see? And so, the children rest there and it's really nice. And you're dead two hundred years ago. But because of what you do in this life here, they will have that life there. That's what I mean by legacy. Because that mother, if it weren't for you, wouldn't be on the beach able to love like that, to call her children up with a passion, to call them up to feed them, not grapes and graham crackers and Sprite, to feed them her and life and possibility and care and rest and boundaries and an accord, an affirmation, a confirmation. It's astounding how when one person steps into recovery, we call it many things restoration, redemption, recovery, their own hearts, their own humility, their own who they're made to be. The universe changes. If you take a dot and draw a line out from the dot, it goes into infinity. If you move that dot a nanometer, if you stop the line or go back to your origin and move that starting point a nanometer, which is is indistinguishable, you can't even tell it happened, and you start the line again, the separation between the two lines is infinity. Do you get what I'm saying? If you take a vector, a dot here, draw out infinity. Come back, draw the line again, almost indistinguishable. There's a point at which as this these two lines go out, they separate to infinity. And those two children are on that beach being loved by that mom because of your willingness to make a nanometer move. That's legacy.

This is Stephen James, the executive director of Sage Hill Counseling. Thanks for listening to the Sage Hill podcast with Dr. Chip Dodd. If you're interested in learning more about the power of our core eight emotions, I encourage you to check out Chip's book, The Voice of the Heart, A Call to Full Living.