Hope is powerful. It’s more than a feeling. It’s a foundation for getting us through even the darkest of times. The season of Advent provides the opportunity to attune to hope, become aware of our deepest hopes and desires, and then align our lives to hope.

This December, we’re celebrating Advent with you by offering four guided meditations by Dr. Pam King—considering how to cultivate the Advent virtues of hope, peace, joy, and love into our lives this year.

We’d be grateful if you considered the Thrive Center in your year-end giving. To make a year-end tax-deductible gift, visit thethrivecenter.org/contribute.

Don't forget that Season 2 of With & For launches with all new episodes on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

• “Hope has the power to transform and involves our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.”
• Take hold of hope with simple steps of attunement, awareness, alignment, and activation
• Breath work
• Attune, in order to feel sensations of hope in your body.
• How are you experiencing or feeling hope in your body?
• Notice, don’t judge.
• What do the feelings of hope say about your deepest desires?
• Where does your hope come from?
• How can you align your day with your hope?
• How can you align with hope to reflect God's desires for you?
• What is one thing you can do today to lean forward into hope?

About the Thrive Center

• Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
• Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
• Follow us on X @thrivecenter
• Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

• Host: Pam King
• Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
• Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
• Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
• Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

SEASON 2 is launching January 6, 2025! Subscribe to With & For today!

How can we reconnect, repair, and rebuild our fractured world?

We need grounded scientific insight that we connect us with what is good, true, and beautiful. We need wider perspective that guides us toward purpose, community, wisdom, and spiritual health.

Developmental psychologist, ordained minister, and professor, Dr. Pam King introduces Season 2 of With & For, which launches on January 6, 2025. Inviting guests with expertise in psychology, spirituality, and leadership, this new season will tackle practical questions with courage, openness, and hope—focusing on insights, stories, and exercises for how to reconnect, repair, and rebuild our fractured world. How to find psychological, emotional, and spiritual health, and how to find one another in love.

This season, episode topics include:

The power of positive emotions like awe, wonder, curiosity, and transcendence, along with other research backed practices that encourage them.

The dangers of spiritual and religious abuse, the psychological impact of childhood relational trauma, and how to heal from the wounds of the past.

The neuroscience behind our emotional health, its impact on how we develop, learn, grow, and make meaning.

The science behind core human relationships, the emotional vulnerability and power dynamics of intimate romantic relationships, as well as the challenge of parenting and being parented.

Why and how our moral lives and cultivating virtues are fundamental to joy and thriving.

The legacies of racial justice and consider the spiritual and moral underpinnings of nonviolent resistance. The healing properties of art, creativity, and beauty, and how they offer comfort and strength beyond words.

And much more.

Subscribe to With & For wherever you listen to podcasts and visit us online at thethrivecenter.org/podcast.

About the Thrive Center

• Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
• Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
• Follow us on X @thrivecenter
• Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

• Host: Pam King
• Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
• Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
• Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
• Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Show Notes

• About Liberty Road podcast and organization
• “Pursuing your future doesn't end at 40. In fact, it may mark the beginning of knowing who you are, what you're capable of, and what you really want.”
• What is the Thrive Center?
• The intersection of psychological science and spiritual wisdom
• “The irony of the term of mental health is that it's actually defined by mental illness, or pathology, or depression, or anxiety.”
• What can go right with people?
• Explicit interest in spirituality: “There’s gotta be something more.”
• “A historical rift between religiously or spiritual things and psychological science.”
• Research-backed spirituality
• “A thriving life is a life on-purpose.”
• “It’s not just the journey, it’s the direction.”
• Thriving at the intersection of three pillars of life: individual, relational, and aspirational.
• “In the deepest part of my being, I really want to enable people to thrive in a very holistic way. And live more fully into who they are. Living more authentically, living with deeper connection and, and with deeper purpose.”
• Not just another self-help platform
• “How do you help us understand purpose or thriving when maybe we haven't put ourselves first?”
• Balance and moving through extremes
• Life is fluid and dynamic
• Middle age as a period of flux
• Looking at opportunities in challenges
• Motherhood and service for others
• Finding joy
• Examples for each three pillars
• Stay-at-home mom moving into a new phase of life
• “Start with loving ourselves and giving ourselves grace.”
• “Bring out the best in yourself. Love yourself.”
• What images come to mind as positive memories of competency and strength?
• Obligations in relationships
• What are we actually living out? Is it consistent with our values?
• Change your environment or change yourself.
• What is spirituality?
• “Spirituality is people’s perception and experience of transcendence. … But also our response to transcendence.”
• Spiritual health and psychology—”Not all spirituality is helpful or healthful.”
• “I think we're living in a spiritually void time.”
• “Have we deprived ourselves of something in an effort to not deprive ourselves of anything?”
• Pam King on life in the “middle third”
• Reprioritizing and making professional shifts
• What keeps you grounded? 10 minutes of silence of meditation.
• What are you currently reading? Open and Unafraid by W. David Taylor / Strength That Remains, by Tracy Kidder
• What is a skincare musthave? SBLA Facial Wand
• What has surprised you about the good life? There’s more losses than anticipated.
• What has your work done to liberate you? Reworking and reconsidering purpose; “Diving deep in conversations with people has been liberating and wonderful.”

About Nada Jones

Nada Jones is the founder and CEO of Liberty Road, a podcast and organization for entrepreneurial women focused on growth, wisdom, sharing stories, and finding purpose. Discover more of her work at www.liberty-road.com.

About the Thrive Center

• Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
• Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
• Follow us on X @thrivecenter
• Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

• Host: Pam King
• Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
• Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
• Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
• Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.