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.

If we want to bear good fruit in our lives, we must have strong roots. Good fruit must lead to love. As the Rev. Dr. Pam King offers in this episode, “Root into love so that you can live out love.”

Speaking on Jesus’s parable of the Tree and Its Fruits in Luke 6, she draws on theological and psychological resources to reflect on the role of active and intentional love in a thriving life.

Luke 6:43-45: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes bramble bush. The good person, out of the good treasure of the heart, produces good. And the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”

Show Notes

• Luke 6:43-45: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes bramble bush. The good person, out of the good treasure of the heart, produces good. And the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”
• “I believe this scripture … redefines reality and redefines fruit.”
• True love in *The Princess Bride — “Wuv. Twoo Wuv.”
• “True love is the greatest thing in the world.”
• “Root into love so that you can live out love.”
• What is thriving? What New Testament parables of Jesus express thriving?
• Redefining “Good”
• What is good?
• “Good” is a four-letter word
• There’s always a right answer in Sunday School: “Jesus”
• Defining the Relationship? Or Define the Reality?
• A reordering of values
• “… a radical reordering of values and a re sanctification of sanctioned behaviors. He describes the kind of conduct that is appropriate for this kingdom that he will be leading. It is love your enemies, do good out of love. Give generously out of love. Lend without expectation. Love your neighbor.”
• Fruit is a symbol of love
• Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, “The Home of God”—what is to come is coming now. “Inbreaking”
• Flux in congregational or community life
• The Reciprocating Self
• Conformity is not synonymous with uniformity
• “We are each invited to bear fruit out of our own giftedness.”
• “Bear fruit as yourself.”
• “Pam, you’re a good Pam.”
• “We bear fruit by living out God's love. in this world as ourselves.”
• Tree imagery in the Bible
• “A tree firmly planted, or some versions rooted, by streams of water, that does not get blown when the winds come by.”
• What kind of tree are you?
• How do you root into God’s love?
• Eli Finkel and third-person perspective taking
• “When people take a benevolent third person view in the Christian worldview, God's perspective, and they actually write those things about a person, the conflict is still there, but they're able to interact and care for that person more effectively and see that person more wholly.”
• “80 percent of Americans young people are lonely. We are in a cultural mode of despair in many ways. We are losing our relational capacity.”

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.

“How did it go?” As we pursue purpose and spiritual health, we need regular opportunities to take stock and understand how our efforts are making an impact in our lives and in the lives of others.

In the process of pursuing purpose, cultivating joy, and connecting more deeply to ourselves, we need to learn how to audit and assess how its going as we live out our spirituality and refine our values.

In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains assessment—the final (and absolutely essential) step in the process of cultivating agility and adaptivity for spiritual health. At this stage, we take stock, adapt, and flex, ready to start fresh and begin anew each day.

Show Notes

• Audit and assess
• Take stock, adapt, and flex, ready to start fresh and begin anew each day.
• Consider cycles and frequencies of assessment
• The Ignatian Prayer of Examen
• Becoming aware of where God is most fully active in our lives
• Slow down, connect with God, and take a different perspective
• What are we made and created to do?
• What is our purpose as full human selves?
• The importance of patience and pausing
• Accountability
• Utilize emotions as signposts
• Drawing on the first step of attunement
• How to facilitate the final step of the cycle and move toward beginning again

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.

“Activate your skills, gifts, and passions for the benefit of others.”

Activation is the practical step in the cycle of 5 A’s for Agility in Spiritual Health—where we implement a practice or exercise, make a move toward our values, or experiment with something to help us grow.

In this episode, Dr. Pam King walks through the fourth step of the 5 A’s: Activate. This step in the cycle draws from each previous step, going from non-judgmental observation, internally connecting to our values, and then puts our values into action for the sake of living out our purpose.

Show Notes

• Implement a practice or exercise, make a move toward our values, or experiment with something to help us grow.
• “What is one thing I can do today to more clearly align my life to those values and those sources of joy and mattering  that I thought about when I was considering alignment.”
• An attitude of discovery
• Enacting intentional behavior; bringing our values into real life
• “Activate your skills, gifts, and passions for the benefit of others.”
• Activating your purpose
• What will get us one step closer to our purpose?
• Stay mindful of the feelings we attuned to in the first step of the 5 A’s.
• Positive, expansive feelings
• Small microsteps forward
• Moving toward what matters most

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.

“When our life is aligned to what truly matters, that is when we experience the most enduring joy.”

In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains the 3rd step in the 5 A’s of Agility for Spiritual Health. Alignment is the process of becoming more reflective, drawing connections between our thoughts and emotions—and our beliefs, values, habits, and the experiences that shape us.

This is the step where we look for our intentions and expectations and hold them up to our raw experiences and the possible meanings associated with them. We begin by identifying what's true or what's false in our feelings and thoughts so we can more clearly move toward our purposes.

ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

• “Alignment involves aligning the insights that you gained from taking inventory and attuning to your feelings and becoming aware of their meanings of then aligning these feelings to your ideals, your values, and what you assume matters.”
• What matters to you?
• Taking stock of what we attuned to, and what we became aware of
• How do we align what is with what we want?
• How to practice alignment
• How do you spend your time?
• Reflecting regularly on life goals
• “When our life is aligned to what truly matters, that is when we experience the most enduring joy.”
• Resilience and stability

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.