We live in a high-speed, high-efficiency, get-it-done-yesterday society. Why would we talk about patience? But the old adage, “Patience is a virtue” is true. A core ingredient to our spiritual health in our frenetic modern world is the ability to live fully in the moment, exercise control and stability through arduous or challenging (and even traumatic) circumstances—doing so with poise and style.

Research psychologist Dr. Sarah Schnitker of Baylor University has pioneered the scientific study of patience among the virtues, exploring the physical, emotional, spiritual, and philosophical dimensions of this timeless and timely virtue. She defines patience as the ability to remain calm in the face of adversity and suffering—being able to wait well and not become inordinately overwhelmed by anxiety or sorrow.

Patience makes us ask not just “What’s worth waiting for?”, but “What’s worth suffering for?” Our English word for suffering comes from the Latin word for “enduring suffering.” And Sarah Schnitker brings theologically rich dimensions to her psychological study of patience.

In this conversation with Sarah Schnitker, we discuss:

About Sarah Schnitker

Sarah Schnitker is Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Baylor University. She holds a PhD and an MA in Personality and Social Psychology from the University of California, Davis, and a BA in Psychology from Grove City College. Schnitker studies virtue and character development in adolescents and emerging adults, with a focus on the role of spirituality and religion in virtue formation. She specializes in the study of patience, self-control, gratitude, generosity, and thrift. Schnitker has procured more than $3.5 million in funding as a principle investigator on multiple research grants, and she has published in a variety of scientific journals and edited volumes. Schnitker is a Member-at-Large for APA Division 36 – Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, is a Consulting Editor for the organization’s flagship journal, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, and is the recipient of the Virginia Sexton American Psychological Association’s Division 36 Mentoring Award. Follow her on Twitter @DrSchnitker.

About the Thrive Center

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

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

Developmental Psychologist William Damon, who has spent decades at Stanford University's Center on Adolescence, has focused his career on studying the human lifespan, growth, and thriving. His latest work introduces the concept of the Life Review as a tool for personal discovery and peace.

Dr. Damon's research systematically studies purpose and its operationalization for human thriving.

Purpose Defined: An enduring life goal that is both meaningful to oneself but also makes a difference beyond the self.

Key Characteristics of Purpose:

Enduring and long-term.

Personal, meaningful, and provides Agency and energy.

Transcendent (beyond the self).

Is a "lifespan developmental capacity" that is "never really complete."

A Caution: "Purpose is not a silver bullet." It does not replace a moral code or guarantee happiness.

Thriving Defined: "Becoming the person you always dreamed you’d become."

Damon's latest book, A Round of Golf with My Father, introduces the life review process. This work was motivated by his own experience uncovering a big mystery: "Who is my father?"

What is a Life Review? A systematic way of looking into your past and history to uncover mysteries and understand who you’ve been, and what that means for your present and future (drawing on the work of Robert Butler).

Forward-Looking Approach: The process acknowledges that "The past is not dead. It’s not even the past" (William Faulkner), and helps reframe and redeem past emotions (regret, guilt, shame) for the present.

The Process: It involves "Making a case study of yourself" and addressing difficult emotions by moving "From blaming to claiming to gaming."

The path to self-understanding and purpose is driven by emotional connections between courage and curiosity.

Courage is Essential: Cultivating courage is an essential virtue for a thriving life, particularly when confronting difficult or traumatic aspects of our past. Small steps make a big difference in overcoming challenges and leveraging purpose. (See also: Aristotle on courage).

Positive Youth Development (PYD): Damon's work highlights the opportunities of youth by focusing on strengths and assets rather than flaws. As Peter Benson stated, "Everyone young person has a spark."

Scope of Purpose: Purpose extends beyond personal motivations to include a wide range of psychological, moral, relational, historical, and spiritual factors. "Purpose is not an elite endeavor."

About the Thrive Center

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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

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

Wellbeing begins with we. “If your community is not well, then you are not well.” Thriving is collective. But our atomic individualism and narrow focus on ourselves is constantly pulling us away from the mutual belonging, reciprocity, and vibrant flourishing that can only be found by seeking the good of the wider human community—the neighbor, the stranger, the migrant, the farm worker, and the poor.

Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra is a scholar, organizer, activist, and pastor, and is Academic Dean of the Centro Latino as well as the Assistant Professor of Integral Mission and Global Transformation at Fuller Theological Seminary.

She offers a healing message for those who wrestle with the pain and suffering caused by structural and systemic injustice, calling for listening, empathy, and action. Alexia’s faith is rooted in community and kinship. She affirms the wisdom of the body and cautions against over-intellectualization, offering instead a larger emotional vocabulary, emotional attunement, and the ability to hold and live with complex feelings.

The power of community is on display in our ability to celebrate and suffer together. And in Alexia’s work as an activist, she shows how fractured communities can reconcile through the power of a shared dream.

In this conversation with Alexia Salvatierra, we discuss:

About Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra

Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra is the Academic Dean of the Centro Latino at Fuller Theological Seminary, as well as the Assistant Professor of Integral Mission and Global Transformation. Her work is a beautiful mosaic of immigration reform, faith-rooted organizing, cross-cultural ministry, and building vital holistic Christian community. Throughout her career, she’s played a central role in founding and convening communities for social justice, including the New Sanctuary Movement, the Guardian angels Project. Matteo 25 a bipartisan Christian network to protect and defend families facing deportation, the Evangelical Immigration Table, and the Ecumenical Collaboration for Asylum-Seekers. She is co-author of God's Resistance: Mobilizing Faith to Defend Immigrants and Buried Seeds: Learning from the Vibrant Resiliency of Marginalized Christian Communities.

About the Thrive Center

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

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

Note: This episode contains content about trauma. Listener discretion is advised.

The path toward hope and healing is often charted through pain, suffering, loss, and grief.

Coming from two decades spent studying post-traumatic stress disorder, researcher and clinical psychologist Dr. Cynthia Eriksson Cynthia has worked with individuals and communities in the wake of major tragedy. Her psychological and spiritual perspectives emerge from first hand experience with Cambodian children exposed to the atrocities of war, Ugandan refugees, Haitian victims of earthquake catastrophe and infrastructure collapse, or at home in Pasadena tending to frontline workers who are often left burned out and traumatized from relief work.

Cynthia Eriksson discusses how to pursue resilience and recovery by reflecting on the role of faith and spirituality; habits and rhythms of life; and relationships and community.

Both resilience and thriving recognize the complexities of life, and both affirm and require the actualization of human agency.

In this conversation with Cynthia Eriksson, we discuss:

About Cynthia Eriksson

Cynthia Eriksson is Dean of the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy, and is a Professor of Psychology in the Clinical Psychology Department.

Her research is particularly focused on the needs of cross-cultural aid for mission workers, as well as the interaction of trauma and spirituality. This work has included trauma training, research, and consultation in Monrovia, Liberia; Kobe, Japan; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Barcelona, Spain; Guatemala City, Guatemala; Gulu, Uganda; and Amman, Jordan.

Eriksson also collaborated with colleagues in the US, Europe, and Africa on a longitudinal research project on stress in humanitarian aid workers funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. She also participates in the Headington Program in International Trauma at Fuller.

She has completed research on risk and resilience, exposure to stress, and spiritual development in urban youth workers funded by the Fuller Youth Institute.

Eriksson and her students are currently exploring the intersection of cultural humility and culturally-embedded resilience practices through collaborations with ministry agencies and Fuller colleague Alexia Salvatierra.

About the Thrive Center

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

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

In developmental science, there are lots of debates between nature and nurture. And Dr. Dan Siegel’s groundbreaking work in interpersonal neurobiology demonstrates that we are naturally wired for nurture—and furthermore, we cannot thrive without it.

Over the past five decades, he has sought to explain through attachment theory and a study of the brain, how relationships shape our feelings, thoughts, memories, stories and personal narratives, and how all these offer an opportunity for us to integrate all of our personal subjective with the world outside us.

Dr. Dan Siegel is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He has authored numerous research articles, books, and accessible materials that apply what we know about the brain to our most sacred and significant relationships.

In this conversation with Dan Siegel, we discuss:

About Dan Siegel

Dr. Siegel is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. An award-winning educator, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and recipient of several honorary fellowships. Dr. Siegel is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization, which offers online learning and in-person seminars that focus on how the development of mindsight in individuals, families and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes. His psychotherapy practice includes children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families. He serves as the Medical Director of the LifeSpan Learning Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Blue School in New York City, which has built its curriculum around Dr. Siegel’s Mindsight approach.

He is author of many books, including, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind, Survive Everyday Parenting Struggles, and Help Your Family Thrive, Parenting from the Inside Out: How A Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive, and his most recent, IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging.

About the Thrive Center

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

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

Seeing justice, equity, and social transformation through the lens of hip-hop culture and Christian faith, Rev. Dr. Dwight Radcliff offers a vision of freedom and unencumbered life for the future of the Black community to which we can all bear witness.

Raising challenging questions about the meaning of thriving in a culture dominated by fear, he speaks in a prophetic voice, interweaving the powerful, compounding effects of the language of the Gospel and the language of hip-hop.

As a cultural theologian, community leader, and pastor, one of Dwight’s many gifts is presence—presence to emotion, to the realty of injustice, and to the complexities of thriving in the context of race and gender.

He speaks about the power of purpose and calling in his life, pointing out the unique insight hip-hop, rap, and R&B music can offer the human experience. He calls us to be attuned to the whole reality of pain, suffering, trauma, and struggle when discussing psychological and spiritual health and thriving. And he bears witness to fear, anger, and grief—re-sensitizing us to our pain and vulnerability—speaking truth for the sake of beauty and justice.

In this conversation, we discuss:

About Dwight Radcliff

Theologian and pastor Rev. Dr. Dwight A. Radcliff Jr. is Academic Dean and director of the William E. Pannell Center for Black Church Studies and is Assistant Professor of Mission, Theology, and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. Prior to coming to Fuller, Dr. Radcliff taught at Vanguard University, Azusa Pacific University, and the Southern California School of Ministry.

He has published in The Journal of Hip Hop Studies, and is a recipient of the Parish Pulpit Fellowship graduation prize and the Hooper/Keefe Preaching Award. He completed post-master’s studies at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas and the University of Oxford.

He currently serves as senior pastor of The Message Center in Gardena, California, where he leads with his wife, DeShun Jones-Radcliff, who serves as the church’s director of administration. He and his wife have two daughters.

About the Thrive Center

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

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

We’re in a crisis of meaning. It’s like our existential compasses are off kilter. Uprooted from faith, social, and civic communities—the very institutions that once supplied narratives, a sense of identity, and belonging.

But meaning and purpose are central to our spiritual health and therefore thriving. And theology comes into play because psychologists are more concerned with how meaning is made descriptively—looking at the cognitive and affective processes of our brains and behavior. Whereas theologians are concerned with prescriptive meaning, commenting normatively about how we should live.

This episode features renowned theologian Miroslav Volf (Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School / Founder and Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture) and author of the bestselling book, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most.

We need stories of love and hope to define our lives. And much of Miroslav's life's work has been devoted to understanding what constitutes a life worth living.

In our conversation, he shares about a God who is with us, who is loving, and who created us for love, calling us to an active role in the flourishing of this world.

In this conversation, we discuss:

About Miroslav Volf

Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and is the Founder and Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.

He was educated in his native Croatia, the United States, and Germany, earning doctoral and post-doctoral degrees (with highest honors) from the University of Tübingen, Germany. He has written or edited more than 20 books, over 100 scholarly articles, and his work has been featured in the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Christian Century, Sojourners, and several other outlets, including NPR, On Being with Krista Tippett, and Public Television’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.

His books include Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most,  Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, Allah: A Christian Response, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity, A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good, The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World, Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World, For the Life of the World: Theology that Makes a Difference (with Matthew Croasmun), and The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything (with Ryan McAnnally-Linz).

About the Thrive Center

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

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

We need each other. We are relational beings, and our thriving—or languishing—often hinges on relationships. In this episode, psychologists Sue Johnson and Jim Furrow not only explain why relationships are so important, they offer practical advice on how to pursue healing, emotional regulation, and lasting thriving in all kinds of relationships.

Sue Johnson is the creator of Emotionally Focused Therapy, the gold standard in tested, proven interventions of couples and author of many books including Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Jim Furrow is a marriage and family therapist and an internationally renowned trainer of Emotionally Focused Therapy.

This conversation goes from profound to practical, covering the biological and psychological science to explain why belonging gives way to becoming. We discuss the rampant emptiness and loneliness, fear, and depression people today experience and the connection between relationships and a sense of meaning in life. Sue and Jim also provide a framework for how to understand your attachment style and the way it impacts your relational health. And they discuss the practical ways we can grow and change so that we can engage in and sustain fulfilling and life giving relationships.

In this conversation with Sue Johnson & Jim Furrow, we discuss:

About Sue Johnson & Jim Furrow

Sue Johnson is the creator of Emotionally Focused Therapy and author of many books including Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Jim Furrow is a marriage and family therapist and an internationally renowned trainer of Emotionally Focused Therapy.

About the Thrive Center

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

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

Do you know your purpose? How do you understand your own life story?

The science of purpose demonstrates powerful benefits across mental health, physical health, longevity, career fulfillment, and relationships. However, this vital sense of meaning can often feel elusive.

Purpose is defined as an actionable and enduring goal that is meaningful to oneself and contributes to the world beyond oneself. This kind of purpose is crucial to spiritual health because it integrates our beliefs, values, and sense of ultimacy into action.

In this episode, Dr. Belle Liang (Boston College, author of How to Navigate Life: The New Science of Finding Your Way in School, Career, and Beyond) provides research-backed, practical guidance on how to identify and pursue purpose.

Dr. Liang identifies four essential elements of purpose that must be aligned:

Character Strengths: Your inherent positive qualities.

Skills and Expertise: The abilities you have cultivated.

Deeply Held Values: The principles that guide your life.

A Sense of Contribution to the World: How your efforts benefit others.

Dr. Liang guides listeners through a real-time, practical exercise to help align these elements, ensuring that purpose becomes less an "ephemeral object" and more a concrete tool for navigating the journey of life and cultivating thriving.

In this conversation with Belle Liang, we discuss:

About Belle Liang
Dr. Belle Liang is a professor of Counseling, Developmental, & Educational Psychology at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College. As the founder and Principal Investigator of Purpose Lab, she is committed to advancing understanding of positive youth development, including mentoring and relational health, through her research. Her expertise in purpose interventions, including those that are technologically mediated, is reflected in her current work leading the development of True North, a curriculum and web-based application aimed at helping individuals and organizations cultivate purpose with data analytics.

With over 100 publications, Dr. Liang is recognized as a knowledgeable speaker and collaborator in the field of positive youth development. She is grateful for the opportunities she has had to contribute to the field and to translate research into practical application, as demonstrated by her recent co-authorship of the bestselling How to Navigate Life: The New Science of Finding Your Way in School, Career, & Beyond, published by St. Martin’s Press.

About the Thrive Center

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

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

Dr. Richie Davidson’s research has revolutionized the way we understand the brain and how plastic and malleable or changeable the brain is. Just like we train our physical bodies and go to the gym, he and his team at the Center for Healthy Minds have shown that we need to train our brains and work them out as well. 

As a result, he is changing the way we understand well being—to think of it as a skill—something we do and practice as active agents of our own well being.

His research can give us a whole new appreciation of Christian contemplative practices or disciplines. Although we can't control all that happens around us or to us, we do have some control on how we respond, merging helpful insight with concrete practices that make a difference for our minds, so that we can become more regulated, peaceful, receptive, open, and even more trusting.

In this bountiful conversation with Richie Davidson, we discuss:

About Richie Davidson

Dr. Richie Davidson is a pioneer in contemplative neuroscience, and does cutting edge research on the neuro-correlates of emotion and meditation. He's also the founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin Madison, where he's the William James Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry.

About the Thrive Center

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

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