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Pam King: I’m Dr. Pam King, and you’re listening to With & For, a podcast that explores the depths of psychological science and spiritual wisdom to offer practical guidance towards spiritual health, wholeness, and thriving on purpose.
Jill Westbrook: Hello listeners, I’m Jill Westbrook, and we’re back with another installment of our current series from Pam King on the 5 A’s of Agility for Spiritual Health. I’m one of the With & For producers, and I’m delighted to be introducing each of these reflections from Pam. As we’re on our way to Season 2 of With & For.
which is dropping with all new guests and full episodes on January 6th, 2025. We’re sharing shorter clips, practical features, and other talks and interviews from Pam to tide you over and help orient you towards some of the framework we’ve developed for thriving and spiritual health. And before I forget, I want to ask for your support.
Would you join us in spreading the word about Within Four season two, specifically, sharing one of your favorite episodes of season one with a friend, and then heading to Apple Podcasts or Spotify to rate and review our show.
You’d be helping us grow and bring With & For to new listeners. Once again, thank you for your support. At this point in the series, we’ve gone from attunement to awareness. If you haven’t heard those yet, you should probably start there. All of these steps end up building and working together. Today, Pam continues the series by talking about activation.
This is where things really get moving. To this point, attunement, awareness, and alignment have kept things internal, but the activation step is where we implement a practice or exercise, make a move toward our values, or experiment with something to help us grow.
So, here’s Pam on Step 4 of the 5 As of Agility for Spiritual Health, Activation.
Thanks again for listening. Enjoy.
Pam King: So today we’re going to talk about activation in the five A’s of agility and thriving. Last time we talked about aligning to our deepest values , and today we’re going to talk about activating your purpose. Within the five A’s. It’s when we actually start thinking about how we want to live differently, how we behave and how we act.
This can be on a broad scale of making a major life pivot or on a daily basis. It could be 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.
So activating could be anything from discovery and committing to pursue and discover what your skills and gifts are. Or if you feel really clear, like I love to write, maybe it’s taking time to write in a way that you long to write in. Great activation and great behaviors in our lives are not just behaviors that benefit us, but they’re behaviors that benefit others.
So I encourage you as you work through the five A’s, when you’re focusing on activation, think about how you can activate your skills, gifts, and passions. for the benefit of others.
Activation has to do with activating your purpose. And in some seasons in our lives, we’re more clear about what our purpose is. So I can get up and say, I’m going to write a blog on thriving. Because, that’s part of my purpose, is to help people thrive.
For some of us, we might be less clear at this certain spot in our life, but we can try something that we might think will get us one step closer to either pursuing our purpose or exploring or discovering our purpose. But every day we want to be conscientious about how we are activating for our purpose either specifically pursuing it or exploring and experimenting with it.
We want to be not only mindful of our conclusions in aligning of the values or goals that we want to pursue or the purpose that we believe we are after or that we’re exploring, but we also want to be mindful of those feelings that we became attuned to in the first step of the five A’s because the reality is, especially when we’re attuned to positive emotions like joy or wonder or curiosity or gratitude, these are expansive and they actually motivate us to action. Keep aligned to the values and keep attuned to the feelings that go with these positive values. That is really helpful in motivating you towards activating towards your purpose.
Often in modern culture we can take goals in purpose really seriously and, and kind of go uber purpose when I’m talking about in activating on a daily basis is a small micro step because this allows us to get feedback on what.
does matter, what brings joy in our lives. So this is thinking about what is the small step. That you can actually make forward that enables you to get a little closer or dial into that sense of purpose.
When we are active, especially when we are proactive in a way that is aligned with what matters most to us, Boom. Dopamine. Good, lasting chemical reactions. things that are lasting and shape and sculpt a life occur for us.
Jill Westbrook: Thanks for listening. Next week, Pam will wrap up this series on the five A’s of spiritual health with an exploration of assessment. Until then you can find a wealth of practices and resources on our website, thethrivecenter. org. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to With & For to catch each of our weekly episodes this fall. We’ll be back next Monday.
Pam King: With & For is a production of The Thrive Center at Fuller Theological Seminary. For more information, visit our website, thethrivecenter.org ,where you’ll find all sorts of resources to support your pursuit of wholeness and a life of thriving on purpose. I am so grateful to the staff and fellows of the Thrive Center and our With & For podcast team.
Jill Westbrook is our Senior Director and Producer. Lauren Kim is our Operations Manager. Wren Jeurgensen is our Social Media Graphic Designer. Evan Rosa is our Consulting Producer. And special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology and Marriage and Family Therapy.
I’m your host, Dr. Pam King. Thank you for listening.
Dr. Pamela Ebstyne King
Pamela Ebstyne King is the Executive Director of the Thrive Center and the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science in the School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary. Her life’s purpose is to help people thrive. To this end, her academic work focuses on psychological and theological perspectives of human thriving and social flourishing. Her psychological research focuses on spiritual and moral development; the role of transcendent beliefs, narratives, and emotions in virtue development; and environments that promote thriving for diverse people. TheThriveCenter.org translates research into resources that promote wholeness, thriving, and spiritual health, and she is the host of the With & For podcast.
Episode Summary
“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
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