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Pam King: Purpose is something we all know we need. It’s a vital part of our spiritual health, but for some of us it can be so hard to find. Psychologist Belle Liang helps us navigate and thrive holistically through our own journeys in life by identifying four essential elements of purpose. Character strengths, skills and expertise, deeply held values, and a sense of contribution to the world.
Belle Liang: There’s the whole range of ways that we contribute to the world beyond ourselves. When you know more about those questions, you can begin to intentionally align your life and your choices to those elements of purpose. Purpose is not like finding your one true love. I think that that is what is intimidating to a lot of people as if it’s one thing, and if you don’t find it, then, you know, you’re sunk.
But instead, it’s knowing more of yourself. self and how you are designed and living in ways that are aligned and consistent with those values, strengths, beliefs, and desires.
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.
The science of purpose promises many positive outcomes, mental health, psychological well being, physical health, longevity, academic engagement, career fulfillment, and even nurturing relationships. But as much as purpose can captivate us. Purpose can also taunt us. For many, actually statistically for about half of us right now, purpose is elusive.
It can feel like this ephemeral object dangling in front of us. We want it, we sense it, we know we should have it, but we can’t quite attain it. Well, in this episode, I am bringing you up close and personal with a dear colleague, Dr. Belle Liang from Boston College. She is author of the best selling book, How to Navigate Life, the new science of finding your way in school, career, and beyond.
In our discussion, she offers research backed and really practical guidance on how to identify and pursue your purpose. Belle informs us that purpose is not something out there to attain. Your purpose has to be found within you. Purpose is understood as an actionable and enduring goal that is meaningful to oneself.
and contributes to the world beyond oneself. This notion of purpose is crucial to our spirituality because spirituality serves to integrate our beliefs, values, understanding of ultimacy, and love into action.
In my conversation with Belle, we talk about how family history shapes us as individuals, the importance of differentiation and emerging.
from early family dependency into a healthy sense of oneself as an individual, the role of faith, spirituality, and community in our understanding of purpose, a psychological definition of purpose as using strengths and skills and values to make a positive impact on the world. And we get deep into the practical elements.
of finding and living your purpose as an individual with and for others. And Belle guides us through a practice of reflecting on our past and finding our purpose.
Belle, I have been looking forward to this so much. It is great to have you on the show and I feel very fortunate to have some time to talk with you.
Belle Liang: I feel exactly the same way, Pam. I’m still looking forward to our conversation when I’ve mentioned this before that I so admire the work that you’re doing at Thrive. I’m so excited about talking about some of the intersections between our vision and mission for purpose.
Pam King: Story of purpose. We really started at the beginning, actually before the beginning you might say.
I asked Belle about her family history, her ethnic background as an Asian American, her faith background and how the feelings of responsibility and meeting expectations of her family and culture informed her felt purpose as a daughter.
Belle Liang: Yeah. And that has played such a formative role. My role as a daughter in an Asian immigrant family.
who really sacrificed everything to come to the U.S. So that I and my brothers could have an education in the U.S. Both my parents came from very impoverished backgrounds. They had parents who passed pretty early in life. They were raised by single moms and during a very, very difficult time. It was not a small feat that my dad was able to make it to the U.S. Borrowing money you. from whoever would lend him money so that he could come to the U.S. on a student visa. And, that required a great deal of sacrifice for my mother who was left behind for two years with a newborn. And it was two years before they were reunited on American soil when he was able to afford to bring them to the U.S. So that was sort of the backdrop and context of my growing up years. I just really was all about trying to please them and make their sacrifices worth it. And it, and it really affected a lot of the choices that I made early in my life. I’m just
Pam King: both overwhelmed by thinking about the extraordinary opportunity that they gave you, but then the sense of responsibility and potentially heavy burden that might come with that, their sacrifice.
Belle Liang: It really, you don’t think so much, you know, about the ways that you are making choices based on your, your family’s. former sacrifices until you develop a little bit more awareness, I think, later in, in young adulthood. So at the time I was in high school and getting into college and, and my choices in terms of what my major was in, in college, I just felt like maybe they were my decisions.
They were my, my own desires and wishes. And it wasn’t until I sort of developed a little bit more of awareness that I realized that a lot of my choices that I was making around major and career direction were really trying to live up to the expectations that I felt from my family and culturally and so on.
And looking back on things from my junior year of college, I started realizing that I should listen more to my own heart. And that’s how I became a psychologist. I remember the day that I sat my parents down and I told them that I broke the news to them that I was changing my major mom and dad from premed to psychology.
And it was like I had just told them I was drumming on college. They were like, can you get a job doing that? And why are you doing this to us? And so like, we kind of look back on it and, and laugh about it now because of course they’re, they’re proud of me now. They understand I do have a job, all those things.
But at the time there were just very rigid, specific expectations. for success because as an immigrant family, there’s, there, there, there really aren’t the privileges of, of as much exploration and messing around. Like you kind of, you have to think about financial security above all else and, and for survival, you’re really trying to make.
choices that will guarantee success as well as you can and the shortest route to it. So it was pretty tricky for me early on to make some decisions that had to do with my own interests, my own intrinsic motivations versus doing what seemed to be the most strategic pathway to success.
Pam King: My approach as a developmental psychologist trains me to think about the processes that shape us into who we are. and what we can become. It’s interesting how in our search for ourselves and unlocking our purpose, thinking genealogically, thinking through the lens of ancestors and those who came before us, who brought us about, how this can shape our early sense of ourselves.
But there’s a very important process of differentiation that occurs as we go through adolescence and into adulthood that is crucial to our sense of thriving. As you always observe, teens are always pushing boundaries, pushing away from their family systems. It’s a natural process in which we become more uniquely ourselves.
And we’re doing that so that eventually we can have intimacy, grow close to others, but on our own terms and as our own selves. And as young people do this, as they begin to listen to themselves, they listen to their interests. Concerns, creative sources and their aspirations. Parker Palmer refers to this process as enabling us to let our life speak and be, and I both agree that we need to listen hard to that inner voice of our life.
There’s so many voices in this world telling us what we should be, how we should be. It’s really important to cultivate a practice and have a guide to help you listen to your own inner voice.
As you know, I’m a huge cheerleader and fan of your book. I love your writing. And you picked some really beautiful quotes.
And one of my favorite authors, Parker Palmer, you noted, included his quote, Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. And it sounds like that junior year in college was a moment where all of a sudden you started listening to your life and listening to your heart.
How did you do that?
Belle Liang: Well, really, that is where faith comes in, because even through all of the this period of intense striving and trying to live up to expectations and asking myself, what do other people want from me? Faith was already a very important part of my journey, and really, it’s It was the center of, you know, what ultimately guides me today and guided me then I was, you know, just aware that I had even a higher calling than what my parents expected of me and that I had been given certain privileges and opportunities and interest.
It was the sense that I had been given certain aspirations and interests and abilities that were not just handed down to me from my family. And, you know, we’re not just random and chance, but that I was just became very aware that God has a purpose for my life. And, and I felt some safety in that. And I think that that’s what enabled me to take some of the risks that I did, that I was like, okay, how wrong can I go if I’m really listening to My life and, and, and to the spirit within, I think that I can afford to take some, some scenic routes here and trust that it’s going to bring me where I ultimately need to be.
Pam King: Belle’s research suggests that it’s often a look into the past, reflecting, remembering, and reconceptualizing those events, even and especially the hard times.
It sounds like that season might have been a bit of a crucible in which you were like a raw metal being purified, informed and coming out even more durable, more potent, stronger and more purposeful. And here you are now studying. Writing, teaching, influencing around people, catalyzing their own crucible journey of understanding purpose.
When do you think, like looking back in your life, maybe the initial seeds of pursuing purpose evolved?
Belle Liang: Yeah, I love that you’re asking that question about the when because a huge part of the work that we do around enabling young people to consider what their purpose might be is to reflect on the past and understand what some of the formative experiences of their lives have been.
Um, because oftentimes there are seeds of like, there are clues that reside in that history. And oftentimes it’s, it’s an adversity, actually, it’s something that was difficult or challenging, a sense of, of, um, struggle. that gives one a sense if you reflect on it, that gives you a sense of what the needs are in the world and how your experiences of having lived through some of those struggles can inform your contribution to those needs in the world.
So I think that very early on, I was aware of a sense of Poverty is just the way that we grow up. Like my parents give, did everything they could to set us up for success. But that required like constant. coupon clipping, you know, it required very little buying of anything that was not absolutely essential for the family.
Meanwhile, shopping for me so that I would have like trendy clothes at the time, I suppose we’re trending. Um, now they’re kind of coming back. I see that’s kind of funny. But at the time, I just think of like all the shopping trips that you know, where we would buy one thing when we went to the mall, my mom and I for me so that I could fit it.
That was like their goal is that I would fit in and I would be successful in school and academically. And so I was just very aware of some of the scarcity that my family experienced or that that was somewhat the the messaging is that you have to work really, really hard in order to be successful because it’s not going to be handed to you.
And along with that, that sort of striving. I was aware of all of the accompanying feelings of insecurity of stress of anxiety that I was feeling and that many of my peers were feeling in the context of a very high achieving affluent community in school. Um, so that really, I think those were the early seeds of my thinking about, you know, what is one’s purpose?
Because surely this can’t be all that. We’re just supposed to jump through all of these hoops and live up to someone else’s expectations. I had this awareness early on, even though I may not have been able to fully articulate that. I, I think that that’s where the seeds were planted.
Pam King: With this historical work and reflections on the interweaving personal and family stories that make us who we are, I wanted to turn the conversation directly toward purpose.
In order to carefully study such a huge and far reaching concept like purpose, psychological researchers need to offer a definition. So in this section we ask, what is purpose? Belle’s working definition draws on Bill Damon’s work at Stanford and considers purpose as living a life. that is personally meaningful and intended to contribute to the world beyond oneself.
It is also one that deeply resonates and is represented throughout my own work. Purpose is a really popular term in psychology and business. I’d love to hear or have you explain how you define purpose as as an academic or professional.
Belle Liang: Okay, so the first definition that we use in research is probably one that we share, you included in the research on youth purpose.
The research definition coming out of Damon’s work and your work is putting it in very plain terms is living a life that is personally meaningful and intended to contribute to the world beyond oneself. That is a definition that, you know, I think informs a lot of the research that comes out of our lab.
From that research that defines purpose that way, we can see that when people have purpose, it’s associated with all these positive outcomes, mental health, psychological well being, physical health, even longevity, certainly academic engagement, and ultimately career fulfillment. So all good things coming out of having purpose as defined that way.
The challenge that we see is that In order to have purpose, you have to know what’s personally meaningful. You have to know in what ways you want to contribute to the world beyond oneself. That is not easy. And that is why we wrote the book is because we wanted to scaffold people in the journey to realizing what’s personally meaningful to them, to realizing what needs they wanted to contribute to the world beyond themselves.
The research that we’ve done has identified some of the, what we call elements of purpose that are associated with forming purpose. They include, again, putting it in very like plain language, which is character strengths, skills that you’re motivated to learn and master values that you’re willing to stand for and sacrifice for and the needs of the world that you want to contribute to.
When what character strengths make you your best self and the skills that you care about learning, not what somebody else says you’re good at. And you know what values like when you take away all of the flexible values, the ones that shift based on culture and context, you get to the core of yourself, the parts of you that are not negotiable, those values, what are they?
contribution you want to be making, what positive impacts you want to be making in the world beyond yourself could be to your family members. It doesn’t have to be solving world hunger. There’s a whole range of ways that we contribute to the world beyond ourselves. When you know more about those questions, you can begin to intentionally align your life and your choices.
to those elements of purpose. Purpose is not like finding your one true love. I think that that is what is intimidating to a lot of people as if it’s one thing and if you don’t find it then, you know, you’re sunk. But instead it’s knowing more of yourself and how you are designed and living in ways that are aligned.
and consistent with those values, strengths, beliefs and desires.
Pam King: Now definitions are important, but to do the work of integrating concepts into one’s actual real life is sometimes concepts stay too distant. So I asked Belle about her own personal purpose, knowing that I was also very willing to share mine. And for both Belle and myself, personal faith and spirituality really is the foundation of our sense of our own purposes.
Although it’s a personal faith for both of us, it’s a faith that grows and moves outward into an expansive relational and communal work of helping others.
Belle Liang: We have four questions that accompany the four elements of purpose. And the first one is how do want to be remembered. Usually how we want to be remembered, it has to do with our, our, our character strengths, the ones that we most delight in, the ones that make us our best self.
And I think of that answers having to do with really being a person of faith. I don’t necessarily say that in all of my circles where I’m speaking about this stuff, but you know, I’m going to be a hundred percent myself here with you, Pam, because I think we share. some core beliefs and convictions that I want to be a person of faith who is using the privileges that I’ve been given, the, this, this, the skills and strengths and motivations that I’ve been given to the glory of God.
Frankly, we have this one small life, you know, it’s like a flicker in the time span of forever. And a lot of what I think about is how can I use the time that I’ve been given on this planet, um, in a way that’s aligned with what I see as glorifying to God. And, you know, and that can mean many different things.
It’s not necessarily I have to write books or I have to teach well, or I have to, it means like, even like right now, as I’m speaking with you, how can I be as much a blessing as possible to whoever’s listening in our conversation? That’s to me what it looks like to be my best self. and the living out purpose.
Pam King: Thank you for sharing. Some of our listeners are going to be people of faith, Christian faith. Some might be just like, Hmm, how does spirituality and psychology like dovetail? But I often think of Romans 12, 1 and 2 as a life verse for me of, of offering our lives as living sacrifices that are holy and pleasing to God.
And that is our act of spiritual worship. And I, as you just were talking about yourself, that, that came to mind of just how you want to be a help. You want to be an offering, whatever the call of the day is, writing, speaking, teaching, parenting. Being wanted, wanting to be a steward of your life. That’s really beautiful and profound.
Belle Liang: I think that it’s important to be reminded that being like a living sacrifice is a joy. It’s not like, let me do the thing I most hate because I think it will be something that God will smile upon. Right? It’s like we were designed. for joy, for delight. Absolutely. And that’s what’s really cool about purpose is like, it’s not inconsistent with like the scriptures to be living a life that is personally meaningful while you’re also living a life that is It’s a sacrifice and it’s it’s the two are not mutually exclusive.
They’re like very aligned. And I think that’s sometimes hard for some people to understand. They think that, okay, you’ve got to do either the practical thing or the purposeful thing, the thing that is like about passion. And you know, you’re just got to choose, you got to do the thing you hate just because it’s the practical thing or do the thing you hate because that’s what God wants you to do.
And then sacrifice. You know, what is. truly something that you enjoy and care about and you’re excited about. And that’s really just, I don’t know where that comes from, but it really is not based in the research. Oftentimes, we see that people who are living at their purpose are much more able to be successful.
They are dialed in at school. You know, they are, they’re working probably in some ways in much more engaged ways. That’s what our research shows. And, and because they’re more academically engaged and engaged in their vocational journey. They can be more successful. Purpose is not like you have to sacrifice a paycheck in order to do the thing that you love and the thing that is aligned with your purpose.
Pam King: That’s, that’s so helpful and so profound. Honestly, um, one of my agendas for Thrive is to help the church rethink like a call of discipleship. And, and there is some notion of sacrifice as being a very bad connotation of involving suffering and doing what obedience is all about things that are hard or bad or you don’t want to do.
And I think that That maybe worked for the church decades or centuries ago, but I really think in this season that God is calling people to thrive and to find their purpose, discover who God created them to be, and to live that out for God’s purposes, glory, his, you know, redeeming the world, flourishing the world.
And that is one place I get so excited about purpose and the intersection of vocation or calling and, and you’re just doing such important work in that space. That’s so helpful.
Belle Liang: Thank you. I, if I may just say, I’m so excited about your initiative and center thrive because I think it’s very relevant and going to resonate with this generation of people who are seeking faith because I think that this generation of young people is.
for good reasons, kind of turned off by like our old notions of faith as being all about rules and sacrifice, very boundary restrictions around life. And, and I think Thrive just really captures what truly God designed us to do. Um, and that means being able to have life to the fullest. That is a very different picture of, of faith and living, you know, the joy of faith than I think some people may be stuck in and not fully realizing how expansive faith can be.
Pam King: I absolutely agree that faith traditions are at their best when they are meeting human needs, like fundamental human needs and enabling people to become who they are for a greater purpose. And that’s really how I understand thriving. I had a little epiphany. I’m Presbyterian, so I don’t have a lot of big transcendent moments in my life.
But a friend asked soon after I started graduate school at Fuller, what pushes your buttons? And he meant it in a positive way, not what irritates you. And I just spontaneously said, enabling people to thrive and become who God created them to be. And I, like, didn’t even know what I was saying, but I heard myself say it.
And I’ve globbed on to that, like, in terms of my studies and my research. It’s like, how do we understand people becoming most fully themselves for a greater purpose? Whether, you know, that’s conceptualized within the Christian narrative or otherwise, that’s just really, like, where my heart is drawn. So you’ve been a parallel partner in this.
Belle Liang: I very much feel like a parallel partner with you because when you said that, that is like, Oh, that is exactly how I see your purpose is enabling people to thrive because you are creating all these opportunities for people to thrive and to talk about thriving and to think about thriving and ask questions about what thriving is.
And we grow in the direction of our questions and mine is very similar. So like, while my overarching purpose is to be. a blessing to be able to, you know, live in a way that’s to the glory of God. My like unique way of doing that is similar to yours. The tool that I like to use that I think is also part of my purpose is translating research and language.
Sometimes it’s like spiritual language into very plain terms so that people can access. That’s what I think is so valuable research is so valuable scriptures, spirituality. Sometimes we use words that not everybody can access. And I, I always like translated for my parents as a language broker. I was always sort of sitting between different cultures, like as an Asian, as an American, as a person of faith, but in very.
like non christian, you know, non faith open environments. You know, I could see both sides. I could see the best in people. I could see the through line across these different sort of polarized places. And, and that is still what I’m doing, like translating across the lines.
Pam King: So powerful and I do experience you as like a goodness magnet You you do just draw the goodness out of people Naturally for such a time as this belt.
You give me hope we need more. Dr Belle meetings in the world who can be a bridge between polarized sides a key element of what I’m Trying to do in this podcast and the Thrive Center, we’re trying to be overtly practical to offer real science backed practices that facilitate our spiritual health and personal and relational thriving in this world.
So I asked Belle to offer an extended practical session that will help us align with our purpose. You can listen now, you can pause the episode for reflection as Belle directs us. You can save it for later, or you can head to our website at thethrivecenter. org for more practices just like this. So again, when you talk about purpose, I really love that you conceptualize or describe, um, with your beautiful gift of words, purpose as involving a decision and being intentional.
Belle Liang: Yes. So I can give you some examples of how we try to translate the research on purpose to action. What is the how to, how do you actually apply the findings and the research so that you can cultivate more purpose in your life? We have a, a bunch of, of tools and, and particular like sort of strategies for being able to identify the elements of purpose and ultimately that how bringing together like how do these elements of purpose inform your purpose.
we would say purpose is using your strengths and skills to make a positive impact in the world that’s aligned with your core values. So how do we begin to identify all of those elements of purpose that inform that kind of purpose. We break it down because some of us know intuitively what some of those elements of purpose are, but there’s a lot that we don’t know about ourselves because we’ve never been given the space to reflect and given the scaffolding to ask those kinds of questions of ourselves.
And so I would say as a really quick thing for your listeners, is to journal for five minutes without raising their pen from their paper on an index card or on a piece of paper. Just kind of get away from tech for a moment just so you can really think and focus and reflect on the first question, which is how do you want to be remembered?
And it’s hard to do it first, but people always find that, you know, as the first minute goes by into the second, it becomes easier and easier and it just starts flowing off of your pen. And then you have this response about how you want to be remembered. And then I say, now look at what you’ve written and choose three or four phrases or words that feel particularly meaningful to you, profound in some way, they really capture how you want to be remembered.
And so then they do that. And then oftentimes it is those are the strengths that they want to be remembered for. And then I say, okay, now let’s like reflect on those strengths and take the first one. What’s one thing you can do in one minute that’s going to move you one step closer to your purpose?
What’s one thing that you can do that’s going to take you one step further towards your purpose and something that would just take you one minute to do to build that strength. So let’s say my strength was, you know, that I want to build. It’s something that I’m, you know, not completely have achieved, but it’s like courage.
And that is something that I, that I delight in and, and it’s something yet that I want to cultivate in my life. What is one thing that I can do to cultivate courage? It might be to reach out to that person or speak to somebody in the elevator or in the line while I’m waiting for my, for my, for my coffee and doing those kinds of things as a practice rather than as a one off.
And then I’m going to work towards creating some sort of moment that matters, what we call moment that matters in our book, which is an event, a formative experience where I’m going to be able to use those strengths that I’ve been practicing. It might mean that I’m going to give a talk and that was something that that I struggled with in terms of my courage level.
And now I’ve been practicing in a very intentional way, skills to lead up to that moment that matters. And so I think it’s really important for us to realize that we, we want to connect our envisioned future, whatever that, that aspiration is for growth and that strength or that skill with where it came from, which is.
reflecting on our past and what informed it with the action in the present. And, and to have people come alongside us as to journey with us as we develop those skills and strengths.
Pam King: This is so practical, helpful. And I think some people have access to practices or information or science about purpose and others are like, it sounds great, but, but how do I do it? I know you have some specific exercises that you offer people for helping identify their. purpose. Could you share one with our audience?
Belle Liang: Absolutely. So I would say to those of you who have an interest in practicing purpose, try this one out. Take out a sheet of paper and a pencil or pen and start by envisioning the future. I want you to just Just really do a brain dump. You’re going to write for five minutes. We’re not going to take the five minutes here, but you can pause the podcast and just write for five minutes without lifting your pen.
No one else is going to see your paper. So you know, you can write whatever you want and it might feel hard at first, but it will get easier and easier until it just starts flowing out of your pen like, like water. So you’re going to ask yourself this question in an ideal world, what does success look like for you?
And then set your timer and, and start to write. And after you’ve done that, you’ve written for five minutes on what does success look like. I want you to look at what you’ve written and pick out four phrases or words that are particularly meaningful to you. from what you just wrote. And maybe you choose to do this with a friend or you know, somebody you trust, a mentor, um, a colleague, a family member, you share with them.
What are these things that are your vision, your envisioned future for success that might include certain strengths and skills and ways of impacting the world around you. And if you do that, And you envision the future. There’s all sorts of positive outcomes that research shows are associated with doing that.
Now that you have a good idea of what the future is and what you envision in terms of success or the strengths that you want to bring into the world and really embody, I want you to reflect on the past because you’re going to try to uncover lived experiences that have informed those aspirations for success.
And maybe you’ll write about that as well for the next five minutes. What are certain experiences that you’ve had that are formative? Um, what are certain relationships that were meaningful in your life that, that, that gave you that sense of this is the kind of success that you aspire to? Maybe they were negative experiences or relationships that informed your ideas around success and who you wanted to be in the world.
And you’re going to write about that for five minutes and then ask yourself, what impact did this have on you? These experiences that were formative or these relationships? Maybe choose one of them to write about. Did it, this relationship or this experience, did it cause you to think differently about yourself or the world?
Did you learn a profound, maybe even a harsh truth about yourself or the world? Did it cause you to believe or to accept or trust something or someone? Did it cause you to commit to an action that altered the course of your life? Maybe it caused you to start or stop doing something that changed your life.
So now that you have those reflections on the future that you envision as well as the past that has informed those aspirations. I’m gonna ask you to try to craft a story from those reflections. And the first thing that you’re gonna do is just set the stage. You’re gonna provide just enough information to understand who, when, what and where.
And I want you to go ahead and take out another sheet of paper and write about that. You’re gonna set the stage. The second part of your story is Something happens. What happened to cause the actors in your story? Movement across time and space. One of the actors is you, of course, and there might other be other actors in your story.
And then the third part of your story is what impact did that have on you? How did whatever happened impact you? You’re going to write about that. And then the fourth component of your story is success revealed. How did that impact on you bring about a new understanding of what true success is? When you.
Take away all of the expectations and all of societal definitions of success, which tend to be very limited and restrictive. Your envisioned success is probably different than that. Where did that come from? Who influenced it? What happened in your life that, that caused you to change your mind about success?
And how did that impact bring you to a new understanding of what true success is? So that would be an example of a practice that we would use in purposeful.
Pam King: That’s really profound. That’s awesome and so helpful. And I encourage our listeners to take some time when you’re not driving in the car to pull out a journal or pull out those pieces of paper and work through that.
I often think of purpose more like a verb than a noun. It should be an activity, not just an intellectual concept. And Belle’s concept of purpose is so dynamic. And part of that dynamic element is relational. Purpose is a personal thing. Yes, but just as our family. and relational history shape us as we cultivate our sense of purpose.
That then reaches out into our friendships, neighborhoods, schools, churches, and wider society. Purpose is a deeply relational endeavor. Bill, I’d love to follow up with you with a question about story and the power of story and the connection between one’s evolving story that one tells about themselves and purpose.
One is. The many things I so appreciated in your book is how you both really acknowledge how dynamic and messy and complex the world is and how fast things are changing and that often, as you noted earlier, we have these ideas of fixed goals or capital P purpose that has to be pursued and lived out the same way.
But you offer a much more dynamic you. and fluid yet stable and enduring idea of purpose. And as I was thinking, I wish purpose was a verb because it feels like we’re purposing people. We continue to pursue purpose rather than just have a purpose. We are purposing. I’d love to hear why story is so important to purpose.
Belle Liang: If there’s a tool for purposing people, it really is through helping them to articulate their stories because we all have a story because that’s because we all have a future and a past. And we all have our present that we are ideally trying to intentionally live out or live towards. That envisioned future informed by our history informed by our past and story is really about making the the influences in our life explicit to ourselves because oftentimes we when we’re not living intentionally, it’s like we don’t know what our story is.
We’re just kind of doing whatever is put in front of us and we’re we’re not living in a way that is aligned at all with our purpose. You know, that little exercise that we just went through, it serves multiple purposes. One is so that you know what your story is and you can be explicit in your, you know, intentional.
current behavior and feelings and decisions. But it also is about learning how to articulate it to the outside world. Anytime you are wanting to apply for a job or a graduate program or explaining to anybody who you are, you want to be able to tell your story. And so helpful to have done the work of identifying what truly matters to you and putting it together in a story.
So it’s for you as well as it’s for your ability to move in the world.
Pam King: I really appreciate how in the way you broke down elements of the story that The storyteller, or myself, the listener, you, has agency and they’re actors and they’re proactive, but yet they are part of something bigger. In my work in spirituality and also purpose, I often think of one of the helpful things about purpose is that we can weave our story into other stories, whether it’s the Christian gospel, whether it’s the American dream, being a global citizen.
Our, our ethnic past, our family’s traditions, all can become part of our stories. But when we intentionally weave those, we know our role in the story.
Belle Liang: Oh, that’s so perfectly put. And I could not agree more. It’s just a really beautiful way to put it. And I think that this piece of, of telling your story is, is really true too, which is that we can have some agency over the meaning that we ascribe to the events in our life.
You know, so much of the time we have these things that we don’t choose to have happen to us. And some of them are hard, some traumatic and making meaning of our experiences. gives us some agency over the impact of those events in our life. We don’t have to be the victim. We don’t have to, in our story, we don’t have to be the one who loses in the end.
You know, we are the ones who, who get to determine what, in a way, what impact and what meaning those events have had in our lives. We realize ultimately that it’s God who gives us our identity and no one else, no other human can. And there’s just something so incredibly freeing and empowering in that because oftentimes we let events and other humans we tell ourselves that we are who they need us to be, but we aren’t.
Um, so storytelling is about, you know, reclaiming our own life events and our own experiences and making meaning of those.
Pam King: Absolutely so powerful. One time we were talking and you actually said the phrase, it was in the throes of COVID, about how people are coming to the ends of themselves. And you were graciously pointing to me and saying your work on spirituality is really helpful when people get to the ends of themselves.
But I’d love to hear how you understand this work on purpose. Whether people have spiritual inclinations or have beliefs in God or identify as Christian, like how does purpose intersect, come alongside us, help us when we are at the ends of ourselves?
Belle Liang: I think that spirituality is Whether or not you are a believer and have experienced this yourself yet, um, it is such a resource, right?
Because we see, because we’re, we’re living our own lives, we see the limits of our power. We even, as I said, that you can have agency over your story. We also know all the ways in which we feel powerless. to change the future or the past and um, and we have limitations in the current, in our current lives.
The resource of understanding that there’s so much more to our strength than our own human strength, um, that we can tap into divine power. So when, when the situation seems impossible and I, I feel like I can’t possibly achieve, like I felt like writing a popular press book seemed so unattainable coming from my history.
I never aspired to it at all. I resisted. the opportunity and the invitations for a long time because I didn’t think I could do it. And I was right. I kind of, you know, why should I be able to do this? But because that desire came from my purpose, which was to translate research into popular, into like very plain language that people could benefit from, and it could ultimately enhance their, their sense of purpose.
I was like, I’m gonna have to do this thing and God, I’m going to need like some divine support around this. I know I want to grow in these strengths. I know I want to grow in these skills. I want to impact the world in such and such a way, but there are all these other things I can’t quite control. And I have this sense, like I have experienced the, the divine.
power of praying, trusting God, seeking God to do these things that I’m setting out to do and experiencing that animating force behind my intentions and aspirations.
Pam King: Finding our purpose and maintaining a dynamic and well integrated sense of how that purpose informs us. This is not easy work, of course, and there are some who think that purpose is just for the privileged, just for those who have the So I asked Belle to respond to this criticism, and her perspective is that nothing could be farther from the truth.
And this is not to lionize suffering, or baptize trauma, or marginalization at all. Belle finds that there’s often a deep sense of purpose that emerges from those who have suffered systemic injustices. And personally, I believe that there’s a depth of knowing oneself and one’s purpose. That emerges from suffering, and this is really consistent with some of Jesus’s core teachings.
In the Sermon on the Mount, he says, blessed are the porn spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they shall. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. This uplifts the hard won wisdom of those who have struggled, and we all have much to learn here.
One of the critiques that I hear on research and purpose, which I know you have actually addressed directly is the issue of privilege. You know, do you have to be a privileged person to pursue purpose? Is it something that those with money, those with education, those with social capital can pursue? How do you understand privilege and purpose?
Belle Liang: Yeah, I think I can understand where the question is coming from because illogically, it seems that maybe purpose is associated with choices. So the more choices you have, the more ability you are to pursue your purpose. Um, and so you would think that only privileged people have choices and people who are less privileged don’t have as many choices and therefore they can’t pursue their purpose as well, especially if it doesn’t fall within their purpose does not seem to fall within one of the choices they have. But the research doesn’t really bear that out. The research shows that, um, if anything, underprivileged people, people who are very marginalized, they have experienced systemic injustice in their life. And if they’ve done the work to reflect on These those adversities and those injustices in their life, they are far more likely to have clarity around purpose than very privileged young people.
So unfortunately, it’s actually the privileged people that sometimes struggle. with purpose because they are so busy. So many of us so busy trying to keep up with the joneses and and really define our success by societal measures of success. Some of those strongholds are not really the challenges for people who are more marginalized and come from more underprivileged backgrounds.
They, you know, very real life experiences of adversity and have experienced systemic injustice and they, when they have reflected on the causes of them, they have greater clarity about what the needs are in the world and how they can contribute to those issues.
Pam King: All the more important for you to keep translating this important research and getting it out to all populations.
And your book is so helpful of breaking down how people can get at purpose. So I just want to point people to how to navigate life. It’s so useful in education settings, for parents. coaches, counselors, congregations, non profits, any youth development organization. I just think there are so many practical pointers and, and I, I’m convinced it’s really life changing.
In each of my conversations on this podcast, I ask my guests the same question, what is thriving? I love doing this because I know what I think thriving is, has something to do with becoming our best selves with and for others. But I love hearing their diverse perspectives through the lens of their own work and their own experiences.
It’s been fun to hear common ground emerge and also accent points that really offer unique insight into what thriving is.
Belle Liang: Oh, I love that question. I think thriving is living in your joy. It is so much about what you get to do. Um, and what you get to do is really living out what has been placed in you, what you were designed to.
So it’s living in a way that is aligned with the strengths that make you your best self, the skills that you most want to grow in. It’s making the impact that you care about making in a way that’s really aligned with your deepest core beliefs and values. Purpose is not just about an individual mindset.
It’s about shifting culture. You can have a purpose mindset all you want, but if you’re an environment, this does not reward. purposeful living. It’s going to be hard for you. It’s kind of like gross mindset. If you have a gross mindset, but you’re not in a growth culture, you’re only being rewarded for short term learning and um, not for like the long game, then it’s not really conducive to having a gross mindset.
We really believe that cultivating purpose and purposing is about not just purposing individuals, but purposing communities. and organizations and cultures, we need a shift in how we define success. We need to create environments that really support people to live their purpose in school and in the workplace.
Pam King: Belle, thank you for your time.,and bringing such life giving words of wisdom and specific practical advice to us. I’m immensely grateful.
Belle Liang: I feel the same way right back at you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Pam King: Belle Liang’s definition of purpose is living a life that is personally meaningful and intended to contribute to the world beyond oneself. And at times I have people tell me I’m paralyzed. by this idea of finding my purpose. But what Belle does is she offers incredibly helpful and practical guidance. And she does so with such a deep sense of personal commitment to this task of living her own life on purpose.
The key takeaways that I will carry with me from this conversation are the following.
We are relational beings with deep dependencies on our families of origin. And we need to differentiate and individuate in order to thrive and find out who we are and enter into even more healthy relationships to find a purpose.
We can let our lives speak, and there is transformative power in personal storytelling when we do so mindfully and intentionally.
Faith can be fertile ground for finding purpose, especially when practiced in communities of thriving and healthy spirituality.
Spiritual health includes our own awareness of our evolving sense of purpose and an application of that to our daily lives, work, vocation, and all the relationships we find.
Purpose is something you grow toward, and from it emerges all sorts of prosocial benefits and positive personal outcomes for physical and mental health.
Lastly, purpose is for everyone, not just a privileged few.
With & For is a production of the Thrive Center at Fuller Theological Seminary. This episode featured Belle Liang. This season, new episodes drop every Monday.
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 podcast team. Jill Westbrook is our Senior Director and Producer. Lauren Kim is our operations manager. Wren Jurgensen 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. Belle Liang
Dr. Belle Liang, Boston College professor and mentoring researcher. Founder of Purpose Lab, APA Fellow Division 17, and Distinguished Alumni, Indiana University.
Episode Summary
Are you looking for a sense of purpose? Does it feel like you’ve lost your way? Purpose is a vital part of our spiritual health. We know we need it, but for some of us, it can be so hard to find. Psychologist Belle Liang helps us navigate and thrive holistically through an understanding of our own journey and the stories that shape us. She names four essential elements of purpose: (1) character strengths, (2) skills and expertise, (3) deeply held values, and (4) a sense of contribution to the world. Includes a real-time practical exercise for aligning with our purpose and explore how it can help us navigate the journey of life.
Show Notes
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“We all have a story because we all have a future and a past. … And story is really about making the influences in our life explicit to ourselves. Oftentimes, when we're not living intentionally, it's like we don't know what our story is. And we're not living in a way that is aligned at all with our purpose—so that you know what your story is, and so that you can be explicit in your intentional current behavior, feelings, and decisions.” (Dr. Belle Liang) Do you know your purpose? How do you understand your own life story? The science of purpose promises many positive outcomes: mental health, psychological wellbeing, physical health, even longevity, not to mention academic engagement, career fulfillment, and even nurturing relationships. Who doesn’t want purpose? But as much as it captivates us, can be an elusive, ephemeral object dangling in front of us. We want it. We can sense it. We should have it. But we can’t quite attain it. A deep sense of purpose and vocation are central to our spiritual health. Purpose is understood as an actionable and enduring goal that is meaningful to oneself and contributes to the world beyond oneself, is crucial to our spirituality bc it serves to integrate our beliefs, values, understanding of ultimacy, and love into action. In this episode Dr. Belle Liang (Boston College, author of the bestselling book How to Navigate Life: The New Science of Finding Your Way in School, Career, and Beyond), offers research-backed practical guidance on how to identify and pursue your purpose, identifying essential elements of purpose: (1) character strengths, (2) skills and expertise, (3) deeply held values, and (4) a sense of contribution to the world. During the interview she guides listeners through a real-time practical exercise for aligning with our purpose and explore how it can help us navigate the journey of life.In this conversation with Belle Liang, we discuss:
- How family history shapes us as individuals
- The importance of differentiation and emerging from early family dependency into a healthy sense of oneself as an individual
- The role of faith, spirituality, and community in our understanding of purpose
- A psychological definition of purpose as using strengths and skills and values to make a positive impact on the world
- And the practical elements of finding and living your purpose as an individual, with Belle guiding us through a practice of reflecting on our past and finding our purpose
- Check out How to Navigate Life: The New Science of Finding Your Way in School, Career, and Beyond by Belle Liang and Timothy Klein
- “What is your life dream?” Learn more about Belle Liang’s Purpose Labs
- “Purpose is knowing more of yourself and living in ways that are aligned and consistent with those values, strengths, beliefs, and, desires.”
- Pam King introduces Belle Liang and this episode
- Belle Liang’s family of origin
- Growing up the daughter of Asian immigrant parents with very impoverished backgrounds
- Understanding sacrifice
- Learning how to listen to herself and identify her vocation and purpose
- How Belle became a psychologist
- “It was pretty tricky for me early on to make some decisions that had to do with my own interests, my own intrinsic motivations versus doing what seemed to be the most strategic pathway to success.”
- Parker Palmer and “letting your life speak”
- Listening to the inner voice that reveals purpose
- How to define purpose in order to study it through psychological research
- Purpose as “living a life that is personally meaningful and intended to contribute to the world beyond oneself.”
- Positive outcomes of finding and living your purpose
- Improved mental health and well being
- Physical health and longevity
- Better academic engagement
- Increased career fulfillment
- What are the elements of purpose?
- Character strengths
- Skills that you're motivated to learn and master
- Values that you're willing to stand for and sacrifice for
- Needs of the world that you want to contribute to
- “Purpose is not like finding your one true love.”
- Romans 12—offering our lives as “living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God”
- Practical or Passion: they’re not mutually exclusive
- “Purpose is not like you have to sacrifice a paycheck, in order to do the thing that you love and the thing that is aligned with your purpose.”
- Living life to the fullest
- Pam’s purpose: “To enable people to thrive and become who God created them to be.”
- Belle’s purpose: “To be a blessing … translating research and spiritual language into plain language. … translating across the lines.”
- Practical resources and tools for finding your purpose
- Purpose defined: “Using your strengths and skills to make a positive impact in the world that's aligned with your core values.”
- “There's a lot that we don't know about ourselves because we've never been given the space to reflect and given the scaffolding to ask those kinds of questions of ourselves.”
- Recommended practice: Journal for 3 to 5 minutes
- “How do you want to be remembered?”
- Look for key words and think of them as strengths you want to be remembered for.
- “What's one thing you can do in one minute that's going to move you one step closer to your purpose?”
- Example: Cultivating courage
- Creating a “moment that matters”
- “We want to connect our envisioned future, whatever that, that aspiration is for growth and that strength or that skill with where it came from, which is reflecting on our past and what informed it with the action in the present, and to have people come alongside us as to journey with us, um, as we develop those skills and strengths.”
- Purpose Practice: “In an ideal world, what does success look like for you.”
- Pick out a few words that stand out, share them with trusted people.
- Envision the future based on these strengths and successes.
- Consider the past.
- What are certain experiences that you've had that are formative?
- What are certain relationships that were meaningful in your life that gave you that sense of the kind of success that you aspire to?
- What impact did this have on you?
- Did you learn a harsh truth about yourself or the world?
- Did it cause you to believe or to accept or trust something or someone?
- Did it cause you to commit to an action that altered the course of your life?
- Craft a story based on these reflections: (1) Set the stage, (2) Something happens, (3) Impact on you, (4) Success revealed.
- Purpose should be more like a verb than a noun—it’s a deeply relational endeavor.
- “We’re purposing people.”
- Living toward an envisioned future, informed by our past.
- “You want to be able to tell your story. And it’s so helpful to have done the work of identifying what truly matters to you and putting it together in a story.”
- Weaving our stories into other stories
- Reclaiming our own life events and experiences and making meaning of those
- At the end of ourselves
- Relying on faith in God, prayer, and seeking God in seeking a life of purpose
- The Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
- Is purpose just for the privileged? No
- Sometimes purpose is associated with choice, but the research shows that those who have encountered adversity and trials and trauma are more deeply connected to their purpose.
- What is thriving to Belle Liang?
- “Living in your joy.”
- It's making the impact that you care about making in a way that's really aligned with your deepest core beliefs and values.
- “Purpose is not just about an individual mindset. It's about shifting culture.”
- Pam’s key takeaways
- We are relational beings with deep dependencies on our families of origin, and we need to differentiate and individuate in order to thrive and find out who we are and enter into even more healthy relationships.
- To find our purpose, we can let our lives speak. And there is transformative power in personal storytelling when we do so mindfully and intentionally.
- Faith can be fertile ground for finding purpose, especially when practiced in communities of thriving and healthy spirituality.
- Spiritual health includes our own awareness of our evolving sense of purpose. and an application of that to our daily lives, w ork, vocation, and all the relationships we find there.
- Purpose is something you grow toward, and from it emerges all sorts of pro social benefits and positive personal outcomes for physical and mental health.
- Lastly, purpose is for everyone, not just a privileged few.
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
- 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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