When it comes to thriving, listening to our inner compass is crucial. Living out our purpose alongside others can only really happen when we use the tool of discernment. But that can often feel kind of daunting. It’s hard to know where to begin.

Bonnie Wan has developed a three-step process for tuning into our true desires – and then putting them into action.

Bonnie Wan is a strategist, bestselling author and creator of The Life Brief: A Playbook for No-Regrets Living. She took the idea of a brief from her marketing campaigns, and repurposed it for our creative and spiritual lives. Bonnie shares her challenging experience writing her own life brief – and the surprising path it led her down.

Bonnie walks us through how to apply the life brief to a big decision, which begins with allowing our human messiness to come to the surface. And more often than not, living out our purpose is relational.

Bonnie has over 30 years of experience guiding major companies. At advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Bonnie has led strategy for BMW, Comcast/Xfinity, Frito-Lay, HP, Kraft-Heinz, and PepsiCo. She also led award-winning campaigns fighting racial injustice, child sex trafficking, cyberbullying, college campus rape, and gender inequality.

With & For is a podcast of the Thrive Center, an applied research center that exists to catalyze a movement of human thriving, with and for others through spiritual health.

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.

Dr. Pamela Ebstyne King hosts With & For, and is the Executive Director of the Thrive Center and the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at the School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy at Fuller Seminary. 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

Senior Producer: Clare Wiley

Executive Producer: Jakob Lewis

Produced by Great Feeling Studios

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and Fuller Seminary’s School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. The podcast was made possible through the support from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

The messy path to purpose, with Bonnie Wan