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I started my journey of blogging in 2003 — mostly to capture what I called “transitioning life’s journey”.
In 2023 I took a 3 year break from blogging, but have decided to return to it. I hope you enjoy.
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Rhett Smith Podcast 19: Q + A on “Marital Drift” That Many Couples Experience and Correcting the “Kid Centered Marriage.”
I love interviewing guests on this podcast, but summer has been a bit difficult on the podcast schedule with so many people on vacation and needing to reschedule. But I have some great guests lined up for the future and we will cover some interesting topics. So for this week I decided I wanted to […]
Rhett Smith Podcast 16: Tools to Help You Identify, Manage, and Reframe the Anxiety in Your Life
Anxiety is a struggle that everyone has experienced at some point in their lives. Anxiety is part of the human condition whether we like it or not. But while some people seem to experience little anxiety, others feel their life is consumed with it. I’ve shared in countless contexts how I struggled for a good […]
Rhett Smith Podcast 10: Are You Living a Good Story? How Comfort, Anxiety and the American Dream Can Keep Us From Living a Compelling Life — with Author, Storyteller, and Communications Pastor, Scott McClellan
In the Summer of 2008 I was sitting in my inlaw’s home office working on their computer. My wife, 1 year old daughter and I had just moved from Los Angeles to Dallas to live a more compelling story, but we knew very few people except for some family we had in the DFW area. […]
Rhett Smith Podcast 9: Exploring the Way that Technology Shapes Us, Our Relationships, and Our Faith — with Author, Technologist and Theologian, John Dyer
I first met John Dyer online somewhere in the summer of 2008. I was engaged online quite a bit at the intersection of faith and technology. I am definitely not an expert in technology, but there was a period of about 4-5 years where I spent a lot of time at social media and technology […]
Rhett Smith Podcast 8: Parenting in an Online World, Creating Sacred Spaces, and Navigating Cyberbullying and Pornography Among Youth — with Youth Cartel Co-Founder, Speaker, and Technologist, Adam McLane
I first got to connect with Adam McLane when we were driving through the Dominican Republic, and across the border into Haiti. It was only about a month after the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti, and we were part of a youth ministry team that went down there (though as Adam points out, it was […]
Rhett Smith Podcast 5: Turning Insight into Change, Striving for Balance, and Living Relationally — with Innovation 360’s Kevin Gilliland and Lauren Barnett
This was a really fun podcast episode to record. I drove down to Dallas a couple of weeks ago to spend a couple of hours with Innovation 360’s Executive Director Kevin Gilliland, and Director of Marketing Lauren Barnett. I first came across the work of Innovation 360 when I met up with Lauren and another […]
Rhett Smith Podcast 1: Exploring the Intersection of Self-Care and Relationships
I have been dreaming and thinking about starting a podcast for about two years, but just never got around to it. As much as I wanted to start it, life just got in the way. Work has been busy in my private practice, as well as speaking and writing. And then there is family life […]
Scary Close: My 4 Part Video Book Review of Donald Miller’s New Book
Back in the beginning of December, my friend Tyler Davis Jones mailed me a copy of Donald Miller’s new book Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy. Tyler picked it up at the Storyline Conference he attended. I was so thankful to get this great gift from him, and I plowed through the […]
A Gift Idea on How to Intentionally Create Presence in Your Marriage
One of the things that I became really convicted about in 2014 was my lack of being present. Present to my own life. Present to friends. Present to my kids. Present to my wife. And by present, I mean emotionally engaged and available to people in my life. Instead I found myself distracted by all […]
Redefining Masculinity Around Relationships
Last month I wrote a blog and shot a video called Two Words You Should Never Tell a Boy. The two words I was referring to are “stop crying.” It’s a message that is devastating to boys and leads to lots of other problems for them in the future. Problems that I see everyday in […]
‘Oneness’: When Two Become Three
I’ve been thinking a lot about marriage these last few weeks for several reasons. Whether it is with the couples I work with, or my own personal marriage…I have come to realize that we just can’t do marriage on our own. We can throw all the tools at it we want, but at the end […]
Do You and Your Spouse Need a Marriage Intensive?
I wish couples would go to counseling on a regular basis as a part of their commitment to being intentional in their marriage. I wish couples would go when their marriage was in a good spot, so that they can take it to an even greater spot. But the reality is, in my professional opinion, […]
Leadership and Relationships: Creating Safety
“Weak leaders are the ones who only extend the benefits of the Circle of Safety to their fellow senior executives and a chosen few others. They look out for each other, but they do not offer the same considerations to those outside their ‘inner circle.’ Without the protection of our leaders, everyone outside the inner […]
Exclusion as a Violation of the Self
Last week I came across this article that stated, being ignored is worse than being bullied. I had to stop and think about that statement for a second. Nevermind the article and the research, I wanted to just think about that statement, especially since we hear so much about bullying in the media these days. […]
Marriage Counseling: Sometimes Men and Women Need to Laugh at Their Differences
I love working with couples in marriage counseling, pre-marital counseling, dating…it’s often a lot of fun. This video reminds me of how funny our differences as men and women can be. They are often very painful. But hopefully we can laugh at ourselves sometimes. Mark Gungor explains:
What Are You and Your Spouse Really Fighting About?
I’ve posted before that when couples fight, the argument is rarely about the issue. We think we are talking about money. Or sex. Or parenting. Or in-laws. But it rarely is about those things. Before long (usually within a few seconds) we are questioning whether or not we are valued or have worth. We are […]
Healing Our Disconnection
“I want to think more about what connecting is and why I believe it is at the center of powerful relationships. If connecting is at the center of healing, then disconnecting must be at the core of what needs healing. In our therapeutic way of thinking, we’re more inclined to regard emotional forces, often unconscious, […]
Ever Have Trouble Putting Your Phone Down to be Present With Others?
I think we can all can agree that technology is a huge influence in the shaping of our lives and relationships. That’s why I’m a huge believer in placing healthy boundaries around our technology. It’s something I have been writing about for about 6 years, especially after being heavily influenced by the work of my […]
Terry Hargrave on Couple’s Therapy and Changing our Brain
Four years ago I was presented with an amazing opportunity that changed the way I thought about marriage (my own and the couples I work with), and how I work with couple’s in a therapeutic context. I went up to The Hideaway Experience in Amarillo, Texas to observe a 4-Day Marriage intensive. What I was […]
How Your Self-Reactivity Harms Relationships
“Somehow, even though we know that certain thoughts and behaviors are bad for us and are rooted in our own self-reactivity [negative patterns of coping], we return to those behaviors and usually find that these actions further assault our identities as human beings and our sense of closeness and safety in relationships. Old ideas die […]