Praxis Podcast with Rhett Smith

About 5 years ago I was introduced to a therapy model that changed my life. And that's not an exaggeration. It literally changed my life, beginning with me, then my marriage, then my parenting, then my therapy work, then friendships, and eventually in the work I do with organizations, churches and corporations. I was introduced to a model of therapy developed by Terry Hargrave called Restoration T...

As a kid I loved to run. Whether it was chasing or racing friends, running was something that I grew up loving to do. And I continued to run in high school, competing in the 110 meter high hurdles, 300 meter intermediate hurdles and the 4 x 400. But somewhere over the years I noticed I stopped running as much. Sure, I still ran a couple of nights a week, but that was more of an ad on to my weight...

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 cover two questions that I seem to inevitably get when I'm out speaking on marriage and parenting. The...

About 4-5 years ago my wife and I's life was in a pretty hectic place. Like many of you, we were a double-income family, trying to both balance out time for our work, our family life, and our marriage. And like many of you, we sort of felt like life was just sort of happening to us. We felt like we were more passive observants of our own life, rather than intentionally participating in it. And at...

I enjoy interviewing all the guests on my podcast. It's a huge privilege to be able to talk with such amazing people. And this one was really special as I got to interview one of the former students in my college ministry. Between 2001-2008 I was on staff at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, CA, serving as the college pastor from 2002-2008. And in that time I was really blessed to serve...

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 part of my life with anxiety until I finally began to face it and use it as an opportunity...

About 5 weeks ago I was perusing through Instagram and I came across the feed of lvtrailrunner . I have been following lvtrailrunner (aka Benji Zimmerman) online for quite a while, and I have really been inspired by what he posts, especially his amazing trail running photos. But something different caught my eye this day...it was what he had to say on that post that really captured me. Benji wrote...

I first met Aubrey McGowan approximately in the summer of 2010. And like some other stories you have previously heard on this podcast, we met at the ECHO Conference in Dallas. At that time Aubrey was leading worship (as well as doing all kinds of other things...mentoring, vision casting, etc.) at Hope Fellowship in Frisco, TX. Since our first meeting a deep friendship has formed and I have really...

I have struggled with anxiety most of my life. The story of anxiety in my life begins probably somewhere between 1981 and 1986. Those were the years my mother battled breast cancer, eventually dying in 1986 when I was 11 years old. As best as I can remember, the onset of anxiety for me began two weeks after her death when I returned to school and was no longer capable of reading out loud in class....

This episode was definitely a Rhett Smith Podcast first. My brother-in-law Drew Sams and I went for a long 10 mile trail run earlier in the day, and spent our recovery time hanging outside in his backyard jacuzzi. And so we decided to just record the conversation there. So you are going to hear some helicopters and sirens in the background...and we are a bit delirious by the end of the podcast (I...

We all live in a very busy, very fast paced culture. And in our constant hurry it is often our self-care that goes by the wayside. We stop taking care of ourselves physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, often finding ourselves in a worse predicament than when we began. In this episode I really wanted to explore some spiritual practices that can help us foster our faith in the busyness...

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. So there I was online looking for some way to connect with people in Dallas. At the time I was pretty involved in the online i...

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 conferences, workshops, meetups, etc. And during that time I spoke quite a bit on how technology shapes our relati...

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 more like a bunch of youth pastors and me -- a therapist). Over the course of those last five years...

One of the issues that almost always comes up in my work with clients is the issue of forgiveness. It is the issue that often is not addressed, but the one that is most needed. So a few months ago when a pastor friend of mine asked me to come speak at his church's marriage conference he gave me the freedom to choose what I wanted to talk about. The obvious stuff came to mind instantly, communicati...

As I say in the introduction of this podcast, Wess Daniels is one of the smartest guys that I know. I first met Wess about ten years ago or more when I was a student at Fuller Theological Seminary and pastoring at Bel Air Presbyterian Church. I started hanging out with Wess when he was teaching me some tech hacks in creating my Apple HTML email signature (I know, sounds pretty exciting). But over...

 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 colleague over coffee one morning. And in the last 3 years I have been continually impressed...

About two years ago I came across Sarah Stanley online which led to a few email exchanges about running and health. And over the course of the last two years I have been both continually impressed and encouraged as I have watched her explore the outer limits of her abilities (physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually) through her ulta-running, all the while being fueled on a plant based di...

My dad is an amazing guy. Besides being my father he has taken on many roles over the course of his life such as church planter, pastor, professor, prison chaplain, hospice chaplain, writer, teacher, speaker, spiritual director, radio show host...and co-founder of Water from Rock which is a non-profit ministry based in Scottsdale, AZ, and which provides weekly classes, workshops, retreats, Lenten...

What can I say about Marc Payan? He is someone who is hard to sum up in just a few words. I first came across Marc in the online marriage and relationship space. Though we first met online I began to occasionally see Marc in person and I have really been inspired by him. Marc is probably best known now as the founder of Payan X which began with him helping a few people get in shape in his garage,...

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 and all the things that come with that as well. Trying to balance out work, family life, as well as my own personal stuff...