Would you like your life to be less focused on others’ reactions and more informed by your own principles? Would you like to stop feeling responsible for the experiences of others?

This week I talk to therapist and author Dr Kathleen Smith about how to stop pleasing other people, find your authentic self, and, in the process, become less anxious and develop richer relationships.

We cover:

• Identifying relationship patterns that keep you stuck.
• Relying less on praise and approval from others.
• Building a solid sense of self in anxious times.
• Building more authentic and rewarding relationships.

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

• What is your anxiety language?
• AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools

Read Kathleen Smith’s new book True to You: A Therapist’s Guide to Stop Pleasing Others and Start Being Yourself

Read Kathleen Smith’s other books, Everything Isn't Terrible: Conquer Your Insecurities, Interrupt Your Anxiety, and Finally Calm Down and The Fangirl Life: A Guide to All the Feels and Learning How to Deal.

Read and/or subscribe to Kathleen Smith’s Substack, The Anxious Overachiever

Take a look at Kathleen Smith’s website

Follow Kathleen Smith on Twitter @fangirltherapy and on Facebook @kathleensmithwrites

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall

We all think of infidelity as something that happens to someone else. When betrayal enters our own safe universe, it comes as a terrible shock. Many couples confronting infidelity end up re-examining just about everything in their lives: not just their marriage, but their work, their relationships with family and friends, and how they find meaning and fulfilment. Sometimes it can even be these couples who end up with the strongest partnerships of all.

Caroline Madden, PhD is a Los Angeles based pro-marriage therapist who specializes in helping marriages recover after infidelity. Caroline is the author of several relationship books including: "Fool Me Once: Should I Take Back My Cheating Husband?" and "After a Good Man Cheats: How to Rebuild Trust & Intimacy With Your Wife” and “Blindsided by His Betrayal”.

In this classic episode, Caroline and Andrew draw on decades of shared experience working with couples affected by infidelity. They talk through the complex, painful process of rebuilding after the discovery of betrayal.

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

• Three things Caroline Madden knows to be true.
• AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools

Listen to Caroline’s book Blindsided by Betrayal on Audible, and take a look at her other books, Fool Me Once: Should I Take Back My Cheating Husband? and After a Good Man Cheats: How to Rebuild Trust & Intimacy With Your Wife

Find out more about Caroline’s work with infidelity survivors on her website

Follow Caroline on Twitter

Read Andrew’s books on infidelity recovery:

Why Did I Ever Cheat? Help Your Partner (and Yourself) Recover From Your Affair

How Can I Ever Trust You Again? Infidelity: From Discovery to Recovery in Seven Steps

I Can’t Get Over My Partner’s Affair: 50 Questions About Recovering from Extreme Betrayal and the Long-Term Impact of Infidelity

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall

People who have near-death experiences or who survive medically-induced comas report back disturbing and beautiful experiences. Some encounter ultra-vivid nightmares, while others undergo a deep, spiritual oneness with the universe or say they have glimpsed the afterlife.

Journalist and author Alan Pearce and his wife, Beverly Pearce, are the authors of Coma and Near-Death Experience: The Beautiful, Disturbing, and Dangerous World of the Unconscious.

In this episode Andrew and Alan discuss some of the extraordinary states of expanded consciousness that arise during comas, both positive and negative. They explore some of the alternatives to medically-induced coma that are safer for treating critically ill patients and kinder for the patients and their families.

Alan Pearce is a journalist, broadcaster, former BBC correspondent, and author of several books. He has contributed to numerous publications, from Time Magazine to The Sunday Times of London. He lives in Nouvelle Aquitaine, France.

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

• Taking a forty-day dark retreat.
• Three things Alan Pearce knows to be true.
• AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools

Buy Alan Pearce’s book Coma and Near-Death Experience: The Beautiful, Disturbing, and Dangerous World of the Unconscious

Visit Alan Pearce’s website

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall

The Meaningful Life Classic Episode: Richard Paterson on “No More Overthinking”.

Do you struggle to sleep, your mind buzzing with worries about the future? Do you compare yourself to others and find yourself always coming up short? This week’s episode is all about ditching overthinking and seeking happiness that ISN’T determined by external circumstances.

Richard Paterson, my guest this week, has trained throughout his life to quiet the thinking mind and unearth “ a treasure trove of uncaused peace, joy, love and perfect contentment waiting to be discovered—your true Self”.

Richard spent much of his twenties and thirties training in Indian ashrams, learning from spiritual masters about meditation and the causes of human suffering. He is trained in techniques of mindfulness and has taken vows as a monk. Richard has travelled the world teaching meditation and mindfulness and is the author of several books.

Follow Up

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Take a look at Richard Paterson’s website

Read Richard’s books Kick the Thinking Habit and Awaken the Happy You

Read Andrew’s advice on keeping a journal of your life and emotions.

Get Andrew’s advice on creating real change in your life and relationships in his book Wake Up and Change Your Life: How to Survive a Crisis and Be Stronger, Wiser and Happier:

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall

If you’re feeling “stuck” in your relationships, asking new kinds of questions can be a powerful way forward. This week Andrew talks with filmmaker and author Topaz Adizes about starting conversations that lead to a deeper, more authentic connection.

Andrew and Topaz discuss Topaz’s new book, 12 Questions for Love, and highlight the importance of:

• Cultivating genuine curiosity.
• Asking open-ended questions.
• The “connective question”, which draws both the asker and the responder into a shared experience.
• Creating the right space to ask deeper questions.
• The difference between a question with an agenda, and a question with an intention.

Topaz Adizes is an Emmy Award-winning writer, director, and experience design architect. He is an Edmund Hillary fellow and Sundance/Skoll stories of change fellow. His works have been selected to Cannes, Sundance, IDFA, and SXSW; featured in New Yorker magazine, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times; and have garnered an Emmy for new approaches to documentary and Two World Press photo awards for immersive storytelling and interactive documentary. He is currently the founder and executive director of the experience design studio The Skin Deep. Topaz studied philosophy at UC Berkeley and Oxford University. He speaks four languages, and currently lives in Mexico with his wife and two children.

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

• Three things Topaz Adizes knows to be true.
• How To Be More Vulnerable.
• AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools

For more about The Skin Deep, visit TheSkinDeep.com.

To learn more about Topaz Adizes and his work, visit TopazAdizes.com.

Follow Topaz Adizes and The Skin Deep on Instagram, Twitter/X, YouTube and Facebook.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall and on Substack at The Meaningful Life.

The Meaningful Life Classic Episode: TRACEY COX on Great Sex After 50

No-one would deny sex is important to a meaningful life, but what that looks like changes as we age. In this first episode of The Meaningful Life, international sex therapist and Daily Mail columnist Tracey Cox discusses her book Great Sex Starts at 50: How to Age-Proof Your Libido.

While wild, lustful sex can certainly be a unique and special life experience, the sex that brings us meaning is different. It’s the sex that lasts past the orgasm, to include that afterglow as you lie together or even just make each other a post-coital cup of tea. It’s about building a sexual relationship that is not solely focused on orgasm.

Meaningful sex is also sex that the two of you work on - after twenty years you probably won’t want to rip each other’s clothes off, but you CAN plan time to devote to each other, to try new things and create desire. Trying new things is something the majority of couples never do - but it’s a simple recipe for exciting, meaningful sex, and Tracey and Andrew have plenty of tips on where to start.

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

• Three things Tracey Cox knows to be true.
• AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things.

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools.

Buy Great Sex Starts at 50: How to Age-Proof Your Libido by Tracey Cox

Get the advice you need on your sex life from Tracey Cox.

Listen to Tracey Cox and Kelsey Chittick’s SexTok podcast

Follow Tracey Cox on social media: Instagram, Facebook and Twitter/X.

Put the spark back in your relationship with Andrew’s book Have The Sex You Want

https://andrewgmarshall.com/book/have-the-sex-you-want-a-couples-guide-to-getting-back-the-spark/

Read Andrew’s advice on what to do if your partner says the passion is gone

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall and on Substack at The Meaningful Life.

Grief is a painful and confusing journey. Often, the culture encourages us to “move on”, squashing our grief down so that those around us are comfortable.

This week Andrew talks to author and grief coach Shelby Forsythia. They discuss:

• Whether grief can turn “toxic”
• Coping with other people’s responses
• Living with grief as your companion
• Creating grief rituals
• Different causes of grief - death, divorce, infidelity, loss of identity.

Shelby Forsythia is a grief coach, author, and podcast host. In 2020, she founded Life After Loss Academy, an online course and community that has helped dozens of grievers grow and find their way after death, divorce, diagnosis, and other major life transitions. Following her mother’s death in 2013, Shelby began calling herself a “student of grief” and now devotes her days to reading, writing, and speaking about loss. Through a combination of mindfulness tools and intuitive, open-ended questions, she guides her clients to welcome grief as a teacher and create meaningful lives that honour and include the heartbreaks they’ve faced. Her work has been featured in Huffington Post, Bustle, and The Oprah Magazine.

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing.

• How to grieve the person you used to be.
• Three things Shelby Forsythia knows to be true.
• AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools

Visit Shelby Forsythia’s website

Follow Shelby Forsythia on social media Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | TikTok

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall and on Substack at The Meaningful Life.

Are you successful in the eyes of family and friends, but still feel empty and a little lost? Is there a nagging voice telling you that your life could have been bigger?

Dr Esther Zeledon had scaled the heights of career success as a scientist and international diplomat, but suffered from a strong sense that things weren’t right. She left behind a successful career to become a life coach, author, speaker and workshop facilitator centred on the mission of helping others create their “limitless life”.

Andrew and Esther discuss:

• Esther’s personal journey
• Overcoming negative voices
• Defining the meaning of success
• Finding clarity on your next steps.

Dr. Esther Zeledón embodies the resilient spirit of a Latina immigrant. Her rich and diverse background has been the cornerstone of her trailblazing work as a life coach, speaker, workshop facilitator, former international diplomat, and scientist. With a commitment to inclusivity, Dr. Zeledón has transformed the lives of thousands worldwide, bridging gaps across communities, corporations, and countries. Dr. Zeledón's book, "Creating Your Limitless Life," blends her personal memoir and life-changing method and follows her journey from paycheck-to-paycheck to creating her limitless life. Through her work, she lives her purpose of elevating people and organisations to shatter limits and trailblaze.

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

• Coping with the fear of being judged.
• Three things Esther Zeledon knows to be true.
• AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools

Read Dr Esther Zeledon’s book, Creating Your Limitless Life: On Your Terms.

Visit Dr Esther Zeledon's website

Follow Dr Esther Zeledon on Instagram @be.act.change

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall and on Substack at The Meaningful Life.